As our second week begins, with an activity to level-set on key Outcomes.

Are you tracking the right metrics related your/your team(s) primary impacts cash, growth, return and/or customer/consumer?

Once you’re goo…

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REST | RESTORE | REJUVENATE | REPLENISH

Weekends are important times for rejuvenation; days to fill the wellspring from which we draw all week in service of the organizations we work for. That’s why you’ll only get one email for 2 days!

You can only pour from a full pitcher.

Take time to…

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1. Is there anything crucial for you to do today to move key outcomes forward this week?

2. Is there anyone you need to connect with today to make sure you’ve engaged the greatness of key others?

3. What aspect(s) of your personal greatness will you tap in service of the above?

PLEASE CHE…

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Focus is key to progress! And progress on your Leadership Daily Practice will create an invalua…

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Your Leadership Daily Practice is designed to keep you focused on key Outcomes as well as engaging others and using your personal greatness.

Here’s the quick link to download your editable 28 Day Leadership Boost journal.

Lead ON!

Susan

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Leadership is using the greatness in you

to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes

by engaging the greatness in others.

That’s why today’s inspiration comes from Ram Charan and is brought to you by the letters O (for Outcomes which require your business savvy) and E (for engaging the greatness in others with whom you must interact for your success and …

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You’re Too Emotional

Have you ever been told you’re “too emotional?”

I have.

I dare say many women have.

It’s something that I’ve never heard said to or about men, even when they have screaming fits or slam their fists on tables, or yell at their staffs. There’s nothing we can do about that, but there is something that we can do about being seen as “too emotional.”

I’ll never forget my boss, Bob Johnson who, in a performance review, said to me, “You’re too emotional.”

At the time, I was seething. Proof positive that - in a way - he was right.

What that Really Means

With hindsight and more business savvy, what I have come to understand is that what he was really saying was that whenever I made a point or argued for a position or disagreed with an action; my rationale was based on statements like,

• it’s not right, or

• it’s the right thing to do, or

• Wouldn’t it be a good idea if or this really needs to be changed.

I never had the business smarts to be able to ground my opinions, my ideas or my innovative suggestions in business reality.

What Could be Different?

Now this is something that you can begin to do.

You can say things like,

“I firmly support this idea. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it will have this impact:

• on the bottom line,

• on our profit margin,

• on our efficiency and productivity,

• on our customer retention metrics.

You can do that if you understand the sustainable business cycle and then move on to a deeper understanding of financial reports and organizational strategy.

I’m NOT saying we should avoid being passionate about things.

What I AM saying is that it’s important to marry our passion with our business savvy. When we do, we come across as authentic and powerful when we don’t, we come across as “too emotional.”

Double Standard

Most women would never do the emotional things that men do. You’ve seen them - the slammed fist, the berating shout, the thrown swears. That’s because while it is considered acceptable for men to demonstrate anger, it’s not considered acceptable for us.

In lieu of expressing our anger, sometimes we cry out of fury or out of frustration and also out of hurt. Sadly, in most organizations, it’s not acceptable for us to show those emotions either.

And for what it's worth — women can be both crying and completely rational at the same time, even if some colleagues can't conceive of that.

Let’s Recap

1. Many, women get feedback that we’re “too emotional”

2. This feedback rests on a gender dynamic that says that it’s okay for men to be angry, but it’s not okay for women to be angry...or to cry.

3. While we can’t control the perceptions that others have about whether or not we’re “too emotional,”we can control how we present ourselves in order to lessen their opportunity to think that we are.

What’s a Woman To Do?

If you have received feedback that you’re too emotional,

1. Think about what the basis for that comment. Were you making points that didn’t get heard? Were you being reasonably passionate about an idea you were promoting? Or about an idea that you were countering.

2. Once you’ve identified this situation or situations that have given rise to that feedback, think about how you might have come across differently if you had presented your idea or made your points with a grounding in your clear understanding of the business, its finances, and its strategy.

3. If you feel like you don’t have the business savvy to ground your ideas in your understanding of the business, its sustainable cycle, it’s value creation chain, what’s happening in terms of financial performance. or connecting what you’re saying to its strategy; then begin to develop your business savvy. We’re always here to help and there are also ways that you can do it on your own.

