Cohort 3

Learn how to model out the financial impact of business and product initiatives. 

Giff Constable

Modeling Business Impact

"Spreadsheets? Booorrrrinnnng." Not so! Financial and "impact" modeling is a critical tool for any actual or aspiring business executive, and it is both strategic and creative. Whether you are in product or business development or marketing, etc, having this skill will allow you to: 1. make better priorities and decisions2. think through upside and risks more clearly3. better align with stakeholders and peers This class is about learning by doing. In the first class, I will lay a foundation. After that it's all about practice. Each week you will have an exercise to attempt before the next class. You will be given a set of assumptions and then you have to dive into a spreadsheet. In our live session, I will walk you through my solution and open things up for discussion, sharing tips and pointers along the way. EXERCISES:Pre-watch video and simple "starter" challenge Exercise 1: model out a business development partnership and decide whether it's a good idea. Exercise 2: you, the CMO, and CEO disagree on the timing of a marketing campaign around a big product launch. Project out the results and create a decision making tool. Exercise 3: model out the impact of a potential acquisition your CEO is considering. Exercise 4: model out the impact of investing in internal tools for your software engineers All of our work will be in the "open" across the cohort so that you can see multiple approaches to solving the same problem. NOTE: This class can be seen as a "partner" class with the Financial Fluency for Product Leaders class on Maven (https://maven.com/giff-constable/financial-fluency). It doesn't matter which one you take first.

Learn a skill essential to being a successful executive

Aspiring business executives in product, bizdev, marketing

Anyone who wants to add more analytical rigor to their decisions and the debates about priorities.

If you already get the value of modeling, but want to practice and see other approaches.

Who is this course for

What you’ll get out of this course

As a leader, you need to be versed in examining the upside and risks of any initiative, and you need to be able to teach your team how to do this as well.

Learn a critical skill for any business executive

Practice designing a spreadsheet to be used as a tool for alignment, collaboration, and less politics. And see examples on how to do this.

Turn spreadsheets into tools for alignment and collaboration

Modeling is about thinking through systems. One former student said, "this really about learning how to think." It's why we don't just focus on one type of initiative.

Practice thinking through any kind of problem

Provide a brief description for each module as a way to sell the value of what students will be learning throughout the course.

First Module

Second Module

Third Module

Course syllabus

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About Your Instructor

Tuesdays 12:00pm-1:00pm EST

Estimated time to work on the exercise models ranges from one to three hours a week.

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About this course

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