Crafting Ambitious Strategy
Working on Strategy Together
Strategy is not a document you write once, but an ongoing process you lead and adapt with your team.
The Crafting Ambitious Strategy program helps leaders in small and medium-sized companies take ownership of this work straightforwardly. You will learn how to build a strategy step by step, adjust it as things change, and connect it to daily work. The program provides clear methods, enabling you to handle strategy work independently.
The program strengthens leaders' ability to set direction, test ideas, and turn plans into action. It helps you deal with uncertainty by testing assumptions and supports in creating the motivation and commitment needed to make it work.
Now is the right time to strengthen your top team's competence and ensure your company is ready for the future. We encourage leaders to join with their top team or selected members. Working on strategy together makes it easier to apply and more valuable for the whole company.
All discussions during the program are confidential and protected by NDAs or similar agreements. We create a safe space to share challenges. By being honest, you not only support others but also gain the most for your own work.
Next, turn strategy into results and continue with the Driving Strategy Execution program.
Blended format
A mix of face-to-face and online sessions supported by company-specific work.
Step-by-step process
From foundations of strategy to exploring the future, testing assumptions, and options, and making a strategy for your company.
Team focus with flexibility
Work with your own “Echo Team,” and add an optional sparring session with faculty for company-specific questions.
"Aiming to be the best in the world is the only way to win. You will not win by pushing harder. You need a bolder and smarter strategy. This requires challenging your assumptions, facing brutal facts, and intellectual creativity. Old ways of thinking are doomed to fail in the new world. This module helps you learn the cutting-edge approaches to strategy making."
Timo Vuori, Associate Professor, Strategic Management at Aalto University
Benefits
For you as a leader
- Build the skills to set direction and make informed choices.
- Handle uncertainty by testing and adjusting assumptions.
- Engage people so that strategy becomes action, not just plans.
For your team and company
- Create a shared understanding of direction and priorities.
- Improve decision-making by spotting opportunities and risks early.
- Strengthen commitment across the organization to reach goals.
For
The program is for leaders in small and medium-sized companies, especially:
- CEOs who want to guide strategy themselves
- Management teams working on strategic decisions
- SME leaders who need a clear process for strategy planning
- Business unit and function heads linking plans with daily work
- Entrepreneurial leaders growing their company and moving from reacting to planning
Contents and Schedule
The program combines face-to-face and online sessions with company-specific work.
Modules
Instructor
Timo Vuori
Timo Vuori is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at Aalto University School of Science.
His research on the psychological aspects of strategic management has been published in leading international journals and won several international awards. He has taught and presented his research at leading universities like Harvard and INSEAD.
Professor Vuori's research and teaching focus on how companies formulate and execute strategies. He has written two books with senior business executives on these topics. "Living Strategy" describes scenario-based strategy making in an ever-changing world. "Platform Strategy" describes how incumbent firms should and can renew themselves in the digital era. The books detail both the "hard" factors, such as technology and business models, and "soft" factors, such as people and psychology, influencing strategy and renewal.
Professor Vuori works extensively with companies, often collaborating with a leading strategy consulting company. Vuori helps the client organization formulate and evaluate several strategic options in strategy formulation projects. He uses advanced psychological techniques to help leaders unleash their strategic creativity and overcome thinking myopias and personal biases. This approach is based on his cutting-edge international research, also described in the Platform Strategy.
In strategy execution projects, Professor Vuori specializes in helping the client firm optimize the psychological engagement of the whole organization. He analyses the psychological impact of the intended strategy execution program and modifies it to maximally leverage the emotions of the organization's members for effectiveness.