Subscribe now

I know from my own experience that it hurts and is infuriating to be accused of being too emotional. Reacting from those places of anger or hurt is sure to simply reinforce the perceptions of the person who is giving you the feedback.

If, and/or when, you get feedback that you are “too emotional,” take a deep breath and say,

“Tell me more. I would like to understand. What behaviors of mine cause you to say that and the context in which you observed this.”

Do this not to argue back - as hard as it’s going to be - do this to help you go through steps one, and two, and take action on step three.

Marry your passion with your business savvy for the sake of your career!

Catch you next time,
Susan

If this sparked something for you...

You’re reading Be Business Savvy — where women get the tools to develop and demonstrate the business, financial, and strategic acumen that turn “she’s great at her job” into “she’s ready for more.”

It’s what I call The Missing 33% of the career success equation — the subject of my TED Talk watched by millions.

I welcome your next step:

Subscribe now

• ❤️ Like or restack this post — it’s the best way to help other women find it

• 📘 Go deeper:

  • No Ceiling, No Walls (ebook)

  • No Ceiling, No Walls (softcover)

  • Make the Most of Mentoring (softcover)

  • Make the Most of Mentoring (ebook)

  • Be Business Savvy Course — self-paced, with coaching support

  • Coaching Executive Women (occasional) (newsletter)

Susan

Welcome, congratulations and thanks for accessing your 28 Day Leadership Boost!

Monday is the day to start your 28 Day Leadership Boost.

Let’s get started!

1 - Download Your 28-Day Leadership Boost Journal

Download it here and use it day-by-day. I’ve found that most women prefer to download, print and use it as a journal.

28 Day Leadership Boost

13MB ∙ PDF file

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2 - For Monday, Day 1 read…

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Your career success rests on your proven and perceived leadership skills. That’s why I’m writing to tell you about our 28 Day Leadership Boost.

This program was originally developed for the ambitious women members of the Lead to Soar network.

Now, I’m making it available for FREE to paid subscribers!

Big Support - Little Time - Powerful Impact

During the 28 Day Leadership Boost you’ll get:

• Daily Reminders to establish the habit of setting your leadership focus for the day.

• Daily Inspirations to enriches the challenge of the day. The days’ focus rotate among business savvy, engaging others and your personal greatness.

• Access exclusive content. We’ve designed 28 Day Leadership Boost to inspire, instruct, and engage.

• Get results. As you dive into the course content and meet the community here in the 28 Day Leadership Boost, you’re on a path of leadership mastery. This reaps rewards for you personally, those you work with and the organization you work for.

• Document Your Progress Access your personal journal to record and review your progress.

Invest as little as 5 - 15 minutes a day and you’ll make a big difference in your leadership effectiveness!

Proven Results

I know how easy it is to get trapped in the hamster wheel of activity, buried under an endless pile of to-dos and lose sight of the bigger picture. As CEO of Leading Women (now sold), I was falling into that trap. While I didn’t have a hierarchy above me that needed to recognize my strong leadership brand, I had people counting on me for their livelihoods.

Luckily I discovered how to use my leadership definition to give each day a clear focus. As a result it was easier for me to set priorities, to differentiate between what was essential and what was easy and to feel less stress while being more productive. By using the exact same tools in the 28 Day Leadership Boost, my business grew 1400% in six years.

You don’t have to figure this out for yourself!

Your 28 Day Leadership Boost sets you on the path to a new way to think about each day - and cement it as a habit that will polish your leadership brand, enhance your leadership effectiveness and keep your eyes on the big picture for a less stressful approach to each day.

Plus a Special Bonus

Join me for a BONUS 1:1 Voxer coaching session on Understanding Outcomes. We’ll clarify your key outcomes to ensure that you get the most out of each day’s activities.

What is Voxer?

Voxer is a walkie-talkie-like app that allows you to ask questions by text or voice, leave a thought, share a document or image. Voxer is easy and free. Works with iOS or Android or on your laptop with Chrome. You’ll find me in a lovely purple jacket on Voxer: scolan73 (Susan Colantuono)

You Deserve This!

The 28 Day Leadership Boost has one goal in mind - to help you deepen, sharpen and enrich your leadership skills.

No matter your level (remember leadership manifests at EVERY level), this program will help you more confidently wear your mantle of leadership and declare, “I am a leader!”

