Business Acumen Gauge Assessment
The Business Acumen Gauge by Quad Assessment is based on breakthrough research designed to define the business acumen capabilities most relevant to your role in an organisation, measure your performance against the capability framework, and improve your behaviours with immediate, tactical and commercial outcomes.
65% of executives believe that a lack of Business Acumen is limiting their organisation’s ability to execute strategy (The Economist Intelligence Unit).
You’ve probably heard the term business acumen thrown around at some point during your career, but did you know there’s no universal agreement on what makes up business acumen?
Business Acumen Gauge Assessment
The Business Acumen Gauge by Quad Assessment is based on breakthrough research designed to define the business acumen capabilities most relevant to your role in an organisation, measure your performance against the capability framework, and improve your behaviours with immediate, tactical and commercial outcomes.
It’s not a ‘one size fits all’ diagnostic tool and is very different to generic assessment tools. It looks at the specific role you’re in, what others (managers, senior leaders, colleagues) want from that role, and then how you operate within that role.
The importance of each capability is defined by your organisation’s senior leaders. This is a critical catalyst for role clarity discussion as it provides a window into misalignment between what you believe is important in your role and what your direct managers believe. We then look at the degree to which you demonstrate commercially relevant behaviour and hone in on the tactical changes that will increase your effectiveness in your role.
How We Deliver
- A complete rating of the importance of each capability to your organisation and role as evaluated by key stakeholders against your own understanding
- A subsequent 360 degree feedback process allows you to measure the frequency with which associated behaviours are demonstrated by you within that context
- Results are presented in a full colour, print and digital 35 page report for your review
- A certified ACE Executive Coach will debrief your results one-on-one to provide insights and recommendations for actions
- Optional ongoing coaching to ensure you can take those results and make them immediately valuable for your business and your own career development as a leader.
Outcomes of ACE’s BAG Assessment
About ACE’s BAG Assessment
- Role clarity discussion provides a window into misalignment between which of the capabilities you believe is important in your role and what your direct managers believe
- A snapshot where you are spending your energy versus where it is considered important to spend your energy – are you performing your role in alignment with the expectations of other stakeholders
- Identify what behaviours you need to adopt to improve your Business Acumen in each of the eleven capabilities – a clear picture of what you need to do differently
Based on extensive research into leadership capability and success, Quad Assessment defines business acumen as the capability to both know and demonstrate the key attributes of your role that allow you to succeed in running your business. They also identified eleven capabilities as being fundamental to leadership and organisational success:
- Mindset – mental attitudes or predispositions which determine their responses to and interpretations of situations.
- Foresight – ability to step back to get a total picture of the business and envisage its future.
- Broad scanning – acquiring and using information about trends, events, possibilities and relationships in the external environment.
- Strategic alignment – creating, setting and executing strategic direction designed to improve business performance.
- Collaborative – working with others to achieve common objectives.
- Resource management – optimally rationing resources – materials, people, time and finance.
- Systems and process – efficiently identifying, developing and using management information systems and technology.
- Decision making – making sound choices from among the available options, then identifying necessary actions and sharing these insights with others.
- Talent development – assessing and developing key talent to meet business needs.
- Duty of care – taking responsibility for present and future well-being of staff and the organisation – economic, social and environmental.
- Financial literacy – understanding, interpreting and applying financial data.