Rebuild your finance operation

In my 12 years of finance, I’ve yet to inherit a team that was ‘great’.

Heck, the best I’ve ever gotten was ‘good enough’.

Which might cloud my judgement, but I’ll let you be the judge.

Every 18ish months (or sooner) I take on a new role/challenge/team.

Without fail, they all need some deep rebuilding (I call it FP&A Transformation).

Which actually means there is opportunity with the People, Process, and Product (the output quality of the team).

And after doing this enough times, you better believe I have a blueprint for taking an FP&A team from ‘good enough’ to ‘great’.

Let’s jump in!

It’s overwhelming, but start with people

When you have opportunity with People, Process, and Product on your FP&A team it can be overwhelming to know where to start…

• Business partners are not happy

• You have a backlog of requests

• Things are breaking every day

• Every 1 issue you find makes you think there’s 10 more you don’t know

My opinion - the only logical place to start is with your people.

Why?

Because the same People who built the bad process will not self-reform.

But as the new leader, how do you quickly evaluate the team? Here’s my blueprint:

• Observe their output for 30 days

• Go deep in their function/responsibilities (during those first 30 days)

• Ask around for feedback (during the first 30 days)

• Set up a fast cadence of project, progress, completion (daily if needed)

• See what breaks

Sometimes people lack vision - you can quickly fix this by casting a clear vision of where you’re taking the team. This problem can fix overnight.

Other times (more often) they lack ability to do the job at a high level - which means you need to make the decision to coach or replace.

But starting with People reform is the key when team’s a mess.

Why I like to rebuild everything

Once I’m confident I have the right team in place, I move on to how we do the work (aka Process).

And by the time I’m done improving the Process, every process is rebuilt from scratch (usually).

“Isn’t that inefficient?” (I hear the critics scream)

Yes and no.

If I (or my new team) didn’t build the mousetrap (i.e. financial model, reporting, etc.), it’s really hard to know where the weaknesses are.

Ever been caught by a bad Excel formula in a report you never knew existed? Exactly.

It’s not about right or wrong - or even about better or best…

It’s about knowing what you’re dealing with.

I could write an entire year of newsletters about all the potential pitfalls of inheriting bad reporting, analysis, forecasting, or consulting…

Or I could just tell you to rebuild it all from scratch.

Product - not what you think it is

I use the term Product a lot in FP&A for a couple reasons.

First, we produce something of value for our businesses - you could call “something of value” a product.

Second, my boy Marcus uses the 3 P’s and it’s just so catchy that I had to steal it.

In short, obsessing over your product means you have a vision for what FP&A looks like (*cough The FP&A OS cough*).

Then you put that vision into practice by building the best reporting, analysis, forecasting, and business partnerships you possibly can.

Often, having an excellent product in FP&A means it’s simple - easy to understand by business leaders.

Simply focus on these 4 to win in FP&A: Reporting, Analysis, Forecasting, and Consulting… those are your products.

But you often can’t get here unless you have the right People and Process.

Even better - your best People who have free time from a clean Process will come up with a better Product than you ever would. Boom, now we’re cooking!

In summary:

I’m sort of obsessed with transforming FP&A teams.

And after doing it for the better part of 12 years, patterns have emerged.

People first. Then Process. Then Product.

You won’t recognize your team in 12 months.

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