I invite you to become a paying subscribe and reap the benefits of a leadership transformation with your 28 Day Leadership Boost.

Subscribe now

Here’s to your continued leadership success!

If this sparked something for you...

You’re reading Be Business Savvy — where women get the tools to develop and demonstrate the business, financial, and strategic acumen that turn “she’s great at her job” into “she’s ready for more.” It’s what I call The Missing 33% of the career success equation — the subject of my TED Talk watched by millions.

Take a next step:

Subscribe now

• ❤️ Like or restack this post — it’s the best way to help other women find it

• 📘 Go deeper:

  • No Ceiling, No Walls (ebook)

  • No Ceiling, No Walls (softcover)

  • Make the Most of Mentoring (softcover)

  • Make the Most of Mentoring (ebook)

  • Be Business Savvy Course — self-paced, with coaching support

  • Coaching Executive Women (occasional) (newsletter)

Thanks for being here!

Susan

If You Have Questions, We’ve Got Answers

This isn’t for me

Seriously, the only reasons Build Business Acumen wouldn’t be for you is if you:

1. Have it AND demonstrate it on a daily basis,

2. Are not serious about your career

3. Don’t want more ease in your leadership role, more confidence, to self-promote with grace, etc.

But you still might be thinking about these other concerns:

But I’m not good at Math

You’re not alone! The myth that business acumen requires numeric wizadry holds many sharp women back. Rest assured - there are no complex calculations here. This course focuses on the core concepts behind the numbers - equipping you with the acumen to contribute at higher levels, without the math anxiety.

Whether you struggled with math or numbers just aren’t your thing, you CAN master the skills needed to advance your career. No number crunching required.

I don’t have the time

Our micro-lessons and self-paced format let you fit the program into pockets of time in your busy schedule.

You get to make progress at your own pace while still gaining skills to apply immediately.

I can’t afford it

When you consider salary bumps, promotions and long-term ROI, the program quickly pays for itself.

And, serious question, would you go out and buy a new outfit with the money instead?

You know how that can turn out - hung in your closet, used up after a few wearings, no long term ROI…unlike an investment in your business savvy.

Will it be too advanced for me?

The course is designed for women at any career level. Our framework simplifies complex concepts so you can build business acumen with confidence, even if you’re starting from scratch.

We meet you where you are: career-start, 1st line supervisor, middle management, senior management - I’ve even used it with women unexpectedly finding themselves in the C-suite.

I want to demo greater business savvy, where do I start

You’re right to wonder where to start. With countless conflicting resources, it’s no wonder developing business savvy feels like a vast, complex undertaking. Where do you find clear direction without getting lost in information overload?

Build Business Acumen removes the overwhelm by distilling proven frameworks into bite-sized lessons. No clutter. No confusion. Just actionable skills delivered step-by-step.

My company offers leadership training

PLEASE don’t believe this. Dare I say it, “Daddy isn’t going to save you.”

Most companies don’t deliver messaging about the importance of Business Savvy or even the basics of business acumen. It’s rarely found in performance measures - and certainly not in proportion to how important it is for advancement - in leadership programs. It’s rarely covered in ERG/BRG programming, mentoring guidance or career development assessments.

I know, I’ve done the research.

I’m not a leader. I don’t need business savvy.

Leadership manifests at every level! And business, financial and strategic acumen are required to perform as a leader at whatever your level or title.

Just as leadership differs by level the expectations for how you demo business savvy do too.

This is why I say, “It’s never to early to begin to develop and demonstrate business acumen…but it might be too late.”

Will this really make a difference?

It’s wise to be skeptical. You’ve seen enough flash-in-the-pan career tips to last a lifetime. But developing business acumen is time-tested and proven to:
- Build confidence in leading teams, projects and presenting to executives
- Showcase your leadership to the gatekeepers of opportunity
- Get you over the “she needs executive presence” roadblock
- Give you talking points that make it easy to “Speak UP!”
- Position you for bigger responsibilities and promotions.

And more!

I hate being on Zoom.

I can honestly say that I loathe Zoom calls, that’s why I show up super casual and if I’m not presenting I often keep the video off. I invite you to do the same for our monthly sessions.
And it’s easy to submit questions in the Comments in case you can’t make the date/time of the meet-ups.

I don’t think this will work for me.

