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Business Acumen Videos

Learn more about what business acumen training can do for your company with our video series. To check out our entire video catalog, follow us on YouTube or LinkedIn.

Online Business Acumen Training
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Online Business Acumen Training

Business acumen isn’t just about the financial make-up of companies, it’s about understanding the role you play in your business’s success. Where do you fit into your company’s money-making strategy — and how can you take your career to a higher level by becoming a business leader? Hi, I’m Kevin Cope, and I’ve converted my New York Times bestselling book "Seeing the Big Picture" into an online course accessible to everyone. In this course, you’ll learn the fundamental drivers at the foundation of all companies, and gain skills and vocabulary to not just speak, but think like a CEO. We’ll take you through a two-part course that will first build your foundation with the 5 Business Drivers, and then teach you how to use financial statements so you can discover the trajectory of any company — and receive professional credits on completion. You’ll receive tools and resources you can continually use throughout your career, like the Executive Alignment tool, Quarterly Earnings Call workbook, Action Plan, and more. You’ll also get twelve lessons so you can take your team through a year’s worth of case study activities to expand their business acumen. And finally, you’ll have access to a catalog of earnings call labs where one of our senior financial consultants will teach you how to listen to earnings calls by breaking down Fortune 500 companies’ numbers. Business acumen training is for everyone. Whether you’re a job seeker, entrepreneur, professional, or looking for a customized version of the course for your team, it’s never a bad time to further your career. Today’s the day — get year-long access to SeeingTheBigPicture.com and take charge of your career. I’ll see you in the course. ✅ Visit https://www.seeingthebigpicture.com/ to get access to the online course! (Oh, and we offer discounts for military personnel + their family members, veterans, and students.) ✅ For a copy of "Seeing the Big Picture" visit https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Big-Picture-Business-Credibility/dp/1608322467 ✅ To learn more about us and our online training programs visit https://www.acumenlearning.com/ #businessacumen #businessstrategy #financialacumen #financialstrategy #learninganddevelopment #HR #leadershipdevelopment #training #onlinetraining
Getting Hired With Business Acumen
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Getting Hired With Business Acumen

If you're looking to get a job and to exude business acumen in your interview, you'll want to know how the company generates money. What products does it have? What customers does it sell to? Where does it operate? Is it growing or not? How profitable is the company? You'll want to know all those things before you go into the interview to then be able to connect the role that you're interviewing for and how that will ultimately contribute to the company's success in the future. They're not just hiring you just to do the job — although that's going to be important. They’re hiring you to link your job and contribute to the company's success moving forward. Being able to make that linkage point in the interviews on how this role fits to the fundamental direction of the company and its financial performance gives you a much higher likelihood to be hired. They don't just see you as a functional person who understand the functional domain well, but as a part of the bigger picture of the organization’s success. Go to their investor relations website and get a feel for what are the latest messages, latest trends, strategies, and what the company is communicating broadly. You'll also want to understand what its top financial metrics are that they look at to measure success. You'll want to be able to understand not only where the company is now in its performance, but where it's trying to go. As you understand more on where the company is going, you can better position your role and your skills — and then better contribute to the future trends of the company. #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #HR #HRleadership #financialstrategy #financialacumen #hired #lookingforwork #interview
Why Business Acumen is Essential for IT Teams
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Why Business Acumen is Essential for IT Teams

I’m sure your CIOs and IT leaders are some of the best when it comes to technical know-how but that’s no longer enough if you want to optimize your team in creating growth. Now is the time to optimize IT operational efficiency to drive business value and strategic agility. Hi, I’m Jeff Cope, a Senior Financial Consultant at Acumen Learning, and I’ve had the opportunity to train some of the top technology companies business acumen. When you think IT, you think optimization and performance, but there’s a missed opportunity if companies don’t leverage the talent of their employees in improving the vision, strategy, and action of IT in business outcomes. Imagine what you could accomplish if your teams understood how they fit into the overall strategy of your business. Your IT teams aren’t just support. They’re a critical component — and really backbone — of your company’s success. Why shouldn’t they also be intimately familiar with its big picture? And leveraged in shifting your company towards its goals? With business acumen, your team will better understand how to speak the language of business, allowing them to see how their decisions and ideas will impact the entire company. Not only will this training impact their decision making ability, but it will also allow them to be more effective at presenting meaningful ideas and opportunities at the leadership level. And who doesn’t need more of that in their company?
How do you develop business acumen?
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How do you develop business acumen?

So, how do you develop or improve your business acumen? There are several things that we would recommend at Acumen Learning that people can do, right now. One is if you can read your company’s latest Letter to Shareholders from its annual report. It’s a statement of the company’s direction, and momentum, and decisions that it’s made to be able to drive success not just this year but moving forward. We would also argue that if you listen to the company’s earnings calls that are held every quarter. Listening to it through the lens of the fundamentals of business, and what that means for you individually in your role, and what decisions you can make that can further impact the company’s success. Also, whenever your CEO or CFO talks to the company, and its employees, get a sense of what that means for you and then ensure that the decisions you are making best fit the direction of your CEO and executive team. So, in developing your business acumen, we think it’s very vital that you have a mentor that can coach, and develop, and contextualize the fundamentals to one person’s role, to one person’s organization. The mentor can really help in the translation process, from the fundamentals, to how it applies to your company, how it applies to your function, how it applies to your industry. The mentor can be the one that gives you the lay of the land, not only for the company but how the function then aligns up to where the company’s actually going. A mentor can be a great guide and a coach in meshing those two worlds together. ✅ For more business acumen best practices, tips, tricks, and stories - subscribe to our YouTube Channel! ✅ To learn more about our business acumen training programs visit https://www.acumenlearning.com/ #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #businessleaders
How to Demonstrate Business Acumen
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How to Demonstrate Business Acumen

So how does someone demonstrate business acumen in the workplace? How is it manifested or what does it look like? We would suggest 3 things. First of all, a person needs to be engaged in conversations around business performance, strategy, and direction. If that topic comes up and somebody sits quietly in the corner hoping nobody calls on them because they have no idea what's being said, they're not able to contribute in that conversation. So first of all, be a contributor in conversations about the business strategy and direction of the organization. Now second, in order to do that, you need to demonstrate that you understand how the company makes money. And when you contribute in those conversations you're giving real relevant answers to what we need to do to improve business results, given that challenge. And then third, you need to make good business decisions. And so when it comes down to your role in the organization and you are faced with challenges or opportunities —that you're making the right kind of decisions that improve company results. Not just decisions that are good for themselves and their team but decisions that impact the overall company results in a positive way. Go to acumenlearning.com for more great Business Acumen tips like this one. #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #HR #HRleadership #financialstrategy #financialacumen #hired #lookingforwork #interview #engagement #companyconversations #improvement #contribution #opportunity
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