The
Business
Acumen
Handbook
Everything You Need to
Know to Succeed in the
Corporate World
AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Summary in Brief
INFORMATION AND RESEARCH FINDINGS from
professional organizations and business publications increasingly
point to an area that requires attention and cultivation: business
acumen.
Ask twenty people to explain business acumen, you may get
twenty different responses. This variation represents a learning
opportunity for business leaders, and anyone who’s contributions
help an organization achieve it strategic goals. After all, if the
right people, with the right level of business acumen, are in
the right roles, the company can excel in chosen markets.
Wouldn’t it be great if, at every level of an organization, there
existed a common understanding of its structure, products and
markets and how departments depend on each other, how cash
ow works, and how to assess performance? Wouldn’t the rm
benet greatly if more people understood the strategic and
nancial impact of decisions they made? They can, and they
do this now.
The Business Acumen Handbook by Steven Haines
was written to help people who work in any functional
department of a company to gain a holistic, systemic
understanding of how the business works, and how each
person can contribute effectively to the goals of the rm.
It’s for anyone just starting in their business or managerial
career, or for any person who needs to ne-tune their
perspectives on how the interconnected systems of a
corporation works.
In This Summary, You Will Learn:
• The crucial components of business acumen.
• Why you want to optimize interdepartmental dynamics.
• How to improve market and product insights to advance
strategy.
• How to develop your own career.
Contents
1. Starting Out: Assessing Your Business Acumen - Page 4
2. Finding Your Way Around the Organization - Page 5
3. Leveraging Processes to Get Things Done - Page 8
4. Mastering Markets - Page 9
5. Setting Direction with Strategy - Page 11
6. Understanding Products - Page 13
7. Assessing Business Performance - Page 15
8. Your Professional Development Strategy - Page 16
My hope for you in this book is that
you’ll gain an appreciation for the
interconnectedness of the parts
of a business, so that you can
recognize the signals as various
situations arise and figure out what
to do to get things done.
STEVEN HAINES
“
Business acumen is a portfolio of skills,
behaviors, and capabilities needed to
support a company in the achievement
of its goals and strategies.
TO PUT THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE, WE START
WITH A SOLID DEFINITION:
INTRODUCTION
Why Business
Acumen Matters
But now studies nd the vast majority of leaders believe a lack of
business acumen on behalf of all corporate employees limits a
company’
s ability to reach strategic goals.
As Steven Haines explains in his book, The Business Acumen
Handbook, people who are either new to a company or shifting
roles usually struggle to catch up with a moving train. Emerging
leaders and managers also need to sharpen their ability to pivot
from the work in front of them to other areas. The Business Acumen
Handbook helps people adapt no matter their position in an
organization or at what point they are in their careers.
As customer problems tend to trump the daily plan, not everyone is
adept at shifting their focus. This book teaches people how to stay
focused on the big picture, cultivate relationships across the rm,
and contribute to the advancement of the rm’s goals. As Haines
explains, it’s not simply a matter of subject-area expertise, but an
individual’s ability to understand various dimensions of a business
that are in play as situations arise.
In other words, leaders want people whose perspective expands
beyond their desk and department oor. They want people who
solve problems, make decisions and contribute daily with results
that benet the bottom line. To do this, not only do people need
to excel in their areas of expertise (domain), they have to possess
a great degree of business acumen. Otherwise, their ability to
contribute to an organization as a whole is limited. When domain
expertise and business acumen intersect, however, careers advance
and companies grow.
Today, all emerging
leaders and managers
must understand
what's needed to
help the company
fulfill its strategic
intent, and business
acumen excellence
can pave the way.
PG 3
BUSI
NESS-ACUMEN.COM
STARTING OUT
Assessing Your
Business
1
For example, one of the areas focuses on the right mindset for
optimum performance. The multiple traits involved with this type of
mindset include strong critical, strategic and systemic thinking skills.
These pages show the reader how to develop these traits.
Another group of traits centers on the individual. How does one
earn credibility? How do employees develop condence and the
managerial courage required to stand up for their convictions?
The book delves deeply into all 38 characteristics that are key to
improving individual and organizational performance and explains
why the two are interdependent.
