Across industries and around the world, executives talk about transformation and the evolution of the future-ready organization. Buzzwords like digitization, telehealth, remote monitoring, and leadership abound. They are often so loud that they drown out what's truly needed to carry an organization into the future. It's as if executives are sending out signals for a revolution when in fact, as most of us know, change comes slowly. However, in the world of health care and healthcare management, there's a sense of urgency that cannot be ignored. The future is now, and a more proactive approach is needed in nursing professional development (NPD).
From another standpoint, in the business world, terms like agile and lean signal a call to action for the collection and analysis of data, testing, and learning. To achieve the level of agility needed to succeed in NPD, the following items are vital contributors to your leadership mindset:
1. understanding the pillars of business acumen and how they're applied to leadership;
2. connecting the core tenets of business acumen to what is needed to influence through encouragement, guidance, and professional development; and
3. leveraging business acumen to adapt to changing conditions (regulations, insurance reimbursement policies, healthcare processes, and patient care).
Although some might interpret these items as hindrances to NPD practice, others embrace the potential for leadership excellence. This desire for excellence is where the mastery of business acumen comes into play and allows you to understand how adopting the core principles of business acumen can help you evolve as an influential leader. In this article, I describe how the cultivation of business acumen contributes to creating future-ready NPD departments that can operate in an increasingly competitive world.
WHAT IS BUSINESS ACUMEN?
Business acumen is a portfolio of skills, behaviors, and capabilities needed to support an organization in achieving its financial and strategic goals. Leaders in health care must cultivate their business acumen as well as their domain (professional) expertise. I've developed a self-assessment you can use to characterize your personal levels of business acumen, and you can associate these with your level of professional expertise. You can find the self-assessment at this link: https://assessment.business-acumen.com/s3/assessment.
NPD practitioners need to understand the big picture of business and how various dimensions of the organization operate and interoperate. They also must be able to consider a host of business dimensions as they collaborate, solve problems, and make decisions. This mindset is vital as NPD practitioners coach, guide, and mentor those with whom they work.
Often NPD practitioners function from the vantage point of their department's functions-not to improve cross-organizational effectiveness. The "business of the organization" isn't being infused into the minds of people who help the organization achieve its strategic goals. This goal achievement often rests in the hands of those in executive roles and creates unproductive organizational friction. From my standpoint, a more granular approach is needed that considers "what" to develop, and there's the "how." Let's talk about the "what" first, using a visual model I created called the "Business Acumen Canvas" shown in Figure 1 (Haines, 2019). Although the canvas has 23 dimensions, I'll summarize the three key dimensions to develop business acumen. You can download a copy of the canvas or watch a video where I explain it in detail at https://business-acumen.com/business-acumen-skills-canvas/.
The three dimensions, noted by the arrows to the left of the canvas, are an external orientation, a person's mindset, and core capabilities that represent both soft and hard skills.
External orientation, the outermost layer of the canvas, is the starting point. The very survival of any organization is based on a thorough understanding of what's going on outside its four walls. In health care, an external orientation requires an understanding of the patients served as well as providers, payers, and suppliers. In addition, the competitive climate cannot be ignored because patients can choose healthcare providers.
Moving inward from the external orientation layer is the mindset layer. Our mindset provides the lenses through which we view and interpret the world and goings-on in our organization. One aspect of mindset is strategic thinking, one of the most desirable leadership competencies. When we think critically, logically, and strategically, we add value to the organization by supporting its strategic goals. But the real glue in all of this is to achieve self-empowerment as we build political capital and develop the ability to finesse the culture to get things done, all while being a capable facilitator and guide along the way.
This finesse is found in the innermost layer of the Business Acumen Canvas capability. This area of the model has eight key capabilities that must be developed to attain optimal business acumen. We'll focus on these capabilities in the next issue of the journal. In the meantime, reflect on your personal business acumen capabilities to identify areas needing improvement.
SUMMARY: WHY BUSINESS ACUMEN MATTERS
Working in the complex healthcare environment can be overwhelming for NPD practitioners as they try to figure out how to get an amorphous collection of urgent, important things done right, right away. Although NPD practitioners are typically expert clinicians, they often lack the business acumen to help them focus on the organization's mission and vision to influence its strategic goals (Harper &Maloney, 2022). As you can see, business acumen isn't one thing. It's multidimensional, dynamic, and knitted into the fabric of the organization. Stay tuned for the next column that focuses on the core of the Business Acumen Canvas and provides strategies for developing your personal capabilities.
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