The slideless monthly management meeting – do you dare to take the plunge?
Anders Liu-Lindberg
Leading advisor to senior Finance and FP&A leaders on creating impact through business partnering | Interim | VP Finance | Business Finance
Teaser: A lot can be done to transform management reporting to increase the quality of monthly management meetings, however, to go above and beyond you need to ditch the slides. Do you dare?
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Wait, what? We’ve just spent weeks talking about how to develop great slides for management meetings, and now we suggest you ditch them. What’s going on?
Don’t worry, those excellent slides will serve their purpose and wow the audience as intended, but the radical shift we’re proposing now is the natural final step in the process of transforming management reporting.
We’ve stripped back the information that’s included in the monthly report to a series of clearly presented key messages. We’ve built those into an impactful reporting structure with recommendations and next steps. The report is now so clear that anyone can understand it!
A good business partner does not stop at preparing the report. First, they ensure that the audience has read the paper, absorbed those key messages, and considered the recommendations. Then it’s time for discussion of the insights that have been produced, and collaboration on the actions that have to be taken to solve problems or grasp opportunities.
The management meeting is the one moment when you can be sure that all the decision-makers are together and primed to act. Why would an influential business partner choose to use that time to present information, one-way communication, when the meeting could be so much better used to work together on the next steps?
Prepare everyone for the meeting
The information still has to be disseminated, read, and understood by the decision-makers. All of the previous tips in this series have built up a logical and consistent structure for that information. That structure, the clarity of the key messages, the relevance in the design of the slides (or pages), and the supporting appendices can be understood by a reader as well if not better than by a listener.
Every good board meeting requires pre-reads to be circulated, and a good monthly management meeting should follow the same format. When people show up for the meeting they need to confirm that they have read the report you’ve prepared and that they are ready to start discussing the key issues.
The management meeting changes instantly from passive to active. Start facilitating the discussion and collaboration that is needed to tackle the key insights of the report. Use a whiteboard, a flip chart, post-it notes, or cards to highlight the top three issues to tackle this month, and in an almost workshop-like style get the management team to work together on finding the best possible solutions.
Take the plunge and inspire action
The slideless monthly management meeting is the ultimate goal in fixing management reporting once and for all. You’ve defined your key messages and insights and found a way to illustrate them without endless description, qualification, and obfuscation.
You’ve defined your recommendations based on those insights and laid down suggested next steps and actions. By providing that clear slide presentation to decision-makers before the actual meeting, the time you