The book also includes a tool to help the reader to assess their
current level of business acumen, as well as actionable, purposeful
ideas for applying assessment results in the workplace. Readers
can appraise strengths, weaknesses and emerging threats to their
ability to excel in an era of digital disruption.
This disruption makes the need for business acumen across all levels
of an organization an almost desperate one given the reported lack
of it. Disrupted industries are constantly the topic of business news
outlets, with household brands increasingly supplanted by startups.
The book outlines seven areas that contribute
to business acumen with each one involving
several individual characteristics. A total of 38
traits are covered.
The Business Acumen Handbook helps readers develop a life-long
discipline of learning, which is so important since all specialties
require a learning mindset to succeed in today’s economy. Without
this mindset, individuals risk career stagnation and businesses risk
survival. Talent management leaders may be interested in BAI's
comprehensive competency assessment to augment the self
assessment contained in the book.
The vast majority of leaders believe a
lack of business acumen on behalf of all
corporate employees limits a company’s
ability to reach strategic goals.
“
PG 4
BUSINE
SSACUMEN.COM
The self-assessment can be found at;
https://assessment.business-acumen.com/s3/BAI
Finding Your
Way Around the
Organization
2
SPEAKING OF DISRUPTION, gone are the days of a
company’s c-suite going through the motions of organizational
change, posting an organizational chart in some conference room
somewhere. Leaders need to work with every level of management
to guarantee change is taken seriously.
“One of the characteristics that separate good managers from others
is a thirst for organizational knowledge,” says Haines. “How they ‘get’
its people, processes and purpose.”
Not to dismiss the org chart -- these charts are critical in providing
organizational clarity and keeping projects on track. With this
context, the book outlines techniques designed to help you get
your bearings and develop an uncanny ability to get around an
organization to get things done. Rather than thinking, “this is how
our company is supposed to work” and handing a document down
from leadership, successful business people learn their way around,
understand where information sits, and gures out how to harness
the energy of the cross-functional team.
To further help readers with their exploration of the company, The
Business Acumen Handbook denes ve organizational structures
and the author guides readers along a path that helps them
understand the structure in which they work, how they t, and
how they can establish both the formal, and informal networks to
communicate and collaborate.
Cross-Functional Effectiveness is Crucial
Haines understands organizational structure can’t stand up to poor communication. While an
org chart directs how work might ow, it’s up to knowledgeable business people to make that
happen. To contribute to goal attainment, the book clearly indicates how clear communication
between departments determines any initiative’s success through the synchronization of work
between all the departments that touch a project.
Readers nd support in learning how they can leverage both organizational charts and informal
social networks to identify cross-employee dependencies that allow the effective completion of
work. These dependencies become clear when every person understands the purpose of every
department, the ow of communication and how the work of each department relates to an
organization’s mission.
PG 5
BUS
INESS-ACUMEN.COM
Communication Counts
The book lays out strategies for people in terms of how they can
communicate up and down, and across the organization. As the
author explains, taking the time to build relationships is not just a
nice side-benet to the work day, it inuences organizational success
tremendously. “People become more apt to help one another instead
of fearing power plays over mistakes and retreating into department
silos to avoid blame,” writes Haines.
The Business Acumen Handbook helps people support and
contribute to collaborative cultures that are built on the level of
transparency required to help teams cross department boundaries.
Otherwise, says Haines, people try to avoid conict, which almost
always results in dysfunction. “As a business grows and it has
adopted these practices, it will experience conict as an opportunity
to make sense of obstacles by seeing all sides and adopting a more
objective perspective.”
The stakes are high, as an organizational structure that doesn’t
trust its people to work together effectively and communicate
fearlessly often results in poor products, systemic breakdowns
and costly redundancies.
Leaders want a level of organizational management that is one
of discovery: It’s not a one and done exercise. Leaders need to
learn how and when to ne tune the process as conditions
change. Most importantly, says Haines, they need to instill a culture
of communication and support that empowers employees to reach
across department boundaries and care about each project’s success.
So How Do We Do This?
Several reports in recent years tell the same story: The business world
is desperate for a serious uptick in soft skills. Success is often dened
today by how well employees collaborate. In fact, a Google survey of
its management found soft skills ranked number-one as the skills most
lacking by employees – STEM skills came in dead last.
