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
In our Income/Outcome business acumen workshops we teach the difference between budgeting and forecasting from a top-down as opposed to a bottom-up process. In our view, top-down relates to forecasting results when the future sales are already known, and you … Read More
You get different benefits from attending an Income/Outcome workshop, depending on whether you are attending as an individual, as part of a team, or as part of an extensive rollout by your company. As an individual, you will learn “the … Read More
Business acumen: “Keenness and speed in understanding and deciding on a business situation.” The need for this is particularly strong when your industry is being unexpectedly disrupted. You might think that disruptions are essentially driven by technological change, and therefore usually only … Read More
In this series I’m using the Financial Times’ definition of business acumen as “keenness and speed in understanding and deciding on a business situation.” The word “acumen” means keenness, but in “business acumen” speed is also crucial, and is included in the definition. To … 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
As part of helping people visualize how they impact the business they work in, our Income/Outcome simulations all use little wooden figures to represent a company’s various job functions. Some stand on the Balance Sheet, for example if their labor … Read More
Just because you follow the recommendations in the previous post to improve your decision-making by broadening your sources of information and opinions, it doesn’t mean all your problems are solved! What happens if everyone has a different opinion? Suppose you … Read More
Good decision-making is impaired by two things: limited information, and by the decision-maker being too narrowly focused – especially when events or conditions are abnormal, or outside the decision-maker’s experience. This is confirmed by a study published in April 2012 … Read More
How do you make sure you are getting good information? And how do you make good decisions, especially when faced with conflicting data or forecasts? You need three things: Business literacy. A common language and common understanding of finance, because … Read More