The First Step in Developing Better Business Acumen

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Leadership   Organizational Project Management  

Whenever we are told that we need to understand something, we immediately make a comparison between where our knowledge is, and where it needs to be. That’s just human nature, even when a topic comes up in a social context.

If we are uncertain whether we fully understand what’s being discussed, some of us will go quiet. Others will bluff their way through, trying to convey more confidence than we feel. And some will simply say that they don’t know enough, and seek to learn more from those who do.

For project managers, business acumen is frequently one of those topics. We know that we are expected to have a certain level of understanding of how our project contributes to the success of the organization. But how well we understand exactly what the expectations are—and how close we are to meeting them—varies greatly from one PM to the next, or even from one project to the next for the same PM. (Heck, even the level of understanding that a PM is expected to have varies significantly depending on the business area and the specific project.)

Where does that leave project managers? We want to succeed. We know that means achieving an appropriate level of business acumen. But many of us aren’t sure exactly what that level is, or how to achieve it.

There are a few best practices that we can employ.

You aren’t expected to know, you …

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