When Executive Assistants and other Force Multipliers ask me how they can become a stronger strategic business partner to their Principal and leadership team, one of the first things we talk about is business acumen.
And no, it’s not just a buzzword for CEOs or MBAs. Developing business acumen is one of the most effective ways for Executive Business Partners, Executive Assistants, Force Multipliers, Chiefs of Staff, and other high-level generalists to set themselves apart, increase their impact, and provide major value to their stakeholders and organization.
So what exactly is business acumen and how do you build it if you don’t have a formal business background?
Let’s break it down.
What is Business Acumen?
Business acumen is the ability (combined with the necessary knowledge and instincts) to understand and interpret business situations, make informed decisions, and take effective actions that lead to favorable outcomes.
It’s not about memorizing jargon or reading balance sheets for fun. It’s about understanding how your company works, what drives results, and how to connect the dots between people, processes, and priorities to help your Executive and organization thrive.
Business acumen includes everything from financial literacy to strategic thinking, and it allows you to:
- Ask better, more powerful questions
- Anticipate what your Executive needs before they ask
- Participate confidently in high-level conversations
- Navigate ambiguity and complexity
- Lead up, lead across, and lead through influence
In short, business acumen is what turns a capable assistant into a true strategic business partner.
This definitely sounds like a valuable skill for Force Multipliers to increase their impact and lead up, doesn’t it?
Why Business Acumen is Essential for Executive Assistants and Force Multipliers
No matter your title, Executive Assistant, Chief of Staff, EA to the CEO, or Executive Business Partner, your job likely touches every corner of the company. When you build business acumen, you deepen your ability to:
- It increases your knowledge of your company and industry, how it makes money, who its customers are, where it fits in the market, and the role each team member plays, thus enabling you to be a more impactful strategic business partner.
- It enables you to ask better and more powerful questions to facilitate meaningful conversations that drive clarity, alignment, decisions, and results.
- It will help you feel more confident and empowered to participate in conversations and decisions across all teams and issues throughout the organization.
- It positions your for more access (to meetings, conversations, conferences, etc.), while also increasing your visibility for future projects and career opportunities.
- It will help you align your thinking with your leader, identify opportunities and gaps in the organization, and find creative solutions to challenges, making you a even more valuable executive business partner.
- It will give you new skills and experiences to use during your next compensation review, promotion, or career move.
Bottom line? Business acumen builds your confidence. When you understand what’s going on “under the hood” of the business, you stop feeling like a bystander and start showing up as a leader.
The 6 Key Elements of Business Acumen
If business acumen feels like a big concept, here’s how to break it down. These are the six elements to focus on as you grow your capability:
1. Financial Literacy
I’m not asking you to become an accountant or CFO here (unless you want to!), but it is important to understand how to read financial statements, sales dashboards, and/or KPIs. You need to know what stories the numbers are telling you and how to use that information to make help your Principal make decisions, or to make decisions on your own. By increasing your financial literacy, you will know what numbers are important to the business and what questions to ask to get the information you (and your Principal) need to make the best decisions for the company. Get started with books like Finance for Nonfinancial Managers or Financial Intelligence: A Manager’s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean.
2. Market Awareness & Industry Knowledge
Market awareness is all about understanding how your company fits into the national and global landscape. What do you know (or not know) about your industry? What is the size of the market? Who are your customers and clients and what do they want? What are your major lines of business and how do they compare to your top competitors? What are the biggest challenges in your industry (technology disruption, government regulations, shrinking demand, etc.)? How does your company fit into all of this?
3. Strategic Thinking
Strategic thinking is an individual’s capacity for thinking conceptually, imaginatively, systematically, and opportunistically with regard to the attainment of success in the future. You need to be able to think both in the macro and micro and apply that thinking to your Executive’s vision and goals. I’m also a big fan of the strategic pause, which enables Force Multipliers to stop just long enough to switch from “doing” mode to “strategic thinking” mode. You can learn more about how to start thinking more strategically here.
