Do You Have What It Takes To Make Money?

If you’re in business, it’s typically about making money and you and your colleagues need to be at your best to beat the competition and make a lot of money. However, you often wonder why even the best thought and well-communicated plans still don’t get executed the way they were intended. Truth be told it’s because you’re not aligned in your mind with what your CEO and senior management team want you to do. In fact, they could even claim that you don’t have what it takes to make money! The good news is that this can be trained but the bad news is, of course, that you can’t just switch it on tomorrow. In our new Business Acumen series, James O’Brien and I are taking you through all sub-components needed to increase your Business Acumen. The first one is a mindset for doing business. Before we dig into it let’s just be clear and define what a mindset is.

“a mindset is a set of assumptions, methods, or notations held by one or more people”

So, when we claim you’re not aligned with the management team you’re either applying different assumptions than they are, using wrong methods or simply just interpreting things differently from what they do.

Here’s how to focus your efforts towards making money

It’s important that you’re in sync with your management team so that you execute the business plan the way it was intended. To do that you focus on developing a mindset for doing business. The Business Acumen Gauge defines the following mindset attributes that need your attention.

• Reflective Mindset – shows that you have both learned from the past and have the learning agility for the future
• Analytical Mindset – gather relevant data, both quantitative and qualitative, and then make sense of it through evaluation, and finally draw accurate conclusions from it
• Creative Mindset – when solving problems, you think creatively – using many techniques for new ways to approach problems
• Collaborative Mindset – appreciate the value of working collaboratively and draw upon the skills and insights of colleagues to solve problems and implement solutions
• Change Mindset – takes responsibility for initiating and leading change
• Resilient Mindset – maintains agility and perseverance to get the job done
• Action Mindset – have an orientation towards getting things done efficiently and effectively

Often a mindset is thought of as something quite loose although not without significant impact. It’s like Anders described in his article “Do You Have A Finance Business Partner Mindset?” yet here it’s made even more concrete and tangible which makes it possible to actively develop it instead of just quickly trying to change a specific behavior. Knowing that you need to be sharp in all these areas you can now also start to question why and how you’re not in sync with the management team with questions like.

• Do we repeat past mistakes?
• Do we use data for our decision-making or base it on gut feelings?
• Do we always use conventional wisdom for solving our problems?
• Do different departments work in silos or is there a lot of cross-functional collaboration?
• Do we lead and embrace change or do we resist it?
• Do we give up too easily when a decision doesn’t work out immediately?
• Do we make decisions and get things done or do we spend too long discussing the issue?

If you don’t have a positive answer to all these questions you need to ensure to get aligned with the management team and maybe have a talk with your direct leader about how to ensure this alignment. If needed you should also get training in Business Acumen to better understand what the management team actually wants from you. Otherwise, the risk of you failing is much higher than it needs to be.

The power of a collective mindset

If everyone in your company shares the same mindset things start to get powerful for you and your company culture will then be supporting every initiative that is rolled out. One could argue that the risk is that everyone thinks the same and opportunities are missed out on, however, if you revisit the seven different mindset attributes you will quickly realize that they force you to look at many different possibilities and through discussion agree on what is the best course of action. This way of doing business might not be for everyone and it’s like “The GE Way that isn’t for everyone” but for doing business the way your management team wants you to do business this is the way to go. The alternative is an ugly one where you question every decision they make, resist it and fail to execute it. Your company will surely lose money as no company or even just a single department can run effectively like this. That’s also why having the right mindset for doing business is a prerequisite for all development of Business Acumen that you need to go through. Get the mindset right from the start and all subsequent training efforts will be so much more effective and if you don’t have it already you will learn what it really takes to make money.

This was the second article in the Business Acumen series where James represents the CXOs wanting their teams to better understand how the company makes money and Anders represents the professionals working in support functions needing to increase their Business Acumen. Essentially adopting a growth mindset is a pre-requisite for increasing your Business Acumen. You can find a link to the first article below.

Do You Know How Your Company Makes Money?

Finance People - Adopt A Growth Mindset Or Die

Anders also encourages you to take a tour of his old posts on finance transformation and not least “Introducing The Finance Transformation Nine Box” which is really the starting point for the transformation. Last but not least, you should join the Finance Business Partner Forum where we will continue to discuss this topic.

The CFOs Roadmap To Transforming Finance

How Finance People Can Be More Successful

The New Career Path For Finance Professionals

What Defines A Finance Master?

Financial Analyst vs. Finance Business Partner

You’re A Finance Business Partner, Now What?

How Finance Business Partners Improve Company Performance

There Is A New Kind Of CFO Needed In Town

Anders Liu-Lindberg is the Global Finance PMO for Maersk Transport & Logistics where my main goal is to create a world-class finance function! Formerly I’ve been a Senior Finance Business Partner for Maersk Line Europe Region and is working with the transformation of Finance and business on a daily basis. I have participated in several transformation processes amongst others helping Maersk Drilling to go Beyond Budgeting and transformed a finance team from Bean-counters to Business Partners. I would love the chance to collaborate with you on your own transformation processes to help you stay out of disruption. Don’t be shy! Let’s get in touch and start helping each other.