Vistex Institute Certificate in Business Acumen

Program Description

It is a fact of life that all organizations and individuals operate in a world fraught with risk and disruption. At a personal level we travel in cars; we eat at restaurants; we purchase food without knowing its origin; we interact with strangers; and we invest our retirement savings in the stock market. At an organizational level, finding examples where risk and disruption have caused major pain are, unfortunately, not hard to find. A question becomes what can an organization do to ensure risk events and disruptions do not lead to serious or even irreparable consequences?

This program addresses how to become a resilient organization, largely through effective risk management. A resilient organization is one that has the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. At a personal level, resiliency means having the ability to withstand adversity and to bounce back from difficult life events.

The notion of organizational resilience is not new: the ability of an organization to successfully confront, and even anticipate the unforeseen has always been a core element of success. But because the numbers and types of threats that can affect organizations are greater than ever, risk management and resiliency have taken on even greater significance. Risk management supports directly the objective of becoming a resilient organization that is positioned to deal with—and at times even gain advantage from—risk events and disruptions.

Resiliency is not only about reacting to events in a way that mitigate their impact. A resilient organization also has the ability to identify and assess potential risks and disruptions, sometimes before an event even occurs. This five-part program, each with a distinct theme, provides an in-depth understanding about how to build and sustain a resilient organization. Special attention will be given to the COVID-19 pandemic and its relationship to resilience and risk management.

Course Sessions

• Session 1: Setting the Stage: Resiliency and Risk Management
• Session 2: Disruptions: The True Test of Resiliency
• Session 3: Increasing Your External Intelligence Quotient
• Session 4: Approaches for Identifying and Assessing Risk
• Session 5: Approaches for Mitigating and Managing Risk; Looking Toward the Future

Attendees will receive a set of resource materials that provide a comprehensive coverage of risk management, disruption, and resiliency.

Faculty

Robert Trent, Ph.D., Professor of Management, at Lehigh University. Bob has worked at Lehigh for 27 years as a professor and co-developer and director of Lehigh’s nationally-ranked supply chain program. He has written eight books and over 50 articles, including Supply Chain Risk Management: An Emerging Discipline, co-authored with Greg Schelgel. Bob has provided professional presentations, seminars, consulting, and training services to 60 companies and organizations worldwide. He recently received the M.B.A. Excellence in Teaching Award at Lehigh University.

Instructor

Greg Schlegel has been a supply chain executive for over 30 years with several Fortune 100 companies and has taught risk management at Lehigh University, Villanova, and other institutions. He has consulted in supply chain management and risk management throughout the US and around the globe, and authored over 100 articles in major supply chain magazines and journals. Greg is also the founder of “The Supply Chain Risk Consortium”—a group of (13) companies providing education, assessment tools and consulting services.

Program Description

Today’s workplace is highly collaborative. Nearly everyone works on a team, and many people work on several at the same time. Leveraging the power of groups is essential to competing in a fast-paced, complex business environment where you need to partner with others to get a job done. But the cold, hard truth is that most teams, because they fail to pay enough attention to the basics of collaboration and communication, never reach their full potential. This session will focus on practical ways to get the most out of a group.

Takeaways Include

• Learning a 4-Step process designed to remove the typical communication barriers and get people on the same page
• Using the process to establish the three core foundations of successful collaboration—shared goals, clear roles, and desired group behaviors related to decision-making and information-sharing
• Gaining insight into different communication styles and learning how to adapt styles to enhance collaboration
• Preparing to apply a simple but powerful behavioral change tool called the STAR model, which targets Specific actions, Taking small steps, Altering the environment to facilitate taking action, and being Realistic about performance objectives

By the end of this session, participants will know how to: 1) Use research-tested communication strategies to build collaborative groups where people are motivated and productive; 2) Diagnose sources of misalignment, such as conflicting styles, as they arise, 3) Identify and enact specific behaviors to boost group performance.

The session will stimulate lively discussions and include a breakout activity where participants share insights about their communication styles.

