Photo by Alexander Nadrilyanski.
We’ve barely dipped into fall and folks are already reaching out about programs for 2026. In case you’re curious, nothing is higher on next year’s corporate-training wishlist than Business Sense. As a topic, business sense is the bayleaf of professional development. The je ne sais quoi that, once you have it, earns you a permanent invite into “the room where it happens.”
This nebulous and elusive business goodness can go by a lot of names. Sometimes it’s Business Sense. Sometimes Business Reasoning. Other times, Helping Leaders with Decision Making. But all of them get at the same thing.
Essentially, people who have business sense make decisions based on what the business needs. They have a north star to guide them. Without that north star? We get decisions based on a mix of whatever is most appealing or least difficult to implement. And if that’s your rubric, at some point either to your face or behind your back, someone will say you’re showing up really junior.
Really junior, as in naive. Really junior, as in with an underdeveloped rubric. Really junior, lacking a complete picture of the strategic landscape. And, in the worst case scenario, really junior, where the through-line of your decision-making is ego and protecting your role and your own skin. At the direct expense of the org. Oof.
Pushing decisions to the edges
The military-themed business books talk about pushing decision-making to the edges. Situational awareness is highest for tactical teams. They are literally on the ground. And can see what is right in front of them. That’s not possible for generals on another continent.
Applied in a non-military context, business execs who read those books will say that they want their folks to have autonomy to solve problems that they encounter. Those people are often closer to those problems. They have important context and nuance that their executive counterparts lack. And so a good, business-y way to ensure execs aren’t overloaded and non-execs aren’t totally disempowered is to…well…empower them.
And that works right up until those leaders make a call that no one would or should make. They want to prioritize a pet project over a major feature release? Um, who authorized that? And on what basis? Why would anyone think that’s a good idea?
In that head-spin moment, two things happen. First, the execs who were pushing decision-making to the edges, put the brakes on real quick. Next, the org slows down. If we now need to check in with our boss and our boss’s boss to make any meaningful decisions, we go slower. A lot slower. And in business, slow and dead are the same thing.
It’s hard to push that decision-making to the edges if we’re not sure how the edges are making decisions. The thing that gets your execs out of the weeds? That gets non-exec leaders acting with skin-in-the-game? And an org where most decisions are mostly right most of the time? That’s business sense.
Spelling it out
Part of the problem is that “business sense” encompasses a couple of related concepts that are rarely spelled out. “Really junior” is just the way people with that business sense describe people without it, whether that person is brand new or decades-in. If you don’t know what they’re talking about neither is particularly helpful. Let’s talk about what everyone’s fumbling to say.
When someone tells you that you lack business sense they generally mean that they see three specific patterns in how you relate to your work:
- You measure success by efforts instead of outcomes.
- You care about consistency more than impact.
- You privilege team goals over org-wide ones.
Wouldn’t it be helpful if they had just said that?
What they all have in common is that they describe someone focused on the predictability and control of their own work, instead of taking custody for the success of the whole operation.
Is there something inherently wrong with focusing on the predictability and control of your own work? Not really. People spill considerable ink talking about spans of control. There’s plenty of advice out there about staying in your lane. You could be forgiven.
But the counterpoint is that the world changes. Businesses change, customers change, governments change. Every organization needs people who can keep an ear open for those changes, who can stare down what that means for the work we’re doing today, and what it might mean tomorrow. A sense, as it were, of the business.
Nobody wants to be junior
We’d forgive you for thinking this all sounds unfair. Your job has process and measures for success but if you do those things as agreed then you lack business sense for not rewriting them? You commit to goals and hit them but if some other teams miss theirs then you aren’t supposed to take the win? What, as the kids say these days, the fuck?
We’re not saying it’s fair or unfair. We’re making a descriptive claim, not a normative one. When someone tells you that you need more business sense, or that you’re not ready for more scope, or that you need to level up, this is typically what they’re trying to communicate. That you’re more concerned with how work happens than with what work should happen in the first place.
And still, nobody wants to be junior. Even folks 10 seconds out of school don’t want to be junior. And leaders with 10 years under their belts certainly don’t. So if you’re a people leader and folks keep routing around you or pulling you out of “the room where it happens,” check yourself.
Does it matter to the business? Outside of your role, your team, your whole department. Would the whole org agree that this thing matters? Yes, good. That’s a business need.
Can we talk about all options for addressing that need? All options means all. Options that include growing teams, sure. But also shrinking them. Or moving them to some other part of the org to better meet that need. Not teams in general. Your teams. Options that include using all the tools at our disposal, but also maybe replacing outdated tools, processes, teams, or approaches with new ones. Not tools in general. Your tools.
And here’s the biggie: Can we talk honestly and calmly about the relative merit of those options? Can we weigh pluses and minuses? Can we stare at the same facts and come to the same conclusion about the best and most-aligned course of action?
You’ll know you’re making progress when some of the best ideas for how to solve a thing involve you and your team letting go of turf in order to have more impact.
You want to be in the room? That’s the price of admission.
— Melissa & Johnathan
