Leading Strategic Initiatives (Program Management) with Greg Githens and Bruce Gay
What You Will Learn
Upon completion of this training, learners will be able to:
- Recognize why “initial starting conditions” are essential for strategic initiatives and apply appropriate techniques to assure benefits realization.
- Understand the competencies of personal leadership in strategy delivery
- Apply communications techniques to better convey benefits, value, opportunities, and promises to stakeholders
Description
As organizations recover, pivot, and “bounce forward” from the pandemic, they will increasingly charter strategic initiatives. Strategic initiatives are distinct from initiatives intended to improve business operations. They are bold endeavors with large organizational scale and scope; thus, they are programs that apply tools from the program management toolbox.
When in crisis and emerging from crisis, individuals typically discover that a new kind of thinking is needed. Individuals need to acquire an executive and strategic mindset, reject out-of-date conventions and practices, and apply the principles of innovation and experimentation.
This training's primary objective is to provide proven leadership practices, skills, and insights specific to strategic initiative programs. Learners will exit the training with tools, perspective, and confidence to make instant, positive contributions to their organization.
The training content is grounded in real-world examples of strategic initiatives delivered through video clips, personal experiences, and case discussions.
Prework
AGENDA
-
- Introductions
- An example of a future-leaning career narrative
- Training logistics and learning objectives
- Program Management
- Programs versus project distinctions
- Main job of the program manager
- Five performance domains
- Getting off to a good start
- Governance and decision-making: Managing the choice cascade
- Communicating the program brand
- Discovery orientation
- Personal Leadership
- Big Ideas alignment, commitment, coordination
- Get off to a good start
- Psychological safety
- Personal leadership
- Prioritizing issues
- The LIDDS model
- Operations versus strategy
- Strategic Initiatives as a Change-the-Business Endeavor
- Closing performance gaps
- Using culture’s strengths
- Translating strategic decisions into tactical decisions
- Definition of strategic initiatives
- Introductions
-
- Delivering a Rolling Wave of Benefits
- Metrics
- Sustaining commitment
- Economic and emotive benefits
- Benefits are experienced
- Benefits map and traceability
- Program roadmap
- Incremental delivery of benefits
- Rolling wave
- Story Telling
- Key elements of a strategy story
- Prospective hindsight technique
- Elevator speech
- Micro-stories
- TACOS model of communicating innovation
- Better Questions Spark Better Strategy
- Four driving questions of innovation projects
- New models of expertise
- Resourcefulness and clearness in strategic thinking
- Delivering a Rolling Wave of Benefits
The instructor was articulate, friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable. The session was very interactive and insightful. I'll definitely attend more of such sessions, especially those facilitated by Greg. I learned a lot and I can confidently say that the seminar was valuable to my personal development, as well as career development.
January 2023 Attendee
It was new content for me and I felt I learned a lot of practical information to be able to take back to my current role.
January 2023 Attendee
The course materials, case studies, classroom exercises, and reference library of books all complement each other very well. It's clear that the instructor has given this topic decades of thought and research.
June 2023 Attendee
PDU Allocation Table
| Ways of Working | Power Skills | Business Acumen | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPM® / PMI-CP™ / PMP® / PgMP® | 4 | 4 | 6 | 14.00 |
| PMI-ACP® / Agile* | 1 | 4 | 6 | 11.00 |
| PMI-SP® | 0 | 4 | 6 | 10.00 |
| PMI-RMP® | 0 | 4 | 6 | 10.00 |
| PfMP® | 1 | 4 | 6 | 11.00 |
| PMI-PBA® | 0 | 4 | 6 | 10.00 |
 |  |  |  |
Instructor(s)
Gregory D. Githens PMP
Greg Githens’ mission is to upskill individuals to make positive impact by delivering useful ideas and new perspectives. His engaging enthusiastic style has earned him the reputation as one of PMI’s most popular speakers.
Greg is the author of How to Think Strategically: Sharpen Your Mind. Develop Your Competency. Contribute to Success. This highly rated book explains that strategic thinking is an individual competency composed of 20 microskills. Because strategic thinking is rare and valuable, those who demonstrate it have more value to their organizations and are more promotable.
Greg has been a featured speaker at PMI congresses, PMI chapters, The Management Roundtable, and elsewhere. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from Bowling Green State University (USA) and a master’s degree from Miami University (USA).
Bruce Gay PMP
Bruce Gay, PMP, helps individuals improve their project management skills, become better leaders, and achieve professional greatness. He has over two-and-a-half decades worth of experience managing large, complex programs and customer relationships across multiple industries. In his current role, Bruce manages a PMO and is responsible for operational and delivery excellence for a 100+ person R&D organization of software engineers, product managers, machine learning and NLP scientists, security experts, and cloud engineers. For the past 15 years, he managed product teams that incorporated UX Design and Design Thinking methodologies into their product development processes.
Bruce has presented at both regional and international conferences, including the PMI global conferences in Chicago, Los Angeles, Dublin, Ireland, Netherlands, and Jamaica. Bruce lives in Pittsburgh, Penn. with his wife, two daughters, and his dog. Bruce is an active volunteer with the PMI Pittsburgh Chapter and is their Director of Corporate Sponsorship. Bruce shares his experiences and ideas around Design Thinking on twitter: @brucegay and on his website: www.Astrevo.com.