Business Acumen:
Integrating business expertise, leadership skills and management processes

Can business acumen-the insight and confidence to quickly size up a business situation, generate alternative courses of action and implement a successful solution -- be taught? The University of Michigan Ross School of Business has long been a leader in teaching this essential leadership skill set through its management development training and executive education programs.

Michigan Executive Education offers a comprehensive management development program to accelerate the growth of key executives and prepare them for leadership positions. Business Acumen for High-Potential Leaders offers a unique opportunity to acquire the business acumen skill set and gain an enterprise-wide perspective on the competitive challenges of today's business environment.

High-potential leaders have already displayed an aptitude for business, but their business knowledge may be incomplete or lacking the connections across functions. They have successfully demonstrated leadership qualities, but have not yet developed the management skills to lead a larger, more diverse operation. And they have participated in planning activities, but not as the visionary leader who is expected to guide the future direction of the firm.

So how can promising executives fill in their capabilities gaps and "put it all together" to develop the business acumen they need to advance to higher levels of leadership?

Learning and leveraging the Michigan Business Acumen model

Michigan has developed a proprietary business acumen model that explains how companies create value in the marketplace -- a comprehensive way of exploring business opportunities in the context of both external and internal environments and needs. The model integrates Business Expertise, Leadership Skills and Management Processes to help executives develop and apply their business acumen to a wide variety of business challenges.

• Business Expertise consists of the foundational management knowledge and critical thinking skills, focused on leveraging the key value drivers and strategies that boost competitiveness.

• Leadership Skills include assessment and development of the personal leadership competencies and values to lead a high performance, innovation-focused organization.

Management Processes are the business process tools and information systems that support the execution of strategies and operating plans to achieve business unit and corporate goals.

Leveraging specific components from the three skill sets, the Michigan business acumen model can be applied to a wide range of business issues and opportunities. For example, a sales management challenge might combine competitor insights from Business Expertise with motivational abilities from Leadership Skills and a performance measurement tool from Management Processes to create a focused, results-driven solution. As managers apply the business acumen model throughout their enterprise, they are better able to evaluate, develop and manage business opportunities to achieve sustainable growth and improve shareholder value.