What is business acumen exactly?
Business acumen can mean good financial management skills or knowing the specific details of other functional areas in an organization. Even though this knowledge is important, in reality, business acumen is much broader in scope. It’s knowledge of key business issues, the skill to apply that knowledge, and most importantly, it’s having the confidence to take action to have a positive impact towards achieving the objectives of the organization.
Business acumen is the ability to understand the organization’s operations and functions, as well as the industry and competitive environment in which the organization operates. But it’s also about using that information to effectively make business decisions.
When employees have business acumen, they understand how the company makes money and how it achieves its goals and objectives. They have the perspective to understand how each decision affects the organization.
- Do your employees know enough to make a positive business impact?
- What if there was a way to know how business savvy the people in the organization are right now?
- What if you could avoid teaching the ‘basics’ to people who already know them and ensure that everyone else is given them?
Business Acumen:
How Does Kaplan’s Business Acumen Diagnostic Work?
Our Business Acumen Diagnostic presents business scenarios and poses two key questions:
- Do you know the answer?
- How confident are you that your answer is correct?
With a few complex algorithms and a wealth of expertise, we analyze the answers to give you a clear picture of who is business savvy and who represents a risk to your organization. This empowers us to efficiently target who needs training and development, and in which areas they need it most.
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