Presented by
Falconbury
The Mini-MBA
Few people can afford the years - or the money - for an MBA course. But this does not mean that you cannot use the key principles of an MBA to your advantage in your day-to-day business life. This on-line course of 12 modules will show you how.
- CPD: 36 hours for your records
- 14 Modules
- Certificate of completion
Course overview
Few people can afford the three years – or the money – for an MBA course. But this does not mean that you cannot use the key principles of an MBA to your advantage in your day-to-day business life. This twelve module, self-managed on-line course, will give you the key business skills of an MBA but at a pace decided by you.
How does this on-line programme work and what do you get?
- Course access from anywhere through your own personal login and administration suite
- Keep track of your progress as you go
- Easy to use note taking and bookmarking facility to return to areas of interest and re-study
- At your convenience: at your desk, from your tablet or from your home computer
- An optional on-line multiple choice assessment at the end of the course for you to ensure you are satisfied with the completion of your training
- Certificate of completion awarded for your training records
This training course is part of our collection of Leadership & Management Training Courses which focus on leadership, innovation, strategy, communication, finance, problem solving and conflict management, to name a few key areas.
Course benefits include:
- The essential theory, practice and techniques of an MBA
- Savings in your time and the huge costs involved in enrolling for a traditional MBA course
- Guidance on your strategic planning with current tools, techniques and thinking
- Improvement on the bottom line with your increased financial understanding
- Exponential improvement in your leadership skills
- Measurable results with your enhanced knowledge of key strategic marketing tactics
- Success in the project you undertake with a greater understanding of how to take a project from start to completion successfully
- Improvement on your ability to influence and impact colleagues and clients
- Enhanced negotiation techniques and skills to increase your success in commercial agreements
The The Mini-MBA course will cover:
- MODULE 1: Managing yourself and others, part 1
- Mastering yourself
- Eight key activities to assist us in developing our skills portfolio
- Getting balanced – how to start taking control and manage yourself and your true value
- Mastering performance management
- Overview
- Influencing people
- Effective delegation
- Communicate and motivate
- Overview
- How to really listen
- Listening and communicating to others – some basic rules
- Applying classic questioning techniques
- Understanding the impact of non-verbal communications
- Effective coaching
- Appraising your people – an overview
- Getting ready for a role review interview
- Tackling poor performers
- How to deal with poor performers – overview
- Managing poor performers – a quick route map
- Agreeing performance targets
- How to give negative feedback successfully
- Receiving feedback
- The ten rules of feedback
- Self-assessment questions for Module 1
- Mastering yourself
- MODULE 2: Managing yourself and others – Part 2
- Managing your team
- An introduction to team performance
- Team development
- The Classic Team Development Cycle
- How to start up a team building process
- A strategy for day to day teamworking
- Team working – processes
- Recognising why teams fail
- Understanding your team roles
- 1. The company worker/implementor
- 2. The co-ordinator/chair
- 3. The shaper
- 4. The plant
- 5. The resource investigator
- 6. The monitor evaluator
- 7. The team worker
- 8. The completer finisher
- Belbin team types summary
- Managing your time
- Managing our time effectively
- Managing your time effectively
- Tackling ‘time robbers’
- Managing your time more effectively
- Mastering meetings
- Managing meetings
- How to be assertive, not aggressive
- The difference between passive, assertive and aggressive behaviour
- Behaving assertively
- A quick guide to developing assertiveness skills
- Dealing with unjust criticism
- Eight essential tips in behaving assertively
- Neutralising anger
- Self-assessment questions for Module 2
- Managing your team
- MODULE 3: Learn to be a Leader – Part 1
- What is management?
- Understanding management
- So what is management really all about?
- The classic functions of management
- But things are changing
- Managing in the knowledge era
- Adapting the process of managing for the knowledge era
- Two classic approaches to managing and leading that can help us manage in today’s organisation
- Task, team and individual model
- Situational leadership
- Leadership: the most valuable attributes of a leader
- But will managers become extinct?
- Characteristics of the knowledge era and the worst of old world managers
- What is leadership?
- Learning about leadership
- Sun-Tzu – The Art of War (for Executives)
- Sensitive leadership: ‘eyes – and ears – on: hands-off’
- Exemplary leadership
- Leader power and inspirational leadership
- How not to lead – the art of mismanagement
- Summary
- The leader as mentor
- Managing today, in order to shape the organisation’s tomorrow
- Transforming organisations – changing career patterns
- The leader as a coach
- Coaching for development and growth
- Coaching – some key behaviours
- Coaching for performance – a coaching structure
- Coaching in action
- Coaching – the conditions for learning
- The coach’s style
- Summary
- Self-assessment questions for Module 3
- What is management?
- MODULE 4: Learn to be a Leader – Part 2
- Decision making in leadership
- Decisions – that’s what leaders are paid for
- Decision making – personal horizons
- The realities of problem analysis and decision making
- Different personalities – different leadership – different decisions
- Some tools and techniques
- Transforming, integrating and mobilising – decision making for synergy
- Summary
- Management and leadership… essentially a team effort
- The growing awareness in business of the value of team working
- What distinguishes successful, high achieving teams?
