Weekly online
Join interactive online teaching, with guided reading, practical activities and assessment work around the live sessions. Your written course plan confirms the timetable, learning hours and masterclass arrangements for this module.
Professional learning · Executive Leadership
Strategic Management.
Make a strategic choice—and build the case for delivering it.
Strategic decisions ask you to choose where an organisation should compete, how it should create value and what it must change to succeed. This module develops the ability to connect those choices with evidence, resources and implementation. You will work from a diagnosis of an organisation’s position to an evaluated set of options and a practical delivery plan. The proposed KBC activities require you to challenge familiar assumptions, explain trade-offs and respond to changes in the environment. The result is a coherent strategic argument: a direction that matters, a reason to pursue it and a way to monitor progress.
Weekly route3 months
Live online2 hours a week
Module startsOctober · February · June
Learning structure1 module
The professional challenge
Make the next decision with more confidence.
An organisation has several attractive growth ideas and limited capacity to deliver them. Different functions support different priorities. You must make the strategic choices explicit, evaluate the evidence and recommend a direction that fits the organisation’s capabilities while recognising the changes needed to make that direction achievable.
Who will benefit
For managers preparing to contribute to organisational strategy, business owners reviewing direction and experienced professionals moving beyond a single operational function. It suits learners who can discuss a real organisation or work critically with a case. You should be ready to justify decisions, compare alternatives and engage with postgraduate-level reading.
What you take back to work
Practical capability, built through learning.
- Diagnose strategic position using relevant evidence and appropriate analytical tools.
- Evaluate alternative directions against clear organisational priorities and constraints.
- Develop a resourced implementation and change plan for a chosen strategy.
- Design measures and review arrangements that support informed strategic adjustment.
Inside the course
A connected learning journey.
KBC’s published route is a three-month module within the 18-month diploma programme. These learning blocks connect the unit outcomes with reading, discussion and practical application. A full OTHM unit includes 100 guided learning hours and 200 total qualification hours; your learning plan explains the allocation across teaching, directed activities, study and assessment.
01Diagnose the strategic position
Connect organisational purpose with environmental scanning, competitive forces and resources. Use tools such as SWOT or industry analysis to answer specific questions, explaining their limitations. Learners distinguish a well-supported strategic issue from a list of observations, then examine whether current plans still make sense in the setting in which the organisation now operates.
Apply it at work: Build a strategic diagnosis and identify the most important decision.
02Develop meaningful strategic alternatives
Create options that represent different choices about customers, value, scope or capabilities. Explore how corporate direction connects with business and operational decisions. Learners challenge options that are simply variations of the existing plan and consider what the organisation would need to stop doing. The exercise makes assumptions and resource implications visible before evaluation begins.
Apply it at work: Prepare three distinguishable options with their main assumptions.
03Evaluate the choice and its trade-offs
Compare options using an explicit decision framework that considers strategic fit, stakeholder consequences and deliverability. Bring evidence and judgement together without disguising uncertainty in a scoring table. Learners test a preferred option against a plausible change in circumstances, then explain why the recommendation remains credible or what would make an alternative preferable.
Apply it at work: Write a recommendation with a scenario test and rejected alternatives.
04Translate direction into coordinated action
Develop goals, responsibilities, resources and milestones that make the preferred strategy operational. Consider whether the current structure and management arrangements support delivery. Learners identify dependencies across functions and the behaviours that must change, then construct a change approach that explains who needs to be involved and how resistance or competing priorities will be addressed.
Apply it at work: Create an implementation roadmap and a stakeholder change plan.
05Monitor progress and adapt intelligently
Select measures that reveal whether the strategy is being implemented and whether it is producing the intended result. Distinguish delivery milestones from strategic outcomes. Learners design review conversations that allow assumptions to be challenged, establish ownership of corrective action and explain how evidence can support adaptation without allowing the strategy to become a moving target.
Apply it at work: Develop a strategic review dashboard and decision rules.
Learn around your working life
Time to understand. Space to apply.
Online or in a city near you
Face-to-face delivery can be arranged in London, Maidstone, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool. Your course offer confirms the venue and teaching dates.
A London masterclass to start your module
Meet your tutors and fellow professionals at an optional full-day London event. KBC covers the event, agreed transportation, refreshments and an open buffet dinner. Confirm arrangements with the team before booking travel.
Support between sessions
Return to class recordings and learning resources, bring questions to your tutor and use free one-to-one tutoring and coaching support. Your course plan sets out the guided reading and practice needed alongside live teaching.
Your route to recognition
Know what the assessment involves.
For the OTHM route, assessment is coursework against the unit’s learning outcomes and criteria; the current specification gives approximately 4,500 words as guidance. KBC’s proposed preparation project is an organisational strategy report covering diagnosis, options, implementation, change and review. Workshops develop the evidence and argument before final submission. The centre assesses the work and OTHM externally verifies it. The issued assignment brief determines the required tasks; the practical learning blocks are not a substitute for that brief.
Your written offer records the award or course completion requirements, any examination fees included, and the relevant eligibility checks.
The professional knowledge behind the course
Explore the books and standards.
The learning themes above bring together the relevant guide, syllabus and workplace practice. KBC’s teaching sequence connects these ideas through discussion and application.
- OTHM Level 7 Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership — qualification specification ↗OTHM · Current linked file: July 2025; document retains May 2020 footers
Official qualification structure and Strategic Management learning outcomes, assessment criteria and coursework guidance. Full specification read.
- Exploring Strategy: Text and Cases — Richard Whittington and co-authors ↗Pearson · 13th edition; 2023 print edition
Recommended reading: strategic position, choices, implementation and change.
Your investment
Get a course offer that fits your route.
Request the standalone fee for your chosen format, including the teaching, reading materials, assessment and membership arrangements relevant to this course.
Standalone professional development is self-funded or employer-funded. The agreed course offer explains any available support and the costs included.
Your questions, answered.
Is this mainly learning strategy models?
Models support the work. The central task is selecting and applying them critically to explain a strategic decision.
Can I use my own organisation?
An appropriate organisational context can make the analysis valuable, subject to the issued brief and permission to use relevant information.
Is this a complete diploma?
This subject is one mandatory unit within the OTHM Level 7 diploma. Completing one module does not complete the full qualification.
What would this help you achieve?
Talk to KBC about your experience, your goals and the right learning route for you.