What is FI?

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Financial Intelligence

Competencies: self-development, financial leadership, entrepreneurial leadership

Who benefits: career oriented employees, supervisors and managers, all executives; HR professionals, IT professionals, entrepreneurs

Consultant Usage: important background information for organizational consultants, executive coaches

What’s it about? This site supports financial leadership and entrepreneurial leadership as organizational competencies.  Unfortunately we only occasionally provide insight into these competencies, so today I will devote this posting to FI, Financial Intelligence. 

One of the leading commercial firms promoting financial literacy is the Business Literacy Institute.  Their credentials include having their books published by Harvard Business Press and having a Blog on Harvard Business Review Online. 

On their website they define financial intelligence as “…focuses everyone on how to contribute to the company’s financial success (and) it also helps people feel more involved and committed to their organization and their work. Financially intelligent managers are able to read financial results, analyze business decisions, and identify the artful aspects of finance.”

What these folks have also done is write a general book on the topic of FI and then rewritten the book several times to make it specific to specialty groups.

So if you are not in one of the specialty areas, you would likely prefer the core book Financial Intelligence: A Manager’s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean.

I came up the HR ranks and really wish this book had been available when I was just starting out: Financial Intelligence for HR Professionals: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers.

Also available is Financial Intelligence for IT Professionals: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers.

And finally, for those of you considering going entrepreneurial (or are entrepreneurs) there is Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers.

As you read today’s posting it is hard to hide that I don’t have my (hopefully) usual enthusiasm for the topic.  It’s not my favorite topic.  For many of you, it’s probably not yours either.  But there comes a time in self-development when we all need to honestly sort out what we “need” as opposed to what we “want”.  If you are not at the end of your career, and have the “need”, then getting FI smart is probably a worthy investment in yourself.

Catch you later.

[tags]financial intelligence, business literacy, financial leadership, entrepreneurial leadership, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

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.