I’ve been thinking a lot about how difficult FP&A can feel at times:

And when your company/industry is going through a lot of growth or change, this volume gets turned up.

Oh, and since finance is a support function we’re expected to keep up with all this while reducing our expenses.

Which is why I strongly advocate for finance leaders to spend a disproportionate amount of time evaluating and fixing our processes.

Hoping the business will slow down is a waste of energy.
Hoping the next business leader will be different is a waste of energy.
Hoping by changing companies that things will be different is a waste of energy.

Your goal should be to optimize where you are for the direction the business is going.

It’s the one skill that nobody can take away from you if you figure out how to do it.

Let’s talk about how to make continuous improvement a habit in FP&A…

Everyone who works for me knows I no longer have patience for venting about a solvable problem - especially those within our control as a finance team.

The model takes forever to recalculate? Fix it.
The process of reforecasting with business partners takes forever? Fix it.
The process we have to intake a reporting request is confusing. Fix it.

I have 0 time for complaining about things within our control.

And you should too.

The key here is knowing the difference between what’s in your control and what’s not. Because sometimes it can be confusing…

Maybe at the root of this problem for most FP&A professionals is this constant question about what their real value is to the company.

If you ask most of your business partners, they would want you to believe that most of what you do is not in your control.

But I’d argue that’s a lazy way to do FP&A.

And a lot of FP&A professionals I lead/coach/mentor never stop to think about this.

In a recent conversation with a CEO, I mentioned to him that if I’m doing my job right in FP&A then everyone is a little bit mad at me.

Your goal isn’t to:

Your goal should be to:

Which means a great FP&A leader is skilled at setting a vision, creating boundaries, and executing on what is most important.

If you’re following your business partner’s lead and bending over backwards to every request they have, you’ll never be able to break that cycle and think proactively about what work you should be doing.

You’ll be stuck hoping things get better without actually taking accountability.

Your goal is not to make it out of today by making everyone happy.
Your goal is to make changes today that will yield dividends in the future for your team.

If you’re a leader, this is critical to your team’s success.

And I intentionally write this today because this is exactly when you need to be thinking about 2026 - the holidays are coming up and you’re tendency will be to coast into January.

But there’s a version of you and your team that starts making the right changes today - then by March you won’t even recognize your team’s performance.

Good luck with this - it’s one of those things that’s critically important, but nobody will ask you to do it.

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