Adding Finance To Your Range of Competencies

You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks — Especially If the Trick Is Finance

What do you need to know to teach an old dog new tricks?

Some people say — “More than the dog.”

Wrong!

“Tricks the dog doesn’t know,” is the answer.

The old dog may know many things you do not know — in other fields. But if you know just one thing he doesn’t, you have something to teach. He may be an astrophysicist, but he still needs to learn to understand finance. It’s not automatic.

Good Education Is Continuing Education

A university degree, if it is a good one, will mainly have taught you how to learn for yourself. You will have a particular emphasis and have picked up content as well as a way of thinking for a specific discipline. But specialist training rapidly ages as knowledge continues to evolve. And by the very fact of being specialized, there must be other areas left out.

So good education is continuing education. It’s a good idea to continue by adding financial intelligence to your other competencies — especially if you’re in business, or leading teams, or navigating a changing industry.

If Finance Is One of the Tricks You Haven’t Learned…

…then it’s a trick worth learning.

You may have been running your business successfully for many years — and you may have missed many opportunities to improve your profit over those same years if you do not understand the finance of business.

You may rely on your Financial Manager completely — and this may be your undoing. You need to be able to evaluate the figures you are being shown and to have the business acumen to leverage opportunities that lay hidden. Or new ones that arise.

Knowing the Jargon Doesn’t Always Mean Knowing What’s Being Said

If you work in the corporate world and you have learned to navigate the jargon, perhaps you are still not sure of what people are actually saying — or confident to express your own view.

To progress, you need to be able to show that you know and understand what you are saying. Knowing how business works lets you make informed decisions, and knowledgeable contributions to financial analysis and management discussions.

Final Thought

If you are new to finance, Finance for Non-Financial Managers is the place to start to find out about business, money and accounting.

If you have had some exposure, best to make sure you really understand what these things mean, before continuing your journey.

Adding finance to your range of competencies is far easier with a structured four days than with self-study. Finance training for managers and teams sets out the options, or ask John where to start.