What is Business Acumen?

Business acumen is keen, fundamental, street-smart insight into how your business operates and how it makes money and sustains profitable growth, now and in the future.

Learning to analyze your company's performance through the lenses of the 5 Business Drivers will help you align your objectives with those of your executive team and help you make smarter and faster business decisions.

Do you want your employees to think and act like owners of the business? Uh...Yes! In this Fast Company article Kevin Cope explains why employees who feel invested in the company are more engaged in their roles.

This month marks the 106th anniversary of one of the most innovative and life-changing products in history, the Ford Model T. Of course, the Model T wouldn't have been the success that it was without the leadership and business acumen of its creator, Henry Ford.

How employees treat each other is highly reflective of the way they treat their customers. Stephen R Covey once said, "Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers."

As a company that teach and promotes business acumen, we get really geeked out looking for organizations that "see the big picture," and Zappos is a company that has caught our attention.

Brian Tracy once said, "The smartest business decision you can make is to hire qualified people."

If your boss came up to you right now and asked what the difference between profit and . cash flow is, would you be able to respond? Or even worse, what if you were asked this question in a job interview.

Up at 5 am and off to the office two hours early to help your team finish up that big project that's expected to be the next most pivotal moment for your company and personal career.

Recently a leader in the aerospace and defense industry hired MetrixGlobal (an independent Training ROI research firm) to evaluate their Building Business Acumen course.

As you look at the challenges that businesses of all industries constantly fixate on, not many are more acute right now than the challenge of gaining and sustaining a level of sales growth that satisfies stakeholders.

We struggle to measure the the performance (and importance) of people.

The IBM Institute for Business Value and IBM Strategy & Change recently published the results of their biennial study that attempts to better understand the challenges and goals of today's CEOs.

I recently read that Oprah was invited to give the commencement address at Stanford University, and that she gave each graduate a copy of the book A Whole New Mind.

When you come right down to it, business is very simple.

Selecting the right priorities, understanding the laws of business (the Five Business Drivers), and knowing instinctively how to make money is one thing.

We're back from San Diego.