Thousands of ambitious women have leveraged this program to increase their confidence, earn higher salaries, and get promoted.

You’ll be sharing your journey with other women who are also focused on career progress and ready to provide peer support.

We do everything we can to make it work for you with monthly Zoom meetings and Voxer coaching.

I’d say that I already have business savvy.

That’s terrific!

Would you also say you consistently demonstrate it? Would your boss and her/his boss agree? or is it hidden from all the world to see?

If you both have business savvy AND demonstrate it consistently, you’re in the enviable position of being able to help other women develop and demonstrate their business acumen.

If not, join us in the Be Business Savvy course!

Subscribe now

If I didn’t answer your question, place one in the Comments and I will be sure to reply.

Hope you’ll join in,

Susan

Others Decide Your Trajectory

Here’s something most people don’t talk about openly: the people above you are constantly making decisions about your future. Who gets the stretch assignment. Who gets sponsored for the next level. Who gets the nod when an opportunity opens up.

Those decisions rest on two things — your proven performance and their perception of you as a leader. You don’t advance solely because of what you do. You advance because the people with power over your trajectory believe you are a partner in the business — someone who understands where it’s going and can be trusted to help take it there.

Ann McCorvey learned this firsthand when interviewing for the CFO position at Kodak. The board made their criteria explicit:

“The board wanted to know that I had the personal drive to succeed in the role, the skills to navigate new relationships with former colleagues who would now be direct reports, and that I understood the business, where it was heading, and my role in taking it there.”

Personal drive. Relationship skills. Business understanding and direction. The board wasn’t asking about technical competence alone. They were asking: is she a leader?

You want your career decision makers to answer “YES” when they ask that of you. Which means you have to understand leadership. And as it turns out, that’s harder to come by than you’d think.

What the Heck is Leadership?

Early in my career I began building a mental list of people I considered to be leaders — Nelson Mandela, Wangari Maathai, Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sojourner Truth, Anne Mulcahy, both Obamas, Melinda Gates and many others. When I looked for what they all had in common, one thing stood out above everything else: they all achieved something. They created change, built organizations, rescued failing ones, won wars, extended rights. Outcomes were the common thread.

That sent me searching for a definition of leadership that captured this. What I found instead was a collection of definitions that — despite coming from smart, respected people — all fell short in one way or another.

Every one of these definitions has something worth keeping. But not one of them captures the full picture of what leadership actually requires — especially in a business context where outcomes are the scorecard.

My Requirements for a Definition

Before I could accept any definition, it had to pass five tests. It had to be:

1. Universal — applicable to leaders of all races, genders, and nationalities

2. Ubiquitous — applicable across corporations, nonprofits, governments, social movements

3. Prescriptive — defining what a leader should do, ruling out the Jim Joneses — or more recently, Keith Raniere of NXIVM — of the world

4. Relevant at every level — from individual contributor to C-suite. This requirement is SO important. Career decision makers look for leadership skills in everyone from career start to the top of the organization. And it’s true that leadership manifests at every level.

5. Useful — something you could actually use to evaluate your own leadership on any given day

None of the definitions in the table passed all five tests. So I built my own.

A Definition Worth Using

Leadership is using the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging the greatness in others.

Look back at what the Kodak board asked Ann McCorvey. Personal drive to succeed — that’s the greatness in you. Skills to navigate relationships with her team — that’s engaging the greatness in others. Understanding the business and her role in taking it where it needed to go — that’s achieving and sustaining extraordinary outcomes.

The board had it right. And now you have a definition that makes it actionable.

Wear Your Mantle

Queens and kings didn’t just hold power — they wore it. The mantle, the scepter, the crown were outward expressions of an inward identity. Leadership works the same way. You don’t wait until someone hands you a title to think of yourself as a leader. You claim it.

As Herminia Ibarra, Professor of Leadership at INSEAD, puts it:

People become leaders by internalizing a leadership identity and developing a sense of purpose — and that internalization is an iterative process.

Start that process today — concretely:

Read more

April 6 is the kickoff for the 28 Day Leadership Boost.

