Your Financial Literacy Self-Diagnostic Report™
Congratulations! You’ve taken your first big step towards upgrading your financial literacy skill set.
YOUR REPORT HAS FOUR PARTS:
- YOUR SCORES: compared with peers before and after my program.
- INTERPRETATION: How to interpret your Scores.
- UNDERSTANDING: How to learn from your Category Scores.
- ADVICE: How to quickly learn the finance you need to improve your Scores.
|
Types of Financial Competencies |
Your Self-Diagnostic Score |
|
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Value Alignment | 2.2 | 4.1 | |||||
| Financial Language | 2.1 | 4.3 | |||||
| Value Analysis | 2.0 | 4.2 | |||||
| Accountability | 2.3 | 4.2 | |||||
| Overall Score | 2.2 | 4.1 | |||||
Key: (1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=neutral, 4=agree, 5=strongly agree)
INTERPRETING YOUR SELF-DIAGNOSTIC SCORE
- BEFORE MY PROGRAM: Siemens product managers with no formal financial training scored themselves somewhere between 2.0 (disagree) and 3.0 (neutral).
- So, if you’re in that range, you are not alone and are exactly where it’s reasonable for you to be.
- AFTER MY PROGRAM: Siemens product managers averaged somewhere between 4.0 (agree) and 5.0 (strongly agree).
- My streamlined tailored program will help you to easily get there.
- NEXT STEP: DRILL DOWN INTO CATEGORIES: Let’s drill down into the competencies within each category to develop your self-development plan.
Want to help your colleagues self-diagnose their financial literacy?
I’ll email them your invitation to take this assessment.
UNDERSTANDING THE COMPETENCY CATEGORIES
WHY SHOULD YOU DRILL DOWN?
The next step is to pinpoint specific concepts or practices you may not yet be completely comfortable with such as:
- Aligning with leadership’s value objectives.
- Forecasting financial returns.
- Integrating financial with strategic analysis.
- Using the language and process of accountability.
Identifying these gaps will help you develop a TAILORED SELF-DEVELOPMENT PLAN.
VALUE ALIGNMENT Category
You assessed your understanding of your leader’s financial objectives, value metrics such as NV and ROI, your role in managing company assets, and how you impact share price.
VALUE ALIGNMENT
| Value Objectives | I understand the financial and value creation objectives of leaders one and two levels above me and how I contribute to those objectives. |
| Value Metrics | I understand how my leaders measure value creation with metrics such as net present value (NPV) and return on investment (ROI). |
| Managing Assets | I know how my activities maximize return on investment from my company’s intangible assets of customers, products, employees, and processes. |
| Company Value | I understand how the value drivers of growth and risk expectations determine my company’s share price and how my activities impact each value driver. |
FINANCIAL LANGUAGE Category
You assessed your comprehension of your role in how your company makes money, how your business activities are reported in financial statements and P&Ls, and how to forecast your project’s future revenue, expenses, and ROI.
FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
| Business System | I know how my company makes money using a business system integrating financing, investment, and operations and what my role is in each activity. |
| Financial Statements | I understand how my company’s financial statements and divisional P&L statements measure my company’s performance and how I impact each component. |
| Revenue Forecasting | I know how to forecast revenue from the activities I manage and how to justify the assumptions of my forecast. |
| Expense Management | I understand cost of goods sold (COGS), operating expenses (OPEX), and capital expenditures (CAPEX) and how to manage my impact on each. |
VALUE ANALYSIS Category
You assessed your ability to prepare for and present to your leaders a fully justified plan including financial analysis, industry and customer analysis, strategic option analysis, risk/opportunity scoring, and ROI value calculations.
VALUE ANALYSIS
| Rigorous Product Planning |
I know how to prepare a financially grounded, value-based plan using financial tools (such as NPV and ROI) and qualitative strategic tools (such as scoring strategy options). |
| ROI Forecast and Assumptions | I know how to prepare a pro forma forecast of my plan’s return on investment (ROI) and how to articulate my forecast’s underlying assumptions. |
| Qualitative Strategic Tools | I utilize qualitative strategic tools such as opportunity costs, externalities, industry analysis, and risk/opportunity analysis to justify my plans. |
| Persuasive Presentation |
I know how to persuasively communicate my plan’s alignment with my leader’s value creation goals and the validity of my plan’s financial justification. |
ACCOUNTABILITY Category
You assessed your proficiency with the process and language of financial accountability that are commonly utilized in business unit reviews and that will build trust in your relationship with your boss.
ACCOUNTABILITY
| Operating Cycle | I know how my company’s annual operating cycle of planning, execution, and review utilizes a learning feedback loop for the company as a whole and in my relationship with my boss. |
| Understanding Quarterly Reviews | I understand the financial terms used during my company’s earning call with investors and during my division’s profit and loss (P&L) quarterly reviews. |
| Explaining Performance |
I know how to explain my financial performance using variances from plan and prior period, primary/offsetting variance drivers, and structural and transitory trend analysis. |
| Managing Commitments |
I know how to establish my accountability for financial targets using promise-based commitments and timely unbiased updates of my assumptions. |
ADVICE ON HOW TO GET STARTED
There are 4.68 billion Google search results for finance, 1.44 billion results for finance training, and 1.14 billion results for finance books. No wonder it seems hopeless to learn finance. You need someone to curate it for you. You might have tried…
- ACADEMIC: Most academic courses teach important topics, but they have very little to do with a mid-level corporate manager’s day-today activities.
- YOUTUBE: Most YouTube videos and online courses are designed for either for financial professionals, for small business owners, or for personal finance. Again, they are not tailored for corporate middle managers.
- ONLINE SEARCH: You can search Google, Investopedia, or Wikipedia but their content is so scattered that it does not connect the dots for you.
Your time is limited and valuable. Don’t waste it. You want financial training how you want it, when you want it, and only what you need.
Forgive me for shamelessly promoting myself, but…
- I spent 25 years on top ten business school faculties (“THE DARK SIDE”) and I’m now what I call an “academic in recovery.”
- I spent 21 years training corporate executives worldwide for Fortune 500 companies such as GE and Siemens (“THE LIGHT SIDE”).
- At the intersection of the DARK SIDE and LIGHT SIDE, there is a small subset of finance I’ve discovered that is practical, useful, and career-enhancing for you.
Let’s stay in touch and I will curate for you the content that I know you will find useful. I promise to quickly teach you the finance you need to be more confident, persuasive, and promotable.
Warm regards,
