Business Acumen, the Importance of (Article)

Business Acumen, the Importance of (Article)
Having Business Acumen is a combination of having acquired valuable business knowledge and how-how. Business Acumen may have been modeled or learned from others throughout your career. People with Business Acumen understand the inner workings of the business where they are employed. This page is still up to date 1-16-2021.

Contact: Please call or text Nereda Haque, PMP for all information on training at 360-584-8614 or email her.

People with Business Acumen know intuitively how to problem solve, how to lead, how to collaborate and facilitate, and how to make decisions, and what they need to know in order to make both good decisions and timely decisions. They know what drives value. They know how the organization stays sustainable.

If you are aware of what’s happening all around you, and start modeling those who are successful, and you are willing to acquire new knowledge and skills, you can also acquire business acumen. An as a project manager with business acumen, you demonstrate real urgency, to produce the project deliverables that relevant stakeholders have identified that will provide the needed and anticipated benefits, and you know the importance of maximizing stakeholder benefits’ realization by aligning your projects to the organization’s goals and objectives.

Many in the organization look up to you, and you know that the organization depends on you and others just like you. You are staying current in your field and you are astutely aware of the ever changing impacts on your projects’ environment, including global, organizational, market, environmental compliance, and technical changes that may impact your project.

It is our belief that project managers and business professionals like this are rarely unemployed, and if they are, it’s not for long.

Take a PMP® Certification with Exam Prep class or the PMI-PBA® class to learn more about requirements’ management, or PMI-ACP® training for all industry best practices for agile methods, roles and responsibilities of Agile professionals. If you have managed project managers as a program manager and or program director, in order to eliminate redundancy in project activities, with alignment of all projects under the program to the organization's strategic goals and objectives, as well as you have a history of managing projects, then you should consider Program management certification (PgMP credential).

You can also become qualified to examine processes for process improvement by turning data into decision making statistical tables and graphs by starting off with Six Sigma Yellow Belt or by acquiring your Six Sigma Greenbelt. These skills require strong statistical Six Sigma math, so you should also know algebra well. See more about Six Sigma training for your organization.

Organizations who have employees focused on professional scheduling would highly benefit from training their employees with this important skill by providing training in PMI Scheduling Professional Certification, whether they plan to take the exam or not.

See Career Path for Consultants. Determining to acquire knowledge is your first step in acquiring business acumen. You can gather both tacit knowledge (knowledge that can only be shared because of experience) and explicit knowledge through expert instructors with lots of experience. They will be able to answer your questions. Then modeling those who are successful is your second step. In today’s world, many project managers find that they are being used in their organizations for different kinds of projects – for IT Development Projects (Agile - PMI-ACP Certification) as well as traditional projects and they are also involved with project identification requiring a Senior Business Analyst role (PMI-PBA Certification), or they may be involved in just traditional and Senior Business Analyst role, etc. If your company is looking to improve their processes based on statistical information that you can provide, then Six Sigma may be an added credential that you might want. Certification is everything because it assures your organization that your knowledge and experience is current. Determine your future so you can have a great chance of survival in the current job market.

Very Experienced Instructor: Mo Haque, MSEE, PMP, PMI-ACP, PMI-PBA, CMfgT, EDMP, PMI(R) Authorized Training Instructor. Verify all of Mo Haque's badges, including his PMI Instructor badge.