April 7 is the next monthly live meeting. It’s the perfect opportunity to

• Discuss the Quick Start Business Acumen content,

• Workshop your Positional Purpose statement,

• Make sure you’re clear on Outcomes for the 28 Day Leadership Boost,

• Work on a real situation that’s coming up for you or

• Wha…

Read more

The woman who pays for her kids’ tutoring without blinking. Who organizes a team lunch to celebrate a colleague’s promotion. Who forwards every professional development opportunity she finds to someone else who might benefit — and quietly archives the ones meant for her.

She’s not careless about her career. She thinks about it strategically. She just doesn’t spend money on it. Not her own money, anyway.

I want to talk about why — because understanding it is the first step to doing something about it.

A Budget that Exists for Everyone Else

There’s a version of this that’s purely logistical. Many organizations have professional development budgets, but they’re unevenly distributed, require manager approval, or feel like a limited resource that shouldn’t be “wasted” on the wrong thing.

Women — who are more likely to be evaluated on likability and less likely to feel entitled to advocate loudly for themselves — often self-select out of that process before anyone tells them no. I found myself stuck in this mindset for years - to the detriment of my career.

But the pattern I see most often isn’t about organizational budgets or lack of self-advocacy. It’s about a personal dynamic.

When we reach into our own wallets for professional development, something different happens. The money feels more real. The justification feels harder to make. And beneath that is a belief, rarely spoken aloud, that I should be able to figure this out on my own — that paying to develop a professional skill is an admission I don’t already have it.

That’s the trap. And it’s one that men, in my experience, fall into far less often.

Share

An Irony Hiding in Plain Sight

Here’s what I’ve found in my research and in years of working on myself and with women in organizations: the very qualities that hold women back from investing in our own development are the ones that leadership development is designed to address.

The confidence gap. The tendency to self-silence in strategic conversations. The discomfort with financial and business-level discussions that gets quietly labeled as “not being a numbers person.” The sense that if you haven’t mastered something already, maybe it’s not really your territory.

These aren’t character flaws. They’re entirely predictable outcomes of working in systems that have, for decades, sent women mixed signals about where we belong and what we’re worth.

But they create a painful irony: the hesitation to invest in closing a gap is itself a symptom of the gap.

The Change When Treating Development Like a Business Decision

The shift I’ve seen — in myself and in the women I’ve worked with — happens when professional development stops being a luxury purchase and starts being treated like any other sound investment.

Not “can I justify this?” but “what is the cost of not doing this?”

• One missed promotion cycle?

• One year of watching a less-qualified peer get tapped for the project that could have changed my trajectory?

• One more budget conversation where I let someone else own the numbers?

When we start doing that math, the calculation quickly changes.

I’ve made this calculation myself and benefited in ways I never imagined. I’ve watched other women do the same — in coaching sessions, in workshops, in quiet moments at the end of a conversation when something finally clicks. The shift isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t announce itself. It looks like a woman deciding, maybe for the first time, that her own advancement is worth treating as seriously as everyone else’s. And for all its subtlety, it’s life changing!

If this resonates, the work of Be Business Savvy is built around exactly this gap — and what to do about it.

Subscribe now

Start anywhere in the archive, or begin with the TEDTalk that brought my research to the world.

What I’m NOT Saying

This is not an argument that women need to be fixed.

It isn’t a suggestion that individual investment is a substitute for organizations doing the structural work they need to do. They absolutely MUST.

But I’ve also spent too long watching talented women wait for someone to invest in them — and lose years of momentum in the process.

You can believe the system needs to change and decide not to wait for it.

In fact, the women I’ve watched advance most effectively almost always do both.

If this sparked something for you...

You’re reading Be Business Savvy — where women get the tools to develop and demonstrate the business, financial, and strategic acumen that turn “she’s great at her job” into “she’s ready for more.”

It’s what I call The Missing 33% of the career success equation — the subject of my TED Talk watched by millions.

I welcome your next step:

• ❤️ Like or restack this post — it’s the best way to help other women find it

• 📘 Go deeper:

  • No Ceiling, No Walls (ebook)

  • No Ceiling, No Walls (softcover)

  • Make the Most of Mentoring (softcover)

  • Make the Most of Mentoring (ebook)

  • Be Business Savvy Course — self-paced, with coaching support

  • Coaching Executive Women (occasional) (newsletter)

Lead ON!

Susan

The Backdrop

Early in my 20s it was obvious to me that, at my company, the number of women in critical functions and in leadership positions was woefully small — especially given that the workforce was primarily comprised of women.

