The easiest way to gain a competitive advantage is simply to have a specific plan – because most of your competition doesn’t! They’re running week-to-week trying to strike it rich with the next big fad tactic they’ve discovered. And to have a significant competitive advantage all you need to is have a specific strategy for systematically executing your plan.

This course will break down the step an entrepreneur or business owner should follow to designing (or re-designing) their ideal business, from the top down, and then it will show them how to build (or re-build) that ideal business from the bottom up. It will show you how to share your strategy with stakeholders, leadership and the team in a way that everyone can understand and easily help execute on.

With continuous discussion on identifying significant competitive advantage, the concepts, materials, and coursework presented are all based on the instructor’s book Getting To The Next Level: A Blueprint for Taking You and Your Business to the Top. A complete copy of the book is included in the course materials for reference. These are the same time-proven methods employed by your instructor Manuel in his international coaching programs.

This course is intended for every entrepreneur, from those starting up a new endeavor to those seasoned business owners. Every business strategy can benefit from this course. The concepts and tools employed in this course are universal in their application regardless of the business maturity.

With the completion of this course, the entrepreneur should have:

• Clear picture of the Business Strategy Lifecycle and its four primary components
• Solid understanding of the framework used to define a complete business – The Pyramid of Purpose and Value
• Familiarity with a variety of tools required for breaking down and analyzing the current or desired business – Business Value Aspects, The SWOT, GAP, and More
• Basic comprehension of business strategy, how it should relate to the business vision, and how it can be developed and tracked using a simple balanced scorecard
• Follow through example of basic business strategy development for an IT company using the concepts, tools, and methods from the book
• Functional understanding of Business Agile Strategy Execution, the most powerful method for developing and executing on business strategy.

Topics to be presented include (but not limited to):

• Learning to Paint an Enticing Picture and Compelling Story
• The Business Strategy Lifecycle
• The Pyramid of Purpose and Value
• Business Culture
• Business Compass
• Business Roadmap and Strategy
• Competitive Advantage and Competitive Strategy
• The Market and Going Vertical
• Business Analysis Tools and How to Use Them
• Measuring Progress and Success
• The Balanced Scorecard and its Perspectives (Finance / Customer / Internal Process / Learning and Growth)
• Generic Business Strategies
• Sell More
• Spend Less
• Tying Strategy to the Company Culture
• Agile Methodologies – They’re Not Just for Software Development
• Agile Applied to Business Strategy