4. Decision-Making
For leaders, decisions are their products. This means that a big part of your role as strategic business partner is helping to provide the information, questions, strategic thinking, space, energy, and connections necessary for your Principal to make high quality decisions on a regular basis—and it’s just as important for you to be honing your decision-making skills. This means understanding how to navigate decision fatigue, learning how to ask powerful questions, knowing when to pause to gather more information, and knowing how and when to use your best judgement to forge ahead. The good news is that decision-making skills can be learned with intention and practice. Check out Thinking in Bets and How to Decide, both by Annie Duke, for advice on how to make better decisions.
5. Leadership & Influence
Simply put, leadership is influence. As Force Multipliers, you need to learn how to lead your peers and direct reports (if you have them), as well as lead up to your Principal. It’s a tall order, yet it’s an important one for building your business acumen. You may be called upon at any time to sit in for your Executive, lead a committee or leadership team meeting, or help share the vision for a new change initiative. Force Multipliers must be ready to lead and ready to follow. In fact, all great leaders should have that skill. Click here to learn more about core leadership principles.
6. Problem Solving
Increasing your problem-solving skills will coincide with, and be a culmination of, all of the other business acumen elements. Becoming a strong problem-solver means that you need to understand your industry and company, the financials, how to ask great questions, make decisions, and how to think strategically. Each of those pieces will help you be able to see issues from a fresh perspective, understand what information you need or who you need to help solve the problem, and be able to confidently share your solution with your Principal or team. Force Multipliers are great at this and already highly skilled at finding a solution to any challenge that comes their way. They know how to get creative, use their contacts, and navigate seemingly impossible situations to get things done.
How to Start Building Business Acumen Today
You don’t need anyone’s permission, a formal program, or a new title to start building your business acumen. Start from where you’re at and go (and grow!) from there.
- Study internal docs. Read board decks, OKRs, quarterly updates, company newsletters, and more. Highlight what you don’t understand and dive deeper into the topic with podcasts, books, ChatGPT, or one-to-one conversations.
- Ask questions. Curiosity is one of your most powerful tools. Don’t be afraid to say, “Help me understand how this connects to our broader goals.”
- Listen closely. Meetings, town halls, and 1:1s are full of business insight if you’re paying attention. Listen for context, challenges that keep coming up, and concerns or worries from team members, this is where there will be opportunities for you to learn and add value.
- Stay informed. The business and economy is a constantly changing landscape. Subscribe to newsletters and podcasts that will help you stay up to date on industry trends and economic impacts.
- Schedule time. Growth doesn’t happen by accident. You have to intentionally set aside time to read, learn, and meet with key stakeholders to continue increasing your knowledge.
- Practice and gain experience. Perhaps most important is setting aside time to put your knowledge into action. Seek opportunities to take on new projects or volunteer for responsibilities that push you outside your comfort zone. Practice using tools like SWOT analysis, financial models, KPI or OKR software, or decision-making frameworks to think through current company challenges.
By embracing a growth mindset and committing time and energy into building your business acumen, you’ll be leveling up in no time!
Here are few other books to check out if you want to continue to work on your business acumen:
- Seeing the Big Picture: Business Acumen to Build Your Credibility, Career, and Company by Kevin Cope
- What the CEO Wants You to Know: How Your Company Really Works by Ram Charan
- The CEO Only Does Three Things: Finding Your Focus in the C-Suite by Trey Taylor
- Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
- The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman
Which element of business acumen should you work on first? What specific action will you take? Name it and schedule it into your calendar today!
Want to work on building your business acumen? Consider joining The Force Multiplier Academy! The Force Multiplier Academy provides leadership training for right-hand partners. Through over 40 hours of on-demand course content, live group coaching calls, guided strategic exercises, and 25+ tools and resources you can implement immediately to get results, you’ll leave the Academy ready to increase the effectiveness of your Principal, impact the bottom line, land that promotion or next job, confidently navigate your career, and more. Click here to learn more.