Steven Haines has helped many businesses foster a climate of
openness and shared understanding with their teams. “Whether
it’s mistrust caused by a generational divide between employees
or a lack of transparency from leadership, I’ve seen team dynamics
transform from dysfunction to ring on all cylinders with the
right training.”
Middle-Management and the EQ Crisis
Few are as aware of the issues a lack of soft skills creates than
middle-managers. They witness every day how productivity suffers
from consistent miscommunication, siloed teams and power
struggles. Haines guides people through the many aspects of
improving the emotional intelligence (EQ) of a team.
Teams with a high EQ are the byproduct of a culture that realizes
morale is as great a priority as meeting deadlines and budget
projections. Some startups are known for emphasizing culture from
day one. But then they scale and join everybody else who is so busy
ghting for market share, culture becomes a back-burner issue.
Haines helps rebuild these cultures -- and create ones where they
never existed -- with training that covers every aspect of what it takes
to possess a high EQ. What does active listening look and sound
like? How do teams create buy-in and resolve conict? What are the
foundations of collaborative aptitude and how does an organization
measure it? These are just some of the topics I address in my sections
on communication,” he writes.
BUS
INESS-ACUMEN.COM PG 6
1
2
3
Change Starts at the Top
The Art of Giving Feedback: What improves motivation? What kinds of delivery kill it?
Curiosity: Asking questions the right way teaches others to trouble-shoot, look
at problems from all angles and learn how to collaborate better. What are those
questions? How should leaders follow-up once input is gathered?
Relationship Goals: They determine the retention of employees, customers, vendors
and anyone else vital to the success of a business. What should these goals be? How
do businesses reach them?
Haines understands relationships are the lynchpin to business success. “Soft-skill
development and boosting our EQ create better relationships and heal troubled
ones. The idea these areas are less important than other business skills is antiquated
and extremely expensive when employee turnover and customer service become
problems.”
The belief that “you’re either a people person or you’re not” is no longer true, as
companies that engage in training in these areas see positive change. Job seekers
have plenty of resources to learn what kind of culture potential employers have
cultivated. What will they learn online about your business?
From front-line employees to c-suite occupants, individual behavior often reects the culture. In
large corporations, several sub-cultures exist, resulting in some people wishing they worked in a
different department – one where they know people are treated better.
If leadership demands soft skills take precedence throughout the company, and more
importantly, leaders model these skills, every employee knows what behaviors are expected and
which ones will not be tolerated.
THE BUSINESS ACUMEN HANDBOOK COVERS SEVERAL TOPICS
RELATED TO THIS BEHAVIORAL TRAINING:
The stakes are high, as an organizational structure that doesn’t trust its
people to work together effectively and communicate fearlessly often
results in poor products, systemic breakdowns and costly redundancies.
“
PG 7
BUS
INESS-ACUMEN.COM
Leveraging
Processes to Get
Things Done
3
The next step involves going deeper with your knowledge
of processes.
Why is this knowledge important, for every key stakeholder?
“Whether it’s because process steps are not known, or because
the process is not t for its purpose, the result is still the same:
a poorly produced product, an unsatisfactory customer
experience or reduced prot for the business,” Haines writes.
This chapter explains how to discover who owns the business
processes for your company, as well as a general hierarchy of
processes that exists in all companies. “Processes matter,” writes
Haines. “Managers have a duty to care about how work is carried
out and completed.”
He goes into important detail about three types of control levers
that businesses can employ in order to streamline operations.
These levers address problems before they happen, while their
happening and how to improve processes in the future.
Understanding an
organization’s structure
and interdependency of
departments is a good
start to becoming a
better manager.
Measuring Success with Consumer and
B2B Clients
We all know several processes come into play from the moment of
customer contact to the point of purchase. Whether you’re working
for a B2B company or direct-to-consumer, both qualitative and
quantitative metrics must apply to the end-user experience. Haines
outlines how every process, from marketing to accounting, involves
several steps crucial to qualitative success related to the customer
experience and quantitative success related to the bottom line.
