Chartered Management Institute · RQF Level 7

CMI Level 7 Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership (QCF)

You don’t just earn this. You learn to use it, one-to-one, on your own real work.

  • LevelRQF Level 7
  • Total credits66
  • Units in this qualification17

Awarded by Chartered Management Institute · on the Ofqual register

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What you’ll learn

What each unit actually teaches you to do

These are the units Chartered Management Institute registers against this qualification. It is a catalogue, not a syllabus. Which of them you take depends on the combination the qualification requires, and that is set by the awarding body rather than by us. Every unit here is regulated, and every one you earn is yours to keep.

Being a strategic leaderReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the organisation’s ethical and value-based approach to leadership
  • Understand strategic leadership styles
  • Understand leadership strategies and their impact on organisational direction
Conducting a strategic management projectReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Identify and justify a strategic investigative project
  • Conduct research, using sources, and synthesise data and options
  • Draw conclusions and make recommendations that achieve the project aim
  • Develop and review the results of the investigative project
Financial managementReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Analyse financial data
  • Assess budgets based on financial data to support organisational objectives
  • Evaluate financial proposals for expenditure submitted by others
Financial planningReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand how the financial plan supports strategic objectives
  • Understand the construction of a financial plan
  • Understand how to promote the financial plan in support of strategic objectives
Human resource planningReal unit · Chartered Management Institute
You'll examine human resource planning and its alignment with strategic objectives. The unit covers relevant UK employment legislation, organisational frameworks, and the impact of the organisational environment on staff, including grievance, discipline, and dismissal processes.

What you'll be able to do

  • Explain how the human resource (HR) plan supports the organisation's strategic objectives
  • Describe the legal and organisational frameworks that govern the employment of staff
  • Analyse the effect of the organisational environment on staff behaviour and performance
  • Outline the organisation's grievance, discipline, and dismissal processes
Introduction to Strategic Management and LeadershipReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the relationship and construction of a personal development plan
  • Understand data and information and apply knowledge to the skills of quantitative analysis
  • Understand core marketing concepts, the need for staff increases and the evaluation and support of others
Organisational changeReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand how to apply solutions to organisational change
  • Understand how to develop a change strategy using implementation models
  • Analyse an organisational response to change
  • Understand how to evaluate the impact of change strategies
Organisational directionReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Review and determine the organisational strategic aims and objectives
  • Identify and analyse progress towards organisational strategic aims and objectives
  • Determine and evaluate strategic options to support a revised strategic position
Personal development as a strategic leaderReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Identify personal skills to achieve strategic ambitions
  • Manage personal leadership development to support achievement of strategic ambitions
  • Evaluate the effectiveness of the leadership development plan
  • Advocate a staff welfare environment that supports organisational values
Strategic Corporate Social ResponsibilityReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the development and alignment of a Corporate Social Responsibility strategy
  • Understand the implementation of a Corporate Social Responsibility strategy
  • Understand the evaluation, impact and reinforcement of the Corporate Social Responsibility strategy
Strategic Risk ManagementReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the concept of risk, roles and responsibilities for risk management, and risk management tools and models
  • Understand the resourcing and implementation of risk management strategy
  • Understand the evaluation and management of risk management strategies
Strategic information managementReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the impact of management information on decision making
  • Understand the importance of information sharing within the organisation
  • Use information to inform and support strategic decision making
  • Monitor and review management information
Strategic leadership practiceReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the relationship between strategic management and leadership
  • Understand leadership principles that support organisational values
  • Understand leadership strategies and the impact on organisation direction
Strategic marketingReal unit · Chartered Management Institute
It teaches you to understand how a marketing plan supports strategic objectives. You'll study the construction of a marketing plan, including market analysis and target audience identification, and how to promote the plan to support organisational goals.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand how the marketing plan supports the achievement of strategic objectives within an organisation
  • Understand the key components and construction of a comprehensive marketing plan, including market analysis, target audience identification, and marketing strategies
  • Understand how to effectively promote the marketing plan internally and externally in support of strategic objectives
Strategic performance managementReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Set performance targets of teams to meet strategic objectives
  • Agree team performance targets to contribute to meeting strategic objectives
  • Monitor actions and activities defined to improve team performance
  • Apply influencing and persuading skills, to the dynamics and politics of personal interactions
Strategic planningReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the purpose of a strategic plan
  • Select a strategic direction from analysis of alternative strategic options
  • Implement, evaluate, monitor and review the strategic plan
Strategic project managementReal unit · Chartered Management Institute
You'll explore the impact of projects and project management on strategic objectives within organisations. The unit covers key elements of project processes and plans, and how to implement and evaluate project outcomes effectively.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the impact of projects and project management on the achievement of strategic objectives within an organisation
  • Understand the key elements of a project process and plan, including initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closure
  • Understand how to implement the project plan effectively and evaluate the outcome(s) against strategic objectives

The honest bit

You’ve started things before

Most courses were built for a room full of people who aren’t you. A cohort moves on whether or not your week allowed it, and by the third week the thing you’re behind on becomes the reason you stop opening it.

There’s no cohort here, and no timetable to fall behind. Before anything starts, Zavmo asks when you’re sharpest and how long you can realistically sit down for, then builds the sessions around those answers. A bad fortnight changes your pace. It doesn’t put you behind.

And you only pay once you start learning. Searching and planning are free, and you can cancel any time — so the cost of finding out is an afternoon, not a year.

