Seeing the Big Picture
Business Acumen to Build Your Credibility, Career, and Company
By: Kevin Cope
Published: March 6, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 176 pages
ISBN-10: 1608322467
ISBN-13: 978-1608322466
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
"Business acumen is keen, fundamental, street-smart insight into how your business operates and how it makes money and sustains profitable growth, now and in the future", writes successful executive, speaker, and founder of Acumen Learning, Kevin Cope, in his business building and very hands on book Seeing the Big Picture: Business Acumen to Build Your Credibility, Career, and Company. The author describes how to understand and apply the same five drivers - cash, profit, assets, growth, and people - that create the success or failure of any business.
Kevin Cope understands how recognizing these key factors, in the daily operations and decisions of the company, have an impact on the big picture for the organization. The author points out that regardless of industry or size of the business, the five key drivers remain the same. Kevin Cope describes how understanding this interrelationship between the drivers, the day to day operations, and the overall big picture, as having acumen. To delve more deeply into the five key drivers, the author provides the tools for understanding the numbers that underline the success or failure of the company. With the development of acumen, a business person at any point in their career, can influence the direction and strength of the entire organization.
Kevin Cope (photo left) provides evidence that business people want to be more effective and valuable to their companies. They want to make decisions, be consulted on ideas and direction, and to contribute to the organizational success. Kevin Cope shares the insights that business people want work that is both engaging and worthwhile. At the same time, they understand that to enhance both their own career and the success of the company, they must have a complete grasp of the five drivers of business success and failure.
To make a real difference, Kevin Cope offers the following competencies that business people must achieve, in order to have business acumen:
* Seeing the big picture of the organization
* Understanding company communications, data, and financial statements
* Using knowledge to make and influence good decisions
* Understanding how your decisions relate to the company's objectives
* Effectively communicate your ideas to employees, managers, and executives
For me, the power of the book is how Kevin Cope provides the insight of identifying the five key drivers of a company is critical to successful management, both on a daily basis and to the overall big picture. The relationship between individual decision making and big picture objectives of the organizations is often a challenge for many managers. Kevin Cope describes the ability to make the overall connection as having acumen. Being in possession of acumen creates a vast improvement in the ability to communicate ideas, influence organizational direction, and the development of strategy at all levels.
To ensure that the business person has the tools to achieve acumen, Kevin Cope provides very accessible and readily understood concepts of business finance. With the complete grasp of the numbers, and what they really mean, a manager or executive can see readily whether the company is on the road to success or to failure. A business person with acumen takes these numbers seriously, as they understand their crucial importance as the illustration of the five main drivers of success.
I highly recommend the very practical and personal outlook changing book Seeing the Big Picture: Business Acumen to Build Your Credibility, Career, and Company by Kevin Cope to any business people, at any level of the organization, or at any point in their career, who are seeking a concise course on the importance of the drivers of business success, and how to master them. This book will demonstrate the relationship between everyday decision making and its impact on the overall big picture goals of the organization.
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