What is Business Acumen?

Business Acumen is the art of learning a set of important skills that are needed to be a successful professional. A good sense of business acumen is critical in analyzing the factors that drive a company's performance, like market orientation and strategic implementation.

According to the Financial Times, business acumen is the “keenness and speed in understanding and deciding on a business situation”.

It is essentially the thought process, which you need for understanding the key factors behind issues related to a particular business action and the ability to comprehend the consequences of particular actions. It’s the ability to pick the right reactions and actions in complex situations, as well as the understanding of how different parts of a business relate to each other.

Furthermore, business acumen is related to understanding how businesses operate. A person with strong business acumen would be able to understand and explain things like:

· How does the business make money?

· What is a person’s individual contribution and role in this?

· What are the different elements that make a certain action work or not work?

Perhaps most importantly, business acumen isn’t an innate ability. It is something most people learn through formal training in leadership and by enhancing your awareness of what are the key skills required for better management and leadership.

To truly comprehend the issues, it’s a good idea to examine the skills that people with business acumen have. A person with good business acumen will:

· Be able to obtain essential information.

· Be able to focus on the key objectives.

· Be able to recognize the options available for solving problems.

· Be able to select the right approach to overcome those obstacles.

· Be able to set in motion the plan that gets things done.

What this essentially means is that people with business acumen can create larger frameworks and use them for the benefit of the business. They are able to see the big picture and use the finer details to their advantage in the event of problems. If you like sports, then you could compare a person with business acumen to the quarterback on the field in American football.

When you are developing your business acumen, you therefore must focus on improving your analytical capabilities, enhance your logical thinking and remain disciplined in the face of tasks.