What Every Executive Should Know About Finance

What is the main goal of Finance for Senior Executives?

This program helps nonfinancial senior executives broaden their perspective. Participants gain a deeper understanding not only of key finance terms and concepts, but also of how financial considerations can be brought to bear when facing strategy, marketing, HR, IT, and other kinds of choices. The program aims to make participants more confident when thinking in finance terms and more proficient in integrating finance into their business judgment.

What would you say to people who are nervous about coming to to the program because they don't think they have enough knowledge in finance?

I'd say, "This is the exact course for you." Finance for Senior Executives doesn't assume any finance knowledge. We develop a powerful framework and toolbox one day at a time, starting with the fundamentals.

I understand there's a unique new option for Finance for Senior Executives. Can you describe that?

We are now offering the program in two formats: the traditional five-day, on-campus experience, or a modular version that includes two distance-learning sessions through HBX Live plus three days on campus. While the content is largely the same, the modular version provides participants with "soak time" to really absorb the fundamental concepts of finance between sessions. There is a set time to log in for the Live classes, but you can access them by computer from anywhere in the world. This adds flexibility for executives and senior leaders.

The Live classroom is quite exceptional. HBS faculty teach from a state-of-the-art studio where participants are displayed simultaneously on individual screens as they engage in real-time discussions and debate. The sessions are professionally produced–this is not your typical video conference.

Finance for Senior Executives attracts participants from diverse industries. How do you make the curriculum relevant to each person's business?

We present global cases on leading companies of various sizes that compete in more than a dozen industries. While each case focuses on a particular problem, they all reflect the fundamental challenges facing key decision makers today. Our dynamic discussions enable participants to exchange diverse perspectives, counter and defend points, build on one another's ideas, and examine how their choices might vary in other contexts. Over the course of the program, they will improve their ability to measure and drive performance, assess the need for cash and manage sources of capital, determine if an investment creates value, and evaluate merger-and-acquisition opportunities.

How does this program help nonfinancial executives improve their relationship with the CFO?

Even if you're not valuing a company, figuring out a merger, or deciding when to go public, you need to be able to interface with the people who are doing that. So a lot of what we teach in Finance for Senior Executives is how to ask the CFO who is contemplating these decisions the right questions. How do you justify this transaction you're talking about, an investment you are considering, or a loan you want to take out? What's the rationale behind that?

What would you say are the top two takeaways of this program?

First, participants leave with a better understanding of how their decisions lead to cash flows and how these cash flows are associated with value creation. That's a very important skill, and we give them the toolbox to do it. Second, we teach them how to apply the tools of value-based management to a wide variety of decisions. Participants leave class with a compelling framework that they have practiced and know how to apply.