Strategic Thinking: Plan, Decide and Execute Strategy

As an experienced tech professional, I’ve seen my share of courses promising to unlock the secrets of strategic thinking. Many deliver theory; few provide the practical, muddy-boots guide to actually planning, deciding, and executing strategy in the real world. That’s where ‘Strategic Thinking: Plan, Decide and Execute Strategy’ by Mike steps in, and frankly, it’s a breath of fresh air.

Overview

Forget the academic fluff. This course is a masterclass in strategic pragmatism. It doesn’t just hand you a list of frameworks; it orchestrates them into a cohesive narrative that guides you from understanding your current organizational standing to crafting a deployable strategy and, crucially, making sure it sticks. What truly sets it apart is its holistic approach. Most courses focus on either the planning or the execution, but Mike brilliantly connects the dots, demonstrating how a well-structured strategy session translates directly into concrete goals and measurable outcomes. You’re not just learning about business strategy; you’re learning how to build and implement it from the ground up, tackling resistance and cognitive biases head-on. It moves beyond abstract concepts, pushing you into the realm of actionable insights and equipping you with job-ready skills you can apply tomorrow.

Prerequisites

While the course positions itself as accessible from ‘beginner to advanced’, a foundational understanding of business operations or some prior leadership experience will allow you to extract maximum value. If you’ve ever felt frustrated by a lack of direction in your projects or company, or if you’re an aspiring leader looking to make a more significant impact, this course will fill those gaps. It’s particularly beneficial for those transitioning into management roles or anyone responsible for defining and driving organizational direction.

Skills & Tools

This course is a veritable toolbox for strategic practitioners. You’ll master stakeholder analysis, external scanning, and gap analysis to truly understand “where we stand.” It teaches you to frame any business problem crisply as Problem, Goal, Constraint, Metric, a powerful pre-cursor to any solution. You’ll design KPIs that are robust and meaningful, leveraging critical success factors and impact mapping, and learn to set and manage OKRs through a full quarterly cycle. Beyond the analytical, you’ll gain skills in facilitating impactful strategy sessions, turning abstract documents into concrete implementation plans with clear owners, resources, and milestones. Crucially, it dives into the human element of strategy, equipping you with models like Kotter’s eight steps and the rider-elephant-path to navigate change management and recognize your own cognitive biases (confirmation bias, anchoring) – often the biggest roadblocks to effective strategy.

Career Benefits & Job Roles

The skills imparted here are gold for anyone aiming for significant career growth. Roles like Product Manager, Project Lead, Department Head, Business Analyst, Management Consultant, or even aspiring startup founders will find immense value. By mastering the full lifecycle of strategic planning and execution, you elevate your influence within any organization. You’ll be better equipped to lead initiatives, drive performance, and communicate vision effectively, making you an invaluable asset. This isn’t just about getting a new title; it’s about fundamentally changing how you approach problem-solving and leadership, providing the intellectual frameworks and industry-standard tools to confidently steer your teams and projects towards success.

Pros

• Comprehensive & Actionable: Unlike many theoretical courses, this one is packed with practical frameworks and exercises, including how to run a two-day strategy session from start to finish. It’s designed for immediate application, making it feel like a series of hands-on labs.
• Focus on Execution & Reality: Mike doesn’t just teach you to plan; he teaches you to execute. The segments on change management using Kotter’s steps and the rider-elephant-path, alongside identifying cognitive biases, address the crucial challenges strategy faces “in the wild.”
• Instructor Credibility & Global Perspective: Learning alongside Mike’s 1.6 million students from 185 countries, you benefit from an instructor whose experience spans giants like Preply, Wargaming, iDeals, and Alfa-Bank. This real-world, diverse background enriches every lesson.
• Robust Measurement & Problem-Solving: The detailed guidance on designing impactful KPIs and setting effective OKRs is invaluable. The “Problem, Goal, Constraint, Metric” framework is a game-changer for framing challenges clearly before proposing solutions.

Cons

• Pacing for Depth: While incredibly comprehensive, covering so many powerful frameworks (from stakeholder analysis to Kotter’s 8 steps, KPIs, OKRs, and cognitive biases) means some topics, by necessity, are explored efficiently rather than exhaustively. To truly master each element, learners will need to actively apply the concepts and potentially dive into additional resources outside the course.