"Be Curious, Not Judgmental" - Ted Lasso

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:

- Be Curious, Not Judgmental

- Don't Be Like Steve

- 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

Be Curious, Not Judgmental

For those who have yet to see any of the Appletv series Ted Lasso, it’s a highly recommended watch.?

Even though I like football and sport it is way more than that in terms of laughs and feel good factor.?

And of course plenty of tips for Finance Professionals working in the commercial world.

One of my favourites is from the “darts” scene where Ted challenges Rupert to a game of darts to support his boss Rebecca. Rupert of course accepts it instantly knowing he himself is a good darts player. What he fails to anticipate is that Ted is also quite good.?

Ted suggests Rupert should be “curious not judgmental” and if only Rupert had have asked “Do you like darts Ted?” he may have found out that Ted used to play darts with his father every Sunday from the age of 10 to 16.

Being curious is also one of the key principles of finance business partnering I captured in my book (which you can download below) under the Ethos of “Appetite to Understand”.?

And asking questions is how you display this curiosity.

So many finance professionals I watch and observe fail to do this well.?

They are often caught making judgment, recommendations and telling people what they must, need and should be doing.

You can turn this all around by recrafting any judgment, recommendation or statement into a question. Ask instead of Tell.

Turn “I think we should do this” to “What do you think we could/should do”.

Change “I need you to do this by…” to “When do you think we could get this done by….”

And recraft “we can’t do that” to a future focused “how could we do this another way”.

Even though the answer may still be the same, two things happen when you ask a good open question.?

Firstly, you get more information you previously didn’t have. You never learn anything by talking, you only learn by listening.

Which may change your opinion, or at least provide more context.

And secondly, you come across as more collaborative and someone people would want to work with.

Neither of these have downside as a Finance Business Partner.

Don't Be Like Steve

This week I have had the pleasure of school holidays with the family and a trip up to Far North Queensland for a well deserved week off.?

Which sounded great until we met Steve, the manager of the resort we were staying at. Who not only made us feel crap, made us not want to work with him.

We have a members card for this resort which provides us with 50% off all meals.?

On our first night when we provided our members card “after” the meal we were informed that in order to utilise the discount we had to show our card “before” the meal.?

Unfortunately, according to Steve, that was policy

Interesting approach I thought – so I let Steve know we would be staying in the resort for the next week and asked him to confirm if we provided our card “before the meal” over the next seven nights for breakfast and dinner the 50% discount would be applied.

He said yes.

I also asked if he thought it would be better to apply the discount for tonight and have us eat there all week, or to apply policy and we would happily eat elsewhere for the week.

He said well that’s your choice but I have to follow instructions.

He chose policy. And revenue on one transaction over flexibility and revenue/margin over a week of transactions.?

He chose make a customer feel like crap, over making them feel considered.

Which completely bewildered me.

But it is something finance people need to consider when dealing in the commercial world. Sometimes deals are done for a bigger prize later.

Sometimes a deal with a customer or a supplier may not look financially good in isolation. But when considered in the light of a wider set of transactions (or even the “relationship”) is a wise idea.

Great commercial people can see this and consider it.

Poor commercial people, like Steve don’t.?

They leave money on the table, and they repel people away from them.

We ate elsewhere for the rest of the week, avoided Steve for the remainder of the week, and of course gave him a one star rating on the feedback form

If you want to be a great Finance professional, don’t be like Steve.

PS: The picture above is not Steve, and Steve is an alias.

Upcoming FBP Programs & Clients?

FBP Accelerator: Expert

starts Wednesday?16th October

Our final public program kicks off in less than a fortnight.?

So if you have been holding off registering please do not hold off any longer

We only have 2 places remaining

Including 22 hours of CPD, 8 x 2 hour workshops and a personalised FBP profile about you and how you work with others

Workshop 1: Relationships

Workshop 2: Influence & Persuasive techniques

Workshop 3: Communication styles

Workshop 4: Managing Stakeholders

Workshop 5: Advanced Influence for Finance

Workshop 6: Storytelling Narratives

Workshop 7: Presentations (Structure)

Workshop 8: Presentation (Delivery)

Signup by visiting www.financebusinesspartnering.com and if you are a CAANZ member contact me directly for your member discount.

?

Sydney CFO Symposium

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the CFO Magazine CFO Symposium at the ICC in Sydney.?

I have attended this event before pre covid and would highly recommend it for anyone wanting to get up to speed with what is and isn’t working in our industry. ?

From AI, to cyber security to employee engagement and of course business partnering everything was covered on the day with some great talks, panels and fireside chats.?

A day well spent for anyone looking to improve their impact and career.?

Keep in contact with CFO Magazine or Richard McBride for details of future events.

-----------------

?? I own and run the global finance training company theFBPteam

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

?? Sign up to my newsletter FBP Made Easy (oh wait you have if you are reading this)

?? Or join our FREE monthly FBP Bootcamp

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