Mentoring

Norman also runs a series of mentoring sessions with individual executives and / or leadership teams. These sessions work particularly well when you have a particular issue you’d like to work through, or when you want to work on things that are commercial-in-confidence.

WHAT

Although the focus can be tailored to suit your particular circumstances, the sessions usually address one or several of the following issues:

Planning for an uncertain future

Because conventional planning is less effective in complex and uncertain environments, we use Scenario Thinking to envisage the range of alternative futures faced by you or your organisation. This allows us to test (wind-tunnel) our current business idea against a range of alternative futures and identify the changes or new capabilities needed. We can then prepare plans to build the required capabilities for an uncertain future.

Crafting strategy for competitive advantage

Learn how to read and understand the “logic” of your market – and then to develop a strategy that delivers a sustainable competitive advantage. This is useful for organisations that operate in markets with intense rivalry where differentiation is hard to achieve.

Improving strategic thinking and decision making – in conditions of uncertainty

By using the latest research from neuroscience – and integrating this with business strategy and economics – we examine how thinking and decision-making occurs. We explore your own style of thinking and decision-making, and then develop practicl approaches to improve performance under pressure and conditions of uncertainty.

Developing organisational architecture

How can you successfully implement your strategy? What type of organisation is required to implement the business strategy? How can we make the organisation more responsive to the market and easier for customers to deal with? These are some of the questions we will work through as we develop an organisation design and business model that is closely aligned with your business strategy.

Managing cultural change

Having the appropriate culture for business success is key focus for leadership. But how do you assess the current culture? How do you define the desired culture? And how do you get the cultural shifts that are necessary to create alignment through the organisation? By using the framework of “Strategic Alignment”, we will determine the logic of your market, understand the requirements of your business strategy, and then develop a culture that will deliver you the business results you need.

Building growth pathways for the future

Planning for growth and future strategy is particularly difficult in conditions of change and uncertainty. Conventional business planning doesn’t work in these situations – you need to use approaches that embrace the uncertainty in the situation and help you build your own future. We will use the techniques of “FutureBuilding” to create pathways to the future and generate increased levels of growth.

Over the horizon leadership

Strategic leadership is difficult at the best of times. But when conditions are highly uncertain, the task is all the more complex. We will work on improving your decision-making, strategic intuition and contingency planning – areas that need to be mastered in order to improve the ability to lead effectively through conditions of uncertainty and change.

HOW

Norman runs these sessions by way of face-to-face meetings as well as webinars. While some sessions benefit from face-to-face contact, webinars offer you the flexibility and convenience of remaining in your office behind your computer.

The sessions can range from half or full days to an hour, depending on the topic and issue being addressed.