For the second time in a year, I have been asked to start designing a computer-based business simulation to both assess and develop Business Acumen skills for potential leaders who will be taking executive positions in 2025 and beyond.
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Consider for a moment, one of the most significant trends in the ecosystem of Talent Development:
Despite the fact that the eLearning marketplace is contracting, the global spend of all eLearning training in 2017 will be over $45 billion.
At the same time this trend of eLearning vs. classroom vs. blended learning is evolving, so are the competencies business organizations are looking to develop. Business Leadership skills such as developing team talent, coaching and feedback, understanding personality styles, leading change, leading innovation, etc. continue to be critical as they relates to the execution of business strategy through people. Another “hot” competency is Business Acumen; the ability to understand how a company makes money and make the right business decisions to execute the strategy to achieve goals and objectives.
Unfortunately for many Executives, Vice Presidents, and Directors of the lines of business that are responsible for setting and executing strategy, Talent Development professionals are becoming more disconnected from the business and relying on eLearning to solve the talent development needs of employees because nobody has the time to learn effectively anymore.
It is important to recognize and understand that crappy, poorly developed, and poorly executed eLearning is ineffective and ultimately will hurt business results.
A case in point…
I was recently engaged by a client from the healthcare industry to perform an assessment of a Business Acumen library of eLearning. The client is trying to leverage a multimillion investment in this library by creating a “curated playlist” of effective modules to cover basic concepts such as reading an Income Statement and Balance sheet.
I was shocked by the poor quality, ineffective instructional design, and lack of context to the application of the content. The eLearning content teaches participants how to read an income statement for a small, independently owned bicycle shop outside of London, England.
Huh? How in the world is a scientist of a major healthcare company in the US responsible for a $300 million budget – and who desperately needs real Business Acumen skills – going to learn anything from hearing a cartoon character explain how to understand financial data of a bicycle shop?
The problem is that when the participants are finished the modules, the Talent Development organization can sit back and give Business Acumen a big “checkmark” and cross that need right off of their to-do list.
But participants won’t be able to do anything different, won’t be able to make better business decisions, and could perhaps make a bad business decision!
When that happens, Executives will think even less of the Talent Development function, and in the future will either not rely on them for help or worse yet save the money for other things leaving the employees with less skills, capabilities, and abilities.
Business Leaders, Talent Development Professionals, and HR Business Partners, there are better ways! Don’t take the easy way out. Invest the time and effort and look into alternative methods of virtual learning such live webinars, business simulations, artificial intelligence coaching, custom videos, and even good old fashioned books.
I urge you to consider some of these ideas before you wake up one day and wonder why your company is underperforming and close to being out of business.
Over the past several weeks, I have had the privilege of working with very successful business leaders at very successful, established organizations as part of my work developing Business Acumen skills. Business Acumen is a critical competency in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous business world. In every Business Acumen training workshop that I have conducted so far this year, we utilize sophisticated business simulation to develop and practice new skills. As part of our debrief and review process, we analyze the data from the simulation exercises to identify trends for research, make our simulations better, and help our clients notice tendencies in behaviors that could lead to the addition of further skill development.
In reviewing the analytics from workshops delivered in 2017, I have noticed a statically relevant and interesting trend:
Established leaders at established companies spend more time focusing on sustainability of established brands than they do focusing on enhancing the value proposition of what got them to a leadership position in the first place.
In one of our core business simulation platforms, AGES™, participants take over a portfolio of established and new products. They are able to choose a new value proposition to customers that creates differentiation and enables their simulated organizations to achieve various metrics of success. More than 85% of the time, established leaders in established companies with established products continued to invest in Marketing, Sales, and service to support market share instead of investing in innovation and R&D to either launch new versions of existing products or bring new and enhanced products to market.
Think of it this way; instead of Apple launching the iPhone 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, they decided to stick with the iPhone 1 and try to convince customers of smartphones that the iPhone 1 was the best in the market through tons of marketing and salesmanship.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. I then went back and took a look at the data from new leaders working in newer companies with newer products. The result was almost the exact opposite. They invested heavily in upgrading and launching new products and used marketing investment to create awareness, not just sustainability of the brand. In some cases I can share that their decision making bordered on recklessness as they were bringing new products to market faster than their customers could absorb, but they were true to their strategy and focus.
