As readers of this blog know, much what I write about is related to what’s in the news, blending it with Business Acumen concepts and teaching points, and providing practical tips and tools for immediate application back to the job for increased business performance.

Over the past few weeks, I have been listening to the weak signals and chatter emanating from the C-Suites of many different organizations and one of the things that I am hearing getting louder is the increased focus on cash flow as a financial metric that matters. As we head to the last month of what will sure be a disastrous Q2 for many businesses, the murmurs about ways of increasing cash flow through cutting budgets will increase based on the pressure board of directors will be putting on their CEO’s and CFO’s. It will be tempting for many of them to cut Marketing and other functional areas like R&D that don’t have an immediate (next month) impact. However, most successful leaders understand that you literally can’t cut off your nose to spite your face. Cutting Marketing and R&D is cutting off the lifeblood of future revenues and profits. While cash flow may increase in the short term, shareholder value (how much the company is worth) will decrease over the long term because it is being starved of the key ingredients that drives it.

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Insights 10 Weeks into the New Norm

When we started the new year of 2020 not many of us predicted that when Memorial Day weekend, the start of the summer season, came about that we would be in a lock down thinking about how a global pandemic would resolve itself.  But here we are, so Happy Memorial Day everyone!

For many who are either functional business leaders supporting the learning or development of their organizations and team, or the talent development professionals thinking about executing their T&D strategies, we have a chance to reflect on the journey so far and the journey yet to come over this upcoming long weekend.

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The Shocking Truth

When it was my turn to answer the question of what I was most thankful for at our family Thanksgiving dinner, 2019 and I answered “The great people of American Airlines who took care of me during the 232,000 miles I flew last year to deliver in-person leadership and business simulation workshops around the world.” I never would have imagined in a million years that just a few months later I would be writing a blog about how virtual simulation workshops are in many ways better than in-person simulation workshops.

But we must face and acknowledge the realities of our new normal and think deeply about the feedback we received from a high-level decision maker at a global pharmaceutical company who ran a virtual business acumen workshop for their high potential leaders last week:

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Later this week we will get word that because of COVID-19 the US economy is in a full blown and significant economic recession. As many of our readers of this blog work in large businesses, I wanted to take some time to enhance your Business Acumen and share some data insights and potential implications to your decision making as we anticipate and decipher the US industrial production reports that will be released on Wednesday and Thursday.

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One of our recent innovations in the area of enhancing Business Acumen skills is called “Decoding the Investor Call.”  The Decoding the Investor call is where our teams of Business Analysts and Consultants listen to a company’s investor call and then “breaks it down” and decode it much like a coach of a sports team breaks down game film to learn about the elements of the game, what went right, and what needs improvement.

Over that past week, we have delivered a portfolio of Decoding the Investor calls to our clients and have poured through hundreds of reports to get our arms around what’s happening and what does it all mean. This blog will share three of our most significant insights and talk about the implications from a Business Acumen perspective.

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