Got Business Acumen?

Got business acumen? What is business acumen? And what does business acumen have to do with building a better career?

This article discusses business acumen, what it is, and how it can help you build a better career.

Business acumen is the ability to see and take advantage of opportunities, understand, and communicate with every behavioral type at every level of your organization, solve problems, make good decisions, have discernment, and focus on the right priorities at the right time.

It isn’t necessary to understand every detail about operating a business, although that would be helpful, of course. But you do need to have a general knowledge around business and it's critical to understand the company you work for. Here are a couple of illustrations of low business acumen.

Recently a client kept insisting that they wanted to get into a leadership role. The client was careful to let me that that anything we worked on, the resume, cover letter, and interviewing skills must help them land a role in leadership. Doing what every coach does, I asked, “What excites you about getting into the C-Suite?” The client asked, “What’s the C-Suite?” Upon explaining that the C-Suite consists of the CEO, the CFO, the COO, etc. The client stated, “Oh I don’t want that much responsibility, I just want to lead a team of about six people who research data.”

The second illustration follows:

An assessment distributor has a client who they’ve only been working with for about 10 months.

• First, the vendor gave the organization a huge break on price because they are a non-profit. (Although the vendor isn’t).
• Next, the CEO’s (let me repeat that – the CEO’s) admin sent an email to the vendor, directing the vendor to just send invoices to accounting bypassing her. Accounting, copying the vendor, politely reminded the admin that these invoices must first be approved by her before accounting could pay the vendor.
• During these 10 months, the vendor’s payments have been late THREE times. When carefully worded and polite reminder emails are sent to the admin, there is no apology, or even an acknowledgement that the emails have been received.
• The admin was sending out announcements and newsletters that the vendor would send her, completely bypassing HR for permission to do so.

In many cases, employees seem to have no connection between how that nice paycheck winds up in their bank accounts, the products and services the organization they work for provides, how their work connects with that, or even how accounting and payroll processes function.

Education should provide basic business knowledge. However, another good idea is to make new hires aware of :

• How they fit in
• Who your organization serves
• The organization’s missions and values
• How the organization makes its money

In addition, provide both internal and external training opportunities to attend business classes, and make business acumen a major part of your career path program.

Helping your employees understand business acumen and how your organization functions are two of the best investments you can make in your employees as well as the growth and profitability of your organization.

If you have employees needing acumen coaching, I’d love to help. Let’s Get Started!