4-WEEK STRATEGIC THINKER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
For the senior professional who’s been asked to think strategically & never taught how
You have spent your career mastering your field and delivering results. Now you are in a role where strategic thinking is suddenly expected of you, and nobody handed you the playbook.
This 4-week programme gives you the framework, the self-insight, and the confidence to think and lead strategically.
Not by winging it. By finally learning how.
Being an expert & thinking strategically are two fundamentally different things
And one of them (strategic thinking) rarely gets taught.
Most people learn by osmosis. They watch, they adapt, they wing it, and they hope the gap does not show. Some get feedback that tells them something is off. Others privately wonder why strategy feels so murky when everything else in their career has felt so clear. And then there are those who have always suspected they could think this way — they just need someone to confirm it, and give them a structure and a language to back themselves.
This transition from specialist to strategic thinker gets almost no in-depth support
Yet it is one of the most significant shifts a leader will ever make.
The need for strategic thinking has never been more pressing
As AI reshapes how organisations work, the pace of change is intense and the complexity is real. Finding a way through uncertainty has always been at the core of strategic thinking; what has changed is the scale of it.
Sound judgement, human values, and a long-term perspective have never mattered more — they are integral to what it means to think strategically .
The Strategic Thinker Development Programme was hugely valuable for me as it provided a clear process of how to form a strategy and also provided tools to reflect and think about complex problems differently. It is a practical programme that really helped me articulate strategic challenges, make decisions about how to respond, and design quality action plans to achieve the strategic goals. I highly recommend this programme to any aspiring Senior Leader or General Manager.
Lachlan McKenzie -- Head of Bay of Plenty Region, BNZ
This isn’t just another leadership course
In fact, it is not a leadership course at all.
It is an in-depth development programme built around the science, art, and practice of strategic thinking, guided by a blend of psychology, business insight, and real-world application.
What sets the 4-Week Strategic Thinker Development Programme apart is that you won't just be handed a framework and sent on your way. You will learn how to use it, in the complexity and messiness of your actual work, applied to a real business challenge you are facing right now. And because strategic thinking is as much about how you think as what you think about, you will also develop the kind of self-awareness about your thinking that most leadership programmes never go near.
What the Programme Includes:
Comprehensive Psychometric Assessment:
Before the programme begins, you will complete a sophisticated cognitive assessment that provides objective insight into your natural thinking patterns, where your strengths lie, and where you might benefit from what I like to call ‘scaffolding’. It is one of the most revealing parts of the programme. For some, it pinpoints exactly where their thinking needs to shift and what to work on. For others, it is the moment they realise they have more of the right cognitive capability than they gave themselves credit for. Combined with the right framework, that realisation alone can change everything.
Group Learning:
Join a cohort of leaders navigating a similar transition. Working through real challenges together, across different sectors and specialisms, brings a fresh perspective that broadens and sharpens your own learning in ways that solo study simply cannot.
Individual Coaching Sessions:
Tailored guidance from Nina to help you extract the full value of your assessment, apply the framework to your specific context, and build a concrete plan for the challenges in front of you right now.
Video Modules
Engage with key concepts in your own time and at your own pace. The content covered here is designed to be absorbed independently, with space to reflect before bringing your thinking to the group.
Real-World Application:
With a focus on your own business challenge throughout the programme, everything you learn is immediately applicable. You finish not just with new capability, but with genuine progress on something that matters in your role.
This programme provided an in-depth, systematic, applied approach to strategic development and thinking. It allowed me to not only learn and think about strategy in a clear and simple way, but also apply the skills in real-life scenarios. From harnessing my strengths to reining in the distractions, combined with reflection and awareness, I have built a trusted ability to bring clarity to the complexity of what I am trying to achieve.
Samara McCaw -- Technical Director, Beca
How you will think, lead, & show up differently after the 4-weeks
This programme is designed for specialists and experts who are ready to own the strategic dimension of their role. Here’s what changes:
Clarity where there was murkiness:
You will have a framework that brings structure and focus to what previously felt jumbled or overwhelming, somewhere to put your thoughts instead of carrying them all in one mental bucket.
Confidence to contribute:
Knowing you have the framework changes how you show up in strategic conversations. You will contribute with more assurance, ask better questions, and engage with complexity rather than avoiding it. People will notice. But more importantly, you’ll notice too.
Insight into yourself as a thinker:
You will finish this programme with a level of self-knowledge that most leaders never get. You will understand how you naturally think, what comes easily, what takes more effort, and where you need support — built not just from your assessment results, but from applying your thinking to a real challenge, working alongside others, and having it all reflected back to you through coaching. And because you understand how you think, you have exactly what you need to keep learning, keep honing, and keep getting better at this long after the programme ends.
