The Importance of Business Acumen for Finance Professionals An important goal for Allison as CFO is to break down the silos that often develop within organizations, particularly regarding the finance department. He believes that finance professionals must understand the business … Read More
Galbraith’s analysis of financial euphoria is a sound, witty overview of the common factors to be found in financial collapses from the Tulipomania of 17th century Netherlands to ‘Black Monday’ in October 1987. Events subsequent to the publication of this … Read More
Everyone admires a genius. Brilliance, especially in business, can carry a mediocre vessel across near-miraculous distances. But if a select few at the top of the business are the only ones with sturdy financial knowledge, the whole structure will topple. … Read More
The Economist has a recent article (“Revisiting Ricardo”) on the reasons behind the growing economic inequalities within the poorest countries. One point discussed is that better educated and better skilled individuals are able to connect with individuals and companies in … Read More
In preliterate, prenumerate societies – according to dubious sources – people only count “One, two, many”. It seems a little strange, given how much people everywhere use their fingers for keeping track of larger numbers and that most people have … Read More
Doing Is Believing: Get Your D.I.B.s on Business Acumen! How can experiential learning highlight the key components of business acumen? How should business acumen be understood by managers? How can they enhance their skills, and achieve better results for the … Read More
We often look at business acumen as a group of business skills competencies including finance, strategy and decision-making. Today I was reviewing some post-workshop comments from an Income/Outcome program in Japan, and I realized that ‘big picture understanding’ may not … Read More
To a lot of people working in large (and not so large) businesses, the word “Finance” means one of two things: the whole time-consuming, confidence-threatening mess of numbers associated with budgets, plans or – argh! – ratios (or even worse … Read More
The lexicon of the Financial Times defines business acumen as “keenness and speed in understanding and deciding on a business situation.” It goes on to clarify: “In practice, people with business acumen are thought of as having business ‘sense’ or business ‘smarts’.” … Read More
The Financial Acumen workshop we developed in conjunction with Saudi Electricity Company in 2011 has now led to the signing of a two-year Agreement with them. We are scheduled to provide Income/Outcome workshops for hundreds of executives and senior managers, … Read More