Staging environment

Modeling Business Impact

4.6 (4)

·

5 Weeks

·

Cohort-based Course

Learn how to model out the financial impact of business and product initiatives.

Course overview

Learn a skill essential to being a successful executive

"Spreadsheets? Booorrrrinnnng." Not so! Financial and "impact" modeling is a critical tool for any actual or aspiring business executive, and it is both strategic and creative. Whether you are in product or business development or marketing, etc, having this skill will allow you to:


1. make better priorities and decisions

2. think through upside and risks more clearly

3. better align with stakeholders and peers


This class is about learning by doing. In the first class, I will lay a foundation. After that it's all about practice. Each week you will have an exercise to attempt before the next class. You will be given a set of assumptions and then you have to dive into a spreadsheet. In our live session, I will walk you through my solution and open things up for discussion, sharing tips and pointers along the way.


EXERCISES:

Pre-watch video and simple "starter" challenge


Exercise 1: model out a business development partnership and decide whether it's a good idea.


Exercise 2: you, the CMO, and CEO disagree on the timing of a marketing campaign around a big product launch. Project out the results and create a decision making tool.


Exercise 3: model out the impact of a potential acquisition your CEO is considering.


Exercise 4: model out the impact of investing in internal tools for your software engineers


All of our work will be in the "open" across the cohort so that you can see multiple approaches to solving the same problem.


NOTE: This class can be seen as a "partner" class with the Financial Fluency for Product Leaders class on Maven (https://maven.com/giff-constable/financial-fluency). It doesn't matter which one you take first.

Who is this course for

01

Aspiring business executives in product, bizdev, marketing

02

Anyone who wants to add more analytical rigor to their decisions and the debates about priorities.

03

If you already get the value of modeling, but want to practice and see other approaches.

What you’ll get out of this course

Learn a critical skill for any business executive

As a leader, you need to be versed in examining the upside and risks of any initiative, and you need to be able to teach your team how to do this as well.

Turn spreadsheets into tools for alignment and collaboration

Practice designing a spreadsheet to be used as a tool for alignment, collaboration, and less politics. And see examples on how to do this.

Practice thinking through any kind of problem

Modeling is about thinking through systems. One former student said, "this really about learning how to think." It's why we don't just focus on one type of initiative.

This course includes

5 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

In-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

4 projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Jan 14—Jan 19

    Jan

    14

    Session 1

    Tue 1/145:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    Exercise 1

    1 item

Week 2

Jan 20—Jan 26

    Jan

    21

    Session 2

    Tue 1/215:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    Exercise 2

    1 item

Week 3

Jan 27—Feb 2

    Jan

    28

    Session 3

    Tue 1/285:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    Exercise 3

    1 item

Week 4

Feb 3—Feb 9

    Feb

    4

    Session 4

    Tue 2/45:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    Exercise 4

    1 item

Week 5

Feb 10—Feb 11

    Feb

    11

    Session 5

    Tue 2/115:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

4.6 (4 ratings)

What students are saying

Can't recommend this course enough. These are critical skills that us Product folks need to be able to demonstrate impact and communicate effectively with our stakeholders and executive partners. This is isn't talked about enough.

Ken

Cohort 1

Sr Product Director, Digital Consumer Experience

VillageMD

Super helpful and informative class, as always. Giff really helps you to deal with the vagaries of real-world situations and all of their uncertainty, and still build useful models that can be used for decision making. Bravo!

Jeff

Cohort 1

Manager, UX Design

H2O.ai

Giff is an amazing coach / Teacher. I enjoyed every hour of the course. It is very structured and well designed. Giff maintains great balance between practical hands on and teaching. Thank you Giff.

Ritesh

Cohort 1

VP, Product Engineering

GoGuardian

It was a good class with an excellent discussion. The exercises were thought-provoking and challenging. I learned a lot about using Excel to model and how to think about modeling as a stimulus to prompt deeper thinking and as a framework for alignment with other leaders. The only feedback I have is that the class would benefit from more instruction on specific ways to use Excel, distinct frameworks for how to setup a model, and some foundational content on how to interpret or think about typical modeling requests. That instruction coupled with hands-on application, and great discussion on applying the lessons and working through the exercises would make this class excellent.

Chris

Cohort 1

Director, Product Management

LendingTree

About Your Instructor

Giff Constable

Giff Constable

Giff Constable is the former Chief Product Officer of Meetup, CEO of Neo Innovation (acq by Pivotal), and the author of widely-used books on innovation Talking to Humans and Testing with Humans.


He teaches several highly-rated classes on Maven, including Financial Fluency for Product Leaders and Product Leadership in Practice. This class on modeling actually came about by popular demand from the takers of the finance class.


Giff also taught product management at the NYU Stern School of Business and has led workshops for major corporations like American Express, Hearst, Mayo Clinic, Steelcase, and more. You can learn more about Giff on LinkedIn or see more content from him on YouTube.

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Course schedule

2-4 hours a week

  • Tuesdays 12:00pm-1:00pm EST


  • Weekly projects

    1-3 hours per week

    Estimated time to work on the exercise models ranges from one to three hours a week.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Modeling Business Impact