Your passport

Every credit is a stamp you keep

Level 7 credits are regulated. They don’t vanish when a subscription ends or a website closes. They travel to any employer, and Zavmo keeps the map of what you’ve earned and what’s next.

Being a strategic leaderConducting a strategic management projectFinancial managementFinancial planningHuman resource planningIntroduction to Strategic Management and LeadershipOrganisational changeOrganisational direction

Each stamp is a real unit registered against this qualification.

Who’d teach you this

The Evidence Evaluator

Assessor

Helps you show what you can actually do, gathering the evidence that proves it as you learn.

Meet all twelve tutors

Where this connects

Where these credits take you

A qualification is never a dead end here. See the jobs its credits open, the national occupational standards its units map to, and the future skills they quietly build.

See Your Progress GrowIllustration
CMI Level 7 Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership (QCF)
  • Develop a risk management strategy
  • Establish Strategic Direction in Line with Political Priorities for the Public Sector
  • Implement and evaluate organisational change
This is your Mind Palace on learn.zavmo.ai. Every skill above comes from this role's own record, not an example borrowed from another job. A node lights up when you evidence it, and what you build stays yours between jobs. That is the part a course cannot do.

Where this can lead

Strategic Projects Manager

This role is a launchpad for a truly impactful career. Whether you aspire to lead a function, become a deep subject matter expert, or eventually run a business unit, the Strategic Projects Manager position will equip you with the skills, experience, and network to get there. We're investing in you for the long haul.

See the whole journey →

Showing 6 roles, drawn from 223 job records mapped to this qualification.

Skills it covers

What the job actually needs. These are the standards the units are built against, in the words employers and awarding bodies already use for the work itself.

Develop a risk management strategyEstablish Strategic Direction in Line with Political Priorities for the Public SectorImplement and evaluate organisational change

How you’ll actually learn this

One-to-one, on your own real work

A qualification is usually something done to you: sit the class, sit the exam, hope it sticks. Here it’s the opposite. You learn it one-to-one with a companion, on your own real work, and you keep going until you can use it, not just recall it.

One-to-one, on your real workNo lectures, no past-papers. Every unit is practised on the actual tasks your job throws at you, a tutor beside you, not a video in front of you.
Taught to the top, not the testMost courses stop at remembering. Your companion keeps climbing: analysing, judging, creating. That’s the part a machine can’t do for you.
Credits you keep, a map that continuesEvery unit is regulated and yours for good. The day you finish, Zavmo already knows the next role your new credits open.
Being a strategic leaderLevel 7

Applied to your work in any of these jobs

How the thinking builds
  1. Remember
  2. Understand
  3. Apply
  4. Analyse
  5. Evaluate
  6. Create
An illustration of a Zavmo lesson, built from this role’s own route. The unit, its objective and every criterion above are the awarding body’s own words, not an example.
Your PlanIllustration

Built for CMI Level 7 Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership (QCF)

17 units in this credential, in the order it lists them, awarded by Chartered Management Institute.

  1. Being a strategic leader
  2. Conducting a strategic management project
  3. Financial management
  4. Financial planning
  5. Human resource planning
  6. Introduction to Strategic Management and Leadership

and 11 more in the full unit list below.

These are the real units of this credential, in its own order. Nothing here is marked done, because this plan has not been started by anyone yet. Yours would fill in as you go.

One to one, not one to many

No two people run this the same way

A course is written once and handed to everyone. This is assembled around you, and keeps changing as it learns you. Five things it reads, and what each one changes.

  1. Your actual work Every unit is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
  2. What you already know The first conversation finds your starting point, so you skip what you can already do and spend the time on what you cannot.
  3. The conditions you learn under Not a learning-styles quiz. The evidence does not support those. The dimensions the research does back, read once and used to shape the plan.
  4. How far you got last time It picks up mid-thought. The tutor knows what you said, what you struggled with, and what it asked you to try.
  5. Which tutor suits the moment Twelve of them, each for a different kind of thinking. The one who walks you through a first idea is not the one who stress-tests it.

See how you learn, free. Eight questions, no sign-up. A directional taster; the diagnostic inside Zavmo goes deeper and keeps adapting.

Why it sticks

Most courses stop at remembering

There’s a well-known ladder of how deeply you learn something, called Bloom’s Taxonomy. Most courses get you up the first two rungs: you remember some facts, you pass a test, you forget it. Real skill lives at the top. Judging, deciding, creating. And this isn’t a generic ladder: every rung has a named Zavmo tutor who walks you up it.

  1. 6CreateThe Creative Catalyst
  2. 5EvaluateThe Evidence Evaluator
  3. 4AnalyseThe Analyst
  4. 3ApplyThe Coach
  5. 2UnderstandThe Connector
  6. 1RememberThe Builder

Where most courses leave you Where Zavmo takes you

Why this matters: AI can already remember and understand for you. What it can’t do is take your real problem and judge the right call. So the only learning worth paying for is the learning that takes you to the top. That’s exactly what a tutor doing it with you, on your real work, is for.

The value

Why the companion is worth £70 a month

You’re not paying for the units. They’re regulated, and the same wherever you earn them. You’re paying for the one thing that decides whether you actually get there: a companion that makes them stick, on your real work.

That is one-to-one on this qualification, every day, on the work you already do, for £70 a month. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it. Billed monthly, cancel any time and billing stops.

Earned on your own work, taught to the top.

Everything you just read, learned one-to-one on the job you already do. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it.

Build my plan, free

No card. See how this qualification maps onto your role and meet the tutors who’d teach it, free. The learning begins when you subscribe. It’s £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.