Strategic Thinking in Action

Pull yourself out of the operational detail and lead where it matters.

The Problem

So many senior leaders find themselves pulled down into the details of day-to-day operations far too often.

The busier they get, the harder it is to lift their eyes to the horizon. The urgent crowds out the important, and the leadership the organisation actually needs from them never quite happens.

The Insight

The operational leader leans on hard work. The strategic leader leans on hard decisions and hard conversations. Strategic thinking is a discipline that can be learned and practised, and it starts with stepping off the dance floor and onto the balcony.

The Program

In this program senior leaders build the discipline of strategic thinking and practise applying it to their real work. Michelle Rushton and Shaun Kenny, founders of People of Influence, help senior leaders build exactly this habit.

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Key Outcomes

What your leaders walk away with

01
Know what great looks like
Leaders understand what strategic leadership actually looks like, and how the strategic leader differs from the operational one.
02
See where they stand today
The Wall Street simulation gives an honest, in-the-moment read on how strategically each leader thinks and acts under pressure.
03
Strategies they can use immediately
Practical frameworks and tools ready for the very next week of work.
04
Practise the skill for real
Leaders apply strategic thinking live in the simulation and against their own real challenges, with feedback from colleagues and the facilitator.
05
A toolkit and an action plan
Each participant receives a Takeaway Toolkit, plus the balcony time and hard decisions they commit to in the session.
06
Nudges that reinforce over time
Behavioural nudges that remind and reinforce the strategic habits long after the session.
The Simulation

The Wall Street Behavioural Simulation

The session kicks off with the Wall Street Behavioural Simulation, a sophisticated, challenging, high-energy and tactile team-based activity. It puts participants in a competitive, pressured environment that tests their ability to think and act strategically. The training then piggybacks off the simulation, going deeper on the practical frameworks and tools they can use immediately in their work.

Watch the mini documentary →
A mini documentary of our Wall Street simulation with a senior group of leaders.
Session Flow

How the session unfolds

Timings and emphasis are tailored to your group and the time available.

1
Wall Street Behavioural Simulation
Teams compete under pressure in a fast, tactile simulation that surfaces how they really think and act when it counts.
2
Debrief
We unpack the strategic behaviours that showed up in the room, the good and the costly, and connect them to real work.
3
Principle #1: Outside-In Thinking
Stakeholder analysis and unit of analysis: how to see your goals from the outside in, at every level of the organisation. Apply the framework of Strategic Factors to understand what you need from your most important stakeholders and what they need from you. Bring in tools from design thinking to more reliably systematise this empathy.
4
Principle #2: The End of Hard Work
Leaders examine how they can move from simply working harder to stopping and doing some of the hard thinking, making the hard decisions and then having the hard conversations. This is about having the courage of your convictions, being willing to absorb the pain of prioritisation and of pushing back on stakeholders when it is the right thing to do for the business and for customers.
5
Principle #3: The Buffet Mindset
How to shift your mindset from a To Do List mindset (where the goal is to get as much done as possible) to a Buffet Mindset. The Buffet Mindset acknowledges that you will never be able to eat everything on offer (nor should you), and that you are empowered to choose what is most important and impactful. This is about feeling the difference between following others’ demands and truly leading.
6
Habit: Get on the Balcony
The principles of adaptive leadership, and why getting Balcony time (and getting off the dance floor) is critical to leading strategically. We learn how to use this time to look ahead (so you are working on your big priorities not just the most urgent work), look across (look across the silos to ensure your team is meeting the needs of its most important stakeholders) and to get creative with problem solving.
7
Make it real
Each leader commits to the balcony time they will protect and the hard decisions they will take back to their work.
8
Embedding
Over the following weeks to months: behavioural nudges, facilitated peer group coaching, individual coaching - a range of options depending on the engagement.
Format & Delivery

Shaped around your context

Duration
Half day (90-minute simulation plus 2 hours training)
Delivery
In person
Audience
Senior and executive leaders
Two ways to work with us

People of Influence is the consultancy through which Michelle Rushton and Shaun Kenny deliver leadership programs, team offsites and impactful conferences.

Contact People of Influence →

Leadership Engine is our proprietary platform for measuring and improving leadership effectiveness with diagnostics, dashboards and behavioural nudges.

Visit Leadership Engine →