Use this one tip in your studies and you will see immediate results

Business Awareness

 

Do some topics on the CIMA syllabus feel more complicated than solving the Rubik’s cube?

Don’t worry, you are not alone. The CIMA Qualification is far from easy.

Understanding certain concepts and being able to apply them in the exam can be the hardest task of all.

However, there is a way to instantly help your learning and ultimately lead to strong performance in exams.

So, what is it?

Good old business awareness

By reading about, thinking about and making notes on real world business situations, you will be much better placed to see the theory you are learning come to life.

Seeing a topic in action takes your understanding to a whole new level.

Okay, so what should you be looking out for?

What should you be thinking about?

What should you be writing down?

Keep reading to find out more…

What to read?

Look out for stories in the business pages that cover issues and topics that are relevant to what you are learning. For example, for Enterprise Strategy – stories on companies expanding overseas, being involved in mergers & acquisitions, or looking to outsource part of its business.

My advice is to scan the headlines and decide whether further reading will be useful to you right now, in terms of what you are learning at the moment with your studies or at work.

The media outlets that I found most useful during my studies were:

What to Think About?

When you come across a relevant article, I suggest thinking about the following issues before reading the whole article:

  • What can be done in this situation – what are the options?
  • What are the benefits and drawbacks of each?
  • Why would a firm choose this course of action over another?
  • What are the likely short term and long term effects (the consequences)?

I recommend these questions because this is the sort of higher level of thinking that is required as you go through the CIMA syllabus and so it gets you into a good habit of thinking strategically.

Higher level thinking, often leads to higher marks.

It would also be valuable to think about how you would have done things differently? This can be particuarly useful if something has gone wrong at a firm or within an industry as a whole – such as a major IT failure (think RBS and Lloyds) or a loss of competitiveness (think HMV, Blockbuster, Woolworths etc)

Another useful exercise is to think about the models or concepts you’ve been studying and how they apply in the real world. Does an article lend itself to PEST, SWOT, Porter’s 5 Forces or Ansoff’s Matrix?  The principles of these concepts may just click.

What to Write Down?

As well as the strategic thinking highlighted above, you’ll also want to take a number of real world examples into the exam with you, to illustrate your points and impress the examiner with relevant business awareness.

Therefore, I suggest writing down a short summary of the articles you’ve found interesting and useful.

Ideally, you want to jot down in bullet form:

  • The source of the article
  • The date
  • The company (companies) and/or industry involved
  • The key points of the story

Not only will this process help you remember the key facts in the exam, but it’s also good practice to be able to distinguish between what is relevant information and what is not, when presented with a business situation.

This is a key skill when dealing with scenario or case study type questions.

Taking Action

Okay, so having now read this post, here’s what I want you to do next…

Choose one of the following actions:

A) Pick a topic you are struggling with (or have struggled with) and search for a business story on it

B) Pick a company or industry you are interested in and keep up to date with what’s going on – are they going forwards or backwards? Have any major changes happened since you last read up on them?

Lastly, if you’ve found this post useful, share it with at least one friend who’d find it useful

Cheers

Matt

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