The Best Advice I Ever Received

Hello and welcome...?to our weekly newsletter, where we share 3 things weekly to help you become a great FBP.

This week those 3 things are:

- The Best Advice I Ever Received

- Launching The Leaders Lab

- Client Wins and Programs

And don't forget, theFBPteam is here to help you develop a highly engaged and commercially?strong?finance team that other functions want to work with.... book in a call to see if we can help at...

www.calendly.com/andrewjepson

The Best Advice I Ever Received

For someone who has been in the finance profession for over 25 years, it's a big call to isolate and label one piece of advice I received as the best.

And yet here we are.?

The reason I want to highlight it is because it was one of the earliest pieces of advice I received.

One the group of grads I worked with in my early career regularly laughed about.

But the one that has stood the test of time throughout my career and served me well over and over again.

What is it you ask......well first a story.

It was my first year as a graduate auditor back in 1998 and I had been given a somewhat risk free audit to run and perform.

As was the norm for my manager?he decided to review the file at 5pm right when I wanted to head home. And he asked me about some of the audit evidence in the file.

Clearly he disagreed with the level of comfort I had gathered so he promptly told me

"Andrew you need to?take ownership".?

This audit was his to sign off on so he had ultimate ownership.?

But for him to have faith in the work I did for him and minimise these 5pm file reviews, I also needed to take ownership. And treat all my work as if I was the partner.

Take Ownership

For the next 2-3 years he would constantly drill it into me if the audit evidence wasn't enough.?

Take Ownership.?

"Are you taking ownership for this audit Andrew"

Until soon enough I started hearing

"You've taken ownership Andrew, well done"

Which turned into us grads mimicking him whenever we went out for Friday night drinks (post an audit file review)

"Andrew have you taken ownership for the next round"

"Andrew the dancefloor is asking for you to take ownership".

Over 25 years later that piece of advice still rings in my ears from his office in Melbourne, Australia.

And it remains the best piece of advice for anyone wanting to progress in an organisation.

Or in Life.

Take Ownership.?

A simple mindset of taking ownership.

If you display it, you will gain more responsibility, you will set higher standards and your career as a finance professional will take off.

And you will be amazed at how quickly you become more commercial.

The?Leaders Lab....starts 2025

It is with great excitement that I announce that in 2025 we will be launching a brand new program for senior finance professionals we call....

The?Leaders Lab

What is The?Leaders Lab?

This is our premium product targeted at the best of the best in finance.

We know you are great at finance. We know you are great at business partnering

But you have to round out your Leadership and Communication skills further to gain access to the C Suite.

And this is what this program will do.?

What does it include:

- Leadership & Communication lessons to help you lead your finance team more effectively and prepare you for the C Suite.

- Peer Group Solve it Sessions where you work with our experts and your peers to solve current work issues....LIVE

- Monthly 1:1 Coaching sessions with our resident experts. Senior finance executives who have been there and done that and can help guide you through your career.

- Live CFO Interviews to learn from those who have been there and done it before you.

- 360 Assessments to shine the light on exactly where you are going right and going wrong. And ways to correct.

This is an exclusive ongoing program to help lift the impact finance leaders have in their organisation

And get you ready for your?step beyond management

Are you interested?

We will be taking expressions of interest over the next month to determine your eligibility, for our launch in early 2025.

And only 20 positions will be available.?

So if this sounds like something for you or your up and coming team, just click on the link below to express an interest.

Expression of Interest - The Leaders Lab

Note: Why no apostrophe in The Leaders Lab you ask - the Lab isn't owned by anyone and isn't short for anything (apostrophes indicate ownership or missing letters) - it's just a great environment lots of leaders want to come and experiment.

Upcoming FBP Programs & Clients?

FBP Accelerator: Expert

Our FBP Expert program kicked off last Wednesday with 10 delegates starting their journey to becoming business partnering experts.

This group is a truly international group with delegates from Australia, India, Philippines and all the way over to Switzerland.

We are together for the next 8 weeks and includes 3 sessions utilising the world renowned Insights Discovery profiling tool.

FBP?Essentials with Virgin Australia

Some of you may have seen my post earlier in the week, but this week we kicked off the FBP Essentials with one of Australia's largest airlines, Virgin Australia

This is the first session of 14 finance and procurement professionals to take them through the essentials of Business Partnering over the next month.

This one is face to face in Brisbane which means I get the velocity points up with Virgin and leverage their products (a plane) and it costs them nothing to get me there (because its flying there anyway).

2nd and 3rd Cohorts for Jemena

Last week we also kicked off the 2nd and 3rd cohorts of our Essentials program for Jemena, one of Australia's largest energy providers.

I have worked with Jemena closely over the past twelve months including an assessment of where their FBP capabilities lie and what gaps they have.

So its great to be able to continue working with the team to improve those targeted areas.

Point of no return??

Unfortunately this week marks what we call our "point of no return".?

We have a policy at theFBPteam that none of our programs are to run over the Christmas and New Year period. Which also counts out early December as people switch off for their eggnog.?

Accordingly if we haven't started you in a program by this week its bad news. You will have to wait until 2025 to start things up.

The good news, our quarter 1 still has plenty of availability if upskilling your finance team is a focus. Just reach out and if you need an invoice to be dated 2024, we can discuss that too.

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?? We don’t help finance teams report performance, we help them improve performance

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Because once the robots arrive, the only thing left will be business partnering