The business unit President was energized as he wrapped up a business acumen learning workshop
Not because everything went smoothly.
Not because the feedback scores were strong (though they were).
He was energized because the conversations were different.
They were more real. More uncomfortable. More grounded in the actual pressures his leaders were facing every day.
As he closed the session, he shared a few reflections that stuck with me. He talked about how the business environment has never been tougher. How the pressure to succeed has never been greater. And how every single person in the organization needs business acumen and the ability to make good decisions.
Then he paused and landed the message.
“This isn’t optional. This isn’t nice to have. This is serious business.”
He was right.
Business acumen isn’t an academic exercise. It’s not an abstract finance class. And it’s definitely not an “after-school activity” for people who don’t have real work to do. It’s the difference between organizations that execute under pressure and those that slowly bleed margin, talent, and credibility while everyone stays busy.
That’s why business acumen skills are serious business.
Decisions Are Being Made Every Day, Whether You Like It or Not
Every day, people across the organization make decisions that affect revenue, cost, risk, customer experience, and long-term value. Most of those decisions aren’t made in executive meetings. They happen in project trade-offs, pricing conversations, staffing decisions, and in how problems get escalated or quietly ignored.
Even when people don’t fully understand how the business works, they still make decisions. They just make them blindly. That’s not a talent problem. It’s a business acumen problem.
Strategy Lives or Dies in the Middle
Senior leaders love strategy decks; markets, positioning, bold aspirations. But strategy doesn’t succeed because it’s smart. It succeeds because thousands of everyday decisions line up with it.
When mid-level leaders and frontline managers don’t understand how value is created, where money is made (and lost), and which trade-offs actually matter, strategy becomes theater. Business acumen is what turns strategy from a PowerPoint into a set of executable choices.
Busy Is Not the Same as Effective
One of the most dangerous phrases in business is, “Everyone is working really hard.”
Hard work without business understanding often leads to over-servicing customers, over-engineering solutions, undisciplined spending, and heroic behavior that masks broken systems. Business acumen gives people a filter. Is this worth it? What am I trading off? What problem am I actually solving?
Without that filter, organizations burn enormous energy for very little return.
Pressure Exposes Weak Thinking
When things are easy, almost any decision looks fine. Pressure changes everything.
Under pressure, cash matters more than profit. Timing matters more than intent. Trade-offs matter more than effort. This is when weak business thinking shows up fast—chasing revenue at any cost, cutting investments that drive future value, or making local optimizations that hurt the enterprise.
Business acumen enables leaders to remain rational when emotions are high. And today, pressure isn’t episodic. It’s constant.
This Is About Respect—for the Business and the People in It
Here’s the part that doesn’t get said enough.
If you ask people to lead teams, manage budgets, serve customers, and make trade-offs—but don’t give them the tools to understand how the business works—that’s not empowerment. That’s abdication.
Teaching business acumen sends a clear signal. It says, "We take this business seriously." We trust you with real decisions. We expect you to think, not just execute.
That’s how strong cultures are built.
Summary Thought
Business acumen isn’t about turning everyone into a CFO. It’s about ensuring that good people don’t make bad decisions simply because no one ever taught them how the business actually works.
The President was right. The environment is tougher. The pressure is higher. And the margin for error is smaller than ever.
This is serious business.
And we should train like it.