High Impact Skills
Finance for Non-Finance
Two days of financial acumen for people who make financially consequential decisions without a finance background, ending in a simulated business case built on your own sector.
The business challenge
Why organizations ask for this.
Non-financial managers make financially consequential decisions daily, then cannot defend them in the language the business actually uses. In commercial roles, the same gap means they cannot hold a serious conversation about the customer's business.
Approach & methodology
How the programme actually runs.
2 days · 14 hours · Face-to-face · uses the client's own figures
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Day 1: Reading the business
Understanding the business of your partners. The profit and loss statement, from revenue to profit. Balance sheet reading skills and why they matter. The main financial indicators and what actually drives them. Cash flow management, the life energy of the company, and the difference between revenue and income.
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Day 2: Deciding with the numbers
How financial decisions are taken based on what we know, and how to influence the right decision. Budgeting, forecasting, and setting KPIs from them. A final case study using the financial situation of a simulated business with the characteristics of your own sector.
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Throughout
A running parallel with personal financial indicators, which makes the concepts land faster than any textbook definition.
Competencies built
What participants can do afterwards.
Financial literacy
Read a P&L and a balance sheet without needing them explained.
Budgeting
Build and defend a budget that survives contact with finance.
ROI analysis
Make the business case in the language a CFO recognises.
Business acumen
Understand what actually drives the numbers you are asked to move.
Expected business outcomes
What the organization should see.
More financially sound decision-making
Better cost control and forecasting
Improved alignment between finance and operations
Schedule & format
Practical details.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Managers and professionals.
2 days · 14 hours. The rhythm is deliberate: modules are spaced so participants apply the behaviour at work between sessions.
Face-to-face · uses the client's own figures. We adapt the mix to your geography and shift patterns.
Yes, and it always is. We start with two to three individual conversations with selected participants, then rebuild the cases, the language and the practice situations from your business.
Kirkpatrick levels one to four: reaction, knowledge, self-assessed behaviour, and the participant's manager assessing the same competencies. We agree the target behaviours with the sponsor before design starts.
Digital missions and buddy work on PROMOTE, with the participant's own manager involved. This is the difference between 15–20% and 60–80% transfer into practice.
Yes. We also deliver in French across our Western European and African operations.
Related programmes
Others in High Impact Skills.
Critical Thinking
Test the claim before you act on it: bias, evidence and inference under time pressure.
Project Management
Practical delivery discipline for the people who run projects without the job title.
Strategic Planning
Turn ambition into a plan with real choices, allocated resources and a way to know it is working before the year ends.
Start a conversation
Book a strategic discussion about Finance for Non-Finance.
If you are evaluating how to build capability that actually changes the way your organization works, we can help you define the right starting point, cohort design and delivery sequence.
The first conversation is diagnostic. We discuss your context, priorities, maturity, and where capability building can create measurable leverage.