As school students, we all went through our academic journeys striving for A’s and fearing flunking tests. Today, we root for sport teams to win and very rarely remember who came in second. In the business world, have you ever heard of a sales professional who missed their quota and received an invitation to the president’s club? Or the supply chain manager who constantly is making the wrong vendor choices and winning employee of the year?  How about the IT Leader who chose the wrong ERP system and was toasted at the shareholder's meeting for a job well done?  Except for the occasional mulligan in Golf, failure, in most aspects of our lives, is not an option.

The Business Leader on the phone was serious; “Can you do a ‘Pop-In’ business acumen training module for like 2 hours on the final day of our Global Leadership Meeting?”

Supercool, SuperSaas, and Going to Jail

The interconnected business ecosystem worlds of venture capital, cloud computing, software as a service (Saas), and Human Capital Management (HCM) were shocked last week when Zenefits – one of the hottest and fastest growing companies on the planet – made an unprecedented business announcements that caused the rocket ship to crash back to earth.

Practice Makes Results, Not Perfection

I just finished an excellent business acumen learning experience with a group of global business leaders.  As part of the learning journey, these participants had the opportunity to run one of business simulations for five years to develop strategic thinking and financial acumen skills.  As we were wrapping up, many of the participants provided feedback on their experience and how they can apply their new skills back on the job.

Between Flawless Execution and Innovation

They are two of the most important concepts and drivers of long term success in business; “Flawless Execution” and “Innovation.”

Most businesses thrive and stay in business through the efficient operationalization of a value proposition to customers.  The process of delivering a value proposition over and over again should create strong efficiencies and should create a culture of flawless execution.  Flawless execution is when the value proposition is delivered to the customer without any mistakes and the customer is 100% satisfied that the value proposition is the value proposition ordered.