Chartered Management Institute · RQF Level 7

CMI Level 7 NVQ Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership

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

LevelRQF Level 7
Total credits45
Guided learning223 hours
Units in this qualification18

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

Aimed at senior managers and leaders, this NVQ diploma validates competence in strategic management and leadership. Individuals will develop skills in areas such as strategic business planning, business process design, and knowledge management strategy development.

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.

Design business processesReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

You'll develop knowledge of techniques and tools for designing business processes, such as process mapping and flowcharting. The unit covers developing processes aligned with organisational objectives and evaluating their effectiveness using key performance indicators.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the various techniques and tools that can be used to support the design of effective business processes.
Develop new business processes or improve existing ones, taking into account organisational needs and objectives.
Evaluate the effectiveness of business processes, measuring their performance against key performance indicators and identifying areas for optimisation.

Develop a business strategyReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

You'll study the principles of business strategy development, including evaluating internal and external environments. The unit teaches you to create a strategic vision and develop a comprehensive business strategy aligned with organisational goals.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the fundamental principles that underpin the development of a successful business strategy.
Evaluate an organisation’s operating environment, considering internal and external factors that may impact its strategic direction.
Develop a clear and compelling strategic vision for an organisation, outlining its long-term goals and aspirations.
Develop a comprehensive business strategy that aligns with the organisation's vision and objectives, taking into account the competitive landscape and available resources.

Develop a strategic business planReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

This unit covers the principles of strategic business planning, including market analysis, competitive advantage, and resource allocation. You'll learn to prepare for strategy implementation and create detailed plans to deliver business strategies effectively.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the principles underpinning the development of a strategic business plan, including market analysis, competitive advantage, and resource allocation.
Prepare for the implementation of a business strategy, considering factors such as organisational structure, communication, and change management.
Develop detailed plans to deliver the business strategy, including specific objectives, timelines, and resource requirements.

Develop and manage collaborative relationships with other organisationsReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

You'll understand principles of effective collabouration with external organisations. The unit develops skills to identify, establish, and manage collabourative relationships that support organisational objectives and address potential challenges.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the principles of effective collaboration with other organisations, including benefits and potential challenges
Identify external collaborative relationships to be developed in line with organisational objectives
Collaborate with other organisations to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes

Establish business risk management processesReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

This unit provides knowledge of business risk management models and techniques. You'll develop and evaluate risk management processes to identify, assess, and mitigate risks, ensuring organisational protection and compliance.

What you'll be able to do

Understand various business risk management models and techniques, and their application in different contexts
Develop business risk management processes to identify, assess and mitigate potential risks
Evaluate the effectiveness of business risk management processes in protecting organisational assets and achieving objectives

Establish organisational governance controlsReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

This unit covers organisational governance, compliance, and the legal and regulatory framework affecting businesses. You'll establish governance controls to ensure compliance and mitigate risks within an organisation.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the nature of compliance and non-compliance with organisational governance requirements
Understand the legal and regulatory framework affecting businesses, including relevant legislation and industry standards
Establish effective governance controls to ensure compliance and mitigate risks

Execute a strategic business planReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

It teaches you to understand and implement the execution of a strategic business plan. You'll explore communication, stakeholder engagement, resource management, and evaluation techniques to overcome barriers and improve strategic outcomes.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the core principles that underpin the successful execution of a strategic business plan.
Implement a strategic business plan within an organisation, adhering to relevant policies and procedures.
Evaluate the effectiveness of a strategic business plan, identifying areas for improvement and future development.

Lead the development of a continuous improvement strategyReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

You'll understand the principles of continuous improvement and develop skills to create and manage a continuous improvement strategy. The unit covers methodologies such as PDCA and Lean, benefits for organisations, and factors contributing to successful improvement initiatives.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the principles underpinning the development of a robust continuous improvement strategy.
Develop a continuous improvement strategy that is aligned with the organisation's strategic goals and objectives.
Manage continuous improvement initiatives, ensuring that they are effectively implemented and monitored to achieve desired outcomes.

