Duration: 2 Days
Every day new information creates new demands. You're asked to summarize a lengthy report. Your boss distributes a pet project and asks you to come up with a list of recommendations. Important information about a competitor's product has just arrived and you're undecided about how to present the data. You're reading conflicting expert opinions on what's hot and new, and you need to decide which advice to pursue.
How do you assess the credibility of new information? How will knowing this information help you make pivotal decisions? How can you be sure of drawing valid conclusions? This seminar will give you basic analytical tools to assimilate, assess, organize, and analyze new knowledge, so you can use the information to the best advantage of your organization-and your career. You will also experience the qualitative application of these tools through a detailed and interactive case study that explores a common business scenario.
How You Will Benefit
- Organize information from multiple sources and in multiple formats
- Put information into a format that can be analyzed
- Apply techniques to determine what information is relevant within a specific context
- Learn to see contradictory information in the correct perspective
- Analyze information in order to identify the best opportunity
- Recognize information patterns and determine what they can mean for your business
- Communicate your findings and suggestions with expediency and clarity
What You Will Learn
- Explore challenges professionals face in collecting, evaluating, and presenting information
- Basic steps in the analytical process
- Deciding on an approach for an analysis project
- Applying specific analytic techniques to your work situation
- Using interview techniques and clarifying questions
- Characteristics of valid conclusions
- How to get from conclusions to recommendations
Audience
All business professionals who want to learn basic analytical skills that they can apply to their jobs to make more informed and successful business decisions
Prerequistes
Course Outline
1. Analytical Skills for the Business Professional
- Core analytical skills commonly used by business professionals
- Importance of analytical skills to problem solving and decision making
- Challenges business professionals face in collecting, evaluating, and presenting information and recommendations
- Basic steps in the analytical process
2. The Planning Process
- Use a tool for clarifying questions
- Underlying issues and related issues that are essential for a comprehensive understanding
- Evaluate the importance of the question in terms of risk, urgency, and impact to you and/or your organization
- Decide on an approach for an analysis project
- Create a data collection plan for obtaining information
- Relate how to use these techniques in your own work
3. Analytic Techniques I
- Content analysis
- Comparison tables
4. Analytic Techniques II
- Decision matrix
- Affinity grouping
- Cost-benefit-risk analysis;
- SWOT and other 2x2 charts
5. Putting It All Together
- Characteristics of valid conclusions
- How to get from conclusions to recommendations
- How to order information in a PowerPoint presentation to make a recommendation
- Present the key analytic techniques taught in the course in a presentation format
- Difference between slides used to illustrate a talk and materials provided for subsequent review
Course Labs
