Implementing Strategy in the Civil Service – Four-Day Training Seminar, Central London
Implementing Strategy in the Civil Service
From Designing Strategies to Delivering Policy Outcomes
Monday 27th March – Thursday 30th March
Day One Monday 27th March The Foundations of Strategy
Guest Speaker on Day One: Zoë Collier, former Diplomat, and Associate Trainer at the UK National School of Government
Day Two Tuesday 28th March Beyond Strategic Thinking
Guest Speaker on Day Two: Guest Speaker: Professor Colin Talbot, Emeritus Professor of Government, Manchester University
Day Three Wednesday 29th March Policy Implementation and Delivery
Guest Speaker on Day Three: Jonathan Slater, former Permanent Secretary, UK Department for Education
Day Four Thursday 30th March Leading Delivery
Guest Speaker on Day Four: Professor Patrick Diamond, Professor in Public Policy at Queen Mary, University of London, and former Head of Policy Planning in No10 Downing Street
To book your place on this seminar, or for details of discounts for group bookings, please email David Leakey on [email protected] or phone on +44 20 7661 7817.
Introduction and Overview
A strategy is only as good as its implementation – the extent to which it actually delivers intended policy outcomes. This event provides an in-depth exploration of the key ingredients for implementing strategy and policy in the civil service or any public sector role. Starting with the foundations of strategy, the event looks beyond strategic thinking to consider innovation, adaptation, and implementation. It explores a wide range of implementation issues including feasibility, capacity, project management and change management. The event is very interactive and will include insights from senior civil service leaders.
Who Should Attend and Why?
You should attend this if you are involved in a public sector strategy, policy or delivery role or if you aspire to such a role in the future. The training will develop your ability in your current role and also support your career development as a leader. The event is designed to be of benefit whether or not you have had previous experience of strategy, policy and implementation work.
Objectives
By attending this training, you will understand all the essential insights needed to enable you make strategic choices, plan policy implementation, innovate, adapt and deliver strategic policy projects. Specifically, you will:
- Understand the core elements of strategy and strategic thinking
- Be able to innovate and adapt your strategy to new challenges as they arise
- Gain new insights into successful implementation and delivery
- Understand the core elements of project management and change management
- Consider how to demonstrate leadership on all aspects of strategy implementation
To book your place on this seminar, or for details of discounts for group bookings, please email David Leakey on [email protected] or phone on +44 20 7661 7817.
Agenda
Times on the Agenda are in UK Time
The course runs each day from 10:00 to 16:20
Day One Monday 27th March The Foundations of Strategy
10:00 Welcome, Introductions and Overview of the Course
Session One The Why and Where of Strategy
- Understanding organisational strengths, weaknesses, and how they relate to the opportunities and threats facing our organisation
- Clarifying “the big why” – why the organisation does what it does and the difference it will make to others
- Exploring where we want to be in three to five years from now and beyond
- Creating meaningful strategic goals
Break
Session Two Strategy as Choice
- Exploring alternative strategies
- How to choose which strategy is best
- How to achieve the most significant results with available resources
- Focusing our efforts and being clear what we are saying no to.
Lunch Break
Session Three Strategy as How
- Strategy and operations compared
- Ensuring the right systems, resources, capabilities, communication and collaboration are in place to deliver the strategy
- Facing possible obstacles and working out how to address them
- Managing strategic risks
- Managing change and creating momentum for success
Break
Session Four The Who and When of Strategy
- Strategic planning and project planning compared
- Who should we involve in developing a strategy and when should we involve them?
- A question of balance: how to ensure the policy plan stays on track vs how to adapt and modify the strategy
- Ensuring accountability and ownership
- Promoting learning and continuous improvement
Conclusion, Final Questions and Discussion
16:20 Close
Day Two Tuesday 28th March Beyond Strategic Thinking
10:00 Session One What Are We Moving Beyond? Strategy Essentials
- Limitations of linear planning approaches
- Limitations of top-down approaches
- The need to make challenging trade-offs
- The need to focus
- The need for clarity on the how
- The link between strategy and innovation, adaptation and implementation
Break
Session Two Bold Innovation
- The magic of questions
- Creativity tools
- “Frugal innovation”
- Strategic and operational innovation
- Filtering ideas
- Collaboration and teamwork
- Making the case for change
Lunch Break
Session Three Rapid Adaptation
- Why you need more than just innovation
- Why it is hard to learn from failure (but even harder not to)
- Embracing uncertainty
- Experimentation as strategy?
- Flexible organisations and teams
- Creating an organisation that can adapt to unknown risks
- Seeing systems
Break
Session Four End of Day Wrap-Up
- Accountability without a blame culture
- Using coaching approaches to facilitate transformation
- Final discussion
16:20 Close
Day Three Wednesday 29th March Policy Implementation and Delivery
10:00 Session One Making Deliverable Strategic Policy Choices
- Are the options deliverable?
- Are the proposed policy options politically and publicly acceptable?
- Are new legal powers necessary and what timescales would be involved if so?
- Are the proposed policy options enforceable?
- Discussion of delegates’ experiences
Break
Session Two Capacity Analysis
- Analysis and approaches
- Ensuring adequate resources to deliver
- Methods for stress-testing organisational capacity
- How to avoid common pitfalls – what does not work well and why?
- Sharing delegates’ examples
Lunch Break
Session Three Practical Tools for Managing Change
- Planning and communicating change
- Methods for change management (and how not to do it)
- Leadership and change
- Review of delegate experiences
Break
Session Four End of Day Wrap-Up
- Using scenario planning to make the policy more resilient
- Final discussion
16:20 Close
Day Four Thursday 30th March Leading Delivery
10:00 Session One Leadership and Delivery
- Leadership as influence
- Leadership and questioning
- The leadership and management triangle
- Leading in all directions
- Delegate experience sharing
Break
Session Two Learning from Failures
- The lessons from why projects fail
- Delegate sharing of lessons from past failures
- Monitoring and evaluation
- Systems thinking and strengthening feedback loops
Lunch Break
Session Three Negotiation Skills
- The soft skills of negotiation
- Different negotiation strategies
- How to get others to commit to delivery
Break
Session Four Course Conclusions and Close
- Ways of demonstrating leadership on strategy implementation
- Your action plans
16:20 Close
Our L&D team
- All former practitioners, now professional trainers, our L&D team have provided open and bespoke solutions for more than 100,000 public servants from 120 countries
Our L&D seminars
- A vast reservoir of international, transferable knowledge and perspectives about effective, delivery-focused approaches to working smarter in the public sector
Price
The price of attending this four-day Training Seminar in Central London is:
GBP£ 2,000 per person
USD$ 2,700 per person
CAD$ 3,440 per person
EUR€ 2,390 per person
Please contact us for details of discounts for group bookings, or to arrange a conversation with a member of our training team to discuss in-house delivery options, including tailoring the day’s training to your specific needs.
You can email David Leakey on [email protected] or phone on +44 20 7661 7817.
