The Hardest Part Of A Long Journey Is Taking The First Step

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Many strategies and initiatives are failures even before they get started. That could happen due to: 

• Insufficient resources to fund it
• Lack of organizational capabilities to execute it
• Political games played between concerned parties 

That makes it critical to take the first step. If you start off on the wrong foot, you might fall. Take a step in the wrong direction and you might get delayed. Failing to recognize that there are other travellers are going where you are, and others might get there before you. Not stepping out of the door at all—well, then you just won’t get anywhere at all. 

However, when looking at the business we tend to get occupied with planning for things happening far out in the future—creating 5-year planning or 10-year strategies. Let’s just agree right away that you have no idea of what’s going to happen that far out. So why do we bother and what can we do instead? 

It’s time to start planning the first step

It’s fair that you want to model some financials around your strategy, let’s say five years out. I’m not saying you should stop this, but there’s no point in doing this bottom-up or asking for a ton of details. Just select a few relevant drivers and KPIs, and leave it at that. 

You should start planning the first step:  

• Put most of your emphasis on discussing the first step when discussing your long-term plans
• Split your five-year plan into six-month increments (or even shorter, depending on the nature of your business)
• Focus more on actions than results
• Make sure you mobilize enough of the right resources (people, capital, and so on) right away; if you don’t have the resources in-house, then you must acquire them 

Try and compare this with your budgeting or capital allocation process. How much time do you spend discussing the first things that need to happen to make the numbers come through, as opposed to discussing the process and the numbers?  

Data gathering and number production will not create any value. Five-year perspectives might be good for looking at your business holistically but won’t generate any value either. It’s what you do next that’ll set you on the path toward success. 

FP&A owns the process and needs to own the change too 

A lot can be achieved through proper facilitation. What if every template for collecting data for your plan included three bullets on the next steps to take? That could be backed up by assumptions that must be true and trigger points for monitoring progress. 

What if your five-year plan was built like a staircase with six months of steps requiring less and less detail the further out you go? That should automatically draw the discussion toward what must happen next for the strategy to succeed. 

Shouldn’t this just be a simple fix where a few templates are adjusted, and FP&A can take charge of facilitating the discussion in the strategy room? I don’t see a need for complicating this any further. Do you? 

FP&A must own this change. FP&A might not officially own the strategy process but should put itself in the driver’s seat for facilitating it. The conversation in the strategy room needs to change. In this series, we’ve outlined eight specific changes that must happen. FP&A can own all these changes because one way or another, we have major involvement in them. So, the question to you is: What is your next step in driving these changes and transforming the strategy process? 

This was the ninth article in the series "FP&A Transforms Strategy". You can read previous articles below.

Why FP&A Must Transform The Strategy Process

Stop Planning. Start Travelling. Strategy Is A Journey

How Do You Know Your Plan Is The Best Plan?

Pick Your Winners And Feed Them Big Time

Budgets Don't Create Value. Big Moves Do!

For Your Strategy To Succeed You Must Go Liquid

Sandbags And Accounting Sleeves Only Get You Into Trouble

It's Not Your Numbers That Make You

You can read a lot more articles about FP&A, Business Partnering, and Finance Transformation below. It all start's with “Introducing The Finance Transformation Nine Box” where you set the ambition for your transformation. You should join the Finance Business Partner Forum which is part of the Business Partnering Institute's online community where we will continue to discuss this topic and you can click here to follow me on Twitter.

An Open Letter To The CFO: Are You Ready To Transform FP&A?

The Future of FP&A – Two Ways To Take the Reins

How To Create Value Through Business Partnering

Everyone Can Adopt A Business Partnering Mindset (part of a six-article series about FP&A Business Partnering)

From Business Partner To Working Within The Business (part of an article series where I interview finance professionals about their careers in FP&A and Business Partnering)

Is Your Product Optimized For Value Creation? (part of a toolbox series where we look at what tools FP&A professionals should leverage to drive value creation)

How Business Partners Turn Analysis To Insight (part of case study series where I interview business partners about how they drive value creation using real cases)

What Defines A Finance Master?

The New Career Path For Finance Professionals

How Finance People Can Be More Successful

The CFOs Roadmap To Transforming Finance

How To Become A Finance Business Partner

Financial Analyst vs. Finance Business Partner

You’re A Finance Business Partner, Now What?

Building A Team Of Finance Business Partners

Anders Liu-Lindberg is a Senior Finance Business Partner at Maersk supporting our largest product and I have more than 10 years of experience working with Finance at Maersk both in Denmark and abroad. I am also the co-founder of the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 7,000 members. My main goal at Maersk is to show how to be successful with business partnering and drive value creation as a trusted partner. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with 35.000+ followers.