Mini MBA in Strategic, Executive & Planning Leadership

5-Day Professional Training Course | MSEPL5001

KSA · GCC · Africa

Course Overview

This intensive 5-day Mini MBA programme equips senior professionals, functional leaders, and aspiring executives with the strategic intelligence, executive leadership competencies, organisational planning frameworks, and decision-making disciplines needed to lead with the clarity, confidence, and boardroom credibility that the most consequential leadership roles demand. The Mini MBA format is deliberately chosen — because strategic leadership is not a single skill but an integrated capability system where competitive strategy, executive presence, operational planning, financial literacy, people leadership, and organisational governance must work together seamlessly in the mind and behaviour of a single leader under real-world pressure. Across Saudi Arabia where Vision 2030 is simultaneously creating thousands of new senior leadership positions and demanding a generational upgrade in the strategic and executive capability filling them, GCC organisations navigating the intersection of nationalisation agendas, digital transformation imperatives, and competitive intensity that makes leadership quality a primary organisational differentiator, and African economies where the scarcity of genuinely strategic executive leadership talent is the single most binding constraint on organisational and national development ambition — this programme delivers the integrated strategic, executive, and planning leadership competency that serious leaders at every level of ambition require. Aligned with leading business school strategic leadership curricula, the Balanced Scorecard strategic planning framework, CMI Level 7 leadership standards, and the executive competency requirements of Vision 2030 human capital development priorities.

Keywords: Mini MBA Strategic Leadership Saudi Arabia | Executive Leadership Course GCC | Planning Leadership Africa | Strategic Management Training Riyadh · Dubai · Nairobi · Cairo

Course Information

Target Audience

• Senior managers and directors seeking executive leadership development and strategic capability elevation

• Heads of department and functional directors preparing for C-suite transition

• Strategy and planning officers designing and executing organisational strategic plans

• Government senior officials and public sector executives leading national programme delivery in KSA and GCC

• PMO directors and programme leaders requiring strategic leadership grounding alongside operational expertise

• High-potential professionals identified for succession and leadership pipeline investment

• Entrepreneurs and founders scaling organisations across African growth markets

• Any professional who leads significant organisational responsibility and recognises that strategic thinking is the capability gap between where they are and where they intend to be

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion, participants will be able to:

• Develop and communicate a coherent organisational strategy using proven frameworks including PESTLE, Porter's Five Forces, SWOT, and the Balanced Scorecard

• Apply executive leadership models and emotional intelligence competencies to inspire performance, build culture, and drive organisational transformation

• Design and manage strategic planning processes including environmental scanning, strategic option development, resource allocation, and execution monitoring

• Make high-quality decisions under uncertainty using structured decision frameworks, scenario planning, and risk-informed judgement

• Lead organisational change, manage stakeholders, and communicate with the executive presence and persuasive authority that senior leadership demands

• Build a personal strategic leadership development plan grounded in self-awareness, executive competency, and regional leadership context

Learning Methods

5-Day Programme Outline

Day 1 — Strategic Thinking & Competitive Strategy

1. What is strategy? The distinction between strategic thinking and operational planning — and why most organisations confuse activity with direction

2. Environmental analysis: PESTLE, Porter's Five Forces, and scenario planning — the analytical tools that reveal competitive reality rather than confirming existing assumptions

3. Internal capability assessment: SWOT, VRIO framework, and value chain analysis — understanding what the organisation genuinely does better than competitors and where it is vulnerable

4. Strategic options development: cost leadership, differentiation, focus, and blue ocean strategies — selecting the competitive position that matches organisational capability to market opportunity

5. Competitive strategy in KSA and GCC: Vision 2030 sector transformation, GCC economic diversification, and the African competitive landscapes reshaping strategic option sets across regional industries

6. Workshop: Participants conduct a complete strategic analysis of their own organisation — environmental scan, capability assessment, competitive position evaluation, and preliminary strategic option identification

Day 2 — Executive Leadership, Culture & People Strategy

1. Executive leadership defined: the competencies, behaviours, and mindsets that separate effective executives from effective managers — and why the transition requires deliberate development

2. Leadership models for senior contexts: adaptive leadership, systemic leadership, and the executive approaches suited to the complex, ambiguous, and politically charged environments that senior leaders inhabit

