In the October edition of the Columbia Executive Education newsletter Connected, Rita McGrath notes “Companies devolve to planning with no time for strategy…They don’t apply the same rigor to their strategy process as they do for their planning process.” Rita McGrath will be leading the program Creating and Executing Breakthrough Strategy, November 15-20, 2009. Professor McGrath’s program builds on strategic learning concepts, but focuses specifically on the challenges of driving growth. Growth, because it involves extending the basic capabilities of a company into new areas, is often poorly managed. “The biggest difficulty,” says Professor McGrath, “is that companies try to use the same processes and tools for business-as-usual that they do for growth programs, which simply doesn’t work.” In the course, participants learn to use tools such as opportunity mapping and discovery driven planning to address a growth challenge facing their organizations.