Who Should Attend

Ideally suited for individuals and teams who wish to learn to unleash their creative genius to solve problems, improve processes and generally work more innovatively.

Economic advantage and professional success no longer come from logical, analytical skills but from creative, conceptual, and relationship skills.

Rearrange your knowledge, with strategic tools, to improve throughput @ this Workshop.

This workshop looks at Critical Thinking as a means for teams to develop their Deliberate Creative Thinking to creatively problem solve, improve processes, and seek out and develop innovation opportunities.  Critical Thinking when engaged for creative thinking enables personal and team innovation, and the development of new ideas that deliver winning results.

By examining a range of simple tools that will alter the basic approach to thinking, participants will:

• understand the nature of critical and creative thinking and how they combine to give you a powerful problem solving framework
• appreciate how the deliberate application of critical thinking leads to creativity on demand and inspires innovation at all levels
• be able to focus their creative energy when and where desired

Benefits

People and organizations that understand and use Critical and Creative Thinking methods:

• can focus on achieving real results from clear thinking
• creatively solve problems and make better decisions – faster
• plan and manage change more thoroughly and effectively
• generate more innovative ideas to enhance organizational performance

Topics include:

• Understanding Critical Thinking as a means for creativity on demand
• Thinking about thinking before ‘reacting’ – when and where needed
• Shifting perception as the key to ‘seeing’ new opportunities, ideas and concepts
• Perception can blind us to new opportunities
• Or allow us to always be one step ahead of the game
• Three-Step framework for success
• Adopting a divergent-convergent thinking process to open up thinking
• Open thinking up to new possibilities
• Design and develop potential innovation
• Using Critical Thinking to Focus individual and team creativity
• There is always more than one way to see an issue
• Imagineering to develop a shared vision of goals to be achieved
• Visualization is vital, but not enough
• Engineering goals into reality is the key to success
• Thinking outside the square to generate great new ideas using lateral thinking
• Provocation is vital to open up to new ideas
• Moving from random entries and fanning for ideas is a skill
• How and when to use Critical and Creative Thinking
• Thinking is not enough, commitment is not enough, ACTION is needed

In this course you will learn Tools and methods about thinking, inspire creativity and generate solutions to real problems.

AFOES’s Experience in Scenario Planning

AFOES has frequently used scenario planning to facilitate a client’s maximum efficiency and value. By considering multiple scenarios, AFOES helps companies more confidently anticipate the results of current decisions in the face of an often-turbulent future.

Scenario planning is always viewed in the context of other analysis to assess trade-offs and implications in a multi-faceted manner. For example, a value chain analysis may reveal significant cost savings. However, scenario planning may uncover that for the client to become a successful player in the industry, a strong position in all market segments is a dominant strategic requirement, making the cost reduction opportunity moot. In this example, AFOES would focus the company’s efforts on the strategic threat first, and then secondarily focus on the operational improvement potential.

To find out more about AFOES’s work in Scenario Planning, please fill in the form below to get in touch with us.

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• Diversify the company’s revenue base and enter altogether new industries or businesses
• Respond to changing industry conditions (shifting customer preferences, new government regulations, the globalization and competition, exchange rate instability, entry or exit of new competitors)
• Strengthen your company’s long-term competitive position and secure a competitive advantage
• Broaden/narrow your product line, improve product design, alter product quality, alter performance features, or modify customer service
• Alter geographic coverage, integrate forward or backward, or stake out a different industry position
• Merge with or acquire a rival company, form strategic alliances, or collaborate closely with certain industry members
• Capitalize on new opportunities (new technologies, product innovation, new trade agreements that open up foreign markets
• Counter the actions of competitors and defend against external threats
• Define how the company manages R&D, manufacturing, services delivery, marketing, finance, and other key activities
• Strengthen the company’s resource base and competitive compatibilities

AFOES’s strategy process begins with a clear articulation of our client’s business vision and mission, followed by a fact-based analysis of the competitive landscape, organizational units, points of leverage, dynamics of the customer base, and financial inputs. The types of strategy consulting services that we provide include:

Mission & Vision Development

Working with an organization’s stakeholders, AFOES refines the mission and vision, and assesses the implications of any changes necessary in the current business model. We gather and tests data from relevant stakeholders to ground a client’s aspirations in statements that are feasible and practical. We develop a detailed roadmap to prepare the organization to deliver on the new strategic goals.

