I will be the first one to own it and say that I didn’t think it could be done. That it was impossible to develop a comprehensive set of business acumen skills in less than 40 hours of work in a 5-day in-person program.

Well, times have changed and while it still may take up to 40 hours to develop good foundational business acumen skills you can accomplish a lot in a well-designed 90-minute workshop.

Ultimately, to master the concepts of business acumen, there are about 100 lessons to learn. However, after a lot of careful thought and many years of experience designing, developing, and delivering impactful business acumen learning journeys, it has been proven that you can prioritize the most critical elements of business acumen in a shorter workshop.

Over the past year, Advantexe has had the privilege of working on several unique assessment simulation projects helping our clients reach new levels of effectiveness and efficiencies in their talent assessment processes. During the past long weekend, I took a moment to reflect on some of the key learnings to share with subscribers of this blog as there are some interesting insights that can be gained and used by our various business audiences.

What is a Digital Assessment Simulation?

A digital assessment simulation is an interactive and immersive case study that comes to life. These digital leadership and business simulation assessments are used across various industries for training, development, recruitment, evaluation, and succession purposes. They replicate real-world scenarios to evaluate and improve the skills and competencies of individuals and functions within business organizations.

Welcome to the rest of 2024 and beyond. The business world continues to evolve and change in so many ways that most people have become numb to it.

As business ecosystems, models, and cultures continue to evolve at this rapid pace, the need for enhanced capabilities also continues to change as quickly.

But something has happened to training and development. Something has fundamentally changed in the way organizations and the people within the organizations view capabilities and the way to get them. It’s no longer providing traditional training programs or even traditional eLearning.

As a result of the prolific changes to business and cultures of business, the training and development space is continually evolving, driven by technological advancements, changing workforce demographics, and evolving business needs. Traditionally, “training” was the process of providing the content, process, and tools to increase capabilities. Now, it is something very different.

I was reminded today by a client how important it is to design reinforcement into every learning journey. While putting the finishing touches on our business acumen learning journey kickoff deck, our client asked me to please take a moment during the kickoff to go over the details and expectations of the reinforcement so there are no surprises and participants will take the time to do it and absorb it.

The key components of this specific learning journey include a reinforcement business simulation that will continue to immerse participants in a follow-up scenario of running their own Consumer products company for several more years into the future so they can practice and fine-tune their strategic thinking, execution, and financial management skills. The tools we use to reinforce their learning include reinforcement simulations, decoding the earnings calls, business application projects, and personal action plans.

As part of my assignment, our clients asked me to share a few points with the participants about why reinforcement is so critical, so I turned my research into this blog.

So, here is a dilemma; you go to the supermarket to pick up a few items, you’ve brought your own bags, and you head to the checkout. There are 3 absolutely empty lines with cashiers “waiting” to help you or there are 6 self-checkout kiosks that you can zip right through. What do you do?

On the one hand, I didn’t want to bother the cashiers as I could certainly do the scanning and bagging myself, but on the other hand, I thought if I went to the self-checkout they might get angry at me because have chosen the option that could eventually eliminate their job. It was an unsettling choice, but I decided to do it myself in support of the good people at NCR Voyix who make all that great equipment.

Coincidently, that morning I had read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about the bar code revolutions which got me thinking even further about the business acumen of it all. I really didn’t think there was enough to create a good blog, but I was surprised!

Learning the Business Acumen of the Self-Checkout Revolution