Lead the development of a knowledge management strategyReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

This unit provides learners with an understanding of knowledge management principles and the ability to lead the development of a knowledge management strategy. You'll manage organisational knowledge effectively and promote a culture of continuous learning.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the fundamental principles underpinning effective knowledge management within an organisation.
Develop a comprehensive knowledge management strategy that aligns with the organisation's overall strategic objectives.
Manage knowledge effectively, ensuring that it is captured, stored, shared, and utilised appropriately.
Promote knowledge management throughout the organisation, fostering a culture of learning and collaboration.

Lead the development of a quality strategyReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

You'll examine the development and management of quality strategies, including quality assurance and continuous improvement. The unit teaches you to lead quality initiatives aligned with organisational objectives and manage quality processes effectively.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the fundamental principles that underpin the development of a robust quality strategy.
Develop a comprehensive quality strategy that aligns with the organisation's overall business objectives and customer expectations.
Manage quality processes and systems to ensure consistent delivery of high-quality products and services.

Manage product and/or service developmentReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

You'll study the processes involved in developing new or improved products and services. The unit teaches you to establish needs through market research and manage development stages effectively from concept to launch.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the processes involved in the development of new or improved products and/or services
Establish the need for new or improved products and/or services through market research and analysis
Manage the development of new or improved products and/or services, from concept to launch

Manage strategic human resourcesReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

This unit provides knowledge of strategic workforce planning, forecasting skills needs, and employee retention. You'll develop the ability to manage human resources strategically, aligning workforce planning with business objectives.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the principles and processes involved in strategic workforce planning, including forecasting future skills needs.
Optimise employee retention strategies within an organisation to minimise staff turnover and maintain a skilled workforce.
Manage human resources strategically, aligning HR practices with the overall business strategy to achieve organisational goals.

Manage strategic marketing activitiesReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

You'll explore strategic marketing management principles, including market evaluation and communications planning. The unit develops skills to manage marketing activities aligned with organisational objectives and respond to market trends.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the principles of strategic management in relation to marketing activities within an organisation
Evaluate a market, considering factors such as size, trends, and competitive landscape
Develop a comprehensive marketing communications strategy and plan, aligned with organisational objectives
Manage strategic marketing activities, including implementation, monitoring, and evaluation

Obtain financial resourcesReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

This unit covers methods of raising finance, including debt, equity, and grants. You'll identify organisational financial needs and acquire skills to obtain appropriate financial resources considering advantages, disadvantages, and influencing factors.

What you'll be able to do

Understand different methods of raising finance for an organisation
Identify the need for financial resources within an organisation
Obtain financial resources for an organisation

Optimise the use of technologyReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

This unit focuses on the optimisation of technology use within organisations. You'll understand core principles, scope technological solutions to business challenges, and manage technology implementation while considering associated risks.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the core principles that underpin the optimisation of technology within an organisation.
Scope the potential use of technology to address specific business challenges and opportunities.
Optimise the use of technological solutions to improve efficiency, productivity, and overall business performance.
Manage the implementation and ongoing use of technology, ensuring it aligns with the organisation's strategic objectives and delivers tangible benefits.

Promote equality of opportunity, diversity and inclusionReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

This unit explores equality, diversity, and inclusion principles within the workforce, including relevant legislation. You'll evaluate organisational strategies and promote policies and practices that support an inclusive and diverse working environment.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the principles underpinning equality, diversity and inclusion in the workforce, including relevant legislation and best practice
Evaluate organisational strategies, policies and practices which address equality, diversity and inclusion requirements, identifying areas for improvement
Promote equality, diversity and inclusion policies and practices within an organisation

Provide strategic leadership and directionReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

You'll explore the characteristics of strategic leadership and its role in organisational success. The unit develops skills to provide leadership, communicate strategy, and evaluate leadership effectiveness within an organisation.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the key characteristics that underpin effective strategic leadership and direction within an organisation.
Provide effective leadership and direction to teams and individuals to ensure the achievement of organisational objectives.
Evaluate the overall effectiveness of the leadership and direction provided within an organisation, identifying areas for improvement.

