Halloween used to be simple. A few pumpkins on the porch. A string of orange lights. Maybe a couple of wicked witches at the end of the driveway to scare visitors.

Now? People are spending hundreds of dollars on 12-foot skeletons, fog machines, synchronized light shows, and animatronic zombies that could give Disney Imagineers a run for their money.

I saw a TikTok the other day where someone asked, “Where do people store all this stuff the other 364 days of the year?” Great question.

But beneath the jokes lies something interesting: Halloween has become a big production. And when expectations rise, costs follow, especially for the one thing every trick-or-treater actually cares about: the chocolate!

Too often, the easy “analysis” of a profit problem is to say we just need to charge more. It’s a convenient narrative, especially in markets where customers are fighting for every penny.

If you’ve ever sat in an Operations or Finance meeting, you’ve probably heard one (or all) of these lines:

• “We don’t charge enough.”
• “We’re leaving money on the table.”
• “We can’t hit GM% goals because the price is too low.”
• “The customers don’t understand our value proposition.”
• “We discount too easily.”

And sometimes that’s true, but more often, price is the symptom, not the cause.

In large businesses, the real drivers of margin erosion usually live deep inside the cost structure: inefficiencies, unnecessary levels of bureaucracy, poor communications and workflow systems, systems gaps, supplier creep, or hidden operating costs that quietly pile up. These issues rarely show up in PowerPoints, Monthly Reports, or Board of Directors Presentations, but they absolutely show up in the P&L.

Based on years of experience in business acumen, we have identified five overlooked factors that might be eating away at your operating margin (EBITDA) long before a customer ever sees your price tag.

For years, transactional business acumen training lived in the corner of the Learning Management System, a stand-alone course, often sandwiched between time management and communication skills. However, today, the most progressive organizations are taking a radically different approach to embracing the skills needed to understand and set strategy, and then measure the execution of that strategy through financial reports and performance metrics.

They’re thinking across the organization, treating business acumen not as an isolated skill, but as a critical organizational competency that connects all functions and drives the creation of value for customers, employees, and shareholders.

It’s been another long but incredibly productive week working with clients to help their managers build stronger business acumen. One theme kept coming up again and again, in every program, every debrief, every reflection: developing a General Manager mindset.

More and more business leaders are turning to their HR Business Partners, looking for development solutions that go beyond teaching people how to “do their jobs.” They want their new and emerging managers to think like owners—to make decisions that balance short-term execution with long-term enterprise value.

That’s not easy. It doesn’t happen through a workshop or a checklist. It takes time, practice, and the right tools. But when done well, it changes everything.

As a kid, pumpkins were basic: round, orange, and typically medium to small in size. Finding a big pumpkin felt like winning the lottery, until you tried to cram it into the back of your  VW Bug. There were really only two options for pumpkins back then: carve them into a jack-o’-lantern for Halloween or bake them into my brother’s famous pumpkin cheesecake at Thanksgiving. That was it. End of story. End of pumpkin.

But somewhere along the line, the pumpkin went "primetime." Maybe Charlie Brown was the catalyst, but who knows? Today, we’ve got elegant white pumpkins for modern décor, "knucklehead" pumpkins with warts for novelty, mini multi-colored pumpkins for city apartments, and massive “Forklift Specials”  for front porches. And of course, what pumpkin post would be complete without the greatest innovation of our age, pumpkin spice,  now turning up in everything from coffee and creamers to beers, cookies, donuts, ice cream, cereals, protein bars, candles, and even dog treats?

So, what happened here? The humble life of an orange pumpkin became a case study in innovative thinking.