3. Emotional intelligence at executive level: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and the relational sophistication that determines whether senior leaders build coalitions or create resistance

4. Organisational culture as a strategic asset: diagnosing culture, intentionally shaping it, and the executive behaviours that define culture more powerfully than any values statement

5. People strategy and talent leadership: workforce planning, succession management, nationalisation strategy in KSA and GCC, and the talent decisions that determine whether organisations can execute their strategies

6. Leadership self-assessment: participants complete a leadership style and EQ inventory — identifying their executive strengths, development priorities, and the leadership behaviours they will commit to changing

Day 3 — Strategic Planning, Balanced Scorecard & Execution

1. The strategic planning process: from environmental analysis through strategy formulation, business planning, resource allocation, and performance monitoring — the end-to-end planning cycle every senior leader must master

2. The Balanced Scorecard: financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth perspectives — translating strategy into a coherent performance measurement system that aligns the organisation behind strategic intent

3. OKRs and strategic goal cascading: Objectives and Key Results as a complementary goal-setting framework — how leading regional organisations are combining BSC and OKR approaches for strategic clarity and execution accountability

4. Resource allocation as a strategic act: capital budgeting, portfolio prioritisation, and the resource allocation decisions that reveal what an organisation's strategy actually is — as opposed to what its strategy document says it is

5. Strategy execution and the implementation gap: why most strategies fail in execution rather than formulation — and the governance, accountability, and change management disciplines that close the gap

6. Workshop: Participants develop a Balanced Scorecard for their organisation — defining strategic objectives, measures, targets, and initiatives across all four perspectives aligned to their Day 1 strategic analysis

Day 4 — Decision-Making, Risk & Organisational Governance

1. Executive decision-making: the science and art of high-stakes decisions — structured decision frameworks, decision quality assessment, and the cognitive discipline that improves decision outcomes under uncertainty and time pressure

2. Cognitive bias in executive decisions: confirmation bias, overconfidence, sunk cost fallacy, and the debiasing techniques that protect senior leaders from the systematic thinking errors that derail strategic judgements

3. Scenario planning and strategic risk: developing alternative futures, stress-testing strategies against adverse scenarios, and integrating risk thinking into strategic planning rather than treating it as a separate governance exercise

4. Corporate governance and board leadership: board structures, director responsibilities, executive-board relationships, and the governance competencies that senior leaders need as they approach and operate at board level

5. Stakeholder management at executive level: mapping organisational stakeholders, managing competing interests, and the political intelligence that enables senior leaders to build the coalitions that make strategy executable

6. Executive simulation: participants navigate a complex strategic decision scenario — managing incomplete information, competing stakeholder pressures, and time constraints while maintaining strategic clarity and executive composure

Day 5 — Change Leadership, Executive Communication & Capstone

1. Leading organisational change: Kotter's 8-Step Model, ADKAR, and the change leadership approaches suited to the scale and complexity of transformation programmes across Vision 2030, GCC nationalisation, and African organisational development contexts

2. Managing resistance: understanding why people resist strategic change and the leadership interventions that convert resistance into commitment without sacrificing the strategic intent that made change necessary

3. Executive communication and presence: the communication standards, presentation discipline, and physical presence that command senior audiences — developing the gravitas that makes leadership communication memorable and motivating

4. Strategic narrative development: crafting the organisational story that makes strategy emotionally compelling, culturally resonant, and personally meaningful for the diverse workforce populations that regional leaders must inspire

5. Personal leadership development planning: identifying the specific executive capabilities requiring development, the experiences that develop them, and the accountability commitments that make development plans real rather than aspirational

6. Capstone: Participants present their Strategic and Executive Leadership Plan — covering strategic analysis, competitive position, Balanced Scorecard, change leadership approach, and personal executive development roadmap — for peer and faculty boardroom-style review

Regional Relevance

Content is specifically contextualised for senior leaders operating across KSA, GCC, and African markets — integrating Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 leadership and human capital development priorities, GCC corporate governance standards and nationalisation programme leadership challenges, and the strategic leadership demands facing African organisations where the scarcity of executive talent with genuine strategic capability is the most binding constraint on the ambitions of the continent's most dynamic businesses and institutions.

Assessment & Certification

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