Here's a question to test your prospects as a business leader: How does your company make money?

If you can't answer it, you're hardly alone. Many MBAs can't answer it. Many CFOs and vice presidents can't answer it. Experienced CEOs sometimes struggle to answer it.

What I'm testing with this question is your business acumen.

The Universals of Business

At the core of every successful business, from a global giant to a corner store, are the same fundamentals of moneymaking: cash, margin, velocity, return, and growth. And at the core of every successful business leader is an intuitive understanding of the relationships among them.

It's easy to think the basics of business are for beginners. Everyone knows what cash is, and that companies must make a profit.

But business acumen isn't about knowing definitions. It's about keeping the basics of moneymaking in sharp focus and balancing them in a way that's healthy for the business.

When you have business acumen, you realize the importance of every job at every stage of your career. A mailroom clerk with business acumen knows that getting checks to the accounts receivable department more quickly will ease the company's cash flow. And a sales rep with business acumen knows that higher-margin products will increase the company's return.

Moneymaking Basics

As the complexity of your job increases, it's easy to lose sight of the fundamentals. If your business acumen doesn't develop, you can stumble -- focus too much on revenue growth and overlook cash, or focus too much on cash and overlook growth.

That's why you should never consider it beneath you to revisit the moneymaking basics. They should be front and center in your diagnosis and decision making in every job you have.

Here are the basics:

Cash

No business survives long without it. You should know how much cash your business generates and how much cash it consumes.

What are the sources of it? What drains it? What's the timing of the inflows and outflows and how is it changing? More revenues （sales） often means more cash. But growing a business consumes cash. How fast can the company expand without straining its cash flow?

Margin

When people talk about the bottom line, they generally mean net profit margin -- the money the company earns after paying all its expenses, interest, and taxes. But gross margin is important, too.

Gross margin -- the difference between a product's selling price and what it costs to make the product （the "costs of goods"）, expressed as a percent of the selling price -- can signal important shifts in a business. When PC makers saw their 32 percent gross margins decline to 20, they knew （or should have known） the competitive landscape had changed.

You have to know how changes inside or outside the business affect gross margin. Are there new entrants in the market who are winning customers? A competitor who's found a clever way to reduce costs and prices? A change in the pricing power of suppliers?

Velocity

Velocity refers to speed, turnover, or movement.

How much revenue do you turn over, or generate, for each dollar of inventory? If you have $1 million in inventory for the year and revenues of $10 million, your inventory velocity is 10. This tells you how fast you're moving raw materials through the factory, turning them into finished products, and moving those products off the shelf to customers. The faster, the better.

Service businesses can track velocity, too. For banks, velocity of equity -- how much revenue is generated per dollar of equity -- is a useful measure. The concept applies to every business.

Return

Margin multiplied by velocity equals return. If your return is lower than your cost of capital, your business is likely to be in trouble. That's when shareholders get concerned.

How do you boost your return? See if you can boost your margin or increase your velocity -- or, better yet, both.

Growth

Every business needs to grow to stay in business. How do you grow in a way that keeps the other aspects of moneymaking in balance? There's no formula -- people with business acumen figure it out.

Where Business Acumen Counts Most

Street vendors in villages around the world use business acumen every day. They have to -- their next meal often depends on it.

In companies, business acumen is crucial when the external world changes and there's a need to reposition the business.

Like when Hollywood studios started selling videocassettes directly to the public at the same time it sold them to video rental companies. That's when Blockbuster's rental business started to slide.

People wanted to buy movies, not just rent them, so Blockbuster started selling them. But the moneymaking was completely different.

Blockbuster was used to buying videocassettes on credit and making payments with the cash from renting them. Returns were high.

Selling videocassettes meant laying out the cash up front, holding lots of inventory, and waiting for the cash to come in when the videocassettes were sold. Cash flow, velocity, and return were all adversely affected.

Where Do You Want to Go?

You don't need business acumen to make a meaningful contribution to a business. But you'll need it to rise through the leadership ranks.

You can't acquire it at a seminar or in a quick read. You learn it by using it in real business situations.

Start now by applying it to your company. Ask for the numbers or pull them from the annual report. Precision isn't necessary -- knowing what to focus on is.

