Advanced Public Sector Strategy and Finance, Leadership and Change Management

Course Outline

Overview

This course is for anyone needing a basic understanding of business finance and insights into operational decision-making.

By attending this course, non-finance staff who need to extend their understanding of finance will learn how this could make a difference to their organization’s financial management.

You will also explore the specific role that is required of strategic managers in an organization with a more detailed examination of some key elements.

You will be able to successfully lead public services to achieve service excellence and community objectives.

This course embarks into the essential fundamental aspects of leadership on your career pathway. Set over the course using a combination of discussion debates, case studies, research and immersion sessions, you will explore experientially how to emerge more fully as a leader and to harness the workforce to transform.

During this intensive course, you will master leadership with a broad range of skills and knowledge that will excel your potential. By contextualizing the humanistic skills with your leadership skills you will discover the path of least resistance to achieve goals. In doing so you will leverage more time to grow the organization due to gains in the effectiveness and efficiency acquired.

The dedicated ability to foresee opportunities and create the future is naturally the terrain of strategic leadership. To shift paradigms that open incredible opportunities in innovation, success and empowering the workforce to grow and deliver. This course enriches your leadership map preparing you to transform your organization and its blueprint.

Change is ubiquitous and is often fraught with challenges however it is a necessary enabler in business. Get on the right side of change so chance is replaced with clear plans. By understanding how to mobilize perspectives and people through the change process, it will make the process more seamless.

The course will also include site visits to organizations relevant to the course so delegates can develop an understanding of how their contemporaries function in the real-world.

The course will wrap with a summary of the key learning points, followed by an action planning exercise with a view to apply the acquired knowledge and skills immediately upon your return to work. Post-course support is also available in relation to the implementation of your action plan, up to six (6) months following course completion.

Agenda

• Importance of Financial Management
• Measuring Financial Success
• Managing Financial Resources
• Investment and Financial Management of Long-term Projects
• Financial Management – Stakeholder Expectations
• Pricing Decisions
• Public Sector Strategic Management
• Politics and the Public Sector
• Aligning the Public Sector to Support the Economy
• Public Sector Finance Strategy
• Public Sector Strategic Planning
• Public Sector – Leading Strategic Change
• Leadership – The Pursuit of Excellence
• Key Leadership Qualities
• Decision-Making Skills
• Empowering the Workforce
• Influencing with Integrity
• Negotiating Skills for Leaders
• Leveraging your Strengths for Leadership Impact
• Leadership Strategy
• Leading and Enabling Change
• Managing the Change Process
• Understanding and Diagnosing the Need for Change
• Site Visits
• Action Planning

Target Audience

This course is suitable for:

• Directors and Deputy Directors, and all other public sector senior officers who:
• work directly to lead politicians and with other public services to achieve broader community outcomes (public health and well-being and economic development).
• are responsible for achieving the authority’s strategic objectives and can commit the resources to achieve them.
• Heads of Organizations, Chief Officers, Chairpersons, Board Members and Directors.
• Heads of Departments
• Senior Managers and High Performance Executives.
• Change Managers and Executives.
• Senior HR, Business Analysts and Compliance Roles.
• Staff who wish to improve their understanding of how accounting and finance can help in their decision-making and how this impacts on the organization’s financial position.
• Staff who need to extend their understanding of finance to more specific operational activities.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to understand:

• The relevance of finance to operational decision-making.
• The relationship between operational and financial measures.
• Why a deeper understanding of cost and cost behaviour can help operational staff.
• The role of finance in project delivery.
• The role of stakeholders and their impact on an organization’s financial performance.
• The processes involved in deciding prices.
• How to focus on ensuring that the authority and its services are fit for purpose in the current, medium and long term.
• A strategic overview of service delivery.
• When and how to ‘intervene’ in the authority’s operations.
• How to ‘step-up’ to lead the whole service.
• How to define service outcomes.
• The responsibilities of the service ‘end-to-end’ manager.
• Leadership principles and how to apply them.
• Leadership styles and the psychological basis that underpins great leadership.
• High level decision-making approaches to deliver robust leadership strategies.
• Key aspects of leadership using a mixture of pragmatic and logical considerations.
• How to hone both your interpersonal and intrapersonal skills to increase influence and persuasion.
• How to debate and negotiate in a manner to get acceptance from stakeholders to proceed with the organization’s mission.
• How to activate the operational capacities of all strategic business units using influence, authority and power.
• How to overhaul corporate strategy and business plans.
• How to navigate internal and external forces by excelling leadership drivers.
• How to contextualize change and its affects to change management strategies.
• How to harness the power, effectiveness and utility of the change team and change agents.
• How to explore and inoculate the organization from change issues, challenges and concerns.
• A practical perspective into contemporary work practices in your field.
• How to implement an Action Plan at your workplace using the knowledge and skills acquired through the course.