While attributes for good leaders are numerous, strategic management and people management are two key capabilities required of successful leaders.

Strategic management involves provision of overall directions to organizations, specifications of organizational objectives, development of policies and plans to achieve these objectives and allocation of resources to implement the plans. To this end, it is the people in the organizations who perform. Organizations are in fact complex organisms consisting of inter-relationships and processes. Because of this complexity, it is not easy to visualize why the people in organizations are performing in particular ways. Individuals’ performance at and commitment to organizations, both in separation and in aggregate, at the end affect the readiness and effectiveness of organizations to achieve their strategic objectives.

This course is therefore aimed at outlining the journey along which business managers work from strategic analysis, strategy formulation to strategy implementation through people, both in groups or individuals, and also providing a framework to explain why and how the desirable individual outcomes (i.e. performance and commitment) are achieved through improving different organizational mechanisms, team mechanisms, individual mechanisms and individual characteristics, which in turn help the organizations achieve their strategic objectives.

The students will have a better understanding of the organizations and teams they are working at and the behaviours of the people with whom they interact. They will know how the designs and operations of the organizations and the teams within as well as how the behaviours and interactions of individuals will all ultimately affect work performance and individual commitment, which are required if organizations are to achieve their strategic objectives.

The trend of thought in designing this course follows that organizations develop their strategic positions and corresponding strategies and that organizational and team mechanisms and characteristics affect individuals’ deliverables which in return affect organizational capabilities to implement the desired strategies.

The classes are highly interactive and intensive and students will work on both group and individual projects which require continuous self-reflection and contemplation of abstract concepts, both of which are essential to the development of higher-level management skills.