We all have financial commitments that frame our personal lives, yet when it comes to the world of work many people become uncomfortable with the subject. That’s why…
We developed our Financial Awareness course to help people understand the key drivers underpinning trading performance and financial health.
Our financial course has been designed with the needs of the non-finance leaders in mind. Those people who need to be more confident in using financial information to assess performance, focus priorities and locate issues that require attention.
Financial Awareness Modules
Financial Awareness consists of six modules providing insight into financial management and how it can be used to improve the performance of your business.
Making Sense of Financial Information
You can’t lead without understanding the financial performance of your business. Don’t be afraid, they’re only a set of figures that reflect the trading and financial health. This module is a gentle introduction to:
- The 3 key financial statements
- How these can help you assess your trading performance
- The terminology used in describing financial performance
Assets & Liabilities
The Balance Sheet is one of the most widely reviewed of the 3 financial statements, particularly by investors, suppliers and customers. So what information are they extracting? In this module we’ll help you to:
- Know what to look for in a balance sheet
- Understand what it all means in the context of trading
- Assess what actions you can take to influence its performance
Growing Revenue, Building Gross Margin
The Profit and Loss Account contains a substantial amount of business critical information. In this module we’ll concentrate on sales revenue and gross margin and you’ll understand:
- Why the detail behind sales revenue is so important to grasp
- The importance of gross margin as a measure of profitability and how to influence it
- How this information can help colleagues to better understand where their contribution fits into the business
Operating Investment & Performance
In the P&L part 2, we turn our attentions to operating costs and how these investments should be leveraged to generate greater value. We’ll focus our attention on:
- The importance of understanding the existing returns from your existing investments
- How to segment your operating costs into visible and more measurable investment assets
- How to reduce the areas of non-conformance that serve to reduce the effectiveness of your investment in people
Liquid Assets
In an age of extended credit, credit cards and ‘tap & pay’ payment systems it’s easy to forget the importance of cash flow to business survival. In this module we’ll show you:
- How to maximise your cash at the front end
- How to maximise your cash flow through your service delivery model
- How to link cash flow to your commercial pricing and customer base
Risk & Reward
There are no guarantees that our chosen pathways will deliver the success we desire. All future reward carries risk but without risk there is no future. In this module we’ll help you to:
- Understand and use financial appraisal tools
- Apply intuition and judgement to rigorous analysis
- Value and use evidence to assess current and future investment performance
“If we don’t understand the language of finance, we can’t tell when those that do are talking dangerous nonsense.” John Lanchester.
The Leadership Development Academy Difference
To embed new learning, build confidence and bring about behavioural change, each module contains practical work-based assignments and each learner is supported by their own business coach.
Classroom and forum for
online working
Assignments and workbooks for offline working
Business Coaching to experiment and embed new learning
