A Story to Highlight the First 3 of 6 Key Characteristics of a Strategic Business Partner - Part 4
A Note About Sequence
Why start with Business Partner, P&L / Balance Sheet Expert and Effective "Translator" you ask? (or perhaps you didn't - bear with me as I tell a story of two young finance people I've known whose identities are safely unknown to you!)
The punchline: These 3 are 100% applicable at the beginning, middle and end of any successful Financial Business Analysis / Finance Career!
The Story:
Bill Thegoat had just joined the team straight out of the military and fresh off of a Finance MBA - one of 30+ in the Accounting Group at a large manufacturing facility. He had about 7 years of military experience and zero business experience. But he sure was eager to hit the ground running!
Mike Greenshade had also just joined a few months ago and also had about 7 years of experience - accounting for another similar manufacturing facility. He also was excited to get going - his last job had been fairly toxic and he liked the more easy going culture at the new company.
Bill & Mike started to "hang out" - having lunch together frequently, and talking about their jobs, their boss and their coworkers often.
After about 6 months, Bill was given a very large responsibility to lead a new initiative to drive cost improvement (or as they coined it "Cost Leadership") across the plant in direct partnership with the plant leadership team. He was also put in charge of a corporation-wide (there were 6 other plants in this business unit) project to redesign the Chart of Accounts (CoA) as part of an upgrade of the SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. He had also taken over the "non-transactional" aspects of 5 former team members' jobs as part of a significant restructuring of the Accounting Group (which had recently been renamed the Finance Group, coincidentally).
Mike was analyzing and preparing billing for a Joint Venture (JV) partner and preparing journal entries for various aspects of Financial Close and producing several daily, weekly and monthly reports for wide circulation via email.
The two were at lunch when Mike asked Bill why he wasn't being given "cool projects" and being recognized like Bill.
Here is how their conversation played out:
BILL: "Well Mike, I have been fortunate to have some great opportunities and am sorry you are in the same place. I did notice that and even tried to pull you in on a few things since I think you're a good guy with more knowledge of some of the nuts and bolts than me.
Do you remember when I was first learning about the CoA and asked if you wanted to help me put together a proposal about how to improve its usefulness outside the Accounting Group for driving better performance? I had a hunch that we could reshape our Profit & Loss Statement (P&L) in ways that could make it more functional and accessible to our Business Partners but wasn't sure how to even approach that. You were pretty busy doing your reporting and declined. I had figured out some automation for my reporting - albeit working some serious hours for a few weeks and offered to help you do the same. You were busy with Financial Close and asked if we could look at that another day - that was over 3 months ago. You never did join me on that project.
And then there was the time I brought you with me to meetings with Operations & Maintenance Leadership to talk about existing reporting and how they understood their budgets, performance, etc. in order to drive "Cost Leadership." They barely used the reports and didn't understand the ones they did look at. You came out strongly that the reports were very accurate and could easily be interpreted if they just spent a bit more time. Do you remember how I reacted? I simply let them keep going but asked questions to get them to reveal more about what they did not have and did not understand. I also listened to figure out how they approached the financial realities of doing their very complicated jobs - and learned a lot about how to run Operations & Maintenance. You were pretty frustrated (and as usual busy) and declined further meetings to focus on the more critical stuff. We're on track to save many millions and have actually cut most reporting out and I think I've cut down the amount of time folks have to spend looking at and thinking about the numbers.
And finally there was the time when your work on JV billing revealed some inaccuracies - and the partner pushed back very hard on you and you were getting ready to escalate the situation. So our boss asked me to jump in. As it turns out, they simply did not understand what you were trying to tell them (I think they thought you were accusing them of something). And our own Accounts Receivable (A/R) people in corporate had no idea about any of the intricacies of the operations, relationship and contract between us - their inputs and answers were typically out of touch and inaccurate which frustrated the JV partner, even if there was something to what they were saying. Do you remember what I did? I didn't do any new calcs or even improve them - you did that great. I just sat all parties down and helped the JV Partner Accounts Payable (A/P) people and Leaders understand the issue, our A/R people to explain our issues in terms the JV Partner would understand, and clarified a proposed solution that recognized that nobody "did anything wrong" but "got everything sorted out."
MIKE: "Wow, I think I focused too much on the trees and not enough on the forest - right?"
BILL: "Yeah, a bit, but I'd actually say it a bit differently. I think you didn't exhibit 3 really important traits that I think are pretty important for us Finance Business Analysts.
You didn't act like, or get any recognition by our Leaders as, a good Business Partner. Rather than listen and try to learn about them and help them solve their problems when we met with them to try to drive "Cost Leadership," you sort of dug into a bit of an "us vs. them" position which turned them off immediately. And you didn't follow through and show interest in what they do or what their problems are. I think they likely said, "there's another Accountant trying to push their B.S. on us rather than trying to help us."
I think you missed an opportunity to highlight your P&L Expertise. When I was looking for an experienced set of eyes and a partner on the redesign of our Chart of Accounts, you didn't seize that opportunity. You know me by now - I love to tackle hard problems but always reach out for help to close knowledge gaps and always give credit where do. I just found someone at corporate who could help out - remember when I made sure they were recognized when the VP of Finance acknowledged this work on our quarterly call? They were shocked - nobody had ever done that for them before - and they just got promoted and told me they thought I had something to do with that! Can you imagine that! And as a result of doing that work, I've been pulled into other parts of the SAP project and have been asked to lead an Accounting Best Practices team across our business unit (little do most know I have only 6 months accounting experience!).
Finally, I don't think you were an Effective Translator. JV billing is your baby, but you got in hot water on that error because you didn't recognize it was mostly a communication issue and were not able to help 5 different parties get aligned around the topic because they all "spoke different languages" - there were accountants from the JV, leaders from the JV, our team, our leaders and our A/R people from corporate. I didn't even fully understand all the billing at first, to be honest. All I did was get the right people together and help them translate their viewpoints and then articulate our proposal in a few different ways so that everyone could align on it and move on.
Summary:
1. How is "Good Business Partner" Defined?
They do these things well:
a. Provide great Business Advice and act as a sounding board
b. Do Ad Hoc Analysis in direct support of key business decisions
c. Build & support “operating rhythms” that related financial performance to controllable operational factors in an easy-to-understand way
d. use Scorecards, Initiatives, etc. to drive and support their business
>>>In short, they act as a “mini CFO.”<<<
2. How is "P&L / Balance Sheet Expert" Defined?
They:
a. Have Deep Knowledge of the Financial Statements and Ratios and related Finance Concepts
b. Do Thorough Analysis, frequently putting themselves in various stakeholders' shoes
c. Are Systems Experts - on any system that can provide information of use or that impacts "the numbers" in any way
d. Help people understand financial results
>>>In short, they are Financial Experts.<<<
3. How is "Effective Translator" Defined?
They:
a. Can talk to a tax specialist
b. …and a customer
c. …and an operator
d. …and business dev, etc.
>>>In short, they help coalesce diverse people around common ideas / information.<<<
Up Next:
I will tell another story and define the other 3 Key Traits!