Strategic Leadership
The Strategic Shift
Move from reporting activity to explaining outcomes, value, and choices. Practice strategic questions, environmental scanning, assumption checks, and resource tradeoffs. Turn a current issue into a clear recommendation and decision request that connects strategy to everyday work.
Build practical capability
Move from delivering the work to shaping what matters.
This course helps participants widen their view, connect delivery to strategy, and make choices that create stronger organizational outcomes.
Make the transition from managing immediate work to thinking and acting more strategically. Participants learn to connect decisions, resources, and project outcomes to broader organizational goals.
What you will learn
Course learning objectives
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
Evaluate strategic context
Scan the environment and distinguish work activity from the outcomes and value it is meant to create.
Ask strategic questions
Surface assumptions, constraints, and implications using context, value, and the So what? test.
Make priorities and tradeoffs visible
Explain what to do, stop, defer, or protect and what those choices displace.
Connect strategy to work choices
Translate priorities into decisions, measures, and actions that support the intended outcome.
Communicate a recommendation
Move from a status update to insight, a supported recommendation, and a clear decision request.
Build a strategic-shift canvas
Apply the questions to a current issue and revise your reasoning using peer critique.
What you will do
Apply the methods to practical work
Examine an issue through its context, outcomes, value, assumptions, and constraints. Compare what to do, stop, defer, or protect, identify meaningful measures, and turn a status-style update into a recommendation. Apply a strategic-shift canvas and improve it through peer critique.
Techniques you will practice
Environmental scanning: Identify changes in the context that affect priorities, value, or a proposed course of action.
Strategic questioning and the So what? test: Connect an observation to its consequence and the decision it should inform.
Assumption and constraint checks: Show which ideas need evidence and which limits affect the available choices.
Stop, defer, and protect tradeoffs: Explain choices and opportunity costs when time or capacity is limited.
Recommendation framing: Organize insight, evidence, implications, a recommendation, and the decision being requested.
How the course is structured
Demonstration, guided practice, testing, and improvement
Instructor demonstrations and guided activities lead into participant application, critique, and a practical next-use plan.
- Shift from execution to strategy
Explore how the questions change when responsibility expands.
- Examine context and value
Use strategic questions to surface outcomes, assumptions, constraints, and implications.
- Make the tradeoffs
Compare priorities and explain what to do, stop, defer, or protect.
- Translate strategy into decisions
Connect the choices to meaningful measures and everyday work.
- Practice communicating upward
Turn an update into insight, a recommendation, and a decision request.
- Apply and critique the canvas
Build a strategic-shift canvas for an issue and improve it through peer feedback.
Choose an approach that fits your experience
Use a supplied issue or an anonymized work situation. Experienced participants can challenge weak evidence, conflicting priorities, and constrained capacity. The same canvas and recommendation matter across experience levels; coding is not required.
Use a supplied case or an anonymized work situation. Keep confidential information out of shared exercises and tools, distinguish evidence from assumptions, and retain human judgment over consequential decisions.
2027 schedule
Plan the experience into your learning year.
Choose a scheduled offering below. Course registration opens December 10, 2026. You can reserve your interest now and request an opening reminder; no payment is collected by the reservation form. A completed paid registration is required to secure a seat.
Live virtual · 4-hour course
9:30 AM–1:30 PM ET
Eastern Time (America/New_York)
Course investment: $349
Ask strategic questions, connect activity to value, make tradeoffs, and communicate a supported recommendation.
You will leave with: A strategic-shift canvas, priority tradeoffs, and a clear recommendation and decision request.
Reserve this offeringLive virtual · 4-hour course
9:30 AM–1:30 PM ET
Eastern Time (America/New_York)
Course investment: $349
Ask strategic questions, connect activity to value, make tradeoffs, and communicate a supported recommendation.
You will leave with: A strategic-shift canvas, priority tradeoffs, and a clear recommendation and decision request.
Reserve this offeringLive virtual · 4-hour course
9:30 AM–1:30 PM ET
Eastern Time (America/New_York)
Course investment: $349
Ask strategic questions, connect activity to value, make tradeoffs, and communicate a supported recommendation.
You will leave with: A strategic-shift canvas, priority tradeoffs, and a clear recommendation and decision request.
Reserve this offeringThe listed dates, times, and prices match the governed 2027 calendar. This reservation expresses interest; it is not a paid enrollment or a guarantee that an offering will run.
Find your pathway
Choose the next step that fits your goals.
Explore the full 2027 calendar and see how The Strategic Shift connects to your Strategic Leadership pathway.
Explore the 2027 calendar