Experts Share Five Big Points to Unlocking Your Business Acumen

What’s the key to delivering project success? It’s a question with which all project professionals grapple.

Yes, it’s absolutely essential to have project management skills to deliver on project performance and meet the project objectives. You need to be able to deliver projects on time, keep your teams on track, and manage your project budgets. But delivering project success requires more. And, according to PMI’s latest Pulse of the Profession report, it also requires business acumen.

What is business acumen and how can project professionals develop it and leverage it for project success? This was the topic of a recent episode of Lenka Live. Lenka Pincot, Chief of Staff to the CEO for PMI and a member of the Agile Alliance Board of Directors, discussed the topic with experts Colleen Johnson, Dave Prior, Anu Smalley, and Zach Stone.

Watch the full episode here.

Here are the five big points to unlock business acumen our panel shared.

1. Understand business acumen

Lenka kicked off the discussion by introducing the concept of business acumen. She shared that business acumen, which is one element of PMI’s Talent Triangle, is often about understanding the business context around which decisions are made. The panelists provided their perspectives.

“Business acumen is the ability to be adaptable and flexible in whatever space you’re in.” - Colleen Johnson, CEO ProKanban

“It’s the language I use to make decisions. A holistic view of the business—understanding pricing model, market strategy, costs of delay, ROI. It’s more than technical feasibility. It’s understanding the market and the competitive environment; not just what the developers can code.” - Anu Smalley, Co-Founder and Partner, Team KatAnu

2. Know why it’s important

The conversation then turned to the importance of having business acumen as a project professional.

“Business acumen allows you to understand the system you’re in. It’s understanding how to frame your vision in a way that people can buy into. Understanding how to make good decisions.”- Zach Stone, Technology Optimization Lead, Elsevier

“Communicating delivery risk with data is no longer optional. With the speed of change in today’s business environments, leaders need early, objective signals to make smart decisions before small delays become costly setbacks. Business acumen today means knowing how to turn real-time data into action.” - Colleen Johnson, CEO ProKanban

“Business acumen gives you that ability to talk to C-suite in a way that matters to them.” - Lenka Pincot, Chief of Staff to the CEO for PMI and a member of the Agile Alliance Board of Directors

3. Know what you don’t know

Project professionals know a lot about their craft. But, as the panel pointed out, expanding your perspectives and seeking understanding of what you don’t necessarily consider part of your primary task is important as well. It helps you seek out the right support, so you can focus on the things that truly matter.

“Finance is not my jam. If I’m going to be good at what I do, I need people around me who can supplement where I have gaps. I’m not expert at everything.” - Dave Prior, Chief Experience Officer, The Agile Network

“It’s important to balance your own vulnerability. Understand your gaps while figuring out how to grow in the areas you need to grow in. Be as curious as you possibly can be. Don’t believe you know everything. Don’t ever stop learning. When you hear something, write it down and go figure it out.” - Anu Smalley, Co-Founder and Partner, Team KatAnu

4. Build a diverse network

As the panel pointed out, building a network of diverse perspectives can help you hone your business acumen and cultivate mentors who can support you along your career journey.

“The volunteer experience I had [with PMI] was more valuable than my MBA. I was able to travel around the world, to build a network of mentors who taught me all the soft skills.” - Dave Prior, Chief Experience Officer, The Agile Network

“At PMI internally, we are launching Communities of Practice for our own project professionals, product owners, business analysts and change managers; putting together people from different teams who are connected by topic, by their craft, where people can learn from each other and gain an understanding of the larger business environment.” - Lenka Pincot, Chief of Staff to the CEO for PMI and a member of the Agile Alliance Board of Directors

5. Never stop learning

To wrap up the discussion, the panel emphasized the importance of career-long learning in developing and sustaining business acumen, and, as a bonus, they shared some of their favorite books, pods, and authors with the project community.

Zach summed this big point up nicely:

Here are the books recommended by the experts:

• The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge
• CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest by Scott Keller, et al.
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu (negotiation and the art of reading a room)
• The Science of Organizational Change by Paul Gibbons
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• The Anatomy of Peace, The Arbinger Institute
• Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
• Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow, by Dominica DeGrandis

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Tags: Agile | Agility

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