- Drivers – and the use of the profile
- Summary
- Self-assessment questions for Module 4
- Decision making in leadership
- MODULE 5: Strategy is the Key – Part 1
- Keys to Business Success
- Achieving business stability and growth
- Business goals
- Business success – the evidence
- Business stability – the evidence
- Techniques of Strategic Analysis
- Overview
- Environmental mapping
- Industry mapping
- SWOT analysis
- From ► To analysis
- Root cause analysis
- Effective market analysis
- Overview – defining business unit strategy
- Market analysis – setting competitive strategy
- Market mapping
- Strategic Business Unit (SBU) analysis
- SBU analysis: the benefits
- Competitor profiling
- Directional policy matrix
- Competitive positioning: generic strategies
- Competitive positioning: differentiation
- Differentiation and price
- Self-assessment questions for Module 5
- Keys to Business Success
- MODULE 6: Strategy is the Key – Part 2
- Mastering the Volume – Cost – Profit relationship
- Overview
- The contribution approach
- Product and service pricing
- Cost profiling
- Mastering organisational analysis
- Overview – moving to a new level of success
- McKinsey ‘7S’ model
- Mastering option appraisal
- Overview
- Force-field analysis
- Stakeholder analysis
- Identifying financial sensitivity and evaluating risk exposure
- Evaluating business development options
- ‘AID’ analysis
- Mastering strategic leadership
- Overview
- The concept of mission
- Summary – the implications of mission
- Leadership: situational responsiveness
- Mastering performance measurement
- Overview
- Strategic Key Performance Indicators (SKPIs)
- Financial Key Performance Indicators (FKPIs)
- Summary – building up the picture
- Operational Key Performance Indicators (OKPIs)
- City Key Performance Indicators (CKPIs)
- Value added
- Mastering new business development
- Key stages in business development
- Self-assessment questions for Module 6
- Mastering the Volume – Cost – Profit relationship
- MODULE 7: Master Marketing – Part 1
- How marketing works
- Introduction
- Specific group of customers
- Dialogue over time
- Customer’s needs, understood in depth
- Choosing your customers
- Market selection
- Segmentation
- The marketing mix – The product
- What ‘products’ are
- The marketing mix – Pricing
- Introduction
- Internal accounting based pricing
- Product life cycle and price
- Value added pricing
- Some useful marketing pricing strategies
- Profit centre
- Self-assessment questions for Module 7
- How marketing works
- MODULE 8: Master Marketing – Part 2
- The marketing mix – Your route to market distribution
- Introduction
- Background
- The environmental dimension
- The structural dimension
- Functions of the ‘route to market’
- Using intermediaries: advantages and disadvantages
- ‘Managing’ the distribution channel push versus pull strategies
- Power in the chain
- The marketing mix – Marketing promotion and communications
- Introduction
- Understanding marketing communications
- Public relations and editorial publicity (PR & EP)
- The role of advertising and promotion
- What advertising and promotion cannot do
- The campaign design process
- The marketing plan
- Introduction
- The marketing programme
- The plan’s main headings
- The marketing audit
- The action plan
- The marketing programme
- The control mechanisms
- Building the budget
- Managed cost budgets
- Workbook: Planning a campaign
- I Objectives
- II Strategies
- Self-assessment questions for Module 8
- The marketing mix – Your route to market distribution
- MODULE 9: Demystifying Finance – Part 1
- Finance makes the world go round
- Basic accounts
- Balance sheet
- Current assets and current liabilities
- Long-term liabilities
- Other side of the balance sheet
- Analysing performance
- Interpreting accounts using ratio analysis
- Profitability measures
- Balance sheet measures
- Finance ratios
- Match the business with ratios
- Match the business with ratios: solution/explanation
- Practical working capital management
- Detailed case study
- Profit and loss account analysis
- Break-even
- External analysis
- A source of intelligence
- Self-assessment questions for Module 9
- Finance makes the world go round
- MODULE 10: Demystifying Finance – Part 2
- Review of accounting principles
- Introduction
- Fixed assets and depreciation
- Long-term liabilities
- Owners’ equity in companies
- Ordinary shares: basic concepts
- Notes to the accounts
- GAAP mechanism
- Auditing principles
- Audited financial statements
- Budgeting and management accounting
- Budgeting
- Setting a budget
- Reviewing a budget
- Zero-based budgeting
- Monitoring a budget
- Management accounting
- Better management accounting
- Self-assessment questions for Module 10
- Review of accounting principles
- MODULE 11: Demystifying Finance – Part 3
- Costs
- Introduction
- Break-even
- Building up costs
- Decision-making
- Golden rules for decisions
- Organisational decision flaws
- Pros and cons of profit centres
- Computing future decisions
- Dealing with the future
- A more scientific approach
- Accounting rate of return
- Payback period
- Time value of money
- Discounted cash flow
- Summary of criteria
- Interest rate
- Time scale
- Accuracy
- Learning cycle
- Comprehensive example
- Final thoughts
- Self-assessment questions for Module 11
- Costs
- MODULE 12: Successful Project Management
- Introducing project management
- Stages of a project
- Time, cost and quality
- Early stages
- Evaluating a project
- What’s the risk?
