The View from Harvard Business

You Know the Difference Between Cash and Profit. Right?

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Management

Here is a really, really scary factoid from Harvard Business Review.

"A majority of U.S. managers surveyed by the Business Literacy Institute were unable to distinguish profit from cash, and many didn't know the difference between an income statement and a balance sheet."

Admittedly, not all managers run P&L shops (That's "profit and loss" for you same folks identified in the paragraph above.) But still. Can you call yourself a manager without understanding the basic financial metric upon which your company's success is based? This suggests, as does the related HBR article, that we need to do a much better job of training our employees in basic financial principles. Take our poll. How would you describe your own financial literacy?[poll id="17"]

posted by Sean Silverthorne
November 5, 2009 @ 10:04 am

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