Let’s face it: times have changed. It’s easy to get consumed by the ever-increasing daily challenges posed by executives, team members, business partners, and other stakeholders. However, to determine how best to respond, what we often don’t realize is that we must immerse ourselves in the future. We need to figure out how to create meaning from all the uncertainties, trends, and conjectures that seem to be on the horizon, but in reality have already begun. And we need to know when to stop analyzing and breaking apart data and learn to synthesize the thousands of pieces of information about the future into breakthroughs that will catapult your project, initiative, or organization forward.
The Performance Excellence Network, Southeast Region, is pleased to announce a special workshop “Proven Ways to Enhance Strategic Thinking in Yourself and Others” December 4 in Rochester. The workshop will be facilitated by Lori Silverman.
Discover why organizations require leaders at all levels that can think strategically, anticipate issues, solve problems, and make decisions based on new and emerging information and the long-term vision for the project and the enterprise. Walk away with myriad practical strategic thinking tools and techniques you can apply immediately in your work.
Objectives: At the end of this workshop, you will be able to …
- Distinguish between strategic thinking and analysis thinking.
- Integrate environmental scan and vision-based scenario information into strategy work that is done prior to creating a project plan.
- Talk to a team about creating a future story to expand upon its vision for an initiative.
- Identify what’s needed to sustain a project after implementation and integrate it into the project plan upfront.
- Identify high-level interdependencies between your project and other projects and initiatives in the organization.
- Begin to identify the new assumptions underlying your project and those being used by key stakeholders and project members that may be in conflict.
- Outline the various rungs on the ladder of inference for a specific project situation and know how to address this.
- Listen for critical thinking issues in conversations and intervene to get more information.
About Lori Silverman
As a strategist and the owner of Partners for Progress®, a management firm dedicated to helping organizations think and act differently, for the last two decades Lori Silverman has consulted across more than 25 different industries on implementing messy, complex organizational changes and creating viable long-term strategies to increase success. Organizations she has worked with include Chevron, Bechtel, Redwood Credit Union, Jones Dairy Farm, Mental Health Management, Duquesne University, the American College of Veterinary Pathologists, the Association for Public Health Laboratories, YMCA of the Inland Northwest, Lucent, Thrivent Financial, American Family Insurance and the U.S. Air Force Reserves.
A nationally recognized keynote speaker and member of the National Speakers Association, Lori has inspired thousands of people to take action on topics ranging from schmoozing, to strategic planning in uncertain times, the use of story in business, and persuasion and influence. She also speaks as an ad hoc instructor at the Fluno Center for Executive Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lori has published more than one hundred articles and workbooks on strategic planning, teams, quality, value creation and change and has appeared on more than 70 radio and TV shows to talk about using story techniques at work to gain tangible bottom-line results. Lori is the co-author of Critical Shift: The Future of Quality in Organizational Performance and Stories Trainers Tell. Her 2006 book, Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results, debuted in the top 100 books on Amazon. Business Storytelling for Dummies, co-authored with Karen Dietz, PhD, will be out in late 2013.
For more information, see www.partnersforprogress.com and www.wakeupmycompany.com.