- Invitation to tender
- Proposals
- Negotiating for what you need
- Terms of Reference
- Planning a project
- Introduction
- Dependencies
- Flowcharts
- Work breakdown structure
- Networks
- Gantt charts
- Choosing your software
- Schedules and milestones
- Budgets for projects
- Preparing estimates
- The project plan
- Making sure it sticks: follow through
- Introduction
- Delivering the goods
- Project closure
- Evaluation
- Saying goodbye
- Self-assessment questions for Module 12
- Introducing project management
- Final assessment
- Course evaluation
Stephen Brookson
Chequered Leopard Ltd
Stephen Brookson is Managing Director of his company, New City Consulting, which specialises in the provision of practical business development consultancy and training programmes.
He qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1980 with Peat Marwick and after a period at Grandmet plc, he joined a leading organisation in the provision of training for chartered accountants in practice. During this time he gained extensive experience of writing, developing and presenting programmes on accountancy and taxation. He then joined Ernst & Young for a number of years as a consultant, leaving them to set up his own management and training consultancy business.
He has presented numerous seminars and training events in both the public and private sectors, in the UK and overseas.
Paul Elkin
The Management Matters Partnership
Paul M Elkin is Managing Director of TMMi group, which provides consultancy services with a particular focus on business strategic development, performance management and corporate image. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and an experienced Management Consultant. After 15 years in a range of senior management roles in both public and private sector industry with UK and US businesses plus three years with Price Waterhouse, Management Consultancy Services, he formed the TMMi group at the end of 1989.
Paul’s personal career and, in particular, recent consultancy experience have provided the opportunity to work with a wide range of UK, European and US businesses. The nature of the involvement with each business has varied considerably according to their particular needs.Paul is the author of a series of practical ‘reference guides’ covering finance, strategy and business awareness and supports the delivery of MBA programmes in the areas of strategy and finance. He has also been involved in a range of initiatives in Europe for major corporates including ABB, Philips, International Paper and General Motors.
Cathy Lake
After leaving Oxford University Cathy Lake MA (Oxon) worked for the educational publishers Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd. Since 1976, she has worked as a freelance editor, writer and project manager. During the past two decades, she has taken part in, and also managed, almost every aspect of the publishing process. She has worked for most of the major national publishers and has written about 40 training manuals and textbooks, mainly on management and health-related topics. As well as writing for commercial publishers in the UK and abroad she has also written management development workbooks for corporate clients.
Ian Ruskin-Brown
Ruskin-Brown Associates Ltd
Ian Ruskin-Brown. For the last 26 years Ian Ruskin-Brown has been the owner/entrepreneur of several Service Businesses. He ran a market research company – Marketing Decisions International Ltd – from 1980 to 1994. The company was a full member of the Market Research Society. It was through these businesses that Ian conducted many market research and consultancy projects for firms in the Service Sector: from government organisations (BBC, HM Customs & Excise) to the Law Society, several national and international airlines, banks and building societies.
Ian was course director at the Chartered Institute of Marketing for courses on Marketing in the Service Sector (1984-1988). Additionally, Ian designed, wrote and piloted in-company training courses on marketing and selling consultancy services for a number of blue chip companies including The IBM Marketing University, ICL Training and Kodak Health Imaging.
He currently runs the Marketing Your Services course for Management Center Europe (part of the American Marketing Association). He also runs client specific courses in the USA and South East Asia.
Mark Thomas
Performance Dynamics Management Consultants
Mark Thomas is a highly successful international business consultant and trainer who has worked with some of the world’s major businesses in the fields of strategy, change management, human resources and executive development. He is a highly experienced speaker and business presenter who has worked in over 40 different countries around the world. As a consultant he has successfully sold major consulting projects and development initiatives. In addition to his consulting work Mark has authored several books and is a regular conference speaker on strategy, change management, people management and other organisational issues. Prior to becoming a Partner with Performance Dynamics, he worked for several years with Price Waterhouse Management Consultants in London. He is also a visiting faculty member at leading international business schools. He also advised on the business and organisational change issues arising out of strategic reviews and both private and public sector re-organisations.
Mike Williams
Mike Williams & Partners
Mike Williams M.Sc. is an international management consultant who established his company, Michael Williams & Partners, in 1979 and now works closely with associate companies in Geneva, Vienna and Copenhagen. He is also a director on the Board of British Ceramic Tile, based in Devon, UK. His main clients include leading Business Schools, e.g. IMD at Lausanne and the Theseus Institute, located in Nice, as well as several universities and a wide range of companies and consultancies throughout Europe, Canada and the United States. Mike is a member of the British Psychological Society, the Institute of Directors and the Association of Management Education & Development.
Enrol on The Mini-MBA training
Complete course
Course code 5002
- GBP 300.00 +VAT
- EUR 420.00 +VAT
- USD 468.00 +VAT
- Browser-based online learning
- Take the training at your own pace
- Receive a certificate of completion upon passing the assessment
- Follow progress if purchasing on behalf of your colleagues
- Questions? Read our FAQs or contact us
