Virtual Training Offerings
Members look to you for knowledge. Not just technical and industry specific knowledge, but knowledge they can use every day to improve their performance, and make their job more rewarding. A crucial part of your mandate is to provide continuing professional education, training and mentorship opportunities in numerous forums and methods that are suitable to the needs of members at all levels. During COVID-19 association members are hungry for training and are willing to participate virtually for up to a full day. Since COVID-19 started, our clients have asked us to move all our training on-line and participants rave about the content, format and approach…even for full day sessions. We combine video, audio, screen sharing, surveys, quizzes, demonstrations, virtual breakouts and group discussions to keep participants engaged.
While our clients are constantly looking to provide value, they are of course looking for new ways to preserve revenues in an age of social distancing. One important lesson is that the old rules of break-even no longer apply and you can hold training sessions with fewer people virtually and still make a profit. Members are looking for as much variety and choice as possible, and our clients have focused on increasing the frequency of virtual training. While our clients successfully sell recordings of our training sessions “on demand,” members will pay more for live virtual choices. We have trained thousands of people in more than 20 countries. Through insight and real world relevant examples, we will inspire participants to apply new lessons to old problems. Participants will leave virtual sessions armed with the process, tools, and a plan to apply the knowledge they have gained.
We will work closely with your organization to clearly understand your training objectives, and design and deliver a program for maximum impact and knowledge transfer. All materials are made available on-line for immediate access by session participants. Please find specific examples below of our training designed for your association members. Sessions below range from full day to 90 minute training sessions and can be customized to suit your requirements.Contact us at info@theplanninggroup.ca to discuss customization and next steps.
Understanding Business Continuity Planning
Move beyond risk analysis to understand how to plan for the worst. Whether you call it risk management, contingency planning or disaster recovery, we all need a “Plan B. While most contingency planning focuses on what to do when something goes wrong, this session will help you go beyond to define a range of scenarios, financial implications, reputational implications, tripwires and most importantly, recovery.
Business Planning Boot Camp
An intensive program which provides an in depth overview of strategy and planning across all sectors and industries. Peter Wright of the Planning Group will take you through a mix of business planning training and workshop discussions to assist in thinking about your own organization’s situation, and in optimizing its business planning process.
Strategic Thinking for Senior Leaders
This special program is for senior leaders looking for the challenge of new approaches to strategic thinking in today’s business environment. As leaders become more senior, there is a much greater emphasis placed on strategic skills, and a much greater expectation of results. To solve new and more complex problems, senior leaders require new and innovative ways of thinking and acting strategically.
Introduction to Practical Project Management
This interactive session provides a basic overview of project management process and brings all participants up to a general skill level, and speaking the same language around projects. Session focus is on the skills required for effective planning and execution of projects, and we put a strong emphasis on understanding project management roles and responsibilities.
Internal Consulting Boot Camp
Whether it is for finance, process improvement, project management, planning or any other important function, organizations are increasingly seeing the benefit of internal consultants. Internal consultants provide a crucial service and help their organizations make dramatic improvements. Most internal consultants are a clear expert in their subject matter, but they rely on their content expertise with very little consideration given to what it takes to be a highly effective internal consultant.
Board Role in Strategy Development and Oversight
Boards talk about their role in strategy, but do most boards really understand what that means? Boards have an obligation to define strategy that will bind future boards and constrain the strategic decisions of organizations, but are all too often a rubber stamp for management. In this engaging session, Peter Wright will walk participants through a number of provocative questions to determine their true intent to make and oversee effective strategy.
How to Get More Done in a Hectic Work Environment
So many of us are looking for an antidote to the feeling of being busier than ever, but not getting enough done. Everyone at every level of an organization has felt this. There is a growing trend across organizations and endless research supports the notion that our lives are becoming more frenetic by the minute. While life and work are immeasurably intertwined, our primary focus is on helping individuals and organizations make remarkable progress toward achieving goals with less stress and less drama.
