This course is designed for professionals who want to enhance their critical thinking, leadership, and negotiation skills. It is suitable for anyone who is involved in or interested in leading or negotiating with others, such as managers, supervisors, team leaders, project leaders, or aspiring leaders.

• Define critical thinking and strategy making and explain their importance and benefits
• Apply various critical thinking techniques to analyse information, generate ideas, and evaluate arguments
• Apply various strategy making techniques to define the vision, mission, goals, and actions of an organisation
• Identify and avoid the common pitfalls and biases that affect your thinking and strategy making
• Use appropriate tools and frameworks to support your thinking and strategy making process
• Communicate and collaborate effectively with others to make better strategic decisions

Day One:

Introduction to Critical Thinking and Strategy Making

• What is critical thinking and why is it important?
• What is strategy making and why is it important?
• How are critical thinking and strategy making related?
• What are the benefits of critical thinking and strategy making for professionals?
• What are the challenges of critical thinking and strategy making in today’s business environment?
• What are the common pitfalls and biases that affect critical thinking and strategy making?
• How can we overcome them?

Day Two:

Critical Thinking Techniques

• What are the elements of critical thinking?
• How can we use logic, arguments, evidence, and assumptions to analyse information?
• How can we use creative thinking to generate new ideas and perspectives?
• How can we use systems thinking to understand the big picture and the interrelationships among components?
• How can we use root cause analysis to identify the underlying causes of problems?

Day Three:

Strategy Making Techniques

• What are the stages of strategy making?
• How can we define the vision, mission, goals, and actions of an organisation?
• How can we analyse the external environment using tools such as PESTLE analysis or Porter’s five forces analysis?
• How can we analyse the internal environment using tools such as SWOT analysis or VRIO framework ?
• How can we formulate strategies using tools such as Ansoff matrix or BCG matrix ?

Day Four:

Tools and Frameworks for Critical Thinking and Strategy Making

• What are some of the tools and frameworks that can help us with critical thinking and strategy making?
• How can we use decision trees to visualise the possible outcomes of different choices?
• How can we use scenario planning to explore alternative futures and prepare for uncertainties?
• How can we use balanced scorecard to measure and monitor the performance of an organisation?
• How can we use SMART criteria to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives or goals?

Day Five:

Communication and Collaboration for Critical Thinking and Strategy Making

• Why is communication important for critical thinking and strategy making?
• What are the principles of effective communication for critical thinking and strategy making?
• How can we communicate clearly, concisely, confidently, convincingly, and courteously with different audiences?
• How can we use various communication methods (e.g., written reports, oral presentations) to convey our findings or proposals?
• How can we use feedback to improve our communication skills?
• Why is collaboration important for critical thinking and strategy making?
• How can we work with others to solve complex problems effectively?

To enhance learning and practical application of concepts, the training course will use a combination of interactive lectures, case studies, group discussions, practical exercises, and real-world examples. Participants will also get the chance to collaborate on group projects and create action plans adapted to the needs of their respective organizations.