In today’s highly volatile marketplace, the financial literacy and business acumen of your managers, sales professionals and employees are fundamental to bottom-line success. With a higher-level understanding of your organization’s financial and strategic drivers — and a keen appreciation for their own impact on those drivers — your employees can make more profitable decisions, influence revenue generation and take actions that support your organization’s strategies.

Why develop business acumen? Because it’s …

• A critical leadership competency for managers. Today’s managers are being challenged in unprecedented ways to get results. Increasingly, organizations are incorporating business acumen education into their leadership development curriculums to equip their managers with the knowledge and skills they need to make a bottom-line impact.
• An important alignment initiative for employees. Every day, the actions and decisions of employees affect the bottom line. With increased business acumen, they understand how departmental objectives and their own jobs fit into the big picture of financial and strategic goals. And that means higher levels of commitment, motivation and alignment.
• A competitive edge for sales professionals. To win new sales and secure long-term customer loyalty, sales executives must credibly and confidently offer products and services within the context of a customer’s financial and strategic objectives. The development of business acumen for sales professionals increases skill in using a consultative, customer-focused sales approach.

And the good news is … developing business acumen can be fast, fun and effective.

The world’s best companies know their financial and strategic performance is affected dramatically by the degree to which their employees act in concert with the organization’s vision, values and strategic initiatives. Studies reveal that highly engaged employees are more productive, more customer-focused, more accountable, more strategic and more likely to stay with the organization than their disengaged colleagues. And this engagement has proved to translate directly to a company’s key financial business metrics.

Sustaining employee engagement, therefore, is a verifiable strategic imperative.

One of the most powerful ways to engage employees is to help them understand the big picture of the organization—and where they fit into that picture. Paradigm Learning India offers a variety of ways to build this knowledge, drive two-way communications, develop trust in the organization’s leadership and vision, and increase the motivation and commitment of employees to contribute to success.

Today’s demanding business landscape is defined by relentless change and a rising tide of information, bringing new challenges to organizational leaders at all levels. Unfortunately, many leaders aren’t prepared to navigate the complexities.

Top organizations recognize the need for new approaches to leadership development. They’re using business simulations and other discovery learning experiences to help leaders become more confident in business acumen, financial literacy, team leadership, critical thinking skills, talent leadership, leadership accountability and change management.

Our leadership development programs — ready-made, tailored or fully customized — can be used:

• Within a leadership development curriculum
• At management/leadership events
• To support a major company initiative around leadership

Business games, simulations, Discovery Maps and customized games and simulations allow leaders to learn in a fast-paced, energizing and realistic environment where they can develop the higher knowledge and skills necessary to address the increasingly complex and critical nature of their roles.

In today’s world of competitive pressures, changing customer expectations and new technologies, organizations must continually innovate and find new ways of doing business. Change must occur quickly, flexibly and across boundaries.

Successful organizations engage and educate employees around their vision, goals, strategies and new initiatives. They communicate clearly, they heighten understanding and motivation, and they generate commitment to action. When there is true strategic alignment, employees clearly understand what is happening and why. They understand how changes affect their departments and their own jobs. And, most important, employees know what is expected so that they can embrace new ways of getting work done.

That takes more than memos and speeches. It takes approaches to communication and education that engage employees, promote collaboration and drive higher levels of initiative.

Paradigm Learning India helps clients communicate and execute on change initiatives with discovery learning experiences that educate, enlighten and energize employees throughout the organization.

Measuring project success is more complex than ever. Project teams must deliver high-quality results, on schedule and on budget, but often with fewer people, less time, less money and conflicting demands. Challenges such as aggressive deadlines, scope creep, communication breakdowns, and changing marketplace demands add even more pressure.

Project managers and their teams need a solid grasp of the basic tools and processes to plan, organize and manage their projects. At the same time, true project success requires them to think and act more strategically in order to align with the broader business objectives.

Business simulations and other discovery learning experiences are an excellent choice for organizations seeking to develop effective project leaders, educate project team members and build the overall confidence of key contributors in the organization.

Today’s top sales professionals do more than sell products — they’re trusted advisers who work in collaboration with customers to improve their businesses. They’re able to recognize unique business needs and offer meaningful, focused and business-savvy solutions.

With deeper business acumen and financial literacy, as well as a keen appreciation for their own organization’s sales, financial and strategic issues, salespeople and sales managers gain a decisive advantage by being able to:

• Engage in more meaningful, strategic customer discussions
• Gain higher-level access to buyers
• Make decisions in alignment with organizational strategy

Approaching a sales situation from a big-picture business perspective transforms the relationship between seller and buyer. The seller’s specialized knowledge and solutions become a strategic part of the buyer’s long-term success.

Paradigm Learning India offers several options for developing the competence and confidence of your sales professionals and their sales managers.

Even the best business strategies derail when organizations neglect to:

• Gain alignment within the leadership team
• Share the compelling reasons for new strategies and initiatives
• Communicate plans and expectations across the organization
• Generate conversation and discussion that results in commitment

Sure, sound strategies and processes are essential. But the successful execution of business strategy depends on:

• The leaders who conceive the strategy and champion it
• The employees who are tasked with execution
• The managers who bridge the gap between the executives and the front line by setting expectations and creating work environments where each employee can perform his or her role within the larger strategic scope

Paradigm Learning India takes a people-based approach to organizational strategy implementation. We create discovery learning programs that facilitate top-level alignment, foster understanding of the new realities of organizational change, and support crystal-clear messaging of goals and strategies.

Today’s leaders at all levels are responsible for attracting, retaining and cultivating talent. Talent leadership encompasses hiring, on-boarding, developing, managing, challenging, promoting, motivating and more. It ultimately ensures the right employees are in the right jobs with the requisite skills and motivation.

Human resources departments can provide processes and resources, but individual managers are today’s true talent leaders, responsible for:

• Attracting employees
• Retaining employees
• Transitioning employees

With the cost of employee turnover averaging as much as twice the employee’s annual salary, every personnel decision has bottom-line consequences. Often, success depends on changing the way managers think and act — and that typically means acquiring new knowledge and skills. Leading organizations consider talent management a crucial component of their training and development curriculum. It’s essential to the bottom line.

Creating a team is one thing … creating teamwork is another. Here’s the simple truth: Teams only work when there is true teamwork. And that means team members must possess the motivation and the skills to work collaboratively and cooperatively.

Teamwork is about being united around a common cause, motivated to work together toward success and supportive of one another in ways that promote trust and reliability. Whether teams are formal or informal, intra- or inter-departmental, organizations rely on teamwork to drive the success of projects, strategies and major initiatives.

When people work effectively in their department teams, project teams or cross-functional teams, the results can be powerful. True teamwork creates flexibility, synergy, customer focus, and innovative results.

Paradigm Learning India’s business games, simulations and Discovery Maps® are powerful learning programs that use proven discovery learning methodology to educate and energize learners around high-performance teams and teamwork.