Corporate & Educational Workshops

Overview

The overall aim is to provide a positive learning experience for organisational and learners’ professional development.

Having taught qualification and non-qualification strategy and leadership development courses for over 20 years for Henley Business School, Warwick Executive Education, Lancaster University Management School of Business, DeGroote School of Business, and Kingston Business tailored outcomes, design and the learning process is key. I use learner’s organisations or their own career as ‘ the case study’ to optimise professional and organisational benefit.

Corporate workshop experience include Experian, M&S, the International Chamber of Commerce, Bulgaria as well as speaking engagements such as the UK Employees Assistance Professionals Association.

Academic institutions as a core course and/or elective

Managing Strategic Change

As lead author of Strategy through Personal Values – A Behavioural Approach. S. Lichtenstein and M. Higgs, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022., I have designed and delivered “Managing Strategic Change” for Lancaster University Management School as a course on their Executive MBA programme in Ghana.

Learners’ organisation and/or their career development is the case study to increase relevance for professional and organisational development.

A strategic change as storytelling approach is used for intellectual and emotional buy-in. The book and course has been designed to develop two strategic leadership practices:

Sense-make give: to make sense of the organisational situation an individual, team or business unit is in, and then to give that sense to stakeholders, known collectively as ‘sense make/give’. Sense-making is the capability to see what’s happening on the surface and to understand the root cause before attempting to solve the problem or bring about change (Aitken and Higgs, 2010). This ability to recognise, understand and address what is going on as a whole system is a practice and key capability of any informal and formal leader wanting to make lasting strategic change.

Personal values sensitivity: The other strategic leadership practice strategic change requires is tuning into all the personal values, interests, beliefs and motivational drives present in important communications and interaction, starting one’s own, known as ‘Personal values sensitivity’ (McKensie and Aitken, 2012).

The development of the two leadership practices of sense make/give and personal values sensitivity underpin this course.

Corporate training

Managing Strategic Change Workshop

Working with the business to tailor it to its context and intended outcomes, the learner’s context and organisation is the ‘case study’ for maximum relevance, professional and organisation benefit.

As lead author of Strategy through Personal Values – A Behavioural Approach. S. Lichtenstein and M. Higgs, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022., the purpose of the workshop is for learners to develop their own strategic transition project taking a strategic change as storytelling approach for emotional buy-in.

The process is input, group work on exercises to develop the intellectual and emotional buy-in for the project and feedback on individual and group work exercises.

The benefit of the workshop is the development of a strategic change story including a call to action and the development of two leadership practices:

(i) sense make/give – to make sense of the organisational situation an individual, team or business unit is in, and then to give that sense to stakeholders, known collectively as ‘sense make/give’, and

(ii) personal values sensitivity – tuning into all the personal values, interests, beliefs and motivational drives present in important communications and interaction, starting one’s own.