What is Business Acumen? Video

Acumen Learning has taught business acumen training around the world for fifteen years, helping people understand their business, the impact of their roles, and change their careers for the better.

Our customized Building Business Essentials® course will help any professional from any industry understand the big picture of their business, improve their track record of success, align decisions to corporate strategy, fix present problems and prevent new ones, break down communication barriers, take advantage of opportunities to grow, and much more.

What is business acumen, and why is it important to your career?

A great question is what business acumen skills are most needed in the workplace? There are a lot of them, but we think there are at least three that are vital! 1) Understanding where your company is going. 2) The ability to make a business case, or think about a business idea through the lens of the business acumen fundamentals - and then applying that to your company. 3) Being comfortable with major financial statements and key financial metrics - for example the P&L or Income Statement. The first one is really understanding where the company is going. Stock price is about the future. So, where the company is trying to go, it is really vital to put in context what you do every day to help contribute to that. If you don’t know where the company is going, then the decisions you make every day may or may not really directly apply to where the company is trying to go. And to try to elevate your credibility and your impact, you really need to align what you do every day to where the company is going. Another skillset is around putting a business case together or your business ideas need to be put in context to where the company is going. It’s not just about the technical feasibility of the product, but it’s about how your business idea contributes to the future of the company, contributes to the economics of the company, and being good at linking your business ideas to that I think is vital to elevating your credibility, and your impact. The third thing is being good at understanding at least the high-level financials of the company’s performance, with particular attention to the P&L or Income Statement. Which lays out the sales of the company, its cost, and then the profits at the end. What part you play in generating more sales, where you spend, and what kind of impact that spend has on additional sales, the additional future success, and how much profit you can help contribute to it, then helps the company take those profits, reinvest those in a way that helps drive the future success of the company. Understanding where the company is going and understanding in a business case linking to where the company is going, and also understanding the high-level financials really starts to elevate the credibility of your business ideas, it starts to shape your language a bit differently that better aligns the language and the metrics you use to where the company is going and how the executives think. It certainly gives you a much higher likelihood that your business ideas get funded because you’re putting it in context to where the company is actually trying to go, and where the executives are trying to go as well. Understanding the P&L in a lot of ways is the language of business. So if you can apply that language not only do they see you as a good functional leader, but also they see you as a better business thinker, much more aware of the company broadly, and your contribution to that. ✅ Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos with business acumen definitions, stories, tips, and tricks! ✅ Visit our website to learn more about our business acumen training and impacts it has on organizations: https://www.acumenlearning.com/ #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #HR #HRleadership #financialstrategy #financialacumen

We're excited to announce the official launch of our Building Business Acumen for Sales Professionals Program! During this course, participants will become more efficient in identifying, analyzing, building, and presenting growth opportunities to customer organizations. And they'll be able to directly tie opportunities to customers’ KPI’s and unique strategies, and create customized presentation for each buyer or stakeholder within an organization.

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

We don’t want you to feel like checking your email is a better use of your time than participating in a poorly taught training. That’s why we’ve made a virtual class that’s as much a discussion for you and your peers as it is instruction for your career.

Hear from Waste Connection's leadership on the impact of Acumen Learning's business acumen training.