Preparation Isn’t Proof

Jenny’s Lesson: Knowing every statistic about a baseball team, doesn’t mean you can hit a home run. Knowing every piece of data in your financials doesn’t mean your strategy works. 

She knew what she’d done wrong. Despite hours of preparation for her first-ever monthly report to the executive team, she had failed to convince the other executives that she could continue to outperform the objectives that were set when she took on the new VP position.

Walking out of the last meeting, it suddenly dawned on her that at her new level, it wasn’t good enough to perform. She had to be able to convince the executive team that she could continue to perform.

They weren’t really interested in what she did yesterday or even this morning. They wanted to be sure that she could keep doing it next week, next month and next year. They wanted assurance that her success wasn’t just luck. That her plans would work in the long-term.

Round 2. Four weeks since her first 90-minute inquisition in front of a firing squad and Jenny was much better prepared. She had spent days digging into her financial reports. She read every one that landed in her inbox. She had her assistant print them out for her and she spent hours every evening pouring over the numbers. Flagging areas that were inconsistent and returning to work the next morning with a stack of questions for her managers and business analysts.

And even better, her team kept performing. Still on budget – in fact under budget on headcount and business develop – and over-performing on other key metrics.

With so much preparation, she should have been extremely confident but the barrage of questions still clearly imprinted on her brain, she entered the meeting with a feeling of cautious optimism.

That feeling lasted throughout her presentation as she took the executives through every single line of her 25 page monthly report, pointing out where things were better and where they were a bit off track but assuring the other executives that her team was “all over” the problems and continuing to perform at an exceptional level. Her optimism continued as she confidently responded to the onslaught of questions that seemed to accompany each new fact.

Her attention to detail was paying off!

Clearly, she had finally communicated her real value to the rest of the executive team…

The CFO broke into her thoughts. “I get that you believe that everything is going well but what I don’t understand is how are we supposed to know that it is because of you and that you can keep it going well. How do we know that this isn’t some sort of residual success from your predecessor?” Others chimed in and by the end of 75 minutes she felt completely wrung out, baffled and discouraged.

She had done everything right! She went through every data point!

What more could she possibly do?

That’s when she called me. Find out what Jenny learned in our next blog The Plain Truth About Financial Skills.

Do you tend to go through your financials line-by-line or do you have another approach?

This post originally appeared on stephsharp.com. You can follow me on Twitter and Facebook for more insights.