Walking the reader through the multiple layers and steps related
to the quote-to-cash process, Haines outlines how to make this
process run more smoothly. “Through working in or consulting
with large, complex companies I’ve learned that executives want
business managers to view business through a critical lens,” he writes.
“Furthermore, they want managers to examine processes with an
ye toward reducing waste, improving efciency and saving time
and money.
“You should be able to consider possibilities to enhance, improve or
revise a process to make it work easier, faster and more efcient.”
Six steps to improving process acumen are discussed in this chapter,
as well as character traits that contribute to its success. “When you
master this knowledge, you’ll have the wherewithal to prioritize your
own work and help others if they get bogged down.”
PG 8
BUS
INESS-ACUMEN.COM
“Learning how to identify your target customer and what motivates
them is how businesses create products and services tailored toward
the customer’s wants and needs,” writes Haines.
It’s important we know our customers beyond the dimensions of age,
income, profession, gender, etc. These attributes are important, of
course, but customer awareness is so much more. What motivates
someone to act, whether they’re buying a new product or canceling
a monthly subscription?
Haines breaks down the art of understanding consumer motivation.
He helps businesses create an experience or product the individual
desires. How do we know where to start? “It begins with creating
a customer prole that becomes a detailed characterization of their
daily journey,” Haines writes.
Data analytics is making a science of this art, but taking the time to
interact with customers in person still nets highly valuable results.
Businesses need to spend time in-market, knowing how to observe
behavior and what to ask people about what motivates their
Data is everywhere, and business people must
harness a trove of market and customer data
in order to gain credibility with others - and to
put “market first” in decisions that affect the
firm’s success.
decisions. When interacting with customers, either in person or
online or on the phone, listening is most important. Listen for the
emotion behind their words.
Finally, there’s a story you want your customers to know about your
business. Even more so, you want to create avenues to hear the
customer’s story about their experience with your brand.
“The key to customer interviewing is to help people call upon their
experiences and allow them to talk,” writes Haines.
Market mastery begins with creating a
customer prole that becomes a detailed
characterization of their daily journey.
“
Mastering
Markets
4
PG 9
BUSI
NESS-ACUMEN.COM
The Customer Awareness Endgame
The Business Acumen Handbook provides templates for focusing on the customer insight
development process, understanding different market segment dynamics, visiting customer
sites (for B2B companies) and analyzing the competition. This chapter explains your goals
for each of these initiatives and how to achieve them.
Throughout a marketing campaign your goal is to create a Customer Value Proposition that
details the perceived benet a customer will experience from using your product or service.
This chapter helps you take the steps necessary to developing this proposition, which will
involve factors unique to each business.
The business acumen it takes to drive customer awareness, whether in the consumer or
B2B arenas, requires a level of market intelligence that must be shared across all disciplines
in a company. “Your goal is to speak the same language with others in your organization
regarding a market, fully understand it, how to connect with it and discern how your work
will ultimately affect the consumer,” writes Haines.
When interacting with
customers ... listening is most
important. Listen for the
emotion behind their words.
PG 10
BUS
INESS-ACUMEN.COM
Setting Direction
with Strategy
5
Here again, Haines emphasizes how important it is that people
take it upon themselves to not only understand a company’s
strategy but to gure out how they can best contribute to it, and
most importantly, adapt when market changes require a shift in
strategic thinking.
“Good business people realize there are unexpected bumps
along the way and adapt with aplomb,” writes Haines. “This is
the essence of strategic planning and execution.”
In this chapter the foundation of a strong, effective strategy is
discussed, as well as the various dimensions of the planning
process, analytical techniques that allow a business to pivot with
agility and how to transform data into a model for the future.
Can you explain your company’s strategic goals
and the reasoning behind them?
What information matters most? How do we develop an action plan
out of it? These are other questions are answered to help managers
sharpen their strategic thinking.
The cross-functional teams mentioned earlier play an intricate role
in creating goals that follow four key steps in developing an effective
strategy. These steps include linking goals to anticipated market
changes and establishing tracking metrics to determine success.
“I cannot reinforce this enough,” says Haines. “The best goals
and plans will be rendered useless unless these four items can
be carried out.”
BUSI
NESS-ACUMEN.COM PG 11
We Have a Plan. Now what?
