Challenges and Changes for Managers on the Move
Managing people and processes in complex organizational settings requires a variety of skills and perspectives. The need to work with a broad array of people in different departments, functions, and businesses will place a premium on managers' abilities to think and work in a cross-functional manner. This session will provide participants with key concepts and ideas that will help managers understand their new roles within their organizations.
Marketing and Sales Management: Responding to Customer Needs
Given the existence of a persistent buyers' market, it has become increasingly challenging to match capabilities with market opportunities. This session will analyze the marketing function by introducing the following topics: identifying and targeting market opportunities, positioning the firm's product or service, understanding the "marketing mind-set," defining and using the "marketing mix," and formulating and implementing effective marketing strategies.
Financial Accounting: Understanding Financial Statements
Financial statements are written in a language all their own. This session addresses the three primary financial statements - Income Statement, Balance Statement, and Cash Flow Statement - from the perspective of the user of financial information. Interrelationships among the statements will be highlighted, and the impact of operations on financial statements will be discussed.
Evaluating Financial Performance
This session focuses on how practicing managers can better utilize accounting-driven data to better plan and manage their activities. Our focus will be on employing financial ratios to understand and to measure performance effectively at the appropriate unit level. We will also address how accounting systems can provide other useful information that enable managers to improve their departments and/or divisions. At the conclusion of this session, we will specifically address EVA and value chain analysis.
Strategic Human Resource Management - A Practitioner-Led Panel
Strategic HRM deals with a variety of key issues, including compensation, reward system and incentive design, the selection and development of employees, and people retention. While the academic literature provides much theoretical guidance, practicing managers must deal with a reality that is complex and fast changing. This panel of invited senior HR executives will provide their seasoned guidance and forecast what they see are the emerging developments in managing different workplace issues. Invited executives and participants will work together on a case within the classroom to illustrate some of the more current trends and issues.
Management Accounting: Planning, Controlling, and Decision Making
This session will enable managers to better acquaint themselves with the use of financial data for internal decision-making purposes. A basic understanding of cost behavior and the correct use of costs in making decisions is essential to navigating the business. This session will explore how cost and revenue drivers combine to impact profit. In particular, the session will focus on activity-based management.
Financial Management: Creating Value Through Investment
Examines the role of the financial manager, exploring how firm value can be enhanced through investing decisions. Primary topics for discussion include the time value of money concept, discounted cash flow, and other measures of investment attractiveness, tradeoffs between risk and return, and capital budgeting decisions. Participants will also discuss how to screen investments and choose the best of several good opportunities.
Developing Customer-Driven Competencies
The market has become a forum in which customers play an active role in creating and competing for value. They do this by becoming a new source of knowledge and competencies for the organization. Customers now help companies co-develop products, shape product expectations, and shar their experiences with other customers. Firms must now be willing to take advantage of customers' insights, skills, and willingness to learn and experiment. This session will explore the ways that organizations are dealing with the new ways customers are evolving, how to benefit from customer-driven competencies, and how to thrive in this new marketplace reality.
The Art of Leadership
The most successful companies in today's business world tend to be those that place high value on the human capital within their organizations. This session will focus on developing core people-related skills in one's self, other managers, and subordinates. Class members will address changes of both managers and their roles in effectively leading others to reach enhanced productivity.
Knowledge Management: Leveraging IT for Business Agility
In an increasingly competitive and fast-paced business environment, organizations need to become more flexible and agile. This implies that they constantly learn and innovate without losing sight of the need for efficient and flawless operations. Knowledge management, that is, practices and technologies that facilitate the creation, transfer, and (re)use of organizational knowledge, address these challenges. This session will focus on the kinds of problems organizations face with regard to the management of knowledge, and the practices and technologies designed to solve them. We will survey mistakes made in knowledge mangement initiatives in the past, and develop guidelines for designing solutions that will lead to the successful management of organizational knowledge.
Strategic Management: Competing on the Leading Edge
Building competitive advantage places enormous demands on managerial skills and capabilities. Rapid technological change, global competition, and new organizational forms are among several forces redefining how firms compete. This session offers an overview of some key strategic, technological, and organizational developments that greatly impact future competition. Topics include: global strategy, building core competencies, strategic alliances, implementation, and new ways to compete.
