Strategy Action Lab: A Hands-on Executive Workshop on Strategic Planning, Leadership, and Corporate Management
Overview
The three-day Management Development Programme is designed as a hands-on executive workshop built around the Strategic Management Business Simulation. The programme places participants in a complex international corporate environment where they must create, compete, grow, and manage a business across eight simulated decision rounds. The learning design combines 8 simulation sessions with 4 focused classroom sessions in Strategic Management and Leadership Management. The format is intentionally action-oriented: participants learn by making decisions, observing consequences, reviewing live reports, and correcting strategy across successive rounds.
The crux of the programme is the Objective-Strategy-Tactics, or OST, discipline embedded in the simulation. In every decision round, participants must conduct strategic analysis, specify objectives, convert strategy into tactical decisions, execute across functions, and review performance. This repeated cycle helps executives internalise strategic planning as a living managerial process rather than as a static planning document.
Participants begin with seed capital, build production facilities, open distribution channels, design brands, plan advertising and web marketing campaigns, hire workers, decide compensation packages, estimate demand, schedule production, and manage quality. After the first simulated year, participating firms may receive additional venture capital funding, which can be invested in R&D, improved products, expanded distribution, and increased production capacity. The simulation also exposes participants to international market volatility through changing regional demand, exchange rates, and political-economic conditions.
The Strategic Management sessions cover corporate strategy, while the Leadership Management sessions focus on team decision-making, leadership under pressure, conflict, and coordination. The programme integrates strategy formulation, leadership behaviour, functional execution into a cohesive learning experience.
Objectives
By the end of this programme, participants will be able to:
- Develop a formal strategic planning mindset using the Objective-Strategy-Tactics framework.
- Understand how business-level strategy shapes positioning, customer value, competitive advantage, and market performance.
- Apply corporate strategy concepts to growth, R&D investment, capacity expansion, portfolio choices, and resource allocation.
- Make integrated decisions across marketing, product development, sales, HRM, finance, accounting, manufacturing, and quality management.
- Respond to international market changes involving regional demand shifts, exchange rate movements, and political-economic uncertainty.
- Practise leadership behaviours linked to team decision-making, role clarity, conflict management, coordination, and strategic execution.
- Use balanced scorecard feedback to evaluate profitability, customer satisfaction, market share, asset management, manufacturing productivity, human resource management, preparedness for the future, and wealth creation.
Content
The programme is structured as a 3-day, 12-session workshop. It includes 4 classroom sessions and 8 simulation sessions. Each day has 4 sessions. The classroom sessions include 2 sessions on Corporate Strategy, and 2 sessions on Leadership Management. The remaining 8 sessions are hands-on simulation sessions.
| Programme Design | No. of Sessions | Placement | Core Focus |
| Corporate Strategy | 1 | Day 1 | Competitive advantage, market positioning, customer value, and functional alignment. |
| Corporate Strategy | 1 | Day 1 | Growth, resource allocation, R&D, capacity expansion, venture capital, and corporate-level choices. |
| Leadership Management | 2 | Day 2 | Leadership, team dynamics, decision discipline, coordination, and execution under pressure. |
| Simulation | 8 | Across all 3 days | Eight hands-on decision rounds using the Advanced Strategic Corporate Management simulation. |
Core simulation decision areas:
- Formal strategic planning through the OST template in every decision round.
- Marketing, sales, distribution, advertising, and web marketing decisions.
- Product development and R&D investment for improved products and market growth.
- Human resource management, hiring, compensation, workforce productivity, and team execution.
- Finance, accounting, cash flow, profitability, asset management, and funding decisions.
- Manufacturing, production scheduling, capacity expansion, inventory, and quality management.
- International business uncertainty involving demand shifts, exchange rates, political tensions, and global economic conditions
Programme Pedagogy & Assessment
The programme follows a workshop-based learning design. Participants work in teams, make live strategic and functional decisions, review simulation reports, receive instructor-led debriefs, and present their strategic logic in a boardroom-style format.
For Whom
This programme is ideal for: C-suite executives, business unit heads, general managers, and senior functional leaders. Executives in strategy, marketing, sales, operations, finance, HR, product development, quality, and transformation roles. Entrepreneurs, founders, family business leaders, and leaders of growth-stage firms. Managers preparing for broader general management responsibilities in competitive and international business contexts. Participants who prefer a workshop-based, decision-driven learning format rather than a lecture-heavy programme.
Enquiry and Registrations
Management Development Programmes (MDP) Office
Indian Institute of Management Indore
Prabandh Shikhar, Rau-Pithampur Road
Indore 453556, Madhya Pradesh, INDIA
Email : mdp@iimidr.ac.in
Tel. : 0731-2439720/0731-2439727/0731-2439726/0731-2439666
Fax : +91-731-2439800