Strategic Leadership Training Programme – Case Study
MPI Learning partnered with one of the UK’s largest housing association groups to develop an engaging and stretching strategic leadership programme for their senior leaders.
The programme ran through Q3 and Q4 2022 and helped to achieve a step-change in their top 100 leaders’ engagement around strategic leadership, planning and delivery.
The organisation operates in a fast-moving, highly responsive environment, where quality and standards are critical and day-to-day operations can become all-consuming. This presented a leadership challenge as the organisation sought to engage and implement long-term strategic focus and development.
Through our discovery work and initial discussions, we identified that the organisation’s greatest need was on the development of a strategic mindset across their leadership group that would support longer-term decision-making and help leaders to align their day-to-day operations with the wider organisational strategy.
Our challenge was to create a programme that helped Leaders think and act more strategically, elevating their leadership and demonstrating collective ownership of the organisation’s future.
Solution:
The learning solution had to be engaging, practical and able to elevate participants thinking, whilst allowing them time to discuss and address the real issues that were holding them back.
Our programme would centre around a face-to-face workshop, and we agreed with the client to mix the cohorts, thus facilitating more diverse discussion and bridge-building across the business.
We agreed on the following programme objectives:
Delegates will:
1. Be clear on the mindset and approaches required to deliver long-term business success
2. Understand how to create alignment in their strategic planning and wider activities
3. Have committed to tangible actions that will step-change their Strategic Leadership
Prior to the workshop leaders were invited to reflect upon their own strategic leadership impact by exploring a range of media resources and the completion of a questionnaire, thus ensuring that they were primed and ready for discussion and debate.
The workshop started with delegates engaged in an energetic discussion around their pre-work and their current organisational reality helping them to align on the core issues and their role in moving forward. We engaged in a practical exploration of a leader’s strategic mindset and how to align strategic thinking and day to day challenges, creating the conditions for a healthy balance.
The second half of our workshop kicked off with a gamified approach to delivering strategy – a lively and challenging business simulation, followed by a practical exploration and commitment session that helped leaders reflect upon the changes they needed to make and commit to the behaviours and actions that would make a real difference to them, their teams, and the wider organisation.
Commitments were captured in a next week, next month, and next quarter approach and shared with other delegates to cement accountability.
Post-workshop activity included further resources to complement the learning and practical activities that delegates could undertake to advance understanding and personal impact.
Outcomes:
Workshop evaluation was conducted independently shortly after the event and the results were excellent, with over 80% of respondents scoring the programme as having met its objectives.
The longer-term impact was measured from Executive Team responses and the following comments were noted:
• They have seen a marked improvement in responsiveness towards amongst their senior leaders, when comparing responsiveness levels 6 months after to what they were 6 months prior to the training taking place
• “People now see engagement with Strategic Planning as something that matters.”
• The quality of inputs from the business have also seen a general trend of improvement over the same period, as well as a number of early adopters emerging within the long-range planning mindset of the company, with these having a clear view of their path to 2026
The client stated that it was a pleasure working with our facilitator and was very pleased with the outcomes.
You can read a Harvard Business Review Article on Strategic Leadership here