Business Acumen Training & Development Program in Nashville, TN
A Guide to Understanding Business Acumen & Strategy for Managers in the Nashville area
An organization's ability to successfully navigate through the complexities of an ever-evolving business landscape including global and micro-competition, regulatory requirements, technological innovations, and workforce changes, to name only a few, will rest heavily on the management team's business acumen and strategic thinking skills. Business acumen is a cognitive thinking skill whereby we merge experiences, knowledge, education, and perspective into a reliable process for making quality decisions. Organizations that offer managers business acumen development opportunities, in the form of business simulation and financial acumen workshops ensure their company's future.
Effective business and financial acumen training programs build employees that are better equipped to strategically contribute, effectively plan, mindfully monitor, and adapt processes to deliberately meet the ever-changing needs of the changing marketplace.
Seeking a strategic planning consultant to facilitate your strategic planning retreat? Our evidence-based strategic alignment workshop facilitates business acumen and a growth strategy your team can get excited about. Call us at 281-469-4244 or visit our strategic planning consultants page to learn more.
Who would benefit from the training?
Our customized Business Acumen & Strategic Thinking for Managers program focuses upon developing critical thinking and planning competency, strategic agility, financial and commercial acumen, and strategic management competencies via a customized, simulation-like experience. We believe our program is better than a cookie-cutter business simulation competition, as the projects are company-selected and relevant to your strategic priorities.
The program combines learning with real work projects to produce strategic solutions while developing your team’s business, financial, and commercial acumen via business strategy simulation. As the cohort works collaboratively, through real business problems, the program improves your managers and/or HiPos’ leadership, collaboration, and teamwork skills.
Some of our clients are looking for a program for their executive or business unit leadership team. If you are seeking a strategic planning retreat or strategic planning consulting firm, please see our strategic growth planning and strategic alignment program here.
Learning Objectives:
At the Organizational Level the Learning Objectives Include:
- Interaction and collaboration opportunities between executives, board members, and high-potentials
- Support succession planning strategy
- Align cross-functional teams with the mission, vision, and strategic plans.
- Actionable business projects provide strategic impact to the business
- Strategic HR Development
- Change management components aid in learning retention
- Increased competency
- Business competency development designed to impact the bottom-line
At the Cohort Level the Learning Objectives Include:
- Healthy competition and business-focused discourse
- Structured, required collaboration
- Participants learn to routinize the sharing of knowledge
- Participants are immersed in cross-functional problem solving
- Program structure provides learning opportunities with minimal risk to the business
- Alliances are built across the organization
- Strategic management best-practices are demonstrated, modeled, and routinely shared
- Participants form strong relationships and cross-functional knowledge, laying the path for ongoing collaboration
At the Individual Level the Learning Objectives Include:
- Develop insight into the correlation of business functions and operations
- Discover how the builder vs. protector mindsets impact business goals
- Strategic thinking skills
- Critical thinking and analytical skills
- Cross-functional knowledge across all areas of business’ operations
- Quality decision making
- Learn how to make and present a powerful, business case
- Cultivate the ability to be a master-asker (curious, questioning)
- Grow the ability to generate new ways of thinking and create solutions
- Learn to set effective team goals
- Grow financial acumen and budgeting knowledge
- Learn how to align organizational systems
- Grow the ability to be resourceful and innovative
- Develop financial analysis competency
- Understand and learn to practice strategic agility
- Negotiation skills
- Learning through doing
- Presentation skills development
- Influence skills
- Engage in systems thinking
- Engage in continuous improvement discussions
- Develop risk analysis/risk management skills
- Collaborate, negotiate and apply influence to establish plans and build a compelling business case
How does it work?
Business Acumen & Strategic Thinking Training Program
An effective Leadership Development program has three primary development categories:
For Phase 3: Leading in Business - the focus is on Business Acumen and Critical Thinking Skills.
