Why Does Business Acumen Matter?

"Education is not the answer to the question.  Education is the means to the answer of all questions."  Bill Allin

Business Acumen is the Missing Piece

Early in my career I learned that business acumen is the missing piece for many employees.  When you consider that most often, we train our employees  in job skills/procedures when they are newly hired, and we may train them in supervisory skills/processes when they get promoted.

Later on, we may train them in the typical "development" topics, like time management, leadership, communication, team work, business writing, presentations and more.  All of this is good work, don't get me wrong.  These topics have shown to be tremendously valuable to employees, teams, and businesses.  Yet, I have found that the missing piece in all of this is business acumen.  

Business acumen provides the "why."  Why learn these skills?  Why go to all the trouble to develop my work skills, leadership skills, human relations skills?  Oh, yeah, we're a for-profit enterprise and we all are here to do good work for our stakeholders so they pay us.  What's our business?  Where do we get the profit?  What drives cash flow?  Who has an interest in our success?  

Answers to these questions drive the "why" and fill in the missing piece.

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