Business Management Toolbox

Business executives and managers need management skills if they wish to effectively carry out their tasks. To meet this need, we have set up a multidisciplinary training programme based on the main areas of business management and administration.

Upon completion of this path, participants will be capable of:

• steering their business in a rapidly evolving economy
  
• stimulating growth and accelerating transformation by means of strategic innovation
  
• setting up a commercial strategy
  
• mastering the basics of financial management/planning and performance measurement
  
• uniting others in respect of a common vision and mastering the keys to supervising and motivating teams in order to achieve efficient project management
  
• identifying the main legal obligations of the company executive, having acquired a basic knowledge of company law
  

MODULE 1 - Business strategy

• Developing the ability to steer a business in a rapidly evolving economy
• Learning methods: Virtual class / Autonomous learning

Content:

• The definition of the strategy
  
• The origins of the strategy
  
• Vision and strategic mission
  
• The values and culture of the business
  
• The strategic capacity of a business
  
• Porter’s generic strategies
  
• The Ansoff Matrix for developing market strategies
  
• Strategy and business models
  
• Portfolio management
  

MODULE 2 - Innovation & Digital transformation

• Stimulating growth and accelerating transformation by means of strategic innovation
• Learning methods: Virtual class / Autonomous learning

Content:

• Introduction to strategic innovation for new growth, using inspirational examples
  
• Learning the basics of Design Thinking, Lean Start-up, and the Agile Approach for devising, creating and launching innovations
  
• How and where to find opportunities for innovation and new growth
  
• Understanding clients and ‘jobs-to-be-done’
  
• Customer experience mapping
  
• Defining opportunities for innovation
  
• Devising, creating and launching innovations
  
• Devising one’s offer: products, services and customer experiences
  
• Innovation in the commercial and income models
  
• Defining one’s innovation
  
• Launching one’s innovation
  
• Lean Start-up and the Agile Approach in a corporate context
  
• Experimentation and prototyping

MODULE 3 - Marketing & Communication

• Setting up a commercial strategy
  
• Learning methods: Virtual class / Autonomous learning

Content:

• Strategic marketing and operational marketing
  
• Commercial and non-commercial marketing
  
• Goods vs services
  
• The notion of ‘need’
  
• The notion of ‘client’
  
• The product
  
• • Segmentation
    
  • Targeting and positioning
    
  • Product lifecycle
    
  • New products
    
• Branding
  
• • The roles of branding
    
  • Brand name
    
  • Brand capital
    
• Distribution
  
• • Offline, online and multichannel distribution
    
  • Distributor brands
    
• Price
  
• • Choosing a price
    
  • The price of new products
    
  • Price positioning and prestige pricing
    
  • Price according to perceived value
    
  • Price according to economic advantage
    
  • Market price and flexible prices
    
• Communication
  
• • The objectives of communication
    
  • Media advertising
    
  • Digital marketing

MODULE 4 - Finance & Performance

• Acquiring basic knowledge of financial management/planning and performance measurement
• Learning methods: Virtual class / Autonomous learning

Content:

• Financial management
  
• • Understanding accounting and bookkeeping entries
    
  • Drawing up a balance sheet and a profit and loss account
    
  • Commenting on one’s balance sheet notes
    
  • Analysing a financial situation
    
  • Knowing the basics of management control
    
  • Assessing an investment or an opportunity
    
  • Budgeting, drawing up a financial plan
    
  • Knowing the main management software suites
    
• Performance measurement
  
• • Difference between indicators for monitoring performance (reporting) and management indicators
    
  • Diagnosis by the participants of their own indicators
    
  • Performance modelling as justification for selecting indicators: the aims and the variables involved
    
  • The two main modelling methods: the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and the OVAR matrix
    
  • Construction of a performance model using the BSC method (e.g. strategic card) and the OVAR method
    
