Courses

Background
Over time Centre for Business Education (CBE) has run many courses and these have been amalgamated into a training program called “Commercial Awareness and Acumen for Managers”. The aim is to improve managers’ business awareness and acumen. This Awareness and Acumen program is part of CBE’s wider MBA in a Nutshell® training program.

History of MBA in a Nutshell®
Cyril Jankoff created the five-day MBA in a Nutshell® program when he saw how executives needed managerial education as they were often lacking the necessary knowledge skills and behaviours in key business areas. This was particularly clear with technical people such as engineers, scientists, builders, tradespersons etc who were well trained and experienced in the technology part of their vocation but were lacking in many of the key managerial areas. It was also clear with small and medium enterprises, especially family businesses, where managers lack the necessary range of knowledge, skills and behaviours. This, and versions of the program, have been run in Australia and overseas since 1989. This course is alike a “Mini MBA” and is broadly known as MBA in a Nutshell and is trademarked, hence the “®”. Naturally, when attending such a course one does not obtain an MBA degree, but one does cover the “best of” the subject studied.

What the program is about
This “Commercial Awareness and Acumen for Managers” program covers many of the key topics of a full MBA. You will learn the “best of” each of the key areas described below. The program is designed for practical application in the workplace. What you learn today, you can use tomorrow. We are known for our ability to simplify complex concepts to make it engaging and easy for participants to understand their real-life application. The modules are designed for highly interactive face-to-face delivery and are available for public courses and on-site delivery. Customisation can occur in terms of delivery, duration and content. All courses can be delivered online, and this is convenient if an organisation’s staff from around the country, or internationally, need to attend. This saves travel time and costs.

Learning objectives
On completion of this “Commercial Awareness and Acumen for Managers” program course participants should be able to:

Be more aware of the key issues that can help the participant improve the running of their organisation, whether it is for profit, not-for-profit, a family business or a government organisation.
Be more confident in making strategic decisions that can have a lasting effect on their organisation.
More confidently plan, including using a “one-page plan”.
Confidently describe how to market the business.
Operate the business more efficiently.
More confidently negotiate with staff inside the organisation and negotiate contracts and variations outside the organisation.
Use the financial statements to make better business decisions.
Better price the products they sell and review the pricing of their suppliers.
Feel more comfortable dealing with buy-side or sell-side contracts, commercial laws and financial concepts.
Better identify and mitigate business risks.
Understand how Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning will affect the organisation.

Level
The program is aimed at all levels of managers.

Who should attend?
The course is designed for anyone from the for-profit, not-for-profit, family business or government organisation sectors from any industry including:

those who would like their organisation, or department, run more efficiently and effectively.
those wanting to attempt a full MBA in the future but would first like to get an understanding of key areas of management.
anyone from the CEO down who has knowledge gaps and would like to overcome these gaps.
family or privately-owned business managers to quickly pick up “Just In Time” knowledge in chosen areas.

Duration

Each module is ordinarily presented over half to one day, but timing is flexible, and content can be customised for the audience.
Modules, and sub-modules, can be expanded or condensed if there needs to be a greater emphasis on certain content or duration needs to be changed.

Key topics
There are six modules, and an organisation can take any or all of them. The program can be customised from both content and duration viewpoints. We can use your documentation, including for example existing contracts, when we look at how to best write a commercial contract. Naturally, all documentation and information will be kept confidential.

What we offer
List of modules

You can choose from our list of courses, or you advise us what to cover. Our courses are:

Module 1: Strategic Planning
Module 2: Marketing
Module 3: Risk
Module 4: Negotiating for Successful Outcomes
Module 5: Finance and Accounting: managing the business’ numbers
Module 6: Managing your Commercial Contracts and their Associated Risks.

Popular courses
The most popular courses are:

Module 3: Risk
Module 4: Negotiating for Successful Outcomes
Module 5: Finance and Accounting: managing the business’ numbers
Module 6: Managing your Commercial Contracts and their Associated Risks.

Of the above the most popular is Module 6 and combines parts of the other three modules. It is taught to the public, or in-company courses, both in Australia wide and internationally. For list of prior in-company courses see www.TheRiskDoctor.com.au.

Course content
Each of the modules is detailed below:

Module 1: Strategic Planning (suggest half day)

What the CEO seeks, and what you can do to assist
How to prepare, monitor and evaluate a workable plan of substance
The key steps in developing a workable plan
The three key strategic business plan sub-plans: marketing, finance and operations, and how each functions and interrelates
Business improvement strategies
How to prepare a simple but effective one–page plan
The effect of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance).

Module 2: Marketing (suggest half day)

What the CEO seeks, and what you can do to assist
What is marketing and why we bother with it
Identifying the target market
Focusing on customer needs
The “marketing mix” – what you can (and cannot) control in the marketing function
Price and achieving profitability
How to prepare a simple but effective one–page marketing plan that dovetails into your strategic business
The effect of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance).