While the final competency development objectives will be determined through the customization process of each business simulation training program and dependent upon the logistics and scope of the program, a comprehensive Business Acumen & Strategy Execution training focuses on the following business and strategic competencies:
Thinking & Analysis Skills:
- Analytical thinking
- Critical thinking
- Strategic thinking
- Data Analysis
- Holistic thinking
- Sound judgment
- Quality decision making
- Strategic Agility
Business Case Analysis:
- Ability to develop a compelling business case
- Problem-solving
- Global business savvy
- Dealing with ambiguity
- Strategic foresight
Accounting Skills:
- Finance for non-finance managers
- A passion for understanding the numbers
- Investment analysis
- Risk analysis & risk management
- Cost controls
Distinguishing Attributes:
- Executive presence
- Impact and Influence
- Perspective
- Presentation skills
- Negotiation skills
Looking for Public Seminars? We regret that we do not offer public seminars at this time. We do, however, have expert coaches who assist individuals in building their business acumen, and critical thinking skills. Please inquire.
Commercial Acumen and Critical Thinking for Managers Training Program
Our business-savvy and strategy for managers programs are most effective when participants have some management experience or after they have participated in foundational management training including interpersonal effectiveness and supervisory skills.
Our Business simulation competition - commercial acumen training program uses experiential learning opportunities, customized cohort work projects, collaboration between peers and mentors, business case development and capstone project presentations (a la Shark Tank presentations) to drive development and learning retention.
Research from The Chartered Institute of Management Accounting shows that senior managers are battling with basic leadership and decision-making. Their research reported 72% of companies admitted to at least one failure of company strategies over the last three years, with 42% of leaders saying their organization had lost their competitive advantage in the most recent year as a result of being indecisive.
Indecisiveness is a symptom of deficient business acumen, critical thinking capacity, and strategic foresight. While executives may have solid capacity to perform their utilitarian role, many do not have the necessary competence for quality decision making, especially as the pace of change accelerates with every passing year.
Even when a company has a strong and well-communicated plan, managers often fail to align their team's tasks with the priorities of the business. Managers will make decisions based on their current level of business savvy or more likely, take the fast win by dealing only with the squeaky-wheel of the moment, as the real impact of their decisions does not weigh heavily enough on managers who are non-strategic.
When / Important Logistics / Important facts for ensuring success
Our immersive, business strategy simulation and business simulation competition program leverages active-learning and real-work projects for an effective and results-oriented learning experience.
What are the logistics and delivery formats of the program?
Our programs are infinitely flexible. Each component is custom-designed around your organizational goals and budget. Programs are available in a variety of formats, including:
- Lunch and learns / Brown-bag learning opportunities
- 90-minute to half-day introductory sessions
- Comprehensive programs include full-day to multi-day active-learning training events
- Development programs (moving employees from skills knowledge to high-performance requires more change and accountability components) typically include a variety of learning events over a period of 12 to 24 months
- In-Person, on or off-site programs are typically the most effective
- Virtual, Instructor-Led training is also available
What are the components of the program?
We find that each company or non-profit organization will have very specific goals, budgets, and logistical requirements. Thus, we will not insist on a routine approach. However, we can share that our most effective business-simulation and acumen corporate development programs include:
- Stakeholder interviews to uncover the organization's goals
- Management consulting in support of well-considered and selected work projects (capstone projects)
- Coaching focused on business-case development related to the company's selected work projects
- Cohort groups collaborate on real work-projects and prepare business cases
- Presentations to the executive team or board of directors
- The program finale is a fun, engaging and competitive Shark Tank*-like presentation to the company's internal "investors";
- Workshops designed using active-learning and adult-learning principles
- Training agenda is focused on business, financial, and commercial acumen and is tailored for the industry and specific to your organization (i.e. private/public/non-profit/governmental entity)
- Optimal programs include a series of training events. For example, we recommend multi-day, and/or full-day training sessions and bi-monthly half-day sessions focused on the business acumen topics, plus group coaching, internal mentor support, practice presentation sessions, and one-on-one coaching, as needed.
- The group coaching is an essential component as each cohort group works with an experienced management consultant and executive coach to build their business cases with relevant feedback and constructive criticism in support of a dynamite presentation at the conclusion of the program.
- Internally facilitated project meetings to ensure accountability and cross-functional teamwork.
- Internal mentors serve as in-house experts and are provided well-defined rules of engagement that ensure fairness across all teams. Tip: Mentors cannot do the work!
- The final business case presentations culminate in a memorable and exciting conclusion and celebration.
Here's a sample time-line of events for our best-practice approach to the training:
Business acumen and strategic thinking are key competencies for driving a competitive advantage – especially during increasingly turbulent times.
