Financial Fluency for Business Leaders

This program provides you with the tools and frameworks necessary to achieve financial fluency. You’ll learn to extract valuable insights from financial data and communicate them effectively to diverse stakeholders, ensuring alignment around key business objectives.

Why This Financial Fluency Program is Important to Your Career

Many rising business leaders excel in their specific functions and team management but often lack the ability to understand and communicate financial insights. As the demand for financial skills is expected to increase by 16 percent by 2028, mastering strategic finance is becoming essential. Leaders who possess the financial acumen to assess growth opportunities, manage risks, and demonstrate the financial impact of their decisions are better positioned to drive value and secure their organization’s future.

For aspiring leaders, mastering strategic finance is a pivotal step toward career advancement. Unlike traditional finance skills such as accounting or budgeting, strategic finance focuses on understanding how your business generates revenue and profits. This insight is essential for collaborating effectively with finance teams across departments and making informed decisions that resonate throughout the organization.

Through engaging class discussions, interactive exercises, and best practices, you’ll enhance your financial acumen, craft compelling financial cases, and apply strategic finance principles to both immediate and long-term objectives. These skills are crucial for business leaders looking to transition into senior roles, expand their influence in cross-functional teams, and ultimately lead their organizations to greater success.

Benefits of Financial Fluency for Business Leaders

• Convert financial information into strategic business actions, linking choices directly to financial outcomes.
• Create persuasive financial narratives that effectively advocate for your business initiatives.
• Use financial analysis to effectively communicate priorities.
• Develop fluency in business finance terminology — such as financial ratios, margin structures, and leverage — allowing you to engage in financial discussions with confidence.
• Become skilled in financial analysis for leaders, evaluating financial performance, and integrating this analysis into business decisions that achieve both immediate and long-term objectives.

Return to your office with a Certificate of Completion from the Harvard Division of Continuing Education.

Who Should Take Financial Fluency for Business Leaders?

This program is ideal for individual contributors and leaders who have never had formal financial education but require financial acumen to be fully effective at work. It is relevant for all industries and all functional areas. Those who would benefit include:

• Team leaders
• Project managers
• Product managers
• Professionals with responsibility for P&L
• Managers of finance professionals

Curriculum

• Revenue Drivers: Identify and manage the key factors that influence your revenue.
• Value Chain Analysis: Cost drivers, cost structure, and margin implications.
• The Value Equation: Understanding different measures of profitability, returns, and value.
• Profit Patterns: Linking business strategy to financial performance and stakeholder expectations.
• Difficult Comparisons: Factoring timing and risk into financial comparisons.
• Resource Allocation: Evaluating and prioritizing competing demands for resources.
• Making the Case: Techniques for presenting a compelling financial argument to stakeholders and securing the resources you need.