How would you rate your business acumen? In what ways do you build and develop it? Why is it important to continuously improve in this area?
Business acumen consists of 3 key elements:
1. External Factors (understanding the environment in which you operate):
- The market
- Your competition
- Your revenue model
- Industry trends
- Technology trends
2. Mindset (your individual mindset and understanding of internal and external relationships):
- Do you see developments as opportunities or problems?
- What are your internal and external relationships?
- How credible are you and what do others think?
- Your ability to take responsibility
3. Capabilities (the capabilities required):
- Do you know what are best practices?
- Do you understand the products/services your company provides?
- Project management
- Performance management
- Ability to influence
- Ability to work with teams
You cannot focus on all these key elements all the time, so what are the key factors for you? By way of example, we’ve broken it down into external and internal factors in this illustration.
To improve your business acumen, you need to understand all the ingredients, identify your biggest gaps between where you are NOW and WHERE you want to be, and develop action plans to minimize the gap. This will allow you to continuously improve your business acumen.