4 steps to level up in FP&A

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Last week a senior financial analyst reached out to me for advice:

“I am acknowledged as a high performing senior financial analyst and am looking to make the jump to manager. I've been told the gap currently is in "big picture thinking". I would love to hear you talk about how you can build the big picture thinking/strategy muscle. These tasks feel like they take the most time to think through but saying no to lower level work in order to close this gap is a big challenge I'm facing now. Because of that, I would also like to see how you think about prioritization. Not looking to never work over 40, but need some space to breathe to work on my development area. I've already seen great results just defining some of our systems like you lay out in your playbooks. Appreciate what you're doing.”

(I paid him for that last part)

Can anyone relate??

Today’s newsletter will deep-dive my response back to him, but also got me thinking about putting together a full-blown course to help FP&A professionals accelerate their career.

If enough people join the waitlist then I’ll start building it… and that’s a threat.

Here’s my [abbreviated] advice to him:

1. Fierce prioritization

Beginners say yes to everything.
Intermediates say no to everything.
Experts say yes to everything but are transparent with their capacity and force rank projects with business partners.

You can't be busy and creative at the same time, so being realistic with your capacity is step 1 to elevating your thinking.

And instead of waiting for your business partner to tell you what to do, lead by proposing what you think will add value.

New stuff will come up and your response is "sure, but we're working on xyz for you - which is most critical to get done first?"

Action: Create a priority list (in excel) and send it to your business partner monthly for alignment. Then bring it back up when they add more to the list. 

2. Strategic relationships

With some of that free time from step 1, start building your relationships with your key stakeholders.

This will do 2 things:

a. You'll slowly learn what's important to them
b. You'll be top of mind when something happens

Generally, you'll understand their priorities and how you can help them achieve their goals.

And it's easier to ask someone a dumb question if you know, like, and trust them.

Action 1: If you work in an office, then get up out of your desk and talk to someone every day. If you are virtual, call or video chat someone every day. Start with small-talk then ask them “what’s new in your world?”

Action 2: Make a list of 3 people to build a strategic relationship with. Reach out to 1 of them every day (at least) with a valuable nugget. 

3. Listen for the request within the request

Often in finance we'll get an email like "I need a report to explain xyz". But what they really need is an email with a clear storyline that they can tell their boss about what's going on with xyz.

The first request is 10+ hours of work.
The second is 1 hour of work.

And you'll never know the difference if you don't pick up the phone and interrogate:

- What will you do with the report?
- How often will you use the report?

Assuming they don't actually need a report, you should quickly be able to present a better solution for them.

Action: Next time you get a request, pick up the phone and understand the heart of the request.

4. Spend time analyzing the business

Now that you have a bit of free time, a great relationship with your business partners, know what's on their mind, and are avoiding building pointless reports...

Listen for a key theme that senior leaders are concerned about and proactively dig in.

As a finance business partner, they are looking for us to cut through the noise and provide insights based on data.

Try to be the person in the company who cares most about the business trend. Make it your baby.

Once you figure the drivers out, move on to the next trend.

Action: Make it your mission to understand what drives 1 single trend in the business, form a list of hypotheses that could be causing the trend, and start pulling data to figure it out. Repeat this process until you’ve gone through all strategic priorities.

In Summary:

Developing into a high performing finance leader takes a different set of skills than the analyst level.

• Fierce prioritization

• Strategic relationships

• Listen for requests

• Analyze the business

It’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s an action plan you can implement today.

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