So essentially, if you are an established leader at an established company with established products, you need some “strategy awareness” to make sure you aren’t becoming complacent.
Here are 3 key learnings for Business Acumen application:
Don’t forget your value proposition to your customers; being defensive will hurt you
No matter if you are the low cost play, the customer focus play, or the innovation play executing the right strategy to the right customer segment helped you achieve success. Don’t stop and don’t forget what got you there. Becoming defensive and trying to sustain share on yesterday’s value proposition will hurt you in the long run and possibly put you out of business.
Benchmark your competition and determine if they are being defensive or proactive
You have other competitors in your market and they also have a value proposition they are fighting to deliver against you. Establish regular benchmark intervals to see how they are doing and the degree to which they are focusing on sustaining their brand vs. growing their brand. In either case, it is a signal to you and your strategy on what to do.
Listen to your customers, they will tell you what to do
All too often large, established companies stop listening to their customers because they have all of the answers. Don’t let that be you. If you are stuck between sustaining your brand and growing it, ask your customers because in this case, they will have the best answers.
Business Leadership is a competency that everyone in business needs to practice and develop every day in order to be successful. According to HR talent development guru Josh Bersin, the “overwhelmed” worker will have almost no time for development; not even an hour a week. Which means without training, development, and practice of skills leaders will rely on luck and hope for success. I guarantee you Tom Brady and the rest of the Super Bowl winning Patriots practice for more than one hour a week!
For many years, I have described business leadership as equal to the process of executing your business strategy to make a profit and create shareholder value through people.
As business leaders, we need to provide our teams and employees with the skills, practice, tools, and reasons to be successful and feel engaged and committed. As I have learned over the years by conducting award-winning business leadership learning engagements, employees feeling engaged comes down to very basic elements including feeling good about their work and feeling good about how their work gets done. In other words, a pride of purpose in the workplace.
Too many business leaders struggle with getting their direct reports to feel pride in their company, their work, and their purpose. The business leadership challenge becomes how to change the game, the mindset, and most importantly the actions of employees who aren’t necessarily “dis-engaged,” but certainly aren’t feeling and exhibiting tremendous pride.
In 2017 and beyond – where we have at least 4 generation still in the workforce - creating and leading an environment where everyone feels great pride and does whatever it takes to get the job done is very hard, but it can be done.
Based on some recent research that we conducted as part of the overall design for the creation and launch of our new Fundamentals of Business Leadership Simulation. Here are 3 examples of effective leadership skills that will help to develop an environment of pride in the work and on the team:
1) Be clear about expectations
Most companies do a fair job defining tasks and setting rewards for achievements of goals and objectives but too often fall short in terms of setting specific roles and responsibilities. As we still recover from the financial meltdown of 2008, many jobs went away and too many employees are doing at least two jobs which makes things even fuzzier. When this occurs, things fall through the cracks because employees don’t know what to do and they haven’t been provided the skills and tools to be successful. Great business leaders make sre that their people know their jobs, objectives, and key results (OKRs). In addition, employees with pride will pitch in and find new innovative solutions and help move the entire team forward.
2) Do everything possible to share their system of business
A business is a system of integrated dynamic parts. Sometimes these parts move well together and many times they do not. The job of a business leader is to share how the system works and the role each employee plays in making the system work. Having Business Acumen 101 skills is a start to the process but leaders have to go out of their way and make it a regular routine to share the big picture in terms of strategy, metrics of performance, and expectations.
3) Create an environment of pride by acknowledging success
An organization’s vision statement and value proposition to customers is the start but a business leader’s job is to bring them alive and make them happen. Acknowledging and sharing success is a critical function of the creation of an environment that has significant pride. And I don’t mean “pizza Fridays.” I mean taking the time to acknowledge people for their work, customers for their partnership, and the achievement of specific goals and objectives in deep and meaningful ways. But be careful! Not everyone likes the same sort of recognition and one of your key jobs as a business leader is to match the right “acknowledgement strategy” with the right personality style of the person you are acknowledging.
f you are a business professional, you’ve heard it thousands of times; you ask someone a question and they look at you and say, “That’s a really great question!”
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