OVERVIEW

Strategic Action Teams has been designed to create high functioning teams during the challenging time of change and transition. This program can return to the organization a core of committed and able managers who can exercise the Top Team Core Competencies necessary to effectively manage team dynamics to achieve results. The program highlights the importance of building an effective network of working partnerships across the organization.

Top Team Core Competencies include the ability to:

	Build a unified team.
	Focus the team on results.
	Develop collaborative processes.
	Negotiate differences.
	Constructively confront and challenge.
	Establish an effective decision making and feedback process.

The program links teamwork to strategy. It provides models, tools and frameworks that can help managers think differently about their businesses and define issues in ways more understandable and acceptable to others.

OBJECTIVES

	Provide a conceptual framework for understanding the need for strategic action teams in organizations.
	Identify the practices of effective teams.
	Introduce strategy tools and techniques for more effective use of the team as a resource to customers.
	Develop an organizational unit agenda that reconciles competing priorities and maximizes team performance.

Strategic Action Teams develops the strategy and team building skills of managers through hands-on experience. In a realistic business simulation, managers will assume roles on a senior management team that is required to manage strategically with an understanding of organizational goals and the interdependence of managerial actions. They will grapple with the challenges of an increased competitive environment that requires them to rethink markets, customer groups, and products, while focusing scarce resources on supporting the core business. It is designed to emphasize the importance of a strong customer focus that can commit people to action across functional lines.

PROGRAM FORMAT

PART ONE:

	The Challenge Faced by Teams in a Rapidly Changing Environment: An overview of the nature and challenges of organizational change. Participants explore the differing perceptions of change, why people resist change and what can be done to minimize resistance.
	360 Degree Feedback:  Personal profiles and the results from a pre-program survey on strategy and team building skills help describe the participants' own behavior and needs and those of their team members. With this information, participants develop strategies for working more effectively with others.

PART TWO:

	Strategic Leadership: Participants are introduced to strategy tools and models that will help them manage competitive dynamics and achieve competitive advantage.  Models and tools are applied to a video case situation.
	Conflict Management: Personal preference styles in communicating and working with others are identified. Participants explore ways to build cooperative partnerships through the use of influence, negotiation and conflict management.

PART THREE:

	Ideas Into Action Participants manage Foodcorp International, a $2.7 billion global food manufacturing and marketing company using strategy tools and models. As a newly formed management team, they meet to create agendas, solve problems, leverage strengths, and protect the organization against perceive threats.
	How Did We Do? Actions taken or not taken by Foodcorp's management team are discussed, as well as the climate and the values that were suggested by the team's behaviors and actions. Participants then tie lessons learned to the development of a strategic action plan for their individual business units.