  • The passage from modelling performance to selecting indicators
    
  • Organising a dashboard of indicators
    
  • Presentation of practical issues involved in creating a dashboard
    
  • Limits of the dashboard

MODULE 5 - Leadership & Change Management

• Uniting others in respect of a common vision and mastering the keys to supervising and motivating teams in order to achieve good project management
• Learning methods: Virtual class / Autonomous learning

Content:

Leadership

• Developing leadership skills: from manager to leader
  
• • Difference between management and leadership
    
  • Leadership: difference between power and authority
    
  • Definition and functioning of a team
    
  • Role of the manager-leader
    
  • The different forms of leadership: discovering one’s own style of management and its effects depending on the individuals and the situations encountered
    
  • Positioning one’s role as a leader in the organisation
    
  • Optimising one’s winning attitude and increasing one’s positive influence on one’s environment
    
• Developing the skills management requires
  
• • Differences between process and project
    
  • Difference between effectiveness and efficiency
    
  • Organising one’s own activities and priorities according to objectives (MBO - setting a SMART objective)
    
• Developing the qualities leadership requires
  
• • Listening
    
  • Demonstrating assertiveness
    
  • Controlling while motivating
    
  • Developing recognition
    
  • Conflict management
    
• Building trust
  
• • Know how to assert oneself when facing others
    
  • Understanding the principles of transmitting a message
    
  • Establishing a relationship of trust: levers and restraints
    
• Delegating in order to empower: delegation and teamwork
  
• • The role of delegation
    
  • Delegation and communication
    
  • Limits to delegation
    
  • The relationship between delegator and delegatee
    

Change management

• Leading change - the concepts
  
• • Definitions: leading change, transformation, change, transition
    
  • Types of change
    
  • Factors of failure and resistance – factors of success
    
  • Directive logic and participative logic   
    
  • Adapted Kübler-Ross Change Curve
    
  • Kurt Lewin’s Change Management Model: unfreeze – change – refreeze  
    
  • John Kotter’s 8-Step Process for Leading Change
    
  • Procedure for solving a complex problem
    
• Procedure for leading change
  
• • Diagnosis
    
  • Deployment: transition levers
    
  • Steering
    
• Communicating in the context of a project
  
• • Basic principles of communication (interactive communication and unilateral communication (push and pull), types of communication, possible channels)    
    
  • Communication within the project team 
    
  • Communication within the business
    
  • Get the people involved on your side
    
  • Establishing a communication strategy
    
  • Drafting a communication plan in a project
    
  • Good practices for effective communication in a project
    
  • Summary and individual action plan

MODULE 6 - Regulatory Framework 

• Knowledge of the main legal obligations of the business executive and acquisition of basic knowledge of business law
• Learning methods: Virtual class /  Autonomous learning

Content:

• Introduction and general principles
  
• Liability of the executive/the business
  
• Distinction between the different types of liability
  
• • Civil liability
    
  • Criminal liability
    
  • Tax liability
    
  • Liability in the event of insolvency
    
• Basics of labour law
  
• Basics of commercial law
  
• Law of contract: basic principles and commercial contracts
  

• Executive of small or medium-sized business
  
• New manager who has acquired sufficient experience to be responsible for a team; person with more than ten years’ experience but no initial training in management; needs to cope with new responsibilities, and needs to learn everything about this new role
  
• SME manager in direct contact with the business’s executives
  
• Young manager in a defined career plan within the business who needs to upgrade and prove his/her knowledge in order to be considered for promotion
  
• Employee aiming at a managerial position
  
• Employee with ambitions of promotion who decides on his/her own initiative to train in order to improve his/her skills and prove they have been acquired.
  
• Self-employed person whose business has developed considerably over the years, and now has to manage people and unite them in respect of his/her vision
  
• New business manager
  
• Person who has recently been given responsibility for managing a project, activity, budget, etc. within a large organisation
  

Upon completion of the course, participants will receive a certificate of success issued by the House of Training and the House of Entrepreneurship