He guides the readers through the necessary steps to
thoroughly analyzing a business’s core capabilities, vulnerabilities,
and market opportunities. From this, he ensures that this process
requires a team. He states: “When your cross-functional employees
are involved in the process, everyone is inspired to move in the
ame direction – and collectively, maintain the equilibrium required
to execute.”
There are several considerations to make regarding whether this
equilibrium is happening: Is every level of staff engaged with the
planning process, from executives to the front lines? Does every
decision consider how it will affect other departments or possibly
interfere with their objectives? Do goals align with the company’s
talent resources? Does everyone in your organization know what
its vision is and why it matters?
This chapter presents several action points that should occur during
the strategic planning process: These calls to action include looking
at the broad business horizon to derive the most suitable strategic
goals deriving and integrating the best marketing mix model
consistent with your strategic goals.
Haines also helps the reader create a unique game board approach
to achieving a complete picture of the planning process. Haines’
game strategic board template and ll-in-the-blank story outline
helps business people identify new opportunities and explain exactly
how they’re going to leverage them. “Use these tools to craft your
own story about the past, present and future of your business.”
In this chapter Haines explains the various dimensions
of the planning process, analytical techniques that
allow a business to pivot with agility and how to
transform data into a model for the future.
“
PG 12
BUS
INESS-ACUMEN.COM
Understanding
Products
6
This chapter is written to help readers establish important linkages
between market insights, strategic planning and the ideas for
innovative new products or enhancements to existing products.
He covers six areas critical to product management success, including
how to evaluate product ideas, how design thinking is used to create
the best customer experience, how to pitch a product and the role of
intellectual property management.
It’s vital for business people to Integrate a deep understanding of
people, processes, and products: “Business people who understand
the interconnections of these three pillars, and other more-detailed
connections throughout an organization, will have a greater impact
on business outcomes than those who do not.”
Haines is a thought
leader in the field of
product management,
authoring three books
on the subject, The
Product Manager’s
Survival Guide (2e),
The Product Manager’s
Desk Reference (3e)
and Managing Product
Management.
Business people who understand the
interconnections of these three pillars …
will have a greater impact on business
outcomes than those who do not.
“
PG 13
B
USINESS-ACUMEN.COM
From product packaging and labels to understanding the world in which customers live and
breathe, design thinking plays an important role in product management. Haines details how to
use this thinking to develop inspiring designs. In addition to identifying customer needs, design
thinking determines how to present features in a way that elicits an emotional response that
eventually transforms into customer loyalty.
Readers learn how to develop a product line’s architecture, translate customer needs into a
feature of that architecture and determine if the desired customer experience is created. They
take a deep dive into the product planning process from concept to launch, including a rst-
hand look at how agile sprints should work.
“Agile development and similar iterative techniques take what could be a project that requires
a long development period and divides it into smaller projects run by teams that operate like
those in startups … From my perspective an environment that uses iterative development offers
an amazing opportunity to harness how you think about customers and how value is added to
your product.”
Advice is offered for every stakeholder from those who pitch an idea to those who have to
decide whether to invest. The pitch process is covered in six steps, beginning with how to create
an impactful story for an idea and ending with how to prove the ROI on the investment.
They take a deep dive into the product planning process from
concept to launch, including a rst-hand look at how agile
sprints should work.
“
Design Thinking - A Method and a Mindset for Business People
Several criteria are provided for determining a new product’s viability, including if it aligns with
the company’s strategic goals, will it enjoy successful market positioning and several other
nancial considerations.
There are occasions when it’s more viable for a business to manufacture a new product itself
or contract out production. This chapter helps weigh the pros and cons of each option. If the
choice is made to keep the project in-house, managers should track the production process
by knowing what interactions have to take place between product development and other
departments. They also need to be cognizant of key handoffs, dependencies and challenges.
“Business people have an opportunity to be more impactful if they’re more mindful of each and
every step that is involved from the time an idea materializes to how it’s processed to what goes
into the decisions regarding whether to invest or not,” writes Haines.
PG 14
BUSI
NESS-ACUMEN.COM
Assessing
Business
Performance
7
“WITHOUT EXCEPTION, executives want people to speak
the language of the business in order to contribute positive
business results,” writes Haines.
