LEARNING BUSINESS LANGUAGE

Being an engineer with over 20 years of experience and with in-depth project management knowledge, I felt that learning and speaking the business language was the missing gap. I have to learn it. I have adequate technical skills to function at the top level of my career, but that requires additional skills, most importantly, business skills. I have had a lot of interactions in the contracting and commercial space. These interactions exposed me to the commercial side of business. It has also revealed to me my limitations. I, therefore, chose to go to a business school. I chose LBS, went through the entrance exams and started the programme.

We were immediately emersed into Corporate Finance and Accounting. The last time I had something related to it was over 20 years ago, during my final year at the university. We did Introduction to Accounting. Living up to the name, it was only an introduction, and I never had to apply it ever since. It, therefore, made the CFA a new thing for me. It is a start from ground zero. Oh! Obviously, from the lecturer’s teaching style, he was expecting a lot of newbies like me. Chiemeka Ojiabo was really patient with us. He took time to go over explanations again and again. He knew some of us would struggle, and he wanted to provide a soft landing for us. I was happy I could follow the discussions in class and was able to understand them. After leaving the class, I still doubted my understanding of the subject sometimes. Now, I have concluded that I will keep growing in knowing more as this is an entirely new terrain for me.

The second part of the course by Patrick Akinwuntan was a practical application of the earlier classes. We were taught what cannot be found in textbooks. Using real-life cases to explain finance and accounting and how to carry out financial analysis is an effective tool for teaching. Dr Akinruntan deployed this, and sharing his real-life experience as a bank executive who rose to the position of Managing Director is invaluable.

We started by learning the four plus one components of financial statements: Statement of Financial Position, Income Statement, Cash Flow statement and Statement of Change in Equity with Notes on Financial Statement. We ended up learning how to use each of these components of financial statements to measure the financial health of a company. I now have in-depth knowledge about the differences between and impacts of revenue, profit, and cash. Business executives should understand and be able to analyse the relationship and the effect of each on the business. By calculating different ratios, we can compare the finances of the company over the years or at a particular time with another company or with the industry average. All these financial analyses help with decision-making either with the company operations, benefit analysis or investment decisions.

I have started speaking the language of finance and accounting, which is the business language. Not fluently yet. Still, as with other languages, I will improve as I continue to interact with other native speakers.

It becomes more interesting by the day.