Insights from a Finance Business Partner Communicate your value

We all know that communication is the essence of our living. People who are good in communication generally tend to be more successful than others.

This is true for Finance Business Partners, where you have to connect with colleagues from all sort of professional backgrounds and experiences.

My experience

There are many things to discuss and work on when communication is considered as a topic. It is a vast subject. However, one thing that is important and can be easily implemented is to express your understanding and assumptions on the issue at hand.

When we communicate, we assume many things. For example, when we raise an important point we assume that our colleagues have some level of understanding on the subject. These assumptions work as a quagmire restricting the message and limiting the effectiveness of communication.

I also did the same on multiple occasions only later to realise upon reflection the mistake that i was doing. For instance, in one of the engagements, when i took over i learnt that proper accounting and book keeping was not being followed. On top of it, the reported numbers were based on many top-side adjustments done out of books.

Although these activities occupy a small portion of work canvas of any Finance Lead, they are the base on which many other key activities and decisions depend. Therefore, not only I had to to manage the day to day activities of the department, I also had to fix the reporting and accounting issue as a Finance Head. I learned relational database tools (Power Query and Power Pivot) and partially automated the reporting process with the ability to slice and dice to a granular level.

However, out of sense of responsibility i tried to find source of comparative numbers. Then came the management meeting, instead of clearly stating the issues and efforts i did to come up with meaningful insights, i tried to justify the numbers and give a slight indication of the challenges. I expected that management is already aware of the mess. However, that was never the case, they had no clue about it.

In spite of extra efforts that i put to make sense of numbers while being short of staff, my efforts were not visible to leadership as I did not communicate it well.

Learning

No matter what you do, make sure you communicate your efforts. If you are fixing something, tell the process you have done and the efforts it took. Whatever you do try to link it with the value it create for business and communicate it. Also do not forget to, communicate your assumptions and thought process.

This will not only increase your value but will also improve your influence as your colleagues will be able to connect with you.

How has been your experience ? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. You can book a free 1:1 session with me through following link:

https://calendly.com/upskillmsj/30mins_business_partnering