Module 3: Risk Management (suggest half day)

What the CEO seeks, and what you can do to assist
Risk issues:
- Defining business risk
- Describing the International Risk Management Standard seven-step risk management process
- Identifying the key internal and external risks, Assessing (and prioritising) risk, Treating risk and Reviewing risk
- Reasons for why projects and contracts fail
- Using the procurement lifecycle to predict future risks
- “Black Swan Events”
- Determining a project’s risk before signing the contract
- Learning from mistakes
- The effect of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance).
Practical risk mitigation issues relating to the management of contracts:
- Due diligence of vendors, or customers
- Common things that should occur in general risk management but often do not
- Avoiding specific leakages by using a Contract Leakages Worksheet
- Describing effective ways to mitigate contractual risk
- Examining the Risk Assessment and Control Worksheet.

Module 4: Negotiating for Successful Outcomes (suggest half to a full day)

What the CEO seeks out of the negotiation process
The different strategies, tactics, styles and phases that you, and the other party, can use in negotiating.
Negotiate longer lasting and more mutually satisfying contracts, variations, renewals & internal agreements
The World Commerce and Consulting “Top Terms in Negotiation Report”, and “Top Ten Negotiation Pitfalls to Avoid”.
Negotiating with people from other cultures
Making face to face or non-face to face negotiations more successful, both inside and outside the organisation and including suppliers, customers, stakeholders etc
Dealing with difficult negotiators
Documenting negotiation outcomes so they are legally binding.
Describing possible legal problems that can occur in a negotiation, for example misleading and deceptive conduct.

Module 5: Finance and Accounting: managing the business’ numbers (suggest 1.0 to 1.5 days)

What the CEO seeks, and what you can do to assist
Recognise when and where a manager needs to critically understand how the numbers work.
Describe how the financial statements are prepared, interpreted and used in decision making
Confidently make quicker high-consequence decisions including pricing, the movement of cash and profits and making capital purchasing decisions
Financially investigate the other party
Distinguish between cash and profits and describe why it is important to do so.
Profit improvement methods.
Working capital management and budgeting
Breakeven analysis
Purchase of capital assets (using NPV and IRR discounting and payback methods)
Depreciation
Direct and indirect taxes, and their effect on the financial statements and the business
How to prepare a simple but effective finance plan, business case and strategic plan.
The effect of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance).

Module 6: Managing your Commercial Contracts and their Associated Risks (suggest 1.5 to 2 days)

Part 1 Legal background:A focus on key aspects of business law:
- The obligations of the court, costs, where to find the law, who must prove what and how, evidence, avoiding litigation etc.
- Creating a valid and legally enforceable contract
- Contract operational issues: Parties, terms, interpretation, breach and a discussion on remedies and termination.
- Other key laws that can affect the contract including agency, insurance, intellectual property, and tender.
- Brief review of key terms including indemnity, limitation of liability, insurance, force majeure, entire agreement clauses and intellectual property.
- Practical ways to reduce contract risk
- Action Planning: what to do now to better manage your contracts.

Part 2: Contract management: Less of a focus on the law, and more on the commercial aspects, that is on procurement, sales and managing the resulting contract, while simultaneously managing risk.
- What the CEO seeks, and what you can do to assist
- Understand the end-to-end procurement process with a focus on how value is added with each component.
- Discuss responsible sourcing (including ESG issues)
- List key supplier performance measures and issues
- Determine appropriate approach when going out to tender and dealing with suppliers, and how to mitigate potential risks posed by supplier behaviour.
- Outline key negotiation issues in the contracting process, both internal and external, and including variations
- Describe how expertise in the procurement field is ultimately essential, particularly around how that expertise is applied.
- Demonstrate and define value by implementing a variety of evaluation tools and theories.
- All the above but from the supplier’s viewpoint.

Key contemporary issues
Key issues such as ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and Greenwashing, risk in general, AI and Machine Learning will be discussed in each Module.

Course delivery
Each course is educationally designed to enable the participants to gain and retain key learnings. This is done by a teaching and learning program having the following steps in a typical training course (and any or all parts can be removed):

Pre-course reading: To introduce the course to the participants. The reading will be emailed to each participant a week before the 30-minute Zoom session.
Pre-course 30-minute Zoom session: To introduce the course to the participants. Online a week before the first day.
The presentation:Covering the course materials. Training is to be face-to-face, but can be online if desired.
Post-course 60-minute Zoom session:To summarise the key learnings the course to the participants. This online session will be held approximately four weeks after the end of the last presentation date.

Course Materials
Each participant will be provided with detailed written course materials.

Interaction with the client’s advisers
We seek to provide high quality practical user-friendly courses to our target audience. Our objective is not to take you away from your advisers but to work with them in order to strengthen your business.

DISCLAIMER
The information provided in the course, and materials, are for education purposes only. Should you need specific advice see a competent professional working in that area of expertise.