Being an action-oriented young thing, I typed on my IBM Selectric typewriter a memo to the CEO that went something like this:

“Dear Mr. Roberts, most of your workforce is women, but there are very few in leadership positions.”

Up it went through the vacuum tubes that moved important mail through headquarters. Yes, I’m that old.

And I thought nothing more about it because, of course, the CEO was alerted to a problem and would handle it.

Weeks passed and I got a phone call from Mr. Roberts’ very proper secretary.

“Susan, this is Patricia Brulotte in Mr. Roberts’ office. Mr. Roberts would like to see you.”

Here’s what I was wearing that day (Dress for Success had not yet been written and I was fresh out of college).

Furthermore, I was braless - as one should be in a sun dress. I somehow knew it wasn’t appropriate attire for the executive floor.

“Patty,” I said, “today’s not a good day for me to see Mr. Roberts.”

“Susan, when Mr. Roberts wants to see you, you come.”

So off I went to the intimidating floor of paneled walls and power desks.

Mr. Roberts graciously invited me to enter his office and sit on the sofa. From behind his desk, he held up my memo and said,

“I have your memo. What would you like me to do about it?”

The Lesson

It had never occurred to me that he wouldn’t tackle the problem, but would instead expect me to have solutions at hand. This was the first career success lesson I ever learned.

Don’t just bring problems, bring solutions.

I somehow stumbled through the meeting and to make a long story short, within a year we had a women’s initiative at the company that tripled the percentages of women in supervisory and management positions.

Awareness to Action

It took me a long time — and many stumbles — to fully internalize this as a lesson, and to appreciate how important it was. But unlike another lesson I’d eventually learn from Mr. Roberts, this is one I believe I did get “good enough” at.

It’s one of the reasons I rarely post statistics that define the lack of women’s advancement (for example) without also focusing on the solution.

For this I am eternally grateful to Henry Roberts, former CEO of Connecticut General Life Insurance Company (now CIGNA).

Your Turn

Does this lesson resonate with you? Tell us in the Comments how you’ve learned or applied it?

Or share an important career success lesson of your own. (Bonus points if it goes beyond the conventional advice women always get — be more confident, network more, find a mentor.)

Here’s to your continued success!

Susan

Share

If this sparked something for you...

You’re reading Be Business Savvy — where women get the tools to develop and demonstrate the business, financial, and strategic acumen that turn “she’s great at her job” into “she’s ready for more.” It’s what I call The Missing 33% of the career success equation — the subject of my TED Talk watched by millions.

Take a next step:

• 🔔 Subscribe to get actionable articles delivered to your inbox.

  Subscribe now

• ❤️ Like or restack this post — it’s the best way to help other women find it

• 📘 Go deeper:

  • No Ceiling, No Walls (ebook)

  • No Ceiling, No Walls (softcover)

  • Make the Most of Mentoring (softcover)

  • Make the Most of Mentoring (ebook)

  • Be Business Savvy Course — self-paced, with coaching support

  • Coaching Executive Women (occasional) (newsletter)

Lead ON!

Susan

This article is about understanding your Positional Purpose and using it to take action that demonstrates your business acumen. Or we could say it’s about realizing how you’re more than your job.

The Why? of the Matter

Think about a company just starting out. Assuming it’s not funded with huge injections of venture capital and staffed by executives who burn through it mindlessly, every added job must add value — and value is determined through the lens of the Virtuous Business Cycle that we’ve covered in the previous 6 articles.

Whether conscious or not, as companies grow, each new job has to be justified on the basis of the business Outcomes that it hits. That’s what it means to understand your Positional Purpose: you understand why your job exists, not simply what you do in your job.

As one of my ex-husbands used to say, “People who know what will always work for people who know why.”

I didn’t think like this for many years. I focused on what I did and whether I hit my goals — until one day when I gave a speech about the importance of business savvy. An executive woman in the audience came up afterward and told me about her CEO. He was beloved, a truly inspirational leader, but he had one habit people hated. At lunch, he sometimes ate in the employee cafeteria. He’d randomly sit down next to someone he didn’t know, introduce himself, and ask:

“What do I pay you to do around here?”

