Business success requires a close alignment between a firm’s strategy and the processes it uses in its day-to-day work. Connecting operations and strategy generally leads to improved profitability and increased market share. A deep understanding of the challenges an operational process can face, how to evaluate the cost to the organization of those challenges, and therefore how to select the best available options for addressing challenges, is necessary when your expanding responsibilities include operations functions. You need to know how to respond when supply doesn’t match demand, when there is a shortage of labor or materials, or when faced with a new competitor.

To ensure the success of strategic initiatives and avoid the costs of an inefficient operation, you’ll need to understand and manage key operational implications of your decisions, such as:

• What are the operations scale, source, and scope alignments you need so that your firm’s strategic plan and your operations processes work synergistically?
• How do you adjust operational choices as your firm’s strategy evolves?
• How can you prepare to support changes in strategy?
• What data is necessary to identify improvements for existing processes and to evaluate new strategic opportunities?
• How can managers in non-operations roles evaluate and manage the implications of their new strategies on the operations function?

In Leading Business Strategy through Operational Excellence, Duke MBA faculty will share findings from their research to demonstrate how to plan and control business  processes, the processes required to make and deliver the goods and/or services they offer, how to use and manage the data needed to evaluate these processes, what you can learn from experienced operations professionals, and how to use graphics to represent these processes.

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