Enrollment
By September 1, 2025
Delivery mode
Onsite
September 29–30, 2025
Frequency
Twice a year
Location
Aalto University Töölö, Helsinki, Finland
Language
English
Scope
2 days + pre- and post-assignments
Driving Strategy Execution
Learn to Implement Business Strategy Effectively
The Driving Strategy Execution program improves your ability to convert corporate strategy into effective decision-making and execution. It focuses on developing strategic thinking and execution skills to enhance core business activities, particularly in situations requiring significant renewal and transformations.
You will learn how to manage organizational complexities, understand psychological and cultural dynamics, and turn strategic ideas into actionable plans with novel radical creativity methods.
This program is intended for business leaders and senior managers. It includes interactive exercises, role-playing, and scenario planning to provide practical tools for effective implementation within organizations.
Adapt to Rapid Changes: The program equips leaders with the tools to adapt to rapid changes, manage emotional dynamics, and execute strategies effectively in a fast-paced environment.
Credible and Applicable Knowledge: Validated by academic research, this program offers credible and applicable knowledge that can be directly implemented in your organization.
Practical and Hands-On: The practical teaching includes hands-on exercises that draw from novel radical creativity methods, ensuring you can apply what you have learned immediately.
Start
Fee: € 2,900 (+ VAT)
Benefits
This program focuses on developing a living strategy for your business. It highlights the importance of planning and implementing a dynamic strategy path that adapts to changing conditions, which is necessary for success in today's volatile business environments and transformations. Additionally, managing psychological and organizational dynamics is required to improve the effectiveness of executing strategies. Learning to influence and guide emotions to support dynamic strategy execution assists in efficient implementation.
- Enhanced Strategic Thinking—how to analyze, plan, and execute a living strategy.
- Practical Tools for Strategy Execution—tested frameworks for adapting strategies in dynamic environments.
- Stronger Leadership and Decision-Making Skills—the ability to influence organizational culture and drive strategy forward.
- A Competitive Edge in the Global Economy—the ability to navigate complexity, uncertainty, and change with confidence.
For
The program is designed for senior executives and leaders who are responsible for strategic decision-making and execution.
The program is also beneficial for:
- Senior Managers who want to sharpen their strategic thinking skills and are responsible for driving strategic initiatives in their organizations.
- Teams dedicated to contributing to the success of a business unit.
Contents and Schedule
The program provides you with the necessary tools to navigate rapid changes, manage emotional dynamics, and implement strategies efficiently in a fast-paced environment. It emphasizes "both-and" thinking, enabling you to maintain core business operations effectively while fostering a creative mindset within your team.
This two-day program includes interactive lectures, case studies, and group discussions. You will practice essential soft skills and strategic agility through role-plays and hands-on exercises and experience novel radical creativity methods. In the post-assignment, you will apply the theory to develop solutions for your organization.
The program will be delivered onsite.
Program Structure
Pre-module period of 3 weeks
Individual orientation
Two-day module
Intensive contact learning session with instructor and peers
Post-module period
Take-home assignment
Day 1: Strategic Thinking Skills
Morning
- Strategy in practice
- Driving a living strategy for an organization
- Developing the leader’s strategic thinking skills
- Creating a shared understanding of strategy
- Maximizing implementation feasibility during strategy formulation
Afternoon
- Leading a Living Strategy
- The psychological side of living strategy
- Benefits and threats of diverse emotions
- Psychological safety and open dialogue
- How to face emotions and create a flow for strategic thinking and decision-making?
Day 2: Drive Strategy Effectively
Morning
- Hard and soft forces in strategy implementation
- Translating corporate strategy into feasible business unit strategy and driving action
- Balancing the hard and soft forces
- Hard aspects of strategy implementation: structure and process
- Managing the emotional dynamics: overcoming resistance and creating passion
Afternoon
- Balancing short-term performance and radical renewal
- Incremental and radical innovation practices
- Ambidexterity in strategy execution: how to drive effective core and develop new capabilities
- Paradoxical thinking and inconsistent logic in action
- Rules and processes that fit the purpose
Instructor
Timo Vuori
Timo Vuori is an Associate Professor, Strategic Management at Aalto University School of Science, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management.
Professor Timo O. Vuori is a strategy consultant and professor at Aalto University. His research on the psychological aspects of strategic management has been published in leading international journals and won several international awards. He has taught and presented his research at leading universities like Harvard and INSEAD.
Professor Vuori's research and teaching focus on how companies formulate and execute strategies. He has written two books with senior business executives on these topics. "Living Strategy" describes scenario-based strategy making in an ever-changing world. "Platform Strategy" describes how incumbent firms should and can renew themselves in the digital era. The books detail both the "hard" factors, such as technology and business models, and "soft" factors, such as people and psychology, influencing strategy and renewal.
Professor Vuori works extensively with companies, often collaborating with a leading strategy consulting company. Vuori helps the client organization formulate and evaluate several strategic options in strategy formulation projects. He uses advanced psychological techniques to help leaders unleash their strategic creativity and overcome thinking myopias and personal biases. This approach is based on his cutting-edge international research, also described in the Platform Strategy.
In strategy execution projects, Professor Vuori specializes in helping the client firm optimize the psychological engagement of the whole organization. He analyses the psychological impact of the intended strategy execution program and modifies it to maximally leverage the emotions of the organization's members' for effectiveness.
Program Fee and Registration
Program Fee
The fee for the Driving Strategy Execution program is € 2,900 (+ VAT).
Enhance the organizational impact of the training by joining with colleagues or your team. Contact us and ask for a group fee.
Registration
Register for the program by September 1, 2025.
Program start