The New Business Acumen?

I did a talk last night for the Greater Cincinnati Chapter of ASTD. The topic was: The 10 Ways our Management Training Must Change. At the beginning of the talk I offered up two lists - first, the list of knowledge areas that used to make up what we broadly call business acumen. And then I shared what I thought was the new list. Here they are. Tell me what you think and what you would add or subtract to the new business acumen.

Knowledge Areas that Make Up Business Acumen (Old):

• Finance/P&L
• Accounting
• Marketing
• Sales
• Strategy and Planning
• Decision Making
• HR/People Matters
• Operations/Throughput/Efficiencies

Knowledge Areas that Make Up Business Acumen (New):

• ALL the areas above PLUS:
• Complexity/Simplicity (how to manage in a more complex world and de-hassle the org)
• Online EVERYTHING (how to work and communicate online)
• 24/7/365 (how to deal with our always on world)
• Outsourcing, In-sourcing, Intra-outsourcing (how to source work)
• International/Virtual/Free agent teams
• Ubiquity/Experts aren’t (that our competitive advantage is no longer expertise, because anyone can find the knowledge quickly)
• Four generations in the workplace

Comments

[Lisa Edwards]

Hi Lisa,

I would add something like Futurism-- how-to keep your ear to the ground and notice what's happening in the world, in politics and online to create hunches about future changes in customer behavior. The world and business continues to change more rapidly than in the past and paying attention to how that might impact the future can mean survival for organizations.

[Lisa Haneberg]

Excellent addition, Lisa, Thanks. I agree - Drucker called that type of forsight what it meant to be a foul weather manager - always looking forward to see what's coming. Any one else what to weigh in?

[Andrew Meyer]

Lisa,

I enjoy your writing, but here I could not disagree with you more. First I disagree with your definition of business acumen and secondly, your lists are impractical enough to be meaningless. Let me explain.

Business acumen is a difficult concept to explain, but it's reasonable to define it as a "concept pertaining to a person's knowledge and ability to make profitable business decisions" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_acumen

It is not generalist knowledge that makes business acumen meaningful, rather, it is incredibly deep specific knowledge. Take an IT example: "What will the reporting ramifications of using one data model over another?" Or an accounting example: "How will FASB142 affect the amortization of goodwill..." www.fasb.org/st/summary/stsum142.shtml

Business acumen is the sophisticated understanding of how changes and their ramifications affect success and profitability. Competence in a particular area only develops over time and with experience. Businesses rightly pay a premium for this business acumen because it is hard to find.

On the other hand, having the passing familiarity of finance, accounting, marketing etc. prepares one for nothing. Have you ever heard the phrase: "A little knowledge is dangerous?" That is what you are suggesting. People should have just enough knowledge to really be dangerous.

One of the reasons for organizing a business is to take advantages of people's particular skills and to mitigate their weaknesses. Everybody doesn't need to know everything, rather, one person needs accounting acumen, another marketing and yet another HR, Operations and so on.

As an example, let's use Kobe Bryant. Whatever you think of him as a person, he is regarded as being better at every facet of the game than anyone else. However, even if you could find them, a team made up of 5 Kobe Bryants wouldn't do very well. At 6' 6" he would make a lousy center, a mediocre power forward etc. A well balanced team with a 7' center, a muscular 6' 9" power forward, etc would very likely beat a team Kobe Bryants by double digits every night.

Hopefully, I have articulated my first point that the definition you use of business acumen is wrong. Acumen is deep, specific knowledge properly applied, not passing familiarity.

My second point is, if you do believe that someone could have useful depths of all those different disciplines, where would you find such a person? And would this all-star necessarily even want to work for you? If they are so great, aren't they going to be running their own business?

Your lists have some feel-good aspects, but management is the art of combining groups of people so as to take advantage of their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses. Then one focuses them on achieving meaningful tasks in a profitable way. Isn't that plenty challenging without throwing in requirements of finding impossible all-stars and dealing with their inevitable weaknesses and eccentricities?

[lisa haneberg]

Andrew, thanks for your comment and argument. While I agree with much of what you have written here, I want to clarify that I am NOT suggesting that these list items are light or shallow or in any way not deep or not craft-like in that it takes years to develop. If you follow my blog, you know I do believe that management is a craft.

These things are - theoretically - the skill areas we need to develop to make profitable biz decisions. That is why most MBA programs focus on these. What I am suggesting is that you need more today - to make good decisions - than you have in the past.

So I think we disagree less than you think, and I thank your for sharing your thoughts and encourage others to also weigh in.

[Joanww]

I guess that that does not matter if opt for dissertation writing service or thesis service! Because the quality of the mini dissertation just about this topic has to be counting.

[Invertir Dinero]

Interesting post I really like it and I want to start a business and I need to know more about it and I want to Invertir Dinero in this moment but I need to know how can I do it?

[lots in Samara Costa Rica]

Excellent information to many people like that read articles to learn about these issues of great interest.

[Ryan C.]

From Wikipedia: "The perception of business acumen as a valuable and necessary quality for high-level corporate leaders has occurred within a short period of time… some have classified business acumen as simply a buzzword." It's no wonder that business acumen training is now a critical concern of modern leadership development.

[research paper writers]

You're totally right about all these news knowledge areas that now make up business acumen. It is especially true for everything online, as almost every company has a website and some online services nowadays