Why Most Strategic Planning Fails
It goes without saying that most successful businesses are good operators. In those organizations, the owner or CEO usually has a clear vision of the future, and sometimes even a sound strategy to get there. So why is it, that corporate surveys found that 90% of companies don’t execute their strategic plan successfully, and 95% of employees don’t understand their company’s strategy? Do colleagues seem to have plenty of projects and actions happening, but it’s not clear that those actions are helping them achieve their vision?
The Perfect KPI
Like many organizations, yours is probably obsessed with measuring, monitoring and tracking performance. Most organizations get hung up on lagging financial indicators. This session provides advice and tips to help organizations take a more balanced and practical approach to performance measurement. Join us for a brief overview packed with important topics including your role in performance measurement, basic definitions, metric specificity, integration, the balanced scorecard and the perfect indicator.
Target Market Selection and Sizing
Broad growth and value strategies are only window dressing without disciplined and effective market selection and sizing. Glossing over vague target markets spells the eventual demise of even the best market facing strategies. In this session, learn the basics to help you follow the necessary steps to fully understand, prioritize and target your desired primary, secondary and tertiary target markets.
Planning for Successful Conference Networking
The Planning Group’s proprietary “Conference Networking Bundle” is based on the belief that while all conferences offer a number of benefits, networking is the single item that will deliver the most value over the long term. Coincidentally, networking is the only value driver at conferences that attendees control. If delegates don’t put effort in, if they do not plan to network effectively, they have wasted an important and rare opportunity.
Fear of Change is a Fallacy
In this irreverent look at how we work, Planning Group President, Peter Wright makes the case that we are not actually scared of change, or adverse to risk and there is not a human condition that simply prevents us from doing things differently. In this humorous but thought-provoking webinar, Peter explores whether our fear of change is essentially a fear of hard work. With the case made for change, Peter lays out a calculated approach to confront and overcome our self-imposed obstacles for extraordinary outcomes.
Creating a Culture of Innovation
Innovation has resurged as the latest flavor of the month initiative in organizations of all stripes. Books are being written, flowcharts are being drawn, stage gates are being reimagined and consultants are getting rich. But are we really making a difference? Are we really making the transformative changes to culture required to be truly innovative? In this engaging webinar, we draw from client experiences to make the case for transforming culture as the real basis for making organizations innovative.
Planning as a Powerful Tool for Change
Can simply writing something down make us likely to accomplish more and to find new and innovative ways to improve? Is strategic planning just a hollow exercise that we do once a year, or can planning actually help us move forward and propel us to bigger and better things? In this webinar, we demonstrate how the act of planning must drive change, improve our outcomes and personal performance, and lead us to achieve remarkable results.
Brutal Prioritization
After all the strategizing and planning, no one really wants to stop doing anything. Too many priorities and too little focus is a menace for most organizations today. Yet, organizations with fewer priorities are much more effective and actually accomplish more. With hilarious anecdotes and tested and proven solutions, Peter Wright makes the case for brutal prioritization and maps out the steps for real change, real courage and the liberation that comes from doing less.
Running Remarkable Virtual Meetings
Seems simple, but when is the last time you left a Zoom meeting charged up and motivated? Many meetings seem like time wasters and everyone dreads being put in charge of the next one. Most organizations couldn’t function without them, so we should take deliberate steps to ensure that meetings are more effective, and a better use of everyone’s time. Come explore how to be a great organizer and a great participant.
Planning for Small Businesses
We all know that we should set goals for our own business, but do we really need a formal plan? With all our time focused on the needs of our clients and customers, we simply aren’t taking the time to create a basic strategy and action plan required to drive growth and higher earnings. Taking a small amount of time to follow a simple but disciplined planning process can dramatically improve clarity of purpose…and ultimately your bottom line.
The Importance & Practice of Personal Business Planning
We learned that a business plan is important for any business, no matter how large or small. But the idea of creating and executing one can be intimidating and overwhelming. This webinar will move forward from planning principles and introduce the framework and the element of the business plan for a small business owner. This webinar is intended for owners and managers of small and very small businesses who want to create or improve their business plan.