Ask yourself, is the world growing more or less predictable? The answer for most managers is both obvious and disturbing—the future becomes murkier with every passing year. Yet leaders must act, despite the brute uncertainty about what the future holds. How, then, can managers act with confidence when they cannot know what the future holds?

Insights into managing in an unpredictable world is designed to help managers take effective action in an uncertain world. This intensive five-day programme explores how companies can survive and thrive in volatile markets by anticipating emerging opportunities and threats, consistently out-executing rivals and continuously revising strategy in light of new information. Key aspects of the course:

Research based: The course distils findings from seven years of research on over two dozen successful (and less successful) firms in a range of unpredictable markets including China, Brazil, airlines, telecommunications, information technology and private equity.

Practical: This elective introduces a set of frameworks and practical tools for creating and protecting value in highly unpredictable environments. These tools have been developed and road tested with senior executives grappling with the challenges of managing in an unpredictable market. This course focuses on how managers can overcome the obstacles to executing on new strategies.

Cutting edge: This course challenges the received wisdom in strategy: The course takes on corporate vision (irrelevant at best, dangerous at worst), decision making (executives don’t make decisions they make priorities), time based competition (the most effective strategies focus on timing not raw speed), and quality management (managing commitments provide more flexibility than standardized processes when executing novel initiatives).

Learn more about strategic management from the London Business School.

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Free books and articles.

As part of the course, Professor Sull is offering copies of his book Success Against the Odds (2005, with Martin Escobari) available for download in PDF format. This book profiles ten companies that succeeded in one of the world’s most unpredictable markets - Brazil. Each lecture will include a related chapter from Success Against the Odds among the readings. The London Business School and the Financial Times have agreed to make selected articles available for downloading in a PDF file. Unfortunately, copyright restrictions prevent us from making all course readings available free of charge. In these cases, we have created links to help you order these materials online if you are interested.

Worksheets

Each class session will include a worksheet designed to help you translate insights from the course into action in your own organization.

Book of the day

The question of action in the face of uncertainty has attracted some of the best thinkers in fields as diverse as the philosophy of science, military theory and software programming. Each class session will include a recommended book that is not a standard business text, but comes at the fundamental themes of the course from a different perspective.