Bewitched, Bothered and Befuddled By Financial Data?

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Money, Money Everywhere, ‘cept I Don’t Understand It

Competency: financial leadership

Who benefits: non-financial managers, supervisors, and management wannabe’s

Consultant Usage: consultants wanting to improve their understanding of financial management.

What’s it about? Every once in a while I feel obliged to address one of my most obvious shortcomings.  I don’t know diddly or squat, whichever is the lesser, about money.  Well, I do a fairly decent job of spending it, but other than that, nada.  If I were in an organization and seeking a career advancement, I would be in possession of the “Kiss of Death”.  Knowing about money is no longer a career option. 
 
So in honor of my deficiency and to boost your career opportunities, I bring you my semi-annual post on the intersection of Money and Organizations.  My job is made easier by a quartet of items just bundled up by Harvard Business Review. 

Financial Intelligence: A Manager’s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean: The authors  explain not only the essentials of finance in a way that everyone can understand and put to work right away, but also where the numbers come from.

Guide to Finance Basics for Managers: This guide provides the fundamentals of financial literacy, offering tips on reading and deciphering financial statements, preparing a breakeven analysis, and how to speak the language of ROI.

Finance Essentials for Managers (CD-ROM): This interactive program, designed for the nonfinancial manager, includes three modules: Budgeting, Finance Essentials, and Preparing a Business Plan. Each module includes tips, a self-test, tools, and interactive exercises to help you practice and apply what you’ve learned.

Ahead of the Curve: A Commonsense Guide to Forecasting Business and Market Cycles: A Wall Street veteran unveils a new forecasting approach that will enable managers to anticipate turning points in business cycles up to 18 months in advance. Ellis explains critical economic indicators in non-technical language, identifies and documents the recurring cause-and-effect relationships that predict turning points in the economy, and provides the tools managers and investors need to position themselves ahead of upturns and downturns

So there you have it - all you non-financial types need to know about money, present and future.

Catch you later.

PS:  Last week I reviewed Collaborate: The Art of We about collaborative business practices. Reader Dan Heck replied with a question and a suggestion worthy of consideration by anyone interested in organizational cooperation:

“Are you familiar with the work of Robert Briggs at San Diego State? He is considered by many to be the father of the 20 year old field of collaboration engineering. http://sdsu.academia.edu/RobertBriggs  – the very techy side of repeatable processes requiring collaborative efforts.”

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.