Instructor

Mario Moussa, Ph.D., noted author, keynote speaker, management consultant, and executive educator. Currently an Adjunct Lecturer at NYU and Affiliated Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, he has taught at the world’s leading academic institutions, including UCLA, Duke, the University of Virginia, and the Wharton School. Dr. Moussa is co-author of Committed Teams and The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell your Ideas. His work has been featured on National Public Radio as well as in leading publications, including Time Magazine, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, Fortune.com, Forbes.com, Inc., Entrepreneur, The Economist, The Financial Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Program Description

Leading in a VUCA world—one that is more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous—means you can’t operate “as usual.” The way you made decisions, communicated with and managed your team, and led change initiatives needs to change. But that means you’re also presented with an opportunity. Crises and disruptions can generate much-needed advancements both at the individual and organizational levels. Those advancements can lead to a more engaged and productive workforce, and strategic agility that enables stronger growth and profitability.

Strategic Decision-Making and Leadership in a Crisis, you will learn from two renowned experts who have developed and led leadership programs at some of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions, prominent corporations, and at West Point. They share their unique perspectives and areas of expertise in two dynamic team-taught sessions.

Over two two-hour live sessions, you will discover how to build agility into your decisions, making them with less available data and adjusting quickly as situations evolve. Meaningful yet manageable pre-work for this program will introduce important concepts and give you an opportunity to develop questions to explore with the instructors and a peer group of leaders during the online sessions. You will come away with advanced skills that will make a greater impact in your organization, both during and long after a crisis.

Impacts & Benefits

• Prepare your organization for a post-crisis “new normal” that is more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous
• Better manage and lead change
• Apply best practices for decision making under uncertainty
• Understand the mindsets of those you lead to better engage and support them
• Develop more decision makers who will in turn add strategic agility

Instructors

Todd Henshaw, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow, Center for Leadership and Change Management at The Wharton School and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the prestigious Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Todd designs, directs and teaches leadership programs at Wharton to both executives and MBA students. He also consults with organizations desiring improvement in leadership at all levels, including General Electric, Nissan, Glaxo Smith Kline, Coca-Cola, Huawei, IBM, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Novartis, Penske, McKinsey, Bain, McKesson and the National Military Academy of Afghanistan.

Previously, Todd was a Professor at Columbia University, and Academy Professor and Director of Leadership Programs at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he prepared 23-year old graduates to lead in ultimate VUCA worlds: the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kathy Pearson, Ph.D., is a strategist, Systems Thinking expert, and authority in decision making. She is President and Founder of Enterprise Learning Solutions, a firm focused on executive development and learning across industries.

An award-winning educator, Kathy works closely with executive education groups including the Wharton School, Duke CE, Smith College, and the Institute for Management Studies, teaching topics such as Critical Thinking, Strategic Agility, Change Management and Strategic Execution.

Kathy also works directly with global organizations including Bank of America, Cardinal Health, Citi, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Estee Lauder Companies, Federal Reserve Bank, Google, Heineken, and the World Bank. Kathy is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and has served as an adjunct Associate Professor in the Operations and Information Management Department at The Wharton School. She is the co-author of The Perceptive Leader: A Handbook for Leading in an Environment of Uncertainty.

Program Description

The key to a company’s financial success is strategy execution. Companies that have success in long-term value creation have a passion for execution. This program will use financial tools to analyze the differences between value creating and value destroying companies and show that the pattern is the same in every industry and in every part of the world. At the strategy formulation stage, it is important to select a strategy that the company has the capabilities to execute more effectively than completion. It is important to realize that profitability is wonderful but it is very fragile and it can disappear rapidly. It is important to be vigilant about the changes taking place in your industry.

Learning Objectives

• Learn the financial tools that are useful in identifying value creating companies and the metrics used by investors
• Learn about companies that have tied operating metrics to financial performance to drive growth, innovation and value creation
• Learn how you can impact these key value drivers to create value for your enterprise

In four 3-hour sessions, participants will learn about the four cornerstones of Value Creation and the key value drivers for their businesses. They will get an overview of Cash Flow and the financial cycle time metric. Participants will understand how to build a better business case and get an overview of Benchmarking and competitor analysis.

