Our Services
Four Compelling Reasons to Start a Conversation with Us
Defining Business Acumen
Business acumen can be defined broadly or narrowly. We take a focused approach, emphasizing the technical or "hard" skills essential for managing a business—finance, strategy, marketing, operations, and analytics.
Our perspective is shaped by a naval officer’s distinction between management and leadership: ”You manage things”—like businesses, budgets, and projects—but ”you lead people”. As professionals advance in leadership, both business and people skills become crucial for critical thinking, holistic decision-making, and driving performance.
Our focus? Helping you master the skills needed to effectively manage the business.
How We Build Your Employees' Business Acumen Skills
We help you overcome internal obstacles and position your organization for alignment, sustained growth, profitability, ROI, and cash flow. Our approach equips employees with the business acumen, financial literacy, and strategic decision-making skills necessary to enhance cross-functional collaboration and drive better business outcomes.
Using our proven VC Process™, we work with you to:
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Identify Decision-Making Gaps – Pinpoint areas where business acumen skills need improvement
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Facilitate a Customized Learning Experience – Conduct a live, interactive, team-based workshop focused on value creation, financial statements, and the ROIC tree
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Drive Learning by Doing – Immerse participants in a dynamic, risk-free environment where they experience the direct impact of their decisions and refine their critical and systems thinking skills
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Ensure Lasting Impact – Conduct after-action reviews and provide follow-up strategies to reinforce learning and drive real, applicable results
Our experiential approach ensures participants learn from mistakes, make smarter decisions in a rapidly changing environment, and contribute to long-term business success - both during and after the workshop.
What a Customized Workshop Looks Like
Our workshops follow a multi-period, iterative approach that integrates three key components:
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Business Acumen Concepts – Foundational principles such as value creation, financial statements and analysis, ROI, and strategic thinking
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Company Context – Real-world applications using company-specific financial statements, P&L terminology, key metrics, projects, and strategic initiatives
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Experiential Learning & Application – A hands-on, risk-free environment where participants apply concepts to real projects, learn by doing, and refine decisions through practice
Participants take on the challenge of managing a simulated company, making strategic decisions within constraints over multiple periods (e.g., 4-6). Through this process, they develop a critical thinking mindset, balancing trade-offs, leveraging value creation drivers, and applying analytics to decision-making in two key ways:
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Looking Back (Past Performance) – Moving beyond descriptive analysis (what happened) to diagnostic insights (why it happened, how it happened, and what it means)
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Looking Ahead (Future Performance) – Using predictive analytics (what could happen) and prescriptive techniques (what should happen) to forecast outcomes and optimize decision-making
The after-action review process reinforces learning, enabling participants to assess planned vs. actual results, refine strategies, and improve future performance. This structured approach helps build sharper business acumen, leading to stronger, data-driven decisions.