Leadership Institute

Planning and Critical Path

Learning Format: Classroom

Order No. TM4

Effective planning helps people influence events and conditions instead of allowing events to influence them.

This workshop is designed to help leaders fine-tune their planning skills. It teaches leaders an eight-step process for developing effective plans and gaining the commitment of people who influence or have a stake in a plan’s success.

Do You Face Any of These Issues?

  • Do your leaders know how to help people influence events and conditions?
  • Are your organization’s plans effective?
  • Does your workforce buy into your plans or do they work around them?

Performance Objectives

Helps leaders:

  • Increase the efficiency of the planning process by using an eight-step process for developing effective plans.
  • Gain the commitment of people who can influence a plan’s outcome or who have a stake in its success.
  • Work comfortably with the Critical Path -- a management technique for sequencing key project tasks and determining when they must be completed to meet the deadline.

Primary Competencies Developed

  • Decision Making
  • Planning and Organizing

Secondary Competency Developed

  • Gaining Commitment

Workshop Overview

  • Overview Process and Personal Characteristics: Learners review the eight-step planning process and how the personal characteristics of objectivity, vision, and initiative affect that process. They next examine techniques to develop and enhance these characteristics.
  • Development Objectives: Leaders formulate personal development objectives by reviewing upcoming planning decisions and self-assessment profiles of their effective and ineffective planning behaviors.
  • The Planning Process: The Information Base and Plan form is introduced to support the planning process. Learners discuss the steps of the planning process with emphasis on the importance of asking the right questions. Leaders are introduced to the “clarifying” stage.
  • Planning Exercise: Leaders skill practice use of the Planning Process.
  • Gaining Commitment to Plans: The importance of gaining commitment and deciding when and how to involve others is discussed and modeled on video.
  • Developing Your Plan: Small groups develop and present plans using the Information Base and Plan form.
  • Critical Path: The purpose and importance of the Critical Path is explained and described. Leaders are introduced to PERT and Gantt charts. They practice using the Critical Path by applying it to the plan they have developed.

Video Segment Summaries

(Please preview. You may choose to not use this video.)

  • A manager, unclear about a new task force project and how to implement it, meets with the project originator to get more details before he begins planning.
  • In a positive model, a manager seeks task members’ input and commitment to a tentative plan he prepared.

Workshop Details

  • Target audience: Mid- to senior-level leaders.
  • Workshop length: 7 hours. No Fast Track option.
  • Facilitator certification: DDI-certified facilitator required.
  • Prerequisites: None.
  • Series: Suitable for all environments.
  • Group size: 8 to 16 people.
  • Prework: Yes.

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