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.

I shared a secret that I probably shouldn’t have. To commemorate the retirement of one of my most favorite people and one of our best clients ever, I told the story of the “Donna Scale.”

The Donna Scale refers to the way many companies have worked with Donna Torelli who is retiring this week from her role as VP & Executive Director of a great company called Greene Tweed.

I first met Donna in the early 1990’s when we were both early in our careers. I was helping to grow our business simulation business and Donna was willing to give us a chance to help build the business acumen and leadership skills of high potential leaders at Rhone Poulenc Rorer which turned into Aventis, which was eventually bought up by Sanofi. For an incredible 10-year run, we built an amazing curriculum of Business Acumen and Business Leadership programs and working with Donna was an absolute pleasure. Around 1999, we worked together to deliver 5 different types of development programs to different levels of audiences and touched the lives of about 5,000 leaders during that time including many high potentials, some of whom are current CEOs of large companies!

As part of a customized business simulation project I am working on, I had the opportunity to interview a group of senior leaders about what they think emerging leaders should know about business acumen. I started the process by getting the usual answers such as, “Understand a P&L,” “Manage Cash Flow,” and “Know how to get a good return on invested capital.”

One answer made me smile and think, “I’d like them to know about the anatomy of an invoice.” I’ve been developing business acumen programs for several decades and I’ve never heard this so of course I needed to dive in and ask the SME to further expand.

“I want these emerging leaders to be able to think backward from the sending of an invoice to understand the value map of our company so they know how we work and how we make money. I want them to understand that an invoice isn’t something the Accounting team sends, it’s the representation of the business acumen of our company.”

It was an intriguing idea and one that we were able to quantify for the program. I am pleased to share the highlights of this interesting concept.

A recent shared post called “The Real Skills Your CEO Wants Everyone to Know” received many nice comments from colleagues and business leaders. We also collected quite a few direct messages sharing alternative ideas and suggestions for additional content and insight into the business acumen skills that the C-suite hopes employees at all levels to possess.

Originally, we wrote a follow-on post that outlined a list of skills that we see a CFO desires, but we once again received feedback asking us to combine both posts together so our readers can have all the information in one spot.

We always appreciate feedback so we decided to combine the posts into one. The one post can be accessed by clicking below. We thank our loyal readers for their guidance, enthusiasm and insights. We hope you enjoy the new complete post that now focuses on the business acumen skills that both the CEO and CFO desire.

Click here.

Don't Just Check the Box

This post is not about the skills suggested by your competency vendor who built their competencies database in 1983. In their tired and out of date view, Business Acumen is defined as things such “Understanding the Business,” “Financial Literacy/Quantitative Acumen,” and “Focusing on Customers.”

While many CEOs, CFOs, and HR professionals and leaders may think this is great and “check off” a big box on their “competency to-do list” with a bunch of online videos, these words are meaningless and out of context today and beyond. Over the past year, we have been working with leaders of large global companies through our business simulations and virtual learning journeys to re-define their approach to talent development in several areas including Business Acumen.

I am pleased to share some of the deep insights we have gathered and what the real Business Acumen Skills CEOs and CFOs want everyone in their organizations to know from a practical… and more importantly… applicable way that impacts the ability to compete and achieve business results.

First, we will start with the CEO and then move to the CFO.