What is Business Acumen?

When professionals listen about Business Acumen, they feel this word has some taste in it. And of course, it has. Having perception about business operation and progress, premeditative decisions for ambiguity, navigation, and griping of trends that will impact the business in the future or exigency is Business acumen. Business Acumen imparts understanding and has a strong hand in the operation, business infrastructure, financial management, marketing trends, sales promotions, etc.

Business acumen is like being a master of solving business issues, having executive and logical analysis of how things are going on and why? When you are a master in something then your contribution becomes meaningful. Everyone has a zest to know your suggestions. In short, this is a step forward in leadership development.

Why Business Acumen is so Important?

PROBLEM:

Employees do not understand how their contribution relates to the company’s mission and purpose so they don’t work on their potential, impacting negatively on the bottom line. And staying themselves in the same position even at the end of their career where they started.

Gallup’s research says two-thirds of employees do not know what their company stands for. Furthermore, 85% of employees worldwide are not engaged or are actively disengaged in their job. They imply a stunning amount of wasted potential, given that business units in the top quartile of Gallup’s global employee engagement database are 18% more productive and 23% more profitable than those in the bottom quartile.

What Happened when employees get engaged?

• Every employee plays a role in engaging customers, even the ones customers don’t see.
• Only engaged workers can engage customers.
• But they can’t do it if they don’t know how to become “ambassadors” of the company.

Engaged employees tend to be students of the company’s history and products, and they can articulate the brand promise and know how to deliver it. But the challenge for organizations is to build ambassadors at all levels. Maximize the power of engaged employees through knowledge and resources. Employees must know what the organization stands for and what makes it different from others.

So, there is a need to go through Business acumen because it has emerged as a vehicle for improving financial performance and leadership development. It is an intuitive and applicable understanding of how a company makes money. It encompasses a thorough understanding of the drivers of profitability & cash flow, and a market-focused big-picture understanding of the business & its interrelationships.

Connecting Organization Purpose to Employees’ Jobs through Business Acumen Leads to Organizational Success

Business acumen helps Managers to understand their businesses better through a simulation. So, they can focus on the organization’s Purpose and connect it to the Bottom-line.

Develop your team’s Business Acumen at every level of your organization to improve engagement, increase productivity, and grow your business.

What are the benefits of Business Acumen?

Employees will be able to:

• know what their organization stands for and what makes it different from others in the marketplace;
• understand the company’s brand promise and be able to explain the most important elements of the brand identity; and
• feel empowered to deliver on the brand promise

Business Acumen employee value proposition

Employees will focus on “WHY” rather than ‘How’ to achieve the following additional benefits:

• Breaking down Silos
• Empathy for each other and their functions
• Cross-functional alignment – all are on the same page
• Share ideas, energy, and passion
• Make quick decisions, act fast and realize the importance of time
• Ownership of management actions
• Highlighting fast career-progression opportunities for people who have good business acumen

Some Business Acumen adaptive expertise

Understand your Business What does your organization do? Operations, depts., Structure, etc. How do they make money? Knowing your Customers, Products, Market Share, Key Suppliers, Revenue & Business model. Remind them about Vision, Mission, Values, and Core Activities.

Understand your Industry Which Industry do you operate, size, complexity, local regulations, key compliances, international industry horizon, and key fundamentals.

Business S.W.O.T Analysis Your company value proposition, competitors, market trend, what’s coming? Controllable & non-Controllable factors, and SLEPT.

Business Specific Cases Customize cross-functional challenges related to your company’s internal depts. and industry. Develop short case studies for participants to own a problem rather than fixing/blaming it on others.

Essentials of Business Key understanding, forms and types of businesses, how commercial organizations work, critical business stakeholders and their priorities, company legal standing, etc.

Understand Business Language How the company translates its performance, and essentials of finance to understand profit & loss and the company’s financial position through the balance sheet in a simpler manner. Highlight why knowing basic finance is important for everyone.

Business KPIs & Ratios Understanding benefits of KPIs, Types of KPIs, and Linking dept. KPIs to Enterprise level KPIs. Financial and Non-Financial Ratios and their importance.

Stakeholders Theory Why & How to create value for all stakeholders, not for shareholders only, what to do when their interest conflicts, and what is the best value for them.

Business Decisions How companies do investment appraisals / commercial considerations, key assumptions, time value, and technical & financial feasibility. Connect their everyday job to the company’s bigger purpose by linking with a project. Non-financial factors, like social projects even not in profit.

Business Game Simulation A 5-pages real case study (specifically developed) to be played by participants in groups at the end in which they converge all their program learnings and see the big-picture of their organizations by connecting all the dots. Groups are asked to take business decisions (after consideration) as Board members / Owners of the business, which the management proposed due to a global crisis in 2008. These decisions are primarily taken to revive the company’s financial performance/health and increase its valuation. Participants are not expected to do technical things (like calculation of returns, etc.) but rather qualitative aspects of decision making which they can relate to their daily job as well. Make them realize that even a delay of one day for a particular job (like the hiring of a Project Manager by HR Staff) can cost a lot if a project is just one-day delayed because of late hiring.

P & L Responsibility Who is responsible for the P&L of a company’s debt. How important it is if you take care of your division/dept. P&L. How to build acumen in our team to understand it and deal with internal and external challenges. Understanding of Profit and Cost center concepts.

Value Creation What is Value and why creating Value matters, leakages of value in organizations, and what companies do to avoid it. Value creation initiatives are not the only responsibility of the top; it lies at all levels. How you as a person can initiate/propose value-driven projects benefiting you, your dept., and the company. Encouragement of ideas, energy, and passion down the line.

A company’s most engaged employees think and act like owners of the business, but they need to be empowered to think that way. Business acumen empowers them to think like business owners through a business game simulation, apart from other techniques, by helping them to develop and experience business acumen.

Solution:

Customize to your Business and Industry, taking your company challenges into account. Engenius (Executive Education) is a platform that is providing and facilitating employees as well as individuals with such training and programs (Business Acumen Mastery) for organization as well as personal development. An unconventional approach to learning – project-based & experiential, assessments & group presentations. Proven track record of delivery, and not matched with any other offering in the market. Business Game Simulation – all learnings converge to it, in a real scenario to review Business Proposals as Owners. After almost 20 years of executive learning, Engenius focuses on poignant and impactful leadership skills, personalized learning, and precise and measurable growth. Find us more on our official website: https://engeniusonline.com/