Crossing the Chasm: From Operational Management to Strategic Leadership
with Dr. Jeffrey Kuhn
Date: May 16, 2017
Session Time: 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Location Information:
Rivers Club (One Oxford Centre)
301 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
(412) 391-5227
Session Time: 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Location Information:
Rivers Club (One Oxford Centre)
301 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
(412) 391-5227

Session Description
Today’s market landscape presents both promise and peril for leaders in established organizations. Socioeconomic trends, accelerating technologies, and profound shifts in purchase and consumption patterns are radically reshaping existing markets and creating new ones. Threats to a company’s core business have become commonplace as barriers to entry fall and competitive arenas become saturated with fast followers and brazen imitators.
Organizations are waking up to these new market realities and find themselves in short supply of dynamic strategic leaders. They have legions of internally-focused “efficiency managers” to keep the organizational engine humming, but few leaders with the strategic capacity to capture emerging growth opportunities and guide the organization into the future.
This seminar provides a practical framework for thinking and leading strategically in the new market landscape. Through expert content, carefully curated case examples, captivating leadership portraits, insightful strategic dialogue, and impactful development tools, Dr. Kuhn will lead participants through an engaging exploration of the fundamental shifts in mindset, language, and lens needed to break the shackles of short-termism and incrementalism and cross the chasm from operational management to strategic leadership.
Biography
Dr. Jeffrey Kuhn is a distinguished thinker, author, strategy advisor, and speaker with expertise uniquely positioned at the intersection of strategy, innovation, growth, and organizational renewal. His work centers on helping senior leaders elevate their thinking during times of transformation and capitalize on emerging growth opportunities. He is the founder of KuhnStrategic, a New York-based strategy and executive development consultancy that works with business leaders worldwide to build the organizational mindset and muscle to unlock new market growth. He holds a doctorate from Columbia University, and has served as an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, and Teachers College, Columbia University. He is a founding member of the London-based Strategic Management Forum, and is a Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts. He is the author of Beyond the Mirage: Thinking and Leading Strategically in the New Market Landscape (in press, LID Publishing, 2017).
Time Allocation - Topics
10% Defining Strategic Leadership
5% Synthesis of Key Themes and Application
- What is strategic leadership? How is strategic leadership different from operational management and other forms of leadership?
- Three domains of leadership
- The Holy Trinity: strategic thinking, strategic leadership, and strategic innovation in dynamic industries
- Defining features of the new market landscape
- The new market landscape requires new ways of thinking and leading
- Strategic vs. operational vs. tactical thinking
- Key dimensions of strategic thinking and strategic leadership
- Why good companies go bad: sources of organizational decline
- The challenge of strategic innovation in established organizations; overcoming the gravitational pull of today to create the growth of tomorrow
- Leading organizational renewal
- Case discussion: financial health versus strategic health
- Future gazing
- Perceptual acuity
- Framing strategic questions
- The importance of curiosity and imagination
- Overcoming strategic myopia
- Crossing the chasm from operational management to strategic leadership
- Overcoming personal and organizational barriers to strategic thinking
- Building the strategic muscle of my team
- Charting the course to become a strategic leader
5% Synthesis of Key Themes and Application
Guide to Participant Selection
Department | Admin | Distrib | Engr | Finc | H.R. | Legal | Mktng | IT | Opr | Plng | Pchsg | R&D | Sales |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Senior Executive (Pres, Exec & Sr VP) | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
Executive (VP & Gen'l Mgr) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Senior Managers (Div & Reg. Mgrs) | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 |
Middle Managers & Superintendents | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 |
Focus
Primary -- LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT:
Adaptability, Commitment, Creativeness, Developmental Perspective, Initiative
Adaptability, Commitment, Creativeness, Developmental Perspective, Initiative
Secondary -- PLANNING/ORGANIZING:
Problem Identification, Selecting and Organizing Information, Evaluating Alternative Solutions
Problem Identification, Selecting and Organizing Information, Evaluating Alternative Solutions
Tertiary -- EXECUTING/CONTROLLING/EVALUATING:
Decision Making, Use of Authority, Direction
Decision Making, Use of Authority, Direction