If you have been through an Advantexe Business Acumen program, or are currently engaged in any Business Acumen learning activities with us, you know that the Q4 End of Year Earnings call is the most important call of the year.

This is the call that provides the actual final data of what just happened during the year and also provides a first look and guidance into the upcoming year. As you listen to your own company earning calls or our own versions of your “Decoding the Earnings Call,” here are 8 key business acumen concepts that you should be listening for:

I openly and transparently admit that Peloton has changed my life and I am addicted to the entire user experience. I think it’s one of the most innovative, unique, and powerful inventions ever. As I think about the innovations in my world, I know I can’t live without my Dell Alienware computer, my Apple iPhone, and my Peloton cycle.

But unlike Apple which as of this writing had a $2.7 trillion market cap, Peloton seems to be in some financial trouble. A little over a year ago, the stock was the darling of Wall Street and hit a high of $163 per share. Today it hit a low of $24.22.

So, what happened?

As a talent development professional who teaches Business Acumen skills, here are 3 things that we teach in our business acumen programs to help participants learn the concepts so they can make the best business decisions back on the job.

As we are reminded every day, everything has changed. It’s been disrupted. From the way we communicate to the way we learn; we are all dealing with the realities of the new normal.

In our new normal, I have been working on many talent development engagements that embrace the many new ways to learn like virtual business simulations, asynchronous content paths, pod projects, whiteboards, Teams rooms, and many other cool and effective ways of learning.

One huge issue that doesn’t seem to be addressed in this new environment is clearly defining the level of accountability of today’s employee in the corporate learning process. In recent times, if you were an employee within a big company and were selected to go to a leadership development program, you would travel to some nice place, eat nice food, sit and a big room and have someone talk at you. You probably took notes, but in general, the instructors did most of the work and your company paid the bill. Now, we have multichannel delivery modes of learning and there seems to be a shift in this dynamic and more pressure on the learner to be accountable for participating and applying their learning.

You are a Senior Technical Specialist and the Key Account Manager of one of your company’s most important accounts asks you to join her for a very important sales meeting with the key decision-makers regarding a major new opportunity to develop and then deploy a new solution that could have a decade’s worth of revenues that are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

You have prepared and have done everything possible to be able to present a portfolio of great solutions that can be executed and will give the customer the solution they need that is safe, of high quality, and sets everyone up for success.

If you are a functional business leader planning and executing your strategy for 2022, things are extremely different than they were just a year ago. As we start this new year, businesses are faced with unprecedented continuous disruptions that are forcing the best companies to be more resilient, focused, and skilled than ever. The COVID pandemic which looks like it will last for years, supply chain issues, inflation, geopolitical issues, and continued globalization are some of the big issues forcing leaders to think differently.

By now, everyone had been working on and building their resilience. The new normal of working has given organizations the opportunity to focus on ways that previously were simply unimaginable. But interestingly enough, skill development, especially in the area of Business Acumen, hasn’t kept up at the same pace.