About Steven Haines

Steven Haines is the Founder and CEO of the Business Acumen Institute (BAI) and Sequent Learning Networks. Author of 11 published books. Visiting Professor at Technological University Dublin. Background in organizational and industrial psychology, MBA in Financial Management, and senior roles at AT&T and Oracle, where he was part of the founding team that built Oracle’s CRM division.

That is the biography. Here is what matters if you are trying to decide whether to work with him.

Not a Trainer. A Diagnostician.

Most people in this space sell courses. Steven built a diagnostic practice grounded in hundreds of organizational assessments across industries. The question he starts with is not “what training do you need?” It is “what is the gap between where your organization is and where it needs to be, and what is causing that gap?” Based on his research, about 30 percent of companies do an excellent job with product management and organizational capability. About 50 percent push and pull with mixed results. Another 20 percent cannot move off the mark. These patterns repeat across business acumen and strategic thinking, and the diagnostic tools are designed to tell you where your organization sits and what to do about it.

The Intellectual Property

The Business Acumen Canvas organizes the full portfolio of capabilities that constitute business acumen: external awareness, core capabilities, business model understanding, and the mindset and influence skills that translate insight into action.

The Strategic Thinking Mental Architecture provides 22 tools across 5 clusters: a structured, teachable system for strategic thinking.

The GrowthSignal Index™ and Capability Gap Signature™ diagnose organizational capability gaps using importance-performance analysis and characterize whether the constraint is skills, systems, or both.

The AcumenPulse™ measures individual competency across 12 clusters with dual-scale scoring: Knowledge vs. Application, with correction factors from validation interviews.

The Product Management Life Cycle Model provides the framework for how products are managed from beginning to end, and the 8 PM competency clusters that underpin Sequent’s professional development programs.

Sequent and BAI: How They Connect

Sequent Learning Networks is the product management professional development arm: courses, workshops, and advisory for product teams. BAI addresses the broader organizational challenge: diagnosing and building the business acumen, strategic thinking, and cross-functional capabilities that enable growth. Many clients start with one and discover they need the other.

Start a Conversation

Whether you are looking to assess organizational capability, build business acumen, develop strategic thinking skills, or strengthen product management, the starting point is a conversation about where you are and where you need to be.