Business Acumen Certificate

This certificate includes the following four one-day programs:

Finance for Non-financial Managers – helps you understand finance, the language of business, so you can speak with your peers using the correct terms, concepts and appropriate foundational knowledge.  In this 1-day program you’ll also develop an understanding of all of the key financial documents, how to interpret them, and why they are important.  Financial terms and calculations will be explained in a way that makes sense for non-financial business professionals.  Finally, you will also be challenged to apply what you learn in class by analyzing how your work and your decisions are related to the overall performance of the company.

The Business of Human Resources – Employees need clear, manageable, and measurable goals as well as constructive and relevant feedback from others. Additionally, they need to receive appropriate onboarding, training, and professional development that provides them with the skills they need to perform the work for which they are accountable. 

What is often not measured is the impact leaders can have on recruitment, retention and employee engagement. Understanding this relationship and having the insight, confidence and skills to impact the bottom-line through these activities can set you apart in your leadership journey.

Driving Strategy at Any Level – Strategic planning is deciding the most important things that need to get done. Implementation is executing the key dos to achieve your strategic goals. To win in business, you need to master both. Fast paced and filled with real world examples, this program teaches the powerful tools from Krissi Barr’s strategy/execution book, Plugged. It incorporates ideas from AG Lafley’s book Playing to Win, and experience from hundreds of real implementation stories. Participants leave energized and ready to implement their strategic plans. In this program, you will learn to design a plan your team can implement, create a vision to direct your time and resources, and decide what your priorities. Moving to implementation you will also learn tools to transform you and your organization, work past procrastination to stay focused on what’s important, and build assessments to gauge where there is still room for improvement.

Operations – The business practices of turning the organization’s materials and labor into goods and services, quite often creates the highest costs. Strong operational management including strategy, planning, implementation, supervision, and continuous improvement effectively become key elements for ensuring your company manages and improves its profitability. This course will introduce the key elements of operations and tools that will help you manage operations to create improved financial performance. You will also learn ways to measure the outcomes of your efforts
to create optimal processes. 

Middle- to upper-middle-management leaders preparing to step into senior roles in their career.

• Gain financial tools every professional should understand and knowing how to use and interpret them
• Understand how the work you do impacts the bottom line and making appropriate choices based on this understanding
• Align operations to your company’s business model and competitive priorities.
• Understand how HR functions affect the bottom line of the organization
• Facilitating and writing a strategic plan that gets results