Business acumen is often considered as someone’s ability to understand business issues. But it is more than that. It is the collection of both general and organization-specific knowledge about how things get done and the reason behind them. It is a key character trait of leadership as it involves understanding your business and making decisions that create a positive impact on your organization.
Developing business acumen can help give business leaders the knowledge they need to have a long and successful career. Here are five skills that contribute to someone’s business acumen.
Strategic thinking
Strategic planning and problem-solving enable a business leader to come up with effective plans designed to reach the company’s short-term and long-term goals.
Strategic thinking is used by leaders to prioritize tasks or business plans in line with the company’s growth.
In addition to strategic thinking, leaders must also be able to adapt and solve problems creatively. Adapting to change is necessary for an organization to thrive in any market. Traditional solutions may not always be the answer to your organization’s problems, especially in today’s agile landscape. That’s why a leader must think on their feet and strategize accordingly.
Communication skills
Communication skills are crucial to any business leader. Understanding your audience and stakeholders and communicating effectively facilitates practical business functions.
It’s important to know how to communicate effectively with others for the smoother and more effective functioning of the organization.
Marketing
Business leaders don’t have to be marketing experts. However, having some basic marketing skills and knowledge of some marketing tools enables one to better understand their target audience.
This is an important skill to have as it helps in understanding marketing trends and measuring the company’s growth with the right KPIs.
Emotional intelligence
A good business leader understands how their actions can affect the organization and reads the situation aptly. They have the emotional intelligence to understand how team members feel about a given situation and are equipped to handle it accordingly.
Analytical capabilities
Analytical capabilities are key to business acumen. Some of them include:
- Collecting and analyzing information
- Finding correlations between data points
- Looking at a problem from different angles
- Coming up with a solution with limited information
If you see yourself evolving as a leader in your organization, the skills mentioned above can aid in developing your business acumen sooner rather than later.