They want all employees to strive for individual excellence, while
maintaining a focus on overall efciency and productivity. In other
words, you’ll better your position in a business if you start to think
like an owner.
“Whatever role you play, I want
you to become an employee
who’s viewed by leadership as
a prized asset.”
Four topic areas are covered in this chapter that help employees
attain this status. They include: Understanding how metrics and
key performance indicators (KPI) are used and putting performance
management into action using a scorecard. Precision analysis
and a keen eye allow business people to associate independent
observations with data-driven measurements in order to bring the
state of the business into clear focus.
So, how does one develop a performance management mindset?
Like so many things in life, it takes time developing a balanced
perspective of why or why not a business is successful and what
needs to be done to plot a successful future. By learning which
KPIs are most useful in identifying trends related to current
uccess, you’ll be able to start thinking strategically about the future.
This chapter studies the two key areas related to performance
management: Marketing metrics and prot-impacting metrics.
The section on marketing metrics includes a look at inbound metrics,
such as market share, customer usage and customer satisfaction.
It also covers outbound metrics, focusing on lead generation,
revenue earned from promotional activity and incremental sales
from price-oriented promotions.
In regard to prot-impacting metrics, KPIs are just the beginning.
The reader learns several other ways to identify the cause and
effect of business decisions, allowing for better decisions in the
future. Haines also charts examples of scenarios that present
how metrics might be associated and how various people in
an organization might interpret the information and assess
hose associations.
When ownership of business outcomes is encouraged across
an organization, employee morale improves. People want to be
engaged at work and feel as if their contribution has purpose.
When every employee plays a part in performance management,
engagement increases and their purpose is easier to dene.
PG 15
BUS
INESS-ACUMEN.COM
Your Professional
Development
Strategy
8
Taking control over one’s career involves a purposeful professional
development strategy that frequently reassesses business acumen,
determining what skills are needed to compete.
“The characteristics associated with business acumen are
nonnegotiable,” writes Haines. “You’ll have to consider yourself
part of a team, while keeping a watchful eye on internal and
external happenings.”
Haines has developed a
template covering seven areas
of professional development
that help people become
forward-facing employees
poised for advancement.
Once goals and action plans for each group are established, he helps
readers apply this information to immediate and long-term personal
career goals.
“My goal for this chapter is to equip you with a simple methodology
that allows you to proactively focus your efforts on your own career
development. With this information, you can more easily steer the
ship of your career.”
As one owns more of their
employer’s performance,
they’ll notice their own
performance improve.
It’s only natural that with
an incredible increase
of knowledge about
business acumen, people
get more creative about
how to apply it.
PG 16
B
USINESS-ACUMEN.COM
Conclusion
B
USINESS PROFESSIONALS WHO EXHIBIT STRONG
business acumen across all its categories thrive. Business leaders who
encourage the development of these skills by their staff drastically
increase the likelihood of developing and maintaining a competitive
edge.
Sure, there was a time when product development did product
development, sales did sales, IT did IT, and the customer? Well, that’s
the job of customer service and marketing. Most businesses have
figured out that approach no longer works, and those that haven’t
struggle to stay relevant.
What’s clear in today highly competitive and disruptive economy is
that every department and every employee need to be customer-
facing and aligned with the company’s strategic goals -- and that
requires a new level of business acumen from everybody.
The Business Acumen Handbook is your guide to deepening your
understanding of every facet of business success. You’ll expand your
knowledge base and existing skillset, while learning about areas of
business you haven’t yet had the opportunity to explore --
opportunities that will help you identify your career goals and how to
reach them.
To raise the bar in your career or in your company, visit www.business-
acumen.com to learn about our Business Acumen Courses.
Steven Haines is a business optimist committed to the
improvement of the skills and capabilities of business people who
work in complex organizations. He helps managers and leaders
to think holistically and systematically about business so they can
effectively inuence others on their path to business success.
Steven is a best-selling author, world-renowned speaker and
founder of two successful companies: Business Acumen Institute
and Sequent Learning Networks.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BUS
INESS-ACUMEN .COM PG 17
