How to Develop Business Acumen

Do you understand your business and the value you add as an admin or EA? Listen to this episode if you want to start elevating your financial and business acumen for career advancement.

Recorded at EA Ignite Fall 2024 and produced by the American Society of Administrative Professionals - ASAP. Learn more and submit a listener question at asaporg.com/podcast.

Leah Warwick: Hi, everyone. I'm Leah Warwick, and you're listening to "The Admin Edge." Thinking about your unique value-add to the business is one of the first steps to take if you want to boost your visibility, influence, and compensation. At the ASAP event EA Ignite, one of our trainers, Courtney Scott, talked to Katie Hendrickson about why developing business acumen is crucial for staying relevant and advancing your career.

Katie Hendrickson: Hi, I'm Katie Hendrickson, Executive Assistant to the President and Chief Operating Officer of AIT Worldwide Logistics, and ASAP Advisory Board Member. My guest today is Courtney Scott, Managing Partner at Scott & Scott Executive Solutions. Welcome to the podcast, Courtney.

00:00:51                     

Courtney Scott: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Katie Hendrickson: It's our pleasure to have you. Well, we'd be delighted if you'd walk us through kind of your journey and where you got to Scott & Scott Executive Solutions.

Courtney Scott: I'm so glad you asked because I love telling this story. I started out as an administrative assistant – actually, first a legal assistant for a deputy attorney general – and then moved into an AA role, and very rapidly learned that building financial acumen opened a lot of doors. So I moved a rapidly from an AA role to an EA role, then a senior EA role, and then chief of staff. And now I moved into an executive function as a director for a healthcare RCM organization and now have my own consulting firm, where I specialize in providing interim leadership for health tech and fin tech companies who are in startup or growth mode.

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Katie Hendrickson: Wow, that is so amazing. I love that you'd been able to have a progression, to a point where you're really able to impact so many around the world with all that you've learned.

Courtney Scott: Absolutely. I love empowering people. I love being an executive's biggest champion. Not even an executive – teams, team members. I love championing people into their success and into winning, and that EA role and chief of staff role in particular is ideal for someone like me, who likes to be behind the scenes and really loves to help people win. So I found my footing very early in that administrative function.

Katie Hendrickson: And it sounds like, with your role, you have to really get on board very quickly with a new organization. So I'm wondering if you can explain to us something, which is this term called "business acumen." Can you explain what it is, why it's important for administrative professionals to really develop this, and kind of how you've implemented that.

Courtney Scott: I love that question. It's such a great question. It's such an important topic. Business acumen is really understanding the overall health of the organization, the strategy of the organization, and not being focused on just the tactical aspect of your function, whether you're an admin, EA, or whether you sit in another seat, in another function. Business acumen is understanding the vision, strategy and health, and putting it all together and operating with that perspective.

00:03:09

An EA, an administrator in particular, it's so important to develop business acumen because you have a really privileged seat next to the leaders of that organization. The more that you can think with business acumen, the more you're going to be the most strategic version of your business partner self. So I think of business acumen as always being able to look at the 30,000-foot view, but also being able to operate at the 1,000-foot tactical view. 

An EA in particular, they're already doing that. Sometimes they don't understand that they already have this business acumen. I love showing EAs that you have it. It's already there. You use it every single day. Let's tap into it. Let's talk about it. Let's highlight it in our performance reviews and show our executives that we have this business acumen. 

00:04:05                     

Katie Hendrickson: That's so great. So that leads me to another question: How can developing business acumen benefit both the administrative professional's career and their ability to really contribute to the organization and drive that organization forward?

Courtney Scott: Yeah, that's a great question, too. As far as the EA function and using that business acumen to really develop your career, you have to be able to talk about financial health. I don't care what executive you support; that executive has oversight and responsibility that has a financial metric tied to it. When you understand your executive's function in that way, that you know that your executive is impacting the bottom line of the organization, you start to think from an executive perspective. You start to think with some strategy. You start to understand that maybe you can go into your executive's function and create efficiencies that affect the bottom line.

00:05:05

You can find a redundancy in expenses that obviously impacts the bottom line. You can go in and start helping them manage their budget more efficiently. That is really important to your career. That opens doors so that, if you choose to be an EA, you now have financial data tied to your performance that you can talk about [for] your compensation increase and what you deserve, and the value that you bring to the organization that translates to an increase in compensation. 

If you don't have the goal of retiring as an EA, if you want to move into an executive seat – whether that's director or senior director or VP – you now have a financial acumen and a business acumen that you take with you. You've already practiced it. You can prove that you've practiced it through your performance reviews and through those metrics that you are quantifying and documenting, and you take that into that role and saying, "I'm already operating from the executive perspective. Now I'm ready for the title and compensation." 

