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Deepening the Strategic Mindset for the Financial Executive

Transform your role from financial manager to visionary leader by mastering the advanced strategic frameworks needed to drive sustainable enterprise growth.

Created byBlair Cook Jennifer Nicholson
BeginnerUpdated May 10, 2026

What You'll Learn

  • check_circleFacilitate a rigorous strategic conversation using an integrated strategic management framework.
  • check_circleDistinguish good strategy from bad strategy by identifying common failing strategic frames.
  • check_circleAlign the business model with the financing structure, sourcing capital, quantifying risk, forecasting returns, evaluating opportunity costs and sunk costs.
  • check_circleConduct a strategic situational analysis using a variety of strategic analysis frameworks to synthesize a clear strategic Diagnosis.

About This Course

Are you a financial professional who wants to move beyond the scorekeeper role and become a true strategic partner at the executive table? Do you find yourself in strategy conversations where you can quantify the numbers but struggle to challenge the strategic logic itself?

This course is designed to change that. Deepening the Strategic Mindset for the Financial Executive is a rigorous, practitioner-led course built around three enduring principles: that great strategy emerges from insight, choice, and disciplined execution — not from templates and goal lists.

Drawing on the most respected frameworks in modern strategy, the course equips financial leaders with both the conceptual vocabulary and the practical analytical tools to make a meaningful and differentiated contribution to their organization's strategic management process.

The course is organized around four pillars of modern strategy.

  1. The first pillar establishes the intellectual foundation, describing the nature and need for strategy.
  2. The second pillar develops the strategic mindset and paths to attaining strategic insight.
  3. The third pillar focuses on crafting robust strategic alternatives and evaluating the difficult trade-offs that define a genuine strategy.
  4. The fourth pillar addresses implementation, execution, and the monitoring systems that allow leaders to evaluate and react to strategy as it evolves.

Learners leave equipped to facilitate a rigorous strategic conversation, recognize the hallmarks of good and bad strategy, evaluate alternatives using a financial lens, and help their organization align its people, processes, and systems to deliver on strategic commitments.

Course Content

15 activities • 14 videos • duration: 2h 6m

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Course Introduction1 videos • 2 min
  • videocamCourse Introduction
    Duration 2:40
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Defining Strategy1 videos • 7 min
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The Playing to Win Framework1 videos • 10 min
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The Strategy Kernel1 videos • 12 min
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The Finance Role in Strategy1 videos • 3 min
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Situational Analysis1 videos • 17 min
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Cultivating Strategic Insight1 videos • 5 min
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The Seven Powers1 videos • 19 min
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Scenario Planning1 videos • 4 min
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Making Strategic Decisions1 videos • 11 min
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Execution and Alignment1 videos • 5 min
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Monitoring and Steering1 videos • 11 min
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Course Wrap-up1 videos • 2 min
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Bonus: Applying AI to Strategy1 videos • 1 quiz • 10 min
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Final Assessment1 quiz

Your Instructor

Blair Cook Jennifer Nicholson

CPA, CA Leadership

menu_book55 courses
star5,700 reviews

Blair is a seven-time CFO, a director, and an educator at Executive Finance Partners - a professional development and executive coaching firm for financial professionals and executives. He also serves as a corporate director and audit committee chair of publicly listed companies: Terravest Industries and Clarke Inc. He is also the Board Treasurer of the Devour Food & Film Festival and serves on various committees of CPA Nova Scotia. Blair is the author of The Illiterate Executive: An Executive’s Handbook for Mastering Financial Acumen.

Credit Information

Is this course eligible for my CPD requirements as a Canadian CPA?

Provincial regulators of CPAs in Canada do not require that independent providers of CPD be approved to offer courses. Instead, individual CPAs are responsible for assessing whether a CPD activity meets their requirements, and may take activities from any source provided those requirements are met.

Every course offered on LearnFormula is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, and advances learning objectives that are relevant to the responsibilities or professional competencies of Canadian CPAs. All activities on LearnFormula are quantifiable in terms of hours, and are also verifiable, in that users receive documented evidence of their attendance via a certificate of completion after finishing a course (and this certificate is stored by LearnFormula indefinitely). Nearly 100,000 Canadian CPAs successfully satisfy their CPD requirements via LearnFormula on an annual basis.

What Students Are Saying

4.8 out of 5
Student's Choice
17 reviews

Frequently Asked Questions

We are a registered provider with 300+ associations and regulatory bodies worldwide. We operate across 27 global markets including Canada, the US, Australia, and the UK. Every course page clearly displays its specific accreditations. Upon completion, you receive a professional certificate that can be validated online. Our certificates include all necessary accreditation details, credit hours, and completion dates, and are formatted specifically to meet the submission requirements of most global regulatory bodies.

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