Business Acumen
Business Acumen
The time for business acumen - as a learnt skill, only exercised by a rare few within an organisation - is over. It is crucially important for many people to understand both the key indicators of business acumen, and also to develop the capability to support it. Dattner Grant has a significant number of experienced senior leaders helping other leaders to develop this.
Business acumen includes the ability to read the 'narrative' of the organisation's financial performance through key financial documents including Profit & Loss Statements, Cash Flow Forecasts, Balance Sheets and Business Forecasts. People do not need to be able to generate these documents, but they do need to be able to interpret and use them. Research indicates that a relatively large number of people, in key areas of influence, are unable to do this. Dattner Grant holds this as a starting point in business acumen. We also believe that it is important to get people to talk honestly about their level of competence.
Business acumen must then be assessed by an individual's ability to demonstrate:
- Broad scanning (including an assessment of the vehicles they use to stay informed)
- Intuitive insight (the insights gained from broad scanning)
- Reflective insight (the level of connection that occurs as individuals reflect on intuition against where they see their own organisation)
- Analytical thinking (taking reflective insight and then weighing the pros and cons)
- Decisiveness (being able to then act on an idea, including engaging key stakeholders).
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