Strategic Planning

AFOES helps clients incorporate a long-term perspective into their strategies, while focusing on the most challenging issues they currently face and on the best way to get results. Throughout the process, we review and challenge clients’ strategy assumptions; identify the opportunities with the greatest potential to build value within the company; and develop an understanding of how its current performance compares with its full corporate potential. We help clients identify capability gaps and marketplace opportunities and set up tactical goals and tracking systems that ensure results.

Business Start-Up Strategy

AFOES blends deep functional business skills and industry and market knowledge to assist the launch of start-up firms and new business ventures. We have worked with start-up companies in the life sciences, telecommunications, and information technology industries. We have found that putting together the right advisory team and fostering a strong working relationship with our client are the foundation for short- and long-term success. Our relationships are based on trust and we are committed to assisting our clients through the phases of development and stages of financing.

Portfolio Management Strategy

AFOES evaluates clients’ portfolios to recommend where they should place their competitive emphasis. Through objective analysis, we determine which opportunities companies can exploit, expand into, or exit. When priorities shift, we help clients uncover the growth opportunities within their enterprises, supported by our ongoing monitoring of key industry metrics and trends. We assess how well the client is performing relative to the industry’s best practices and the marketplace’s full potential.

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The world’s most successful organizations are also the most agile and adaptable. In today’s world, you must respond effectively to change or risk jeopardizing your organization’s performance and survivability. The primary causes of change are either external or internal to the organization. External change is driven by forces such as government regulation, rising costs, and increased competition. Internal change is driven by a business problem in need of a solution or the desire for continuous improvement.

Regardless of the root cause, in order for organizational change to be effective, it needs to stick and be sustainable. Organizations that can make changes faster, better, easier, and cheaper will have the competitive advantage. Rallying your organization’s workforce behind change can be a challenge. The most common obstacle to successful change is human resistance. Often people’s first reaction to the prospect of using a new business application, reporting to a new manager, or doing their work in a new way is to resist it. Anticipating potential resistance, assessing its threat to your change, and figuring out how to reduce the resistance is what change management is all about.

We believe change management is integral to the success of any large program that touches a large number of employees. AFOES’s approach involves a systematic process of applying the knowledge, tools, and resources needed to effect change to the people who will be impacted by it. The objective is to deliver the required business solution successfully in an organized, planned way that manages the impact of change on the people involved. AFOES provides change management expertise in the following areas:

Change Assessment and Profiling

Assessment of the organization’s change capability; review of the organization’s change strengths; analysis of the organization’s change improvement opportunities; development of an initial baseline for the organization’s change capabilities.

Change Management Strategy

Definition of the purpose, scope, and the outcome of the change; agreement upon the processes, roles, and timeline for achieving the change; articulation of the change goals; development of a change management strategy.

Change Program Implementation

Identification of the change program milestones; development of a work breakdown structure and development of metrics; creation of a change management plan.

Strategic Communications and Outreach

Audience segmentation; assessment of stakeholders’ information needs; development of key messages; analysis of communications channels; development of a communications plan, metrics, and feedback mechanisms; creation of communications products; deployment of messages.

Change Coaching and Workshops

Experienced change coaches equip the client leadership, change agents, and members of the program team with the knowledge, tools, tactics required to ensure the team is setup for a successful change.

Stakeholder Relationship Management

The identification, analysis, and proactive engagement of the organization’s s key stakeholders toward the achievement of the organization’s change management objectives.

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Balanced Scorecard meeting

AFOES has helped a diverse range of commercial, government and non-profit organizations with balanced scorecard and performance management system development, traditional strategic planning facilitation, and performance management software system selection. Our consulting & facilitation services combine training, facilitated team building, and problem-solving consulting and coaching to help clients build their own balanced scorecard strategic management system.  Services can vary from a comprehensive role for the AFOES to more of an advisory role.