00:05:58                     

Katie Hendrickson: So how is it that an administrative professional can gain a deeper understanding of their organization's business model and the strategic goals that really enhance their business acumen?

Courtney Scott: The best way is to always be curious and always be brave – always. If you're curious and if you're brave, you will ask the right people the right questions. Schedule meetings with your CFO. Schedule meetings with your chief strategy officer. Schedule meetings with your CEO. No matter who you support, have impactful conversations with those leaders. Maybe it's just 30 minutes. Maybe it's once a month. Maybe it's every quarter. Sit down with your CFO and say, "What's most concerning about our overall expenditure right now? What is it that I need to be cognizant of for my executive that really is giving you some heartburn right now, that is associated with your bottom line and our net profit margin? How can I reduce our SG&A expenditures? From my seat as an EA, what can I do to impact the overall financial health of the organization?"

00:07:01

If you ask that question of a CFO, they're going to love you forever because nobody really wants to deal with finances. It's meaty. It's a lot. People like me, I spend a lot of time saying, "Numbers aren't my thing. I'm not a numbers person." I really a numbers person because I'm a strategy person, and once you understand that strategy 100% involves finance, you start to get excited about how you can contribute financially to the organization. And because we're admins, we're EAs, we embody SG&A. SG&A is sales, general, and administrative. That is always the bucket that CFOs look to reduce when they are struggling financially. 

00:07:45

As EAs, we're not going to increase revenue. We don't sell anything. We sell our projects and we sell ideas; we don't sell something that creates revenue. So where can we be financially impactful? Through reducing SG&A. We already do it. We have to be able to quantify that in our performance reviews, again. So having those conversations with a CFO will give you insight into where you can lean in as an EA, how you can be better strategic partner to your executive, and how you can get some responsibility around finances in a more strategic way than the tactics that we're already doing. So that's n umber one. 

Number two: It's important that you do that for your executive. If you're supporting – let's say you're supporting a VP of finance or VP of accounting or even a chief operating officer. They are going to have some reports that go in front of the CFO and CEO – and for that matter, it's going to go in front of the board, your [govco], investors. You do not want them going into those meetings flatfooted and a grenade go off in front of them. 

00:08:48

If you can get in front of those conversations and concerns, you can prepare your executive. And again, act as that strategic business partner. Sit them down and say, "Listen, I had a conversation with our CFO. There's some stuff going on I need you to know about." That is a really impactful conversation to have, and it's valuable to your executive because now they can prepare better for that conversation. 

Katie Hendrickson: Right. And I think there is something that's really important in there, having that financial literacy. I recently took a college course called "Accounting and Finance for Decisionmakers," and I learned how to read a balance sheet, how to look at a revenue document, and I feel a lot more prepared. Now, it doesn't have to be a college course that you look at. It could be a free course. You could go to LinkedIn Learning. There are some opportunities within the American Society of Administrative Professionals to increase that. But it's having that understanding of what it is that you're looking at that can really bolster the strategy in that conversation.

00:09:47                     

Courtney Scott: I love that you say that because you're absolutely right. Here's the thing: I love to tell people, I don't have a paper MBA, but I have about 1,500 real-world MBAs because of the knowledge I gained from being in lockstep with the decisionmakers of the organization – not just decisionmakers in the organization, but influential leaders within their respective industries. That's an important recognition for your leader. That means that you have access to industry insights. You are sitting at their level, right? You may not be operating as a CEO, but you're walking in lockstep with your CEO (if you support the CEO). That is invaluable to know that you have access to those insights, so now you can begin to develop that financial literacy. Now you can educate yourself. Now you can put yourself at the table and listen to those conversations so that, at some point, you can actually speak up in those conversations and provide strategic advisory. You can provide advice. You can provide financial insight in those conversations. It's so important to continually educate yourself and always be curious.

00:10:49

To your point, you don't have to go spend $100,000. You can educate yourself for free by listening to your executive, inviting yourself to the meeting, explaining why you're there, and making a case for why you are part of that conversation. 

Katie Hendrickson: So then what would you say are some of the common challenges that administrative professionals might face when trying to develop that business acumen? And what are some practical ways that they can overcome them?

Courtney Scott: Absolutely. I think one of the biggest challenges that we've all faced and we've all felt is the old, "You're just an EA. Stay in your lane. This is my territory. You stay over there." I've been there. I've heard that. I have felt it. It's not a good feeling, because you know that the health of your organization and your department rides on your shoulders, and that you are truly a business partner to your executive. So when someone says, "You're just an EA. Stay in your lane," I would come back to them and say, "No, I am a strategic business partner to my executive, the person that makes the decisions over this budget or this department or this part of the strategy. I am their business partner, and I need to be involved in this."

