If you are a leader who is responsible for setting and / or executing strategy then you have heard the “experts” (other thought leaders, consultants, academics, etc.) say, “Strategy is also about what you don’t do and in many cases what you don’t do is more important that what you do pursue.”

From Michael Porter to Blue Ocean strategy to Playing to Win, the experts present a process of strategic thinking where you understand your markets, customers, and competitors and then decide on your differentiation in order to execute your business plan. They all say that businesses “can’t be all things to all people,” and that the hardest decisions are the ones where you say “no” to certain opportunities that will confuse the strategy and make it more difficult for companies to execute.

Over the past 48 hours I have received a significant number of requests to comment on the results of the US election from a Business Acumen perspective. As of this writing, the election is still not resolved, and it may not be for days or weeks ahead. That being said, the requests are still important and it’s my pleasure to share some business acumen insights on what to plan for and how to adjust your strategic thinking and forecasting for 2021 and beyond.

Assuming the current situation of a Biden administration stays in place, it is inevitable that there will be a battle with congress and in business boardrooms over increased corporate taxes. Most large organizations are against raising the corporate tax rate which opens up a philosophical debate about what happens with the tax dollars. Supply-side economists and many executives believe that lower tax rates enable big businesses to take the money they would have spent on taxes and reinvest it into the business in the form of more jobs, more R&D, more sales, more marketing, etc. The other side of the argument challenges the notion that big business will do anything positive with that extra cash and in fact will use it to make the rich richer by keeping it and paying out bonuses and buying back stock. They want to tax the rich and give to the less fortunate.

Regardless of your political beliefs we can all agree that we have seen and heard things in this election season (and the past for years) that most people never expected or imagined they would see in their lifetimes. The vitriol and nastiness were unprecedented and the lack of civility extremely discouraging. But this blog isn’t about politics or the outcome of the election. It is about how this competitiveness and deterioration of decorum has impacted business and the skills of Business Acumen.

The R&D leader was genuinely perplexed and astonished. “Wait, let me get this straight. Our company spends as much money on Marketing and Sales as we do on R&D? I don’t believe it. My team works on developing the most innovative products on the world. They should sell themselves. Why do we need to waste all that money on “Commercial” when everyone knows that we need more money for product development!

As the world continues to grapple with the realities of the global pandemic, which is spiking again, there is a quiet battle brewing in the executive ZOOM meetings of many organizations. The battle is going to be about what to do with Travel budgets that were allocated in 2020 to functional use but were used for other business purposes.

The combatants of this battle will be the Finance department versus functional departments including big spenders of travel including Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Human Resources. The IT departments are somewhere in the middle of that battle and preparing for their own battles related to digital security which might be the topic of a different blog on a different day.