The Finance Business Partner - The 16 Behaviours Of World Class NEW
The essential skills and mindset to move your team fro Calculators to Coaches
The 16 behaviours of World class finance business partners
Finance is changing fast. Do your team have the skills and mindset to influence decisions and remain relevant?
Are you ready for the finance revolution?
The future of finance is robots, a small number of exception fixers, and commercially-focussed influencers.
Finance is changing fast
Over the next 5 -15 years automation will change finance, freeing up time for us to be better business partners and leaders.
Month end no longer exists as we know it, as transactions are live time. Forecasts are automated, continuous, rolling, as far out as you want. And with a rolling forecast the annual budget process is largely eliminated.
The future of finance is robots, a small number of exception ‘fixers’, and a small number of dedicated commercially-focussed people with financial expertise.
These pure business partners will be in demand and highly paid. Some will be very, very highly paid.
I call then Super Business Partners.
Prepare your team for the finance revolution by moving from Calculator to Coach and developing the 16 behaviours of World Class finance business partners.
The future of finance is automation and a small number of relationship-building influencers.
What is finance business partnering?
Building relationships, turning data into insights, and bringing numbers to life
FBP is about 3 things:
1 Building relationships
Influence starts with relationships. You can’t influence anyone if they don’t trust you. Accountants focus on systems, data & processes. Partners invest time in relationships.
2 Turning data into insights
Accountants deal in the data that tells us what has happened. Commercially-focussed finance partners focus on insight, by asking & answering the question so what?
3 Bringing numbers to life
Probably the worst way to communicate numbers is to use a table of numbers. Business partners bring their data to life by telling the story behind the numbers, and communicating simple, clear messages.
If you do those 3 things you'll influence decisions.
And that's the point of being a finance business partner - to influence commercial and operational decisons.
The myths of FBP
Conventional wisdom is to challenge the business, and make recommendations.
The myths of FBP
Here are the 3 biggest finance business partner myths that hold back our relationships and influence:
1 Be a critical friend
The easiest way to create resistance and damage your relationship is to criticise someone. Your chances of influencing them have just crashed.
2. Challenge the business
The best way to make a sales, marketing, or operations person defensive is to challenge their ideas. Instead we want to coach & sell the benefits of doing things differently.
3 Make recommendations
Recommendations also create resistance - especially recommendations from finance to non-finance. Better to explore options and scenarios.
We have all been senior finance leaders, where we subscribed to the conventional wisdom.
Then we moved outside of finance, had finance partnering us, and realised that this advice and thinking is not helpful.
The 16 behaviours of World class
The essential mindsets and behaviours that will move your team from Calculators to Coaches
The 16 behaviours of World class FBPs
The best FBPs have the 4 essential skills:
1. Build relationships
2. Turn data in insights
3. Bring numbers to life
4. Influence, sell & negotiate
And there are 4 maturity levels:
1. the CALCULATOR
2. the DASHBOARD
3. the COACH
4. the LEADER
Are your team dealing in data or insight?
Data answers the question what. Information answers the question why. And insight answers the question so what.
How far up insight mountain are your team?
The 16 behaviours can be simplified into just 1 model - Insight Mountain.
Data answers the question what?
Information answers the question why?
And insight answers the questions: so what, what next, how could we improve?
Finance are great at telling people what happened and surface whys.
And poor at giving people commercial drivers and helping to answer the so what.
And that's the fundamental difference between an accountant who tells people that sales are 4% below budget due to customer X.
And a finance business partner who say, hey: here are 3 things we could think about to grow sales and margin.
We work with finance teams to move them from data to genuine commercial insight that influences decisions.
Why listen to us?
We've been senior finance leaders, but our methodology comes directly from our experience in sales and marketing.
I’m Andy Shambrook. I used to be a finance business partner, struggling to build relationships and influence alongside reporting, budgeting, and forecasting.
When I became finance director I wanted to make time for genuine business partnering. So I put all reporting, budgeting and forecasting into a FP&A team. And created a few genuine, dedicated FBP roles.
Separating FP&A activities from FBP activities transforms finance's influence
Then I became a sales director. and saw a whole new perspective on finance business partnering.
In sales I learned to communicate clear messages, sell my ideas, and negotiate for win-win outcomes. I realised that these are the missing ingredients for finance influence.
In 2014 I founded The Finance Business Partner, and over the last 5 years I've worked with over 5,000 finance people and over 100 companies across the World in every sector.
All my partners are finance leaders with experience outside of finance, who train and consult from direct experience, not text books.
andy@thefinancebusinesspartner.com
Andy Shambrook FCA, Founder and Managing Partner
Iain Dewson
Partner, Global
Hi, I’m Iain Dewson. I’m a FCA and I’ve held senior finance roles across retail, investment banking, advertising, marketing services and insurance.
Most recently I was Head of Finance Academy at TUI (in the group HR L&D function) leading global finance learning for 3,500 people in 40 countries.
In 2019 I joined The Finance Business Partner, specialising in helping teams build better relationships, bring numbers to life and influence decisions.
iain@thefinancebusinesspartner.com
Iain Dewson, FCA, Partner
Andrew Jepson
Partner, Asia Pacific
Hi, I’m Andrew Jepson. I’m a CPA based out of Sydney, running the Asia Pacific region. I’ve held senior commercial finance roles, and also experienced life outside of finance as a general manager.
I wrote the book 'Compliance to Commercial: The QUIET Approach To Finance Business Partnering', and I run Australia's longest running public business partner workshops.
Having worked both in and out of finance, I can bring both perspectives to the table.
Andrew.Jepson@ thefinancebusinesspartner.com
Andrew Jepson, CA, Partner, Asia Pacific
Some of our clients
Over the last 5 years we've worked with over 5,000 finance business partners across over 100 companies all over the World.
You are more than welcome to contact any of our clients to get a first hand view of how we helped them.
Training & development options
Choose from online video courses, public workshops or tailored in-house development programmes
Not your typical finance training
We offer online video courses, public workshops, and in-house blended tailored development programmes.
Find out more at:
www.thefinancebusinesspartner.com
The view from outside
We've all been senior finance leaders, but 90% of what we show your people comes from our experience of working outside of finance and being partnered ourselves by finance.
Real-life experience
No text-book theories here. Just real-life practical tools from people who have been there and done it and have the scars to prove it. We'll show you the mistakes we made and how we overcame them.
