How adept are the leaders in your organization at evaluating opportunities? Creative leaders have lots of great ideas, but do they possess the financial awareness to determine which will have the greatest impact with the least effort?
In the vast majority of organizations, the answers to both questions will be negative. There are a variety of reasons why this is so, but the simple answer is that they haven’t been taught how to evaluate the financial impact of their decisions.
I’ve had the good fortune to have taught over 1,100 business people how to use the numbers to make better decisions. Some of the more encouraging feedback I got from students and leaders that hired me include:
“I was dreading this class, but I enjoyed every minute of the 18 hours we spent together.”
“I’ve been using what you taught me for over 10 years.”
“I’m coming back to your class to pick up some of what I missed in the previous session.”
“So these are the factors our customers are using in making their buy decisions.”
“I appreciate how you alleviated the morale issue we still experienced after a major layoff two years ago.”
Evaluating opportunities
My Financial Awareness & Strategy program helps leaders in your organization make better decisions by helping them identify opportunities for better financial results, then prioritizing these opportunities based on which will have the greatest financial impact with the least effort.
For those of you who may be concerned about sharing too much financial information, know that the aforementioned benefits can be gained with ratios rather than specific numbers. Having said that, leaders who feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves rarely violate the confidence the owners of their business place in them.
Takeaways
It’s almost impossible to evaluate opportunities without knowing the financial impact they’ll have, not only on profitability, but on cash flow and your company’s bankability.
Creating financial awareness and using that awareness to develop financially sound strategies is key to your company’s success. Help your leaders become more effective in evaluating opportunities and improving their operating decisions and you’ll enjoy quicker, and more dramatic, gains in profitability, cash flow, bankability and the value of your business.
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If you’d like the leaders in your organization to learn how to use the numbers more effectively and/or dramatically improve the productivity of your workforce, contact me to learn more about these resources:
Resources
Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal program helps you identify and nurture emerging leaders who elevate all around them to higher levels of performance and greater job enjoyment.
Financial Awareness & Strategy program where employees learn to identify opportunities to improve financial results and prioritize these opportunities on the basis of which produces the greatest impact with the least effort. Greater financial awareness = Better decisions.
Bill Prenatt
Dale, Your wisdom is ‘spot on’. A lesson that I learned from you was that we can’t manage what we don’t measure!
Dale Furtwengler
Thanks, Bill, I always appreciate your insights. The unfortunate aspect of this message is that it isn’t being taught in the halls of higher education to future business leaders in a way that’s relevant to their roles. The “numbers” education is aimed primarily at those with a proclivity for accounting and finance.