Business Acumen can be defined as the keenness and ability to understand the overall dynamics of the company's business, financials, operations, market factors, and environment and assimilate this knowledge wisely while compelling others to execute smartly. Leaders with a deeper sense of business astuteness have the ability to see the big picture and are capable of assessing the situation more holistically. Executives with the skillset are able to logically and confidently adapt the company's strategies to achieve favorable outcomes, while short-sighted leaders cripple an organization in the long run.
Theoretically, possessing business acumen translates to understanding the financials, the factors that will impact their market, the competition, economics, operational efficiencies, and predicting the future, while motivating and engaging their workforce.
One of the more nuanced attributes is the capacity to manage ambiguity and be adaptable enough to shift gears comfortably. As speed is of the essence, strategic and critical thinking informed by strong business acumen enables a leader to size up a situation quickly, and make course corrections to overcome a challenge or swiftly seize an opportunity. A high-performing leader is able to consider the impact of extensive and complex business conditions and set a course that engages and inspires employees to not only follow but champion.
One may ask, "doesn't business acumen come from experience?" In short, yes. But what company has the luxury of waiting for their leaders to catch up with high-performance via the passage of time. Patience is a virtue - not a development strategy! An effective and strategic Human Resources leader advocates for development programs that will quicken mastery through active-learning workshops, mentoring, personal and peer-to-peer coaching, and business simulation. In a simulation, for example, managers are able to make bad decisions without affecting the business. These failures are brilliant learning experiences. We remember these lessons and use our mistakes to inform future decisions. By structuring a training program that will force leaders to think critically and even set them up to experience a few failures, companies can build business acumen competency within their workforce. You can literally create a safe environment where business keenness has a chance to flourish and leaders have a chance to test their skills and experiment with decision-making.
Quality decision making, business sagacity, and astute analysis can be intentionally developed. When the research shows that most managers and leaders believe they understand the business while those same leaders believe their peers do not, we have an issue. An unskilled leader doesn't understand the business, is not knowledgeable about policies, trends, technology, and the factors that affect the organization. They may know who the competition is, but don't grasp why studying what they do and how they do it matters. They undervalue strategy and remain predominantly focused on the tactical, and while they may be high-performing technically, they will surely underperform as a leader, as an astute strategy is a difference that creates longevity.
The Training Problem
We know that a one size fits all approach to training employees doesn't work. This is particularly true for developing Business Acumen. We will be the first to advocate for coaching and training, as the benefits are well-documented and undisputed. However, for strategic thinking, financial acumen, and some of the more advanced thinking and analytical skills, an effective program may also include:
- A change management and accountability approach
- Real work-projects provide immediate opportunities to apply the skills learned in the training sessions
- Real-world business simulation-style training
- Subject matter experts to inform and mentor participants
- A practical approach for learning about lateral and vertical thinking models
- Top-down support to foster real buy-in to the program
- Accountability check-points ensure engagement and prioritized attention
- Performance management protocols and oversight
- Quality assurance measures
- Coaching to foster integration and skill practice
- Peer-to-peer interaction to maximize learning retention and develop additional learning opportunities
For our business acumen development program we customize our proven curriculum for relevance and alignment with your business, industry and strategic priorities. Each program is designed to actively engage participants in rich learning experiences and adult-learning best practices.
NOTE: We do not have public training events. While our programs are available for groups only, we do have individual, one-on-one coaching programs for individuals seeking business acumen coaching. Please inquire.
Please also see more information on our customized leadership development options:
Have questions? We have answers. Please also read our Strategic Thinking & Business Acumen Training Frequently Asked Questions here, for the details on our Business Acumen Training and Capstone Project development programs.
Business acumen can and must be developed, despite the complexity of teaching it, for a business to thrive. Luckily, business acumen does not have to be an innate characteristic but instead is a skillset that can be learned. Remember, managers with strong business acumen are better equipped to lead their company to sustainable growth and drive meaningful results.
Make sure to also check out TurnKey's other services in the city: executive coaching programs, corporate leadership development, leadership team development, programs for emerging leaders and high potentials, Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team programs, business retreats, and strategic planning consultations.
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Disclaimer:
* Shark-Tank-Like: we are not associated in any way with the television show. We think it’s an awesome show and use the verbiage “shark-tank-like” because it accurately describes how our final capstone, business simulation competition, and business strategy simulation presentations are experienced by our clients. SHARK TANK is a trademark of Sony Pictures Television Inc. and is not associated in any way with this company or program.
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