Kent Blumberg

How well do you understand your business?

My friend Mike Schaffner is running a series on how well IT folks understand the business in which they work.  I think the questions are good ones for anyone trying to lead all or part of a business.  Here are Mike's first ten questions, dealing with general business understanding.  See how well you do on these.  And see Mike's blog for further instalments in the series.

The first ten questions

1. Can you read and understand financial statements?
2. Can you calculate a discounted cash flow or internal rate of return?
3. What are liquidated damages?
4. Do you know what the following terms mean and do you understand them? - DSO, EBITDA, ROI
5. Do you know the difference between cross-selling and up-selling and value-selling?
6. What does it mean when we say the dollar is "weak" or "strong" ?
7. What is a matrix organization?
8. What is the basic difference between Chapter 7 and 13?
9. What is a Proxy statement?
10. What is the difference between a Put and a Call?

 

Now is the time to watch your cash flow closely

Just a quick note in the middle of a busy week (I doubled my clients this week!).  Richard Calderwood writes a timely reminder to small and medium enterprises that now - as house prices begin to slide and the possibility of recession increases - is the time to watch cash flow carefully.  In particular, be very careful about extending credit.  You might not get paid!  Have a look at what Richard has to say.

Questions for Leaders at the end of the First Quarter

The first quarter of 2007 ends this week.  Business leaders at all levels will spend the next few days or weeks collecting financial results and reporting on them.

Will all those reports help you manage your business?  Hopefully they will be of some help.  They might not be enough, though.  Here are some additional questions you might want to ask yourself in order to help you turbo charge the second quarter.  As you work through these questions, you will want to revise your "100 day plan" accordingly.

15 Essential Leadership Tools

Lifehacker led me this week to an MSN Real Estate article listing The 15 tools every homeowner should own (by Jay MacDonald of Bankrate.com).  And that, in turn, got me thinking about the 15 tools every leader should own.

I tried first to find a leadership analog to every tool on MacDonald's list.  That, though, was a bit forced and led to some unfortunate visuals that I decided were best avoided.  Next, I struggled with getting my list down to only 15.  I solved that with a bit of creative grouping.

Just as MacDonald's readers amended the list with essential tools of their own, I'd love to hear what tools you think should be added to my list.  You might also want to check out this slightly different take on key leadership skills.

Business budgets

Monday I laid out my views on business strategic planning.  Today I will discuss how I see the budgeting process.  As with Monday's topic, I cannot claim to be a scholar of budgets.  However, I've been part of budget planning at levels from the operating floor to the executive suite, and have some opinions about what works and what doesn't.  Here they are.  Let me know what you think!

Financial Intelligence

What is your Financial Intelligence Quotient?  Every non-financial manager needs to understand the numbers generated by the accounting department, be aware of the assumptions and estimates accountants are making, and know how to use those numbers to improve the business.