XLC’s Business Acumen Certificate gives you skills to manage with a strategy that is understood and can be implemented at all levels, along with a strong foundation of how business operates, makes money, and sustains profitable growth.
You will learn tools to effectively manage and engage the workforce. You will gain knowledge in planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the activities of an organization in order to satisfy customers’ needs.
Participants must attend 4 of the following one-day programs within the spring semester:
- Change Leadership (April 26, 2023)
- Creative Problem Solving (April 18, 2023)
- Data Storytelling (May 2, 2023)
- Effective Decision Making (May 4, 2023)
- Executing Business Strategy (March 30, 2023)
- Finance for Non-Finance Professionals (May 23, 2023)
Description
Creative Problem Solving:
This highly-interactive, fun, and fast-paced session provides a framework for understanding and applying tools to meet real business needs. You will walk away from this session with increased confidence to generate creative ideas, techniques to recognize/replace unproductive thinking
patterns, and a methodology to foster creative potential and innovation.
Driving Strategy at Any Level:
In this program, you will learn to design a plan your team can implement, to create a vision that directs your time and resources, and to decide your priorities. Moving to implementation, you will also learn tools to transform you and your organization, to work past procrastination and stay
focused on what’s important, and to build assessments to gauge where there is still room for improvement.
Finance for Non-Financial Professionals:
In this one-day program, you will develop an understanding of 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.
Foundations of Operations Management (Not offered Fall 2022):
Strong operations management includes strategy, planning, implementation, supervision, and continuous improvement. Therefore, these aspects of operational management effectively become key elements for ensuring your company manages and improves its profitability. This program will
introduce the key elements of operations along with 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.
Metrics that Matter:
This interactive program will begin by laying out key aspects of operational and financial performance and how they relate to one another. We will then focus on key areas such as the impact of bad metrics, the difference between metrics and measures, leading and lagging metrics, aligning metrics with business performance, and designing metrics that can be understood and managed.
The Business of Employee Engagement:
Employees are engaged when they have measurable goals, constructive and relevant feedback, relevant training and professional development, and are connected to the mission of the organization. This program provides key resources and tools for leaders to create an environment that supports employee engagement, connects employees to the mission, and communicates their department’s impact on the bottom line through successful employee development and retention.
Audience
Professionals at any level who want to increase their business acumen.