A new way of using your expertise:
Your technical knowledge is not irrelevant in a strategic role, but you do need to use it differently. This programme shows you how to translate your expertise into strategic thinking and communication, rather than leading with the technical detail that often loses people.
Real progress on a real challenge:
Because you are applying what you learn throughout the programme, you will finish having moved the needle on something important in your work, not just having learned something new in theory.
Technically confident. Strategically uncertain.
Here’s how that changed for Louise
Louise Eunson, GM of Performance, Risk, and Governance at Whānau Āwhina Plunket, completed this programme in April 2024. Reflecting on her journey, Louise shares how the programme grew her confidence, sharpened her strategic skills, and provided practical tools she continues to use.
Is the 4-Week Strategic Thinker Development Programme right for you?
You are likely a good fit, if:
You have built your career in a technical, operational, or specialist field, and you are now in a role where strategic thinking is suddenly expected of you.
You have never been taught how to think strategically in a way that has truly answered the questions you have. Or you have realised — whether through feedback, a performance conversation, or a role that keeps exposing the gap — that this is something you need to develop.
You want the full picture. Not a quick fix or a surface-level overview. You want to understand this properly and build a skill you will use for the rest of your career.
You are ready to invest — in time, in effort, and in yourself. This programme rewards the people who show up and fully engage.
You want to know, with confidence, that you can think, act, and deliver strategically.
FAQs
I've done strategy courses before. How is this different?
Most strategy courses teach you what to think about. This programme also teaches you how to think. There’s a significant difference. If you have come away from previous training with frameworks you never quite knew how to apply, or theory that did not translate to your actual work, this programme is designed to fill exactly that gap. The focus here is on how your mind works, applied to a real challenge you are facing right now.
I have managed without formal strategic training so far. Do I really need this?
Some people develop a strategic perspective naturally, and if that is you, this programme will give you the language, the structure, and the self-knowledge to do it even better and more consistently. But for most mid-senior leaders, there comes a point where winging it is no longer enough. The stakes are too high, the complexity is too real, and the cost of unclear strategic thinking inevitably shows up in their team's ability to deliver, ultimately reflecting on their own performance. If you are asking the question, the answer is probably yes.
I would not describe myself as a specialist or technical expert. Is this still for me?
The specialist framing describes where many participants have come from, but what really matters is what you are experiencing now: you are in a mid-senior role where strategic thinking is suddenly expected of you, and you have never been properly taught how. If that is where you are, this programme was built for you.
I suspect I might already be a decent strategic thinker — I just have never had it confirmed. Is it still worth doing?
Absolutely, and this is one of the most powerful experiences the programme offers. The psychometric assessment gives you an objective insight into how you naturally think, and for many participants the result is not a gap to fix but a confirmation of what they already suspected about themselves. That confirmation alone — having it validated rather than just wondered about — can be the thing that gives you the confidence to fully step into the strategic dimension of your role.
How senior do I need to be?
The programme is designed for mid to senior leaders who are operating at a level where strategic thinking is part of their role, whether they feel fully equipped for it or not. Participants typically include functional leaders, general managers, senior specialists, and anyone being asked to contribute at strategic levels of their organisation. If you are uncertain whether you fit, the best thing to do is have a conversation — that is what the no-obligation call is for.
My organisation would be funding this. How do I make the case?
The programme addresses one of the most common and costly gaps in leadership development: the transition from specialist or functional problem-solver to strategic thinker. For organisations, the return is not just in the individual's development. It is in their ability to understand organisational strategy, translate it into functional strategy, and use it to connect the work of their teams to the organisation's objectives. If your middle layer of senior leaders are not thinking strategically, your strategy does not get delivered. This programme is how you change that.
A permanent shift in how you think, decide, & deliver
$8,500 + GST per person.
Includes the cognitive assessment (valued at $1,800), individual coaching, and group sessions.
Delivered as a public or in-house programme.
Four intakes per year. Maximum ten participants.
Online format.
Total participant time commitment: 4-5 days over 4 weeks (with the assessment completed prior to the programme start date).
This is more than just another professional development expense
For the right person, the STDP is not a nice-to-have. It is the development investment that changes the trajectory of your career. The shift from specialist to strategic thinker is one of the most significant transitions a leader will make. This programme gives you the framework, the tools, and the confidence to make that shift and keep building on it long after the programme ends.
For organisations funding the investment
Strategic thinking at every layer of leadership is what connects organisational strategy to the people responsible for delivering it. When your mid-senior leaders think strategically, the gap between what your organisation sets out to achieve and what actually gets delivered begins to close. That is the alignment problem this programme solves.