Part one of Advantexe's Making You Indispensable blog series focused on the importance of business acumen. In part two of the series, we will focus on Business Leadership. Business leadership is defined as understanding how to execute your business strategy through people. Important capabilities of business leadership include setting goals, coaching, leading change, creating an environment of psychological safety, and resolving conflicts in an effective and positive manner that leads to success.

1) Set specific and realistic goals and objectives for your teams and projects

Great business leadership starts with setting specific goals and objectives. The mistake that too many leaders make is that the goals and objectives they set – assuming they actually are doing that – aren’t related to the strategy of the business and the expectations of the business, department, and team.

Goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based.

You may already know this, but it is always a great thing to take a moment and review everything including the goals for your top and not-so-top performers. Too many times they are outdated or worse yet, perceived differently by both parties. Take 15 minutes to do this at your next 1:1 with a direct report, the results will surprise you.

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Part One of Advantexe’s Making Yourself Indispensable Series

As we enter the second half of 2023, there is a noticeable difference in the domestic and global business ecosystems. A year ago, you probably heard of people being let go from their jobs. Today, you probably know someone directly. It’s been startling.

As we look at the economy, the foundational business indicators are in front of us:

• The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is slow and decreasing
• The jobless rate is still low, but the amount of new jobs added is decreasing and the number of layoffs is increasing
• Consumer spending is decreasing
• Capital expenditures of businesses looking to grow are decreasing
• Inflation isn’t going anyplace soon

Based on these data and the research that Advantexe does every day working with more than 60 global clients, we believe that it is safe to forecast the second half of 2023 is going to be challenging and the expectations of businesses in terms of the contributions and productivity of employees is going to go up. There is something you can do to make sure you can do to help... become indispensable to your organization. Indispensable means that your company, business unit, and team simply can’t live without you.

By becoming indispensable, you position yourself as a valuable asset the company cannot afford to lose. This not only enhances job security but also opens doors to numerous opportunities for growth and advancement. When you consistently demonstrate your expertise, reliability, and strong work ethic, you establish yourself as a trusted resource that colleagues and superiors can rely on.

While there are many skills and capabilities that can make you indispensable, we are providing this three-part blog series which focuses on the core and foundational capabilities of;Business Acumen, Business Leadership, and Strategic Business Selling. These three capabilities make up the majority of the skill sets organizations need to be successful and having them can put you on the path of becoming indispensable.

Part one of our three-part series on making yourself indispensable to your company focuses on the importance of building, at the very least, foundational Business Acumen skills. Business acumen definition - an understanding of how a company makes money, how your company makes money, how your customers make money, how your competitors make money, and executing a strategy to win in your chosen markets.

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Authors Note: This and all blogs that I share are 100% written by me and do not include any content generated by an AI search engine. In our blog posts, I try to share real-world practical insights that are based on the unique experiences and intellectual property of our organization.

I had a fascinating discussion with a session leader this week while interviewing him for a custom business leadership simulation. The business leadership simulation is going to help build advanced leadership capabilities and one of the competencies it focuses on is creating an environment of psychological safety. My question was fairly straightforward; “Will you share with me a story or an experience where you or another leader did a great job of creating a culture of psychological safety.”

The leader paused for a moment and asked if I wouldn’t be offended if he slightly changed the wording of my question to include “equitable psychological safety.” I thought for a moment, because over the past few years while we have all been learning about psychological safety we’ve been taught that it is an important foundation for creating and maintaining equity and inclusion on teams and within organizations. But I think this leader was saying something different so I asked him if equitable psychology safety is different from psychology safety that supports equity and inclusion.

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The first half of the year is over! The results are in the books and it’s time for many businesses to turn their attention to the second half of the year and beyond including initial planning for 2024.

Most people in the United States are going to relax, have a barbecue, do some binge-watching of some great shows on their favorite streaming service, and maybe do a little preparation for returning to work next week.

For your reading pleasure and to help the continuous process of building and strengthening thebusiness acumen skills of our more than 10,000 subscribers, Advantexe is pleased to share some business impacts of the holiday through the lens of business acumen. Much like we teach in our business simulation-centric learning programs, we present perspectives around the business levers that can be pulled and then share insights into the impacts of those levers. Be safe and enjoy!

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Something dramatic has happened to sales professionals around the world. Over the past six months, I have been working on several large global sales training engagements and I have noticed that a significant number of business-to-business sales professionals who once managed a portfolio of accounts and had the responsibility of growing those accounts through maintaining them and then looking for new opportunities have given up on new sales development.

I’ve been told by their managers and the sales professionals themselves that they simply are refusing to do new business development. What was once a hybrid of both farming and hunting has now evolved into an either/or role. Either you are a farmer and take orders from existing relationships, or you are a lone wolf hunter going after new business, bringing it on, and handing it off to a service team. The middle has gone away and in my opinion, that is a shame for everyone involved but most specifically the customer who can benefit from the experience and value that a true sales professional can add to an account.

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