Financial literacy is a woefully underdeveloped skill in both our homes and businesses. I frequently hear business leaders lament about the lack of financial literacy within their teams. In my first book, Balancing Act, I outline the four most important future-facing skills and financial literacy (and it’s more sophisticated cousin, financial acumen) is one of these four critical skills. So what is to be done to close the financial literacy skills gap? Use your annual budget process as an experiential learning opportunity for managers and key individual contributors in your organization.

I speak frequently about the benefits of adopting a continuous improvement mindset and practice—so much so that the premise of my second book, The Balanced Business, is that smooth workflows create an environment that fosters organizational accountability and allows trust to flourish. There are many preconditions to the establishment of smooth workflows, but one of the most important is to create clarity about how the work gets done in your business.

Magical thinking in business typically evidences itself as a disconnect between the capabilities, skills, and capacity of the teams that are actually doing the day-to-day work of the business, and what management believes are the capabilities, skills, and capacity of those same teams.

This urge to do it yourself is one that comes naturally—at least for some of us. Remember class projects in high school and college? Were you the Type A high achiever that jumped in when deadlines approached and “took over” to prevent a failing grade or substandard outcome? I played this role many times in college and look back on my behavior with a cringe.

To be “bankable” requires an understanding of how the business functions, what your role is in the value streams that you influence, and how the value you help create generates revenue and operating income.

In business and in our personal lives, honing the skill of both giving and receiving constructive feedback is essential to building trust and driving long-term results. Most of us philosophically recognize the importance of this skill, but struggle with its implementation in real life. In today’s video muse, I provide three tips for engaging in constructive feedback.