A business case for a financial literacy course

A new type of financial literacy course is proving to be a cost effective way of enabling business leaders to sharpen their business and leadership skills.

Traditional financial literacy courses emphasise financial jargon. They focus on the terms and acronyms used to talk about business performance. Terms like Return on Equity and EBITDA are defined, but – it is argued – ‘float’ without the anchor of an integrated business model. The new-format financial literacy course begins lower and ends higher than the typical genre of finance for non-financial manager seminar. By starting with the fundamentals of accounting literacy (that many financial literacy courses step over), the new type of course in the end goes further. It goes beyond finance by developing a holistic model of how business works.  The course reveals a graphical accounting-based value-model of business. The result is that the business manager sees every decision that they make in the light of a value cycle.  Everything that happens in the business is either generating value or destroying value. The new genre of financial literacy course achieves a greater return on course-time and course-cost than many executive education courses and traditional financial literacy courses. It does this because it:

• Provides more concentrated learning than longer-format college programs, whilst retaining the business-breadth of such courses.
• Frames all a manager’s behaviours in a value model. Everything the manager does is clearly seen for its effect on profit. All behaviours become profit-behaviours.
• Improves communication skills. Accounting literacy-based courses teach managers to get financial and key performance messages across very simply and powerfully. By improving communication itself, the impact of the new-type course reaches further than traditional financial literacy courses.

Now that’s a leverage concept worth signing up for. Clearly. Colour Accounting is that financial literacy course. Our next public workshop dates are 1st and 2nd July in Central London. For more information about Colour Accounting™ visit https://weareholst.com// or call 0203 111 9292 to discuss financial literacy in your business. About the Author: Peter is the president and a founder of Accounting Comes Alive, publishers of Colour Accounting™. He qualified as an accountant while working at KPMG in Sydney Australia after studying commerce at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. To contact Peter email hello@weareholst.com    ]]>