Cranfield School of Management

In the first week you will work with Cranfield's leading Faculty on a broad range of strategic issues and develop revealing insights into your own approach to general management.

The General Management Mindset: A critical understanding of how managers get results by working across organisation boundaries and conventions.

Strategic Management: Analysing the competitive environment, sustaining competitive advantage, working with the political nature making, understanding the impact of internal organisational dynamics.

Business Environment: Developing an external perspective assessing organisational value, "co-opetition" - combining co-operation and co- business strategies.

Leadership and Teamwork: Developing personal leadership capable managers, working in and across diverse groups, influencing through organisational relationships, developing and motivating self and others.

Change Management: The role of general management in change, top-down and bottom-up processes of change, managing change internally.

Organisational Knowledge: The need for knowledge management, knowledge for organisational influence, the role of general manager innovation.

This forms the basis of a development agenda that you will work on by tackling a real life management project. During this time, you will be guided through a development process that gives you the maximum personal help in discovering how to work successfully at senior management levels. This is a very special process that participants describe as personally challenging, but immensely rewarding.

In the second week you will develop and test out your ideas against critical peer review, culminating in the creation of a 100-day action plan. This plan incorporates continued personal development with a significant business improvement initiative and forms the basis of the Review Modules.

Managing Organisational Politics: Understanding the role of politics in organisations, the impact of politics on business improvement projects, constructive political skills essential to senior managers.

Marketing and Creating Customer Focus:  The role of marketing strategies, customer relationship management, developing focused culture.

Supply Chain Management: Managing partnerships and alliances compression, the fundamental impact of supply chain management on business operations.

Realising Benefits from Information Investments: How to get the business benefits of IS investments, how to improve the IS business benefits tracking.

Financial Management: Working with business and financial risk, investment appraisal, realising the full value of financial management of the business.

People Strategy: Key priorities for future people strategy, the reality of Human Resources, aligning people strategy with business needs.

The Review Modules

Progress Review Module (3-months)

Three months after the course you are invited back for a 24-hour review module to revisit your action plan and set new targets in light of your progress.

Continuing Development Review Module (12-months)

To support your continuing development you are invited back to Cranfield to reflect on the long-term impact of your development from the programme, gain an insight into managing your continuing personal development, renew your development agenda and plan the next phase.