This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

You can be excellent at your job for years and still not know how the company around it actually works. Most people learn a function, not a business.

The specific version of this

You are in a leadership meeting. Someone says the gross margin will not support that acquisition cost at current churn, and everyone nods, and the decision gets made. You understood roughly half of it and looked up the rest afterwards, and by then the conversation had moved on. That is not a gap in intelligence. Nobody ever taught you the vocabulary, because your training was in something else. I came into business from a specialist track and spent two years quietly translating.

What this course actually covers

Six blocks, assembled as one loop around a company. First, what a business sits inside and how it is measured: market structure, Porter's five forces, the Boston matrix, inflation and interest rates, regulation, risk, and the three financial statements explained from zero. Second, how a company finds customers — market diagnosis, marketing strategy, budget and return on marketing spend, brand, digital channels and how the function is structured. Third, how money actually arrives: the revenue funnel from lead to payment, where it leaks, acquisition cost against lifetime value, and how team metrics connect to the profit and loss. Fourth, how a business problem gets framed — telling a symptom from a problem, gathering requirements, and seeing the system whole. Fifth, how work flows: process description, BPMN, and running a mapping project. Sixth, how companies are arranged, including the matrix, levels of management and span of control.

A note on one block

The first eight lessons come from a course recorded for a people-function audience, and its final lesson closes with justifying that function's initiatives financially. The content itself is entirely general — STEEPLE, five forces, the Boston matrix, central banks, international trade and the three financial statements do not change by department. The folder name is the only thing about it that is specific.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike Pritula. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 42 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working material: five forces, the Boston matrix, the three statements, 4P and STP, the revenue funnel, unit economics, BPMN, the six design drivers

• Explanations built for someone hearing each term for the first time

Where to start

Write down five words you have heard in meetings this month and could not define precisely. Most of them are in this course, and none of them are complicated once someone explains them properly. Enrol now and start today.