Instructor

Joseph Perfetti is an author, educator, executive speaker, and subject matter expert in corporate finance, strategy and agility. He has taught executive education programs at Harvard, Wharton, and Duke University, and at leading corporations and consulting firms including Lockheed Martin, Stanley Black and Decker, Google (Alphabet), Merck, UnitedHealth Group, CVS, Anheuser-Busch Inbev, Union Pacific and Comcast.

Mr. Perfetti authored a chapter on Agile Governance in the Handbook of Corporate Governance, 2ndEdition (Wiley Press). His upcoming book, The Agile Dashboard, will be published in 2020. He is also an author of numerous articles published in Dialogue, CFO Magazine, and Fortune. He is also the host of the LinkedIn Live show The Agile Dashboard presented by Duke Corporate Education.

Program Description

Every organization has a business model, whether by design or default. When by design, it should be the guide for achieving your strategic vision and delivering value to your customers. Whether you are building, revitalizing, or pivoting a business, if it’s not clearly articulated and well executed, you are probably falling short of your strategic goals.

Creating and Executing Strategy: The Business Model Canvas is a workshop-style program that will help you develop a holistic strategy that capitalizes on existing strengths and capabilities, promotes greater collaboration and buy-in, and identifies blind spots and areas for improvement. The method you learn can be applied to business units, teams, divisions, and entire organizations, and should be used dynamically to continuously evolve your business model.

This program is a real-time, synchronized learning experience, delivered in a best-of-class virtual format. Designed for immediate application, it requires a high level of engagement in facilitated discussions, exploration of contemporary examples, and collaborative exercises that focus on participants’ real-world challenges. You will gain the practical knowledge and personal insights needed to implement the powerful business model canvas method in your organization.

Program Topics

• Using the Business Model Canvas for new businesses and for pivoting existing businesses
• Customer Development
• Product or Service Design and Development
• Utilizing the Strategic Gaps Map
• Collaboration, design-thinking strategies, and internal versus external facilitators
• Development of Strategy into an actionable plan and execution

Impacts & Benefits

• Learn to think more strategically about your new and/or existing business
• Build a new business by uncovering sources of value, uncovering blind spots, and answering key questions
• Pivot existing business by evaluating your current business model, and exploring options and the consequences of various strategic pivots
• Use the model internally to improve collaboration and creativity; clarify the value of functions, units, or divisions and how that value is delivered

Instructors

Joshua Ehrig Professor of Practice, Department of Management, Lehigh University, and Jamie Flinchbaugh, entrepreneur, lean advisor, board member, speaker, and author. Josh and Jamie bring a strong combination of academic, research-based learning and practical, real-world business experience gained through nearly five decades of advising organizations around business model innovation. They have worked and understand the needs of both new ventures and existing companies. In addition, Josh has taught the Business Model Canvas framework to hundreds of MBA students who have used it to fuel strategic thinking and drive success in their firms.

We have the opportunity to offer up to 15 registrants the opportunity to enroll in this program which program will run online on December 8, 10, 15 & 17, 2020 from 2:00 - 5:00 PM ET

Program Description

Today’s unprecedented work environment and future uncertainties have put a premium on project management. But at a time when profitable outcomes are more important for your business than ever before, those results are harder to achieve. Whether you are a seasoned project manager facing new and difficult challenges or are dealing with the complexity of getting your own projects done at a distance, Project Management Foundations: Managing in a Virtual World will help you sharpen your skills and improve your efficiency and effectiveness. Conducted across four live, synchronous online modules, this program is delivered in manageable three-hour blocks. Based on decades of research (and experience working through previous crises), the program uses a two-pronged approach to help you succeed. First, you will explore the most common reasons why projects fail, and how to spot potential pitfalls before they derail your project. Second, you will gain proven tools and powerful techniques that will guide you through the project management process. Project Management Foundations: Managing in a Virtual World is delivered online in a fully live format following best practices and principles for distance learning. Unlike other virtual programs, it builds a virtual classroom community that allows you to engage with other program participants and share your own experiences and challenges. It also includes exercises and case studies that will provide you with concrete tools you can implement immediately. The program is accredited by the Project Management Institute and counts toward the education requirement for Project Management Professionals (PMPs) and aspiring PMPs.

If you are interested in this option please use the following link to register for this program; use the promotion code SBDC100 to receive a complimentary registration.