00:11:58

You have to advocate for yourself. Sometimes people don't value us because they don't know what we really do, and so we have to get really good at talking about – with quantifiable data – what we actually do day in and day out for ourselves and for our executives, but also for the overall organization, because everything that we do has a direct impact with the overall organization. 

Katie Hendrickson: So what would you say are maybe some specific resources, courses, books that you would recommend for administrative professionals who are looking to enhance their business acumen and their understanding of it?

Courtney Scott: I will tell you, one of the most insightful pieces of literature that I've read recently is actually from ASAP. It's the 2024 State of the [Profession] Report. Every year, ASAP puts that together. This year in particular is so impactful because we're starting to see changes that we have advocated for year over year.

Katie Hendrickson: Yes, we have.

00:13:01                     

Courtney Scott: We're starting to see those – listen, even those it's not at the level of directors and VPs, we're still seeing increases in compensation. I talked about this in my masterclass earlier this morning. Right now, we're seeing an average of about a 6% increase of the administrative function for their compensation year over year. When you put the lens of an executive role over that, they're seeing 10, 15, 20, 25% increases in the same period of time. There's a very direct correlation between the role and the person in that role understanding the value and how they contribute to the finance of the organization. EAs, we're getting better about that. Administrative professionals, we're getting better about that, but there's still some work to be done to really start to advocate for ourselves as those real, strategic business partners that understand business acumen, and financial acumen in particular.

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So I think reading that report every year helps prepare you to go into your performance reviews, your midyear reviews, whatever your review cycle is. Having that data, you can now speak to it. You can now say, "Listen, we're seeing a 6% increase year over year. I believe that I've added this value to our bottom line. I want to talk about an increase in compensation." That's a really important conversation to have, as long as it's backed by real data. And that report, in particular, has lots of invaluable data to have that conversation. 

Katie Hendrickson: So this actually kind of leads into a question that was submitted by one of our community members. It sounds like maybe there's opportunities for us to advocate for ourselves, but perhaps there's times where we feel like we're hitting a wall. So our member wrote: How can admins develop a deeper understanding of business strategy when they're not always involved in the high-level discussions?

00:14:51                     

Courtney Scott: Great question, and it's going to be a challenge to do that if you're not involved in the high-level discussions. That's why it's so important to be brave and curious. Sometimes it's not about asking for a seat; it's about showing up anyway. Instead of asking, "Can I be involved in this strategy session? Can I be involved in this off site?" I would go so far as to say, "It's really critical that I sit in on this meeting, or sit in on this strategy session, because I'm going to be the one following up and making sure that everything is being executed well, making sure that everyone is in lockstep, everyone's aligned. That's going to be my job after this, so it's really important that I sit in on this session so I can get it from the horse's mouth what we're doing," right? Don't ask for permission. Make the case that you deserve to be there. It's critical that you're there. "Why do you need to be there?" "Because I'm going to be the one making sure this goes off without a hitch, right? I'm going to be the one that is your proxy, that I'm going to be having the one-on-one conversations with your direct reports, making sure that you're aligned with your vision and your strategy." It's not about asking the question. It's about putting yourself in the seat and knowing that you're valuable enough to be there.

00:15:57

Sometimes people devalue us because we might sometimes walk into a room feeling a little less confident than we should. Sometimes we have to change our internal dialogue and our own narrative and prove to ourselves every day that we are that strategic business partner, and we do have a place at the seat [sic]. We should be at that conference table. We should be at that strategy off site. Believing that yourself will help other people believe it as well. 

Katie Hendrickson: That is so good and so impactful. I am so grateful that we had this conversation, so thank you so much for joining us on "The Admin Edge." Where can our listeners find you online?

00:16:36                     

Courtney Scott: You can find me online on LinkedIn, Courtney Scott. I also have a LinkedIn page for Scott & Scott Executive Solutions. You can message me there and it'll come directly to me. You can also check me out at scottandscottexecutivesolutions.com.

Katie Hendrickson: Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Courtney Scott: Thank you. I appreciate it. It's been great.

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Leah Warwick: Thank you for listening to "The Admin Edge," produced by the American Society of Administrative Professionals, original music and audio editing by Warwick Productions, with video and audio production at our events by 5Tool Productions. If you like this podcast, please leave us a nice review, five stars, and subscribe. If you'd like to submit a listener question, you may do so on our website at ASAPorg.com/podcast.