From the course: Developing Business Acumen

Build business acumen

From the course: Developing Business Acumen

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Build business acumen

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- What is business acumen and why is it important? It's understanding why a business performs the way it does, how it makes decisions, how you fit in, and how you and your team can have an impact. It requires you to understand the business model, the way your financials work, and the organization's strategy and operations. You have to know how you sell and how you market, how research and development is conducted, and how product development is done. You also have to understand the implications for people and talent. A long time ago, I was in the army. And when I left the army, I went straight into the business world. I had very little business acumen at that time, and I was a consultant working with large corporations. I had to very quickly get in and understand how our clients' businesses worked because we were responsible for coming up with ideas to help them improve. There have been different businesses I've been a part of over the years, and each one has different business models and different ways that they work. At one point, I worked for a financial services firm. We loaned money to consumers, and we made money on interest and fees. Our organization's performance was dictated by our losses, our growth, and our retention of customers. I ran a team that was focused on reducing our losses. By understanding our business and our business model, we were able to focus on metrics and opportunities that would drive overall business performance. I also work for a service organization. We were delivering our service at a premium price point; High quality was key. My team fit in by improving the service experience for our customers, which helped us deliver that high-quality experience that we were charging so much for. As you think about the different roles you're in, you have to focus on different opportunities. The faster you can understand your business, the faster you can have an impact; Business acumen is the way you're going to do that.

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