Shape organisational culture and valuesReal unit · Chartered Management Institute

You'll study organisational culture and values, their influence on behaviour and performance, and factors shaping culture. The unit teaches you to assess and influence culture to support positive organisational outcomes.

What you'll be able to do

Understand the key elements of organisational culture and values, and their impact on organisational performance
Influence organisational culture and values to support organisational 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.

Design business processesDevelop a business strategyDevelop a strategic business planDevelop and manage collaborative relationships with other organisationsEstablish business risk management processesEstablish organisational governance controlsExecute a strategic business planLead the development of a continuous improvement strategy

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 NVQ Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership

Build and Sustain Collaborative Relationships with Other Organisations
Business Process Design and Improvement
Communicate design and improvement information for IT enabled business processes
Design and implement business analysis strategy
Develop an organisational strategy in a food and drink business
Develop and manage a strategy for your photo imaging business or practice
Develop and sustain collaborative relationships with departments and other organisations
Developing a Strategic Business Plan for Your Organisation

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

Lead Knowledge Strategist

Your journey with us as a Lead Knowledge Strategist is just one step. We're committed to helping you grow, whether that's into senior leadership, a deep technical specialism, or even exploring new avenues. The key is your curiosity and drive to keep learning and making an impact.

See the whole journey →

Opens the roleLead Knowledge StrategistOne of the jobs this qualification is a route intoSee the role →Opens the roleManager, Learning & Knowledge ManagementOne of the jobs this qualification is a route intoSee the role →Opens the roleManager, Organisational Learning & Knowledge ManagementOne of the jobs this qualification is a route intoSee the role →Opens the roleManager, Organisational Learning & KnowledgeOne of the jobs this qualification is a route intoSee the role →Opens the roleDirector of Knowledge StrategyOne of the jobs this qualification is a route into · 3 near-identical records folded inSee the role →Opens the roleDirector of Organisational Learning & Knowledge ManagementOne of the jobs this qualification is a route intoSee the role →Future FluencyAll ten future skillsSee how every unit is contextualised by the tenExplore →

Showing 6 roles, drawn from 808 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.

Build and Sustain Collaborative Relationships with Other OrganisationsBuild and sustain collaborative relationships with other organisationsBuild and sustain collaborative relationships with other organisationsBusiness Process Design and ImprovementCommunicate design and improvement information for IT enabled business processesDesign and implement business analysis strategyDevelop an organisational strategy in a food and drink businessDevelop and manage a strategy for your photo imaging business or practiceDevelop and sustain collaborative relationships with departments and other organisationsDeveloping a Strategic Business Plan for Your OrganisationDirect design service businessesImplement and evaluate strategic and operational business plansImplement and evaluate strategic and operational business plansImplement technology foresight processesManage Relationships During Design and Improvement Programmes for IT Enabled Business ProcessesPromote equality of opportunity, diversity and inclusion in your organisation

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.

Design business processesLevel 7

Applied to your work in any of these jobs

Which job do you mean?

Lead Knowledge Strategist Manager, Learning & Knowledge Management Manager, Organisational Learning & Knowledge Management Manager, Organisational Learning & Knowledge Director of Knowledge Strategy Director of Organisational Learning & Knowledge Management

Learners will develop knowledge of techniques and tools for designing business processes, such as process mapping and flowcharting. The unit covers developing processes aligned with organisational objectives and evaluating their effectiveness using key performance indicators.

How the thinking builds

Remember
Understand
Apply
Analyse
Evaluate
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 NVQ Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership

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

Design business processes
Develop a business strategy
Develop a strategic business plan
Develop and manage collaborative relationships with other organisations
Establish business risk management processes
Establish organisational governance controls

and 12 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.

Your actual work Every unit is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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