Even before the pandemic, transparency was an overused, misunderstood buzzword that too many leaders and businesses used as a marketing tool and not a leadership tool. Whether it is used to position a low-quality consumer product trying to compete against a superior product by slapping a new label on a package or a senior leader feigning concern while really trying to push for more production, the term transparency is used too often when someone is actually not being transparent.

“I am going to be transparent here when I say…” is a scary way to start a sentence. So, let me get this straight, you are only transparent when you are telling me you are being transparent and the rest of the times you are hiding something?

Anyone with access to the internet has seen the pictures of the cargo ship that ran aground  and blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week. Another in a seemingly non-stop series of issues that have included a year-long global pandemic, terrible seasonal weather, container shortages, earthquakes, fires, and tsunamis that has caused havoc on the global supply chain.

As we come to the end of the 1st quarter 2021, the global supply chain has taken a beating and business leaders with strong Business Acumen are already looking ahead and planning to create competitive advantage.

At Advantexe, we have the privilege of working with more than 50 global clients across a dozen different industries and we are seeing and hearing about some of the unique challenges that are being faced.

One of the many great benefits of delivering business simulation-centric leadership development workshops is that I get to facilitate a workshop connection almost every day now. And if I’m lucky, I can do two or three sessions in 24-hour global day that starts in Europe and ends in Asia. The conversations, insights, and learnings by participants has been amazing and there are days where I learn as much about Business Leadership and Business Acumen as do our participants.

Last week, I published a blog about The Business Acumen Needed to Understand the Last 2 Weeks of Q1, 2021 which shared insights about the things to look out for from a decision making perspective as most company’s closed the first quarter of 2021.

I received a lot of great feedback and requests for a follow-up as several current and past participants of our Business Acumen programs are getting ready to apply their skills to their own company’s upcoming Q1 earnings call. The most popular request was for me to share my predictions and the common themes and what to listen for so it is my pleasure to do so.

It is truly hard to believe that the end of the first quarter of 2021 is just 2 weeks away. Everyone I work with internally and externally simply can’t believe it. From a business perspective, these next two weeks are going to be very different than most ends-of-a-quarter because we are going to start dealing with the comparisons between 2021 and the pandemic year of 2020.

Most quarterly earning calls and reports follow a cadence of providing insights into the quarter that just closed and then comparing that quarter to the same quarter last year. Sometimes they will also compare the quarter that just closed to the previous quarter if it is not a seasonal type of business. A year ago, the realities and confusion of the pandemic were just starting to hit. Only essential workers were in their workplace and more that 70% of the working population was working remotely. Even though it seemed catastrophic at the time, those first few weeks of the pandemic were at the end of March, 2020 when about 85% of the first quarter results were already in the books. It wasn’t until the second quarter when the financial numbers for some businesses started to dive and for others started to accelerate.