Strategic Decision Making Program
For Experienced Professionals: Embrace the Art of Strategy to Make Better Decisions in Your Business and Daily Life
About the Program
This development program is designed for experienced professionals who aim at learning and employing the art of strategy to improve decision-making. Over the course of this intensive program which is designed as a “training camp”, participants will be engaging in experiments, role plays (e.g., war gaming), and AI-based computer simulations to experience how thinking, deciding, and acting strategically can help achieve desired outcomes.
Program Content
We live in a complex world with volatile and ambiguous systemic interdependencies and a high uncertainty of outcomes. Disruptive technologies, the creative destruction of established business models, black swan events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and social-political upheavals pose huge challenges to decision-makers in organizations globally.
To address and master these challenges, we need to develop contingent plans of action crafted to realize desired outcomes. Thinking, deciding, and acting strategically is an essential leadership skill for coping with inevitable change: Imagine leading your team through the current crisis – the company’s deliberate strategy is still valid but has to be adapted to the disruptive changes. Now you need to quickly make solid strategic decisions to successfully execute the strategy.
This Executive Program nurtures that skill and helps you turn it into a capability that can be applied in different contexts and circumstances. You will learn to recognize and resolve situations where your individual choices and outcomes are interdependent with the choices and outcomes of others. You will train to think critically about your own position in interactions with others, put yourself in the place of these others, see the unfolding situation through their eyes, anticipate their next best moves, determine your best response and act with agility and prudence.
Learn to
- connect the dots through situation analysis
- develop strategic foresight
- discern constellations of strategic interdependence
- put yourself in the place of others and anticipate their moves
- seek out your best responses to others’ potential and actual actions
- devise a plan of action in alignment with your resources and capabilities
Thinking and acting from the strategist’s perspective: program outline & methodology
This program is designed as an immersive three-day in-class “training camp”. You will be put “outdoors”, figuratively speaking, exposed to rigorously changing “weather conditions”, and forced to adopt the mindset of a strategist to cope with various high-stake challenges and come up with viable solutions.
In experiments, role plays (e.g., war gaming), and AI-based computer simulations you will learn to recognize and evaluate situations of strategic interaction, sharpen your awareness for cognitive biases, and experience the consequences of your decisions both intellectually and emotionally.
The art of strategy
The program will hone your strategic intuition, foresight, and judgment. It provides you with a set of practical tools and techniques for dealing effectively with strategic situations – situations of systemic complexity, dynamic interdependencies, ambiguity, and sudden external shocks.
To prepare for the program you can utilize our digital learning platform which provides introductory and background materials (videos, readings, and quizzes) on the topics covered in the program. It also includes an introduction to the Business Simulation Game, which you will play during the program.
Our digital learning platform provides the necessary fundamentals for making informed decisions and devising a strategic plan of how to succeed in a world of complexity and uncertainty. However, knowledge is not enough, if it is not put into action.
“The only source of knowledge is experience” – Albert Einstein
Therefore, the three-day program invites you to leave your comfort zone, go into action, and apply your knowledge. It helps you reflect on your strengths and weaknesses in decision-making and become a more confident, informed, and responsible strategist.
Program Format and Module Dates
This 3-day program runs at WHU Campus Düsseldorf.
Before the program, participants are required to familiarize themselves with our digital learning platform which provides introductory and background materials (videos, readings, and quizzes) on the topics covered in the program. It also includes an introduction to the Business Simulation Game, which you will play during the program. You should plan in 10 hours for this mandatory online preparation.
Module Dates
Program Benefits
Your personal benefits:
- Test your strategic thinking and acting skills in an immersive and interactive learning environment
- Take home a toolkit for strategic and tactical decision-making
- Reflect on your decision-making processes during the program
- Advance your capability to master difficult decision situations
- Share your experiences with your program peers and learn from theirs
Upon completion, you will be awarded a WHU Executive Education Certificate, a recognized mark of your commitment to growth, leadership, and lifelong learning, issued by one of Europe’s top business schools.
Participant Profile
Experienced managers, executives, and entrepreneurs interested in strategic thinking and acting.
Participants should have at least 8 years professional experience and 2 years experience in making decisions of strategic or tactical relevance.
Business background is not required.
This program particularly suitable for past participants of our “Strategy Execution for Organizational Growth” program.
Our Admissions Team is happy to assist you.
We look forward to connecting with you!