(CLP) Programs

Appleton Greene corporate training programs are all process-driven. They are used as vehicles to implement tangible business processes within clients’ organizations, together with training, support and facilitation during the use of these processes. Corporate training programs are therefore implemented over a sustainable period of time, that is to say, between 1 year (incorporating 12 monthly workshops), and 4 years (incorporating 48 monthly workshops). Your program information guide will specify how long each program takes to complete. Each monthly workshop takes 6 hours to implement and can be undertaken either on the client’s premises, an Appleton Greene serviced office, or online via the internet. This enables clients to implement each part of their business process, before moving onto the next stage of the program and enables employees to plan their study time around their current work commitments. The result is far greater program benefit, over a more sustainable period of time and a significantly improved return on investment.

Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. All (CLP) programs are implemented over a sustainable period of time, usually between 1-4 years, incorporating 12-48 monthly workshops and professional support is consistently provided during this time by qualified learning providers and where appropriate, by Accredited Consultants.

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Executive summary

Adaptive Business Strategy

Strategic Thinking Skills for a BANI World –sustaining and improving your organisational outcomes

Organisations invest significant time, care, and effort in producing the organisational strategy. The people that worked on “the strategy” believe that once it is done and cascaded, people throughout the organisation would absorb the content and march on to achieve the expected organisational outcomes, whatever those may be.

Our world has changed, and hence the context in which for-profit or non-profit organisations need to conduct their “business” has changed dramatically. We have left behind the V(volatile), U (uncertain,) C (complex) A (ambiguous) worlds and find ourselves in B (brittleness), A (anxious), N (non-linear world), I (in comprehensive), where things change rapidly and where cause and effect seem disproportionate, something tiny like a tweet, can bring revolutions and fortunes down.

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Since Henry Mintzberg introduced emergent strategy in the late 70s, organisations have wrestled to understand how to use both strategies to their advantage. Emergent and planned or intended strategies are terms used to describe the implied combination of decentralised initiatives at different levels of scale (individual, team, business unit, etc.) in the organisation and central and top-down planning and coordination. This challenge has further increased with the depth and growth of global interconnectedness (supply chain, distributed workforce) and new ways of working (remote work), and external local events that become global overnight, such as Covid-19 and other natural disasters due to climate change, to name a few.

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The autonomous actions and decisions that managers and employees at different levels engage in to meet internal and external demands of doing business are also strategic choices. Their conscious or unconscious decision to stick to the deliberate strategy, seize or create new ways to respond to business demands are core elements of complex strategy-making. These two modes of strategy co-exist. Examples of organisations that capitalise on emergent strategies are Netflix, Flickr, Nintendo, and PayPal, to name a few. Throughout this journey, participants are encouraged to become aware and find opportunities to see how their choices are adaptive responses that can be integrated with the current business activities through flexible initiatives and an intended strategy mode. Conditions are created for participants to have a renewed appreciation of how small decisions can potentially create significant change and the implications & consequences on short- and long-term strategy patterns.

The work done through these workshops is deeply rooted in the activities participants engage in daily to meet the desired organisational outcomes—avoiding the separation and tension of working on (future opportunities) and in (today’s demands) the business. The program creates conditions for experiencing working at different levels of scale that make an imprint on how to do this moving forward. The tension between what I need to do today and thinking about tomorrow softens. It is no longer perceived as a binary decision.

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At a time when contextual change feels at warp speed, participants may need to take quick action. These actions are based on assumptions on how they understand the challenge or opportunity. Due to timing constraints, the uncommunicated learning and rationale sharing behind the decisions increase the risk of process loss (impactful information not readily or appropriately shared among group members), which can make a difference in the micro-moments of strategy making.

As participants journey through the program, they understand that the quality of their questions depends on the lens they are using when contextual sensemaking and the strategic patterns they want to create. Over time, the feeling of being stuck between a rock and a hard place disappears as they learn to navigate their challenges more easily.

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Through this applied-learning journey, participants learn to recognise, make sense of, and navigate the tensions created by:

• Emergent Strategy < ------- > Deliberate/Planned Strategy
• Strategic Planning <------- > Strategic Intent
• Top-Down Strategic Choices < ----- > Strategic Choices at all levels
• Working on the Business (Future) < -----> Working in the Business (Now)
• Linearity < -------- > non-Linearity
• Reactive (Anxiousness) < ---------------- > Responsive
• Complete clarity < ------- > Incomprehensive World
• Yes or No Decisions < -------- > Management of Tensions
• Problems to solve <------------ > Patterns to manage.

Adaptive Business Strategy is an opportunity to co-create your future from the bottom up.