November 22, 2021

Improving Commercial Awareness

The below post has been transcribed from a recent video that I recorded for LinkedIn.

I had a conversation with somebody recently about career progression, and I was asked for any advice that I might give to somebody who's looking to take a step up in their role or move to the next step in their career. It made me start to think about all of the different ways that you could answer a question like that - for example you could talk about specialising in a specific area, or improving a soft skill such as communication.

However, one thing I think is going to be applicable to everyone is improving your commercial awareness. Now this is quite a broad topic, so I won't touch on everything in this post. I might put together some follow up posts to this and speak a little bit more about this in the future, but one thing I'd recommend to anyone who's looking to set up step up is just to really brush up in this area.

I'm not saying that you need to become a finance whiz or that you need to be great with numbers. What I am saying is you need to have a good appreciation for how the business that you're in operates. The best way to start with that is to speak to the people that know the most about it and your business.

What I recommend to people usually is first and foremost to sit with somebody for an hour or so that that can give you a bit more insight into how the business operates - the kind of metrics that they look at. Ask them what success looks like for them.

Typically I recommend having this kind of conversation with someone from either finance or your senior leadership team. They're the most likely people to be able to give you insight into this. Once you've identified the best person to speak to, you'll want to put together a list of questions to make sure you get the most out of the session. The kind of things I'd be asking are:

  • What kind of metrics do you report on each month?
  • How do you report on those metrics?
  • Do you use specific tools to report on those metrics? Are they stored in a specific place?

Whilst there may be many metrics that people track across the business, you'll probably find that a lot of them feed back into the bottom line (e.g. revenue/gross or net profit). Once you understand the metrics that are being tracked, you can then start to work out how you're able to contribute to them in your role.

Basically, getting this type information from finance and from senior management really helps you to get a sense of what you're doing from a commercial perspective and understand how you can have an impact on the growth of the business that you're in, which is ultimately what you're going to be there for.

Something that this also allows you to do is have those higher level conversations with senior management, because you're going to be able to track back what you're doing to overall business goals. When you're able to clearly articulate the impact that your work is having on overall business goals, you're on to a winner.

Being able to communicate exactly how you're helping to push towards overall goals to senior leaders is going to make a big difference to both their overall perception of you and the seniority that you project.

So, start having those conversations with finance and senior leadership - understand the wider picture of the business and how you fit into that, and I guarantee you'll start to see the impact that has on your progression.

© 2024 Alex Wright
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