Top 10 Characteristics of a "Green Eye Shade Wearing" Finance Organization - Blog Post 7
So you are not a Strategic Business Partner Yet?
Hazarding a guess that many of your finance organizations may not qualify as Strategic Business Partners yet...so how do you ID where you are at so you can do the right things to improve? This post and the next 4 will ID what I call the "5 Archtypes of Finance Organizations."
Totally stereotyping here, but they will be in order from "farthest from" to "almost" a Strategic Business Partner.
Archetype 1 - The Green Eye Shade Wearer
***Note from John: no kidding I've seen all of these displayed - this is REAL!***
In your best Southern Drawl, say "you might be a Green Eye Shade Wearer if..." before each of these:
You ask your new hires what kind of accounting machine they prefer and make sure they have enough rolls of paper for it...
You fret about where you can put the next bank of file cabinets...about once per quarter...
You reminisce about the "good old days" before those darned ERP systems...
You wonder what management does in all those meetings (since you've never stepped foot in one...ever)
You agonize over accuracy to the 5th decimal point much more frequently than over whether anyone can actually understand what your numbers mean...
You are proud of how many ledgers, files and pieces of paper you have accumulated...they represent all the work you did...
You require most of your people to be CPA's (and your department is not called "Technical Accounting")...
Financial close is the highlight of your month - the most significant thing you do...
Financial close is what you are either planning for or recovering from every day of the month...
Your average value lies more in the historical things you know than what you can help the business learn going forward...