The process of developing a scorecard system typically begins with a strategic planning offsite with Top Management Team (TMT) where the team jointly develops the “Strategy Map” for the organization. From there, the client’s unique system is built entirely on the client’s location during a series of facilitated workshops organized around the customizable Balanced Scorecard framework.  AFOES’s experienced consultants train the client’s team, facilitate all workshops, and help develop the scorecard system in a short time, typically 6 – 12 weeks. The consulting option is the most effective at taking advantage of AFOES experience and lessons learned, and having a system built and operational in the shortest period of time and with the least amount of difficulty and burden. Many clients chose the consulting approach because it affords the greatest chance of affecting organization change, aligning vision, strategy, and operations, and achieving higher organization performance.

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ISO 9001:2008 Implementation Session

AFOES Consultants will work closely with your staff to prepare for ISO 9001:2008 registrations.

The project will be structured to suit each organisation, but there are some common steps:

Continual Improvement of the Quality Management System

• When you first enlist our assistance, our Consultant will make a series of visits to talk to people at all levels within the organisation and gather information
• Our Consultant, working with delegated staff, will use the information gathered to prepare a Project Plan, agreeing draft documentation and highlight other necessary changes
• Quality / ISO 9001:2008 Awareness training will be delivered to all staff early in the project, so that they are aware of what is being done and how they are involved in the process
• Necessary changes to the management system, including defining and documenting your key Business Processes, will be agreed and implemented to meet the requirements of ISO 9001:2008
• Prior to the formal registration audit, we will initiate an audit(s) of the system and will also facilitate a Management Review meeting.

In addition to the on-site time needed to carry out the project, our Consultant will provide support by telephone / e-mail on any questions the client might have on matters relating to the implementation or operation of the Quality Management System.

Click here for ISO 9001 FAQ

To know more about ISO 9001 quality consultancy, please get in touch by filling in the form below:

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Business Process Management

• The processes once implemented when the organization was small might have become unsuitable to meet the changing needs of the customer.
• The scaling up that has happened in the organization due to its growth might have made the old processes un-suitable to meet the speed and accuracy needs of the internal and external customers.
• The speed of response required has changed phenomenally due the Globalisations scenario. The TAT (Turn Around Time) often decides the competitiveness of the business.

To know more about Business Process Management System, please do get in touch with us by filling in the form below:

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BPR relies on a different school of thought than continuous process improvement. In the extreme, reengineering assumes the current process is irrelevant – it doesn’t work, it’s broke, forget it. Start over. Such a clean slate perspective enables the designers of business processes to disassociate themselves from today’s process, and focus on a new process. In a manner of speaking, it is like projecting yourself into the future and asking yourself: what should the process look like? What do my customers want it to look like? What do other employees want it to look like? How do best-in-class companies do it? What might we be able to do with new technology?

Such an approach is pictured below. It begins with defining the scope and objectives of your reengineering project, then going through a learning process (with your customers, your employees, your competitors and non-competitors, and with new technology). Given this knowledge base, you can create a vision for the future and design new business processes. Given the definition of the “to be” state, you can then create a plan of action based on the gap between your current processes, technologies and structures, and where you want to go. It is then a matter of implementing your solution.

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A session on Integrated Management System

IMS can be undertaken for any business process where the Organisation wishes to integrate the above management system into one coherent system thus simplifying operations and automate wherever applicable.

Integrated Management System

Wherever IMS has been applied by AFOES Consultants a substantial savings in time and cost has been achieved in the past.

There are several good reasons for integration, to:

• Reduce duplication and therefore costs
• Reduce risks and increase profitability
• Balance conflicting objectives
• Eliminate conflicting responsibilities and relationships
• Diffuse the power system
• Turn the focus onto business goals
• Formalize informal systems
• Harmonize and optimize practices
• Create consistency
• Improve communication
• Facilitate training and development

Click here for IMS FAQs.

For a more detailed approach to integrated management system, please do get in touch with us.

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• Standardized HR Policies Competency building through training Improvement in employee satisfaction.
• Attracting and retaining talented people. Professional HR policies & controls.
• Data based Performance Appraisal based on KRA rather than ad hoc rewards & recognitions.
• Elimination of anomalies in perquisites and rewards. Development of talented people for higher responsibilities.
• Competency building for better organizational efficiency
• Less attrition ratio (employee leaving very frequently) and less cost of recruitment and training. In-house training based on the needs of the job.

For a comprehensive review of your HRM systems and consulations for systemic improvement, please do get in touch with us:

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