这个问题可以测试你作为一个企业领导的前景：你的企业是怎样赚钱的？

如果你不能回答，那么你只是很多人中的一个。许多工商管理硕士不能回答。许多首席财务官和副总裁也不能回答。许多经验丰富的首席执行官很费力地才能回答上来。

我这个问题测试的是你的商业智慧。

企业的普遍原则

从全球巨头到街角小店，在每一个成功企业里处于核心地位的都是同样的盈利基本要素：现金、利润率、周转率、收益和增长率。对每一个成功的企业领导来说，最核心的素质就是对这些要素之间的相互关系的直觉理解。

人们很容易认为企业的基本要素是新手要学习的东西。每个人都知道现金是什么，也知道企业必须要盈利。

但是商业智慧不仅仅是知道定义，而是机警地关注盈利的基本要素并且以一种对企业有益的方式来平衡这些要素。

当你拥有商业智慧的时候，你就会明白你每一个职业阶段的每一份工作的重要性。一个拥有商业智慧的信房职员知道，将支票尽快送达应收账款部门将会改善公司的现金流状况。一个拥有商业智慧的销售业务员明白，高利润的产品将会增加公司的收益。

盈利的基本要素

当你的工作变得越来越复杂的时候，你很容易忽视基本要素。如果你不发展你的商业智慧，你可能会犯错误--过于关注收入而忽视现金，或者过于关注现金而忽视增长率。

因此你决不能忽视对盈利基本要素的再度审视。它们应该在你每一项工作的诊断和决策中处于首要和中心位置。

以下是这些基本要素：

现金

没有现金，没有任何一个企业能够生存下去。你应该知道你的企业产生多少现金，消耗多少现金。

现金来源是什么？什么消耗现金？现金流入和流出的时机是什么？流入流出是怎样改变的？收入（销售）越多一般意味着现金越多。但是企业的发展需要现金。在不完全使用现金流的情况下企业的扩张速度能有多快？

利润率

当人们谈论账本底线的时候，他们的意思通常是净利润率--扣除所有费用、利息和税金之后公司所赚的钱。但是毛利润率也是很重要的。

毛利润率--产品的售价和制造其所需要的成本（货物成本）的差额，以售价的百分比来表示--能够传达企业的重大变化。当个人电脑制造商发现其毛利润率由32%下降到20%,他们就知道（或者应该知道）竞争环境已经发生了改变。

你应该知道企业内外的变化是如何影响毛利润率的。是否有新加入市场者在争取顾客？是否竞争者找到了一个降低成本和价格的妙方？是否供应商的定价能力发生了变化？

周转率

周转率指速度、营业额，或者运动。

每一美元的存货，你能带来多少收入？如果你一年有100万的存货，1000万的收入，那么你的存货周转率就是10.这表明你以多快的速度从工厂获得原材料，将其变为成品，然后将产品从货架上销到顾客手里。存货周转率越快越好。

服务企业也能够跟踪存货周转率。对银行来说，资产周转率--每一美元的资产带来多少收入--这是一个有用的度量。这个概念适用于每一个企业。

收益

利润率乘以周转率就是收益。如果你的收益低于你的资金成本，你的企业很可能出现问题了。这时候股东会开始担心。

如何提高收益？看一下你是否能够提高利润率或者周转率--或者更好的是，两者都能得到提高。

增长率

每个企业都需要增长以在生意场上生存下去。你应该以怎样的方式增长才能维持其他盈利要素的平衡？没有公式。有着商业智慧的人们自己决断。

商业智慧在何处最重要

世界各地的街头卖主每天都在使用商业智慧。他们不得不这样--他们的下一顿饭经常得靠他们的商业智慧。

对公司来说，当外部环境发生改变、需要重新定位企业的时候，商业智慧最为重要。

就像当好莱坞制片厂开始直接向公众出售磁带又同时卖给磁带录像出租公司的时候，Blockbuster的磁带出租生意开始衰落。

人们不只是想租电影，他们希望购买电影。于是Blockbuster开始向人们出售电影磁带。但是盈利方式完全不同了。

Blockbuster 习惯了赊购磁带然后以出租磁带所得现金来支付欠款。收益颇为丰厚。

而出售磁带意味着预先支付现金，持有大量存货，等待磁带售出后现金回笼。现金流、周转率和收益都受到了消极的影响。

你的目标是什么？

要想对企业做出有意义的贡献，你并不需要商业智慧。但是如果你想往领导层爬，你必然需要它。

你不能通过研讨会或是快速阅读来获得商业智慧。你只有通过在实际商业场景中的运用才能学到它。

现在就开始将商业智慧应用到你的公司吧。通过询问或从年报中获得数据。精确性不是必要的--重要的是知道应该关注什么。