Introduction

• Objectives and deliverables of the program
• Outline of culminating project, program themes and case studies
  

Understanding the Canadian Business Environment: Overview and Drill-down into Key Sectors

• Composition and structure of the Canadian economy
• Near and long-term trends affecting the Canadian economy
• Principal sectors in the Canadian economy and their challenges and prospects
• Capital markets
• Contemporary business issues

  - globalization
  - sustainability
  - supplier relations/outsourcing

• Panel discussions (with specific sector focus) on the Canadian business environment and contemporary business issues: what’s keeping the CEO awake at night?

Managerial and Financial Accounting

• The basic elements of financial statements, including accounting terminology
• The elements of a balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows
• The process for analyzing and interpreting financial statements
• Management accounting and its application to the on-going decision-making of a manager
• The concept of Shareholder Value, and performance evaluation measures used by businesses today and those emerging for tomorrow
• Cost behaviour (i.e. variable and fixed costs) and its application towards management decision-making

Understanding and Interpreting Financial Statements

• The roles and responsibilities of players in the financial
  reporting process
• Reading and interpreting public company financial statements
• Off-balance sheet items
• Red flags: why you must read between the lines to be aware of:

  - hidden liabilities
  - possible revenue/asset overstatements
  - understated expenses

• Checklist of financial areas to troubleshoot
• Analyzing how creative accounting affects financial analysis and management decision-making

Insights on forensic accounting from Dr. Al Rosen.

• Overview of financial reporting trickery
• Common securities frauds
• How to “cook books”
• Huge gaps in financial statements
• Major Canadian securities litigation involving fake financial reporting

Sales & Marketing / Product Strategy and Execution

• What do successful businesses do well?
• What is marketing?
• Why is marketing crucial to business success?
• Understanding the needs of your customer
• Market segmentation: a key pillar in your business success
• How to build a strong brand
• Business innovation: how to succeed at it
• Positioning your brand for competitive advantage
• How to develop a strong marketing plan
• Building a customer-focused business
• Managing customer value for long term relationships

Transactional Valuation and Pricing

• Key business contexts in which valuations are required
• The theory and practice of private company valuations for M&A transactions, financing transactions, capital investments and shareholder disputes
• The role of valuation in the public company context, including M&A fairness opinions
• When different valuation approaches are appropriate
• Essential valuation concepts, including internal rates of return and sensitivity analysis
  

Risk Management

• Risk models: moving from theoretical to practical management of risk
• Enterprise risk management: understanding strategic and operational risk structures
• Understanding the effect of organizational patterns and external influences
• The importance of ‘Alignment’ and its cultural impact on the effectiveness of risk management
• Identifying emerging risks

Organizational Behaviour/ Change Management

• Managing with new mindsets (reflective, analytic, worldly, collaborative and action)
• Change and change-ability
• Making sense of change drivers: the PESTEL framework
• Living systems — from the rigid to the incubator
• The traps that impede change
• Robust strategies instead of precise tactics during conditions
  of great uncertainty

Governance and Ethical Leadership

• Ethics as a business goal
• Steps to better ethics and corporate governance
• Can ethics be regulated?
• Models of ethical leadership
• Links between ethical leadership and behaviour
• Roles of Boards and Executives
• Evaluating the “tone at the top”
• Ethics and compliance programs
• The responsibilities and pitfalls faced by advisors

“Fireside chat” with Former President and Chief Executive of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Claude R. Lamoureux

Problem Solving Techniques / Strategic Management

Problem Solving Techniques

Not all problems are the same, yet we often apply similar methods that draw upon our professional training and stylistic preferences and strengths. This module challenges program participants to apply methods based on their appropriateness to the situation. The first step is learning how to distinguish between different logical levels of problem. With this
knowledge, we then look at best practice approaches that fit each of the
three unique types of challenge. participants will:

• How to distinguish between Decisions, Problems and Dilemmas
• The three barriers to effective problem solving
• The power of framing, and how to use it intentionally to best effect
• The eight common psychological barriers to decision making
• Best practice approaches to addressing decisions, problems and dilemmas

Strategic Management
Participants will approach their own leadership and strategic management skills from both the “inside out” and the “outside in” as they examine:

• What is strategy
• The role strategy and strategic management play in shaping organizational performance
• How successful leaders build a culture of execution and accountability
  

 

Final Project Presentation

• All participants will apply their learning to present a comprehensive analysis of a company or organization they choose as a client based on its financial health, its opportunities, its strategies and other business practices
• Feedback Session
  

Closing Reception