Do You Have Business Acumen

Running a successful organization means having sound business acumen. Not everyone, however, is born with this skill. How do you know if you have or you need grow this skill? Something that you should consider while starting a running a business.

Business acumen is refined over time and consists of five essential components.

Intelligence

Leaders who have this component are skilled at analyzing, reading and making financial budgets and reports, but they can also explain this information to other people. Those who have this component of business acumen are eager to learn more and further improve their intellect and knowledge.

Strategy

Leaders with this component know the organization’s main priorities and have proactively developed a written action to achieve it. As soon as they know the key priorities of the organization, they start focusing on how they can contribute to it. Leaders should be able to turn their intellect into actionable behaviors that will encourage an entire team and get positive results.

Communication

Leaders with this component are excellent oral and written communicators. They are aware that clear communication is needed to achieve key business strategy and priorities. Leaders who have excellent communication skills communicate clearly with the entire organization. They can get their point across with tact and make the message simpler to relate it to the daily activities of the staff.

Resourcefulness

Leaders who possess this quality can work with little and produce a lot. They’re not hindered by the lack of tools or resources. Leaders with this quality are innovative enough to make new ways to get the job done efficiently. They don’t allow the lack of resources to create conflict or negativity within the team. They are able to overcome obstacles and challenges to create a service or product that’s better than they have expected. Leaders who have sound business acumen don’t waste resources. They are resourceful and innovative. 

Accountability

Leaders with this quality know the significance of employee accountability in maximizing productivity to attain success in whatever they do. When accountability is not present, none of the other aspects of sound business acumen will provide any worth. Strategy, innovation, communication and intelligence will be rendered useless. Leaders should set the expectation or standard in order to hold the employees responsible for driving the organization’s main priorities.

They should also effectively communicate it to get the cooperation of employees and implement it into the work environment. Leaders should assess the performance of employees and recognize as well as reward those who meet or exceed the standard or expectations of the organization.

Business acumen begins from the leader and flows down throughout the whole labor force. If the leader doesn’t have these components of business acumen, the organization won’t function at its best and success will not be achieved. Now that you know business acumen is, you should work towards improving your strengths and closing your gaps as a leader. Developing sound business acumen is important if you want your organization to continue growing.

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