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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Over the coming days, months, and years, much will be written about the great “reboot” of the way we live and work in the post pandemic world and beyond. Our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will study the history of what we did and will learn about the ways that we changed our worlds and created a new path forward.

As we start to think about all the implications of what is before us, I wanted to take a few moments to share some ideas about how business organizations are going to change the way they think about Business Acumen skills and the reboot that has already started to occur. For context, Business Acumen skills are the strategic, financial, and operational skills needed to execute a business strategy to achieve the stated goals and objectives.

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Within the next few months, many businesses will be “going back to work.” For the ones that have survived, they will be talking about things like “getting back to normal,” and figuring out how to adjust to the realities of the new workplace.

One of the many stark realities of this new normal is that we must all challenge the orthodoxies of what was the old normal and make significant adjustments to the way we approach things moving forward into the new normal.

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As we enter the 7^th week of the pandemic and as the new normal of our reality sets in, most decision makers in every part of every business ecosystem are reeling from the minute-by-minute barrage of vendors hitting them with some sort of pandemic message. I spoke with one of our very best clients last week who told me his daily average of unsolicited vendor contacts has gone from an average of 10 a day to more than 50 a day! He also said that it is so bad his company is telling vendors to stop the solicitations as no new Master Services Agreements will be issued for at least 6 months!

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For many leaders, the reality of the new normal has set in and they are trying to focus on setting and executing strategy to drive the business results and metrics that matter. Some of the leaders I’ve spoken with over the past several weeks have shared an upbeat, reinvigorated optimism around getting back to the fundamental elements of the business that may have been forgotten during the decade-long economic growth period.

Based on these interesting conversations – including a couple of very fun virtual happy hours – I share some tips on getting back to the basics and working on the five critical business processes that will improve the metrics that matter.

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