What makes a great FP&A leader?

Ask any great finance leader how they got where they are and they’ll all come back with a similar answer:

It’s some mysterious blend of luck, natural gifts, right-place right-time, and hard work.

Which isn’t very helpful for the rest of us.

There has to be a way to reverse-engineer FP&A leadership success

And as I’ve been studying FP&A leadership and helping others ascend the career ladder, I’ve noticed a consistent pattern.

Here’s what I’ve found:

The problem: it’s unclear

Ask any FP&A leader what you need to do to advance your career and you’ll be more confused than before you asked.

Why?

Because leadership is often seen as an intuitive thing. It’s something you become, not something you do.

And you’ll know it when you see it.

Which makes it extremely unclear to you and nearly impossible to work on.

Even worse than being unclear, your boss doesn’t want to have to teach it.

If they can’t define it or break it down, then they can’t teach it.

Which means it’s up to you to keep grinding away and hope you advance at your ideal pace…

Skills change by level

As you move through your career, what’s asked of you changes (this is obvious).

But very few professionals stop to think critically about the time they spend every day to develop next level skills.

Rather than looking 1 to 2 steps ahead to see what types of skills their leaders are leveraging every day, many professionals stay glued to their work and have the impression that more or better is the answer.

It’s my obligation to tell you that more and better are great - but what you should be focusing on is different.

For example, being an excellent financial analyst requires primarily technical skills.

However, finance leadership requires primarily interpersonal skills.

These 2 types of skills are at odds with each other when you consider how your day is structured.

You can’t build an excel report and influence a business partner at the same time.

Which means your day needs to be structured to maintain excellence at your current level but give you opportunities to develop those next level interpersonal skills:

• Political savvy & Influence

• Strategic relationships

• Communication

• Prioritization

• Storytelling

• Leadership

• Vision

Outcomes that add value

Early in your FP&A career, your primary function is to drive excellence with your inputs.

Reporting, analysis, forecasting, consulting are what you spend time on. But as you grow your career, you start to see these as levers to drive value for the business.

They are simply a means to an end.

The end that we are after is driving the business forward.

• Reducing risk and volatile earnings

• Improving leadership decisions

• Expense efficiency

• Revenue growth

Learning to leverage the inputs you’ve mastered (reporting, analysis, forecasting, consulting) is how you’ll drive those outcomes. Which means you need to maintain excellence while you ascend to higher leveraged outcomes.

Over the next few months we’ll keep diving deeper into each of these Next Level FP&A skills and what they look like in the wild.

In summary:

What got you here won’t get you there.

Learn to look for the leveraged outcomes that build on the hard work you’ve already built up.

Focus on what drives business outcomes. Find time to invest your energy in next level skills.

Knowing where you are headed is half the battle - the other half is figuring out how to get there.

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