Simply answering, “I’m in accounting,” or “I’m a programmer,” or “I’m an underwriter” was not what he was looking for. He was asking whether the employee understood whether they could connect their work to actual business Outcomes —in other words, why there was a salary allocated for their position.

Hearing this, light bulbs went off for me.

Positional Purpose in Action

Imagine you work in HR. If the CEO sat down next to you and asked that question, without Business Acumen you might answer, “I’m a recruiter.”

With clarity about your Positional Purpose, you’d say something like:

“I’m supporting top-line growth goals by filling the sales openings in our new market.”

Quite a difference.

This is what knowing your Positional Purpose means: being able to connect your work — or that of your team(s) — to the key business outcomes of Return, Cash, Growth, and Customer/Consumer. It enables you to consistently demonstrate business acumen because your actions are grounded in that understanding.

Here’s a story that brought this home for me personally. I was once the only non-VP on a team overseeing the opening of a new Emergency Department. I was asked to oversee the training, which involved physicians, nurses, ancillary healthcare workers, patient accounts staff, housekeepers, transport and others. I thought it was pretty cool that I’d brought heads of all these functions together — the first such collaboration, as far as I knew. So that’s what I reported on at our first project update meeting.

I said nothing about Return, Cash, Growth, or Customer/Consumer metrics. I was greeted with a snooze fest.

The CFO leading the project team was a strong numbers guy. So I went back, used my just-emerging Business Acumen and figured out what he actually wanted to know. I came up with 5 outcomes the training would deliver:

• Be budget neutral — no additional overtime costs (Return)

• Meet all external regulatory requirements — no fines (Return)

• Open the ED on schedule — revenue beginning as projected (Return)

• Elevate patient services — fulfilling ambitious patient satisfaction goals (Customer/Consumer)

• Increase patient safety — through enhanced safety behaviors (Customer/Consumer)

These were the Outcomes my position was expected to deliver. They became the goals to which I aligned the training team and the focus of subsequent project updates. The CFO took notice.

One of the participants in a later program I delivered captured this dynamic perfectly. She said: “This explains something I saw at a recent quarterly review. When a manager was talking about how hard his or her team worked, the executives looked vaguely bored. But when a manager presented numbers about team performance, they picked up their pens to take notes.”

Put another way, “No one cares the storms you encounter. They only care — did you bring in the ship.”

Defining Your Positional Purpose

There’s a formula, and it has three parts.

Part One: Own your space. Your positional purpose statement is always about you — especially when you’re speaking up the organization. It can shift to “we” when communicating with your team or colleagues.

Part Two: Own your action. Action words matter. They’re specific and inspiring. Think drive, accelerate, ensure, lead, generate — not help with or assist in.

Part Three: Define your impact. This is where you name which of the four elements of the Virtuous Business Cycle your work primarily hits — Return, Cash, Growth, or Customer/Consumer — and connect your work to the metrics or targets that matter. Add concrete numbers whenever you can.

How to Use Your Positional Purpose

A useful way to get there: forget what you do every day. Instead, ask, if my job didn’t already exist, what would be the argument for funding it?

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We started these lessons in part one of build business acumen by focusing on developing business acumen and defining business acumen as:

Understanding your business. where it’s headed and your role in taking it there.

To make that actionable and easy, we’ve used the Charan Virtuous Business Cycle model, which will also be your key to financial a…

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Address the Unspoken Cause

If you’ve done everything right — worked hard, built relationships, delivered results — and you’re still not moving up the way you expect, I want to tell you something almost no one in your organization will say out loud.

It’s probably not your leadership presence.

It’s probably not your communication style.

It’s almost certainly not your confidence — at least not in the way you’ve been told.

Here’s what it likely is: you’re missing the third of the leadership equation that almost no one talks about.

Why Women Plateau

I’ve spent decades studying why talented women plateau — and why companies lose the very women they claim to want in senior roles. What I found changed everything about how I think about women’s career development.

Most leadership development for women focus on executive presence and interpersonal skills. Those matter. But the leaders who get tapped for bigger roles — who get invited into the room where strategy is decided — are the ones who demonstrate something else: Business acumen. Financial acumen. Strategic acumen.

That’s The Missing 33% of the career success equation.

My TED Talk on this has been viewed by millions of people. And yet the organizations those viewers work in are still developing women’s communication skills while quietly overlooking the business savvy that actually drives promotion decisions.

Most women aren’t lacking business savvy because they aren’t smart enough or ambitious enough. They’re lacking it because no one ever explicitly told them it was required — let alone showed them how to develop it.

That’s what Be Business Savvy exists to do.

Start here. Join free.

Subscribe now

But here’s something else I’ve noticed in twenty years of this work.

Even women who recognize the gap often hesitate to invest in closing it. They’ll forward every development opportunity they find to a colleague who might benefit — and quietly archive the ones meant for themselves. They’ll pay for everyone’s growth except their own.

It’s not carelessness. It’s a pattern. And it’s one worth naming, because the hesitation to invest in closing the gap is itself a symptom of the gap.

The women I’ve watched advance most effectively made a decision at some point to treat their own development the way they’d treat any other sound business investment — not “can I justify this?” but “what is the cost of not doing this?”

That shift changes everything.

What You’ll Find Here

Free Subscribers

Free subscribers get full access to my articles — practical, research-grounded writing on business acumen, financial acumen, and strategic acumen, and how to use all three to accelerate your career.

Monthly/Annual Subscribers

At the Monthly/Annual level, subscribers get:

• Highly actionable guidance — including the Quick Start Business Acumen course a structured learning sequence built around my Business Savvy framework, designed to move you from skill development to successful demonstration of those skills.

• Monthly live working sessions — every month I host an open Zoom for all paid subscribers. Bring a real situation — a budget conversation you’re preparing for, a strategic initiative you’re trying to influence, a leadership challenge you’re not sure how to frame. We work through it together. This is not a webinar. It’s direct access to someone who has spent decades on this specific problem. Come with something real.

• The full archive — every article, fully accessible, searchable, yours.

Founding Subscribers

Founding Subscribers to the Be Business Savvy Course get:

• All of the above AND

• The complete Be Business Savvy course — This includes the complete Business Acumen course, the Financial Acumen course, and the Strategic Acumen course — the full arc of what I’ve spent decades developing and refining. Not too hard. Not too mathy. Designed for a full plate.

What’s the Value of a Paid Subscription?

If you’re like me, it’s uncomfortable to pull our that credit card on our own behalf (clothes, jewelry and makeup aside). Paid subscriptions are intentionally priced to be expensable — this is professional development, and you can make that case to your organization. And if you’re paying yourself, I’ve priced them to remove that barrier too. Discover more about the value of a paid subscription.

I hope to see you as a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

For Organizations

Corporate memberships are available for organizations serious about building leadership pipelines that actually reflect their talent pool. If you’re investing in women’s development and want something that addresses the gap most programs miss, contact me.

If you’ve been wondering why the leadership advice you’ve followed hasn’t moved the needle the way you expected — you’re in the right place.

Start with the articles. Subscribe when you’re ready. And when you’re a paid subscriber, bring your real situations to our monthly sessions.

I’m glad you’re here.

Lead ON!

Susan

One more thing — About the logo

In 2000, I discovered The Missing 33% of the career success equation for women. When I updated the research in 2023, the finding held: managers consistently rated men as outperforming women in business, financial, and strategic acumen.

“Close the Missing 33%” is a mouthful. Instead, I chose something more aspirational.

Be Business Savvy.

A shorter way of saying: build your business, financial, and strategic acumen and close the gap that’s likely holding you back.

Now look at the logo again.

See the star at the center?

That’s you — shining with greater Business Savvy.

Read to shine? Join us!

Celebrating with friends in Amsterdam after riding in Andalusia - where the horses are magnificent and the desire to return grows ever stronger.

So before moving on, pause and open your Business Acumen Worksheet to pag…

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Please make sure that you have your Business Acumen Worksheet open to page 8.

This is a final of the three parts of the outside of the Ram Charan Virtuous Business Cycle model. Where: Return creates free cash flow that fuels Cash. Cash is used directly or indirectly to fuel Growth and Profitable Growth in particular. While we can say, “Cash is qu…

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In this micro lesson, we’re going to make friends with Cash, in other words, the company’s safety net and health indicator.

Before moving on, let’s make sure you have your Business Acumen Worksheet open to page 7.

Let’s do a quick review of our Charan Virtuous Business Cycle where

1. Return fuels Cash,

2. Cash fuels profitable Growth,

3. and …

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