The mid-career professional's free coaching guide - Part 7 of 10

August 2, 2023

Number Cracker: Why You Need to Master Business Numeracy in 2023

Are you a seasoned professional or just starting out, who has never had a formal Performance Coach? My goal with this 10-part series is to help you develop the skills you need to succeed in your career and personal life. #professional development.

It goes out as a gift from me especially for all my MBA and Media students over 250 of them, in enviable jobs and roles in the consulting, corporate and media world as well as start-ups, many of whom said "Mam, when will we earn enough to be coached by you?". These are 10 #coaching lessons I have put together that enabled my very successful and fast-tracked corporate career, that I was lucky to figure out early enough.

These tips and techniques can surely help you, if time or money got in the way, but you are an #inspired self-starter. In this post, we’ll explore the benefits of mastering numbers and the ability to measure everything performance related is vital to getting ahead in the leadership landscape.

If no one told you and you have been working for 7+ years and not figured, a balanced understanding of #Numbers is key to stepping onto the #leadership journey. Numbers are everywhere - from company results to financials to quality and reporting metrics to talent. Numbers tell you the story of your business, your performance, your opportunities, and your challenges. Numbers help you make better decisions, communicate more effectively, and achieve your goals. How confident are you to interpret, analyse, and present data in a clear and compelling way? Do you know how to use numbers to support your arguments, persuade your stakeholders, and influence your outcomes?

Opportunities to build number supremacy:

·??????All managers or department heads have monthly and quarterly reports to submit. Be it a marketing department or finance or talent or quality, MIS?reports are the fastest way to get acquainted with numbers. Offer to help your team mates or manager on their weekly or monthly report outs and there is no faster way to learn than being hands on. Since there is low tolerance for errors, opt to first observe then meddle around with reporting formats and formulas.

·??????If you are a parent or have younger siblings who are still in school and college, pick up their statistics books and go through the basics or solve the maths worksheets they are assigned for homework (take photocopies, of course). You will be surprised at how as an adult you can rekindle your love for basic maths as used at work, even if you hated the maths taught in school.

Quick actions (and once you have done at least one of these, tag me or drop me a comment to share how it went):

1.????Take a course to build your financial acumen. I recall doing a Business and Finance Certification as part of Cornell University’s Leadership certification when online courses were still not as popular. It taught a non -finance professional like me to read balance sheets and make valuable comments on company strategy and plans. Now all the big universities and number of new-age online professional development companies like Talent edge, Udemy, Coursera and Upgrad offer free and paid courses in specialized metrics for talent, finance, recruitment, quality , sales and every specialization you can think of. GO sign up!

2.????If you volunteer at an NGO or any place else, offer to do a pitch for them that tells their story in numbers, or raise funds and prepare an annal budget for them, to build and practice your number skills in a safe environment. Your help will also be an asset to them, as most can’t hire accountants, marketing and sales, and HR and Quality professionals.

3.????Pick up old annual reports or monthly metric reports or excel files in your team or organization and splice and dice data to understand and make sense of it. Try to present it in your own way with an imaginary audience or if peers and team mates will give you a willing ear.

Where to start: Still figuring where to get your number fix, here's a book recommendation: The Economist Numbers Guide: The Essentials of Business Numeracy by Richard Stutely.

If you found this post useful and got to the end of it, drop me your favorite emoji or a comment. #Follow for the next part of the series.