Offered in partnership with the Goff Strategic Leadership Institute.
Strategic leaders are able to identify available resources and drive growth, while also accepting adequate risk to ensure growth occurs at the right pace. Assess your strategic skills and embrace a problem-finding skillset to enable your company to outperform rivals and delight current and future customers.
Every organization faces the same question: how do we actually create value—and how will we create value in the future? Strategic leadership begins not with imitation or analysis, but with the ability to define a unique future that is worth pursuing, often taking the form of a problem that is worth solving. Successful leaders frame problems, questioning the obvious and challenging assumptions that others take for granted. In doing so, leaders can reveal hidden sources of value—resources, capabilities, and relationships that have yet to be fully recognized or used—and turn them into engines of growth.
In this course, we define strategic leadership as a process of generating a unique “theory” and path to value creation and problem-solving. Strategic leadership begins with learning to look beyond data—in asking the right questions, uncovering hidden possibilities, and charting a distinct path to value. The goal of the course is to highlight your role as a leader in orchestrating the process of value creation. You will learn the process by which novel paths to value are articulated and pitched, and how you can lead and persuade others throughout this process.
The course will use a mix of short case studies, readings, frameworks, and in-class exercises to help you master strategic leadership. Our goal is to not only teach and discuss the central principles and processes behind articulating a path to value, but also to equip you with the highly practical tools and insights to help you actually do this in your organization.
This course is designed for leaders and aspiring leaders seeking to develop their problem-framing and decision-making skills. It can benefit anyone pursuing strategy, growth, and innovation. From entrepreneur to executive, this course helps people connect ideas with actions and results — bringing entire teams from analysis to insight, and vision to implementation.
Fall Class Dates
November 12-13, 2026
Class Time
8:30am – 4:30pm
Course Price
$1900
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Eccles Executive Education is recognized by SHRM to offer SHRM-CP or SHRMSCP professional development credits (PDCs). For more information about certification or recertification, please visit SHRMCertification.org.
This course is a part of the Executive Leadership Certificate.
Whether you are an aspiring professional or an attentive executive, this certificate can elevate your leadership potential. The courses in this certificate are designed to provide you with the expertise, credibility, and confidence required to lead modern teams.
Teppo Felin, Ph.D.
Teppo Felin is the Ion Foundation Endowed Professor at the David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah and Co-Director of the Ion Management Science Lab. Before joining the Eccles School, he was the Douglas D. Anderson Endowed Professor at Utah State University. From 2013-2021, Felin was a Professor of Strategy at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, where he also directed the Oxford Diploma in Strategy & Innovation. His work explores how organizations and leaders create value. His research has been published in journals such as Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Strategy Science, and MIT Sloan Management Review. Prior to academia, Felin worked in venture capital in Munich, Germany and Amman, Jordan. Born and raised in Helsinki, Finland, he brings an international perspective to leadership, innovation, and strategic thinking.
Todd Zenger, Ph.D.
Todd Zenger is the N. Eldon Tanner Chair in Strategy and Strategic Leadership and a Presidential Professor at the David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah. He is also Co-Director of the Ion Management Science Lab and Academic Director of the Goff Strategic Leadership Center. A Fellow of both the Strategic Management Society and the Academy of Management, Zenger is among the world’s most cited scholars on corporate strategy and organizational design. His work, including the widely read Harvard Business Review article “What Is the Theory of Your Firm?” and his book Beyond Competitive Advantage, bridges rigorous insight with practical application. A graduate of Stanford University and UCLA, he brings decades of teaching, research, and consulting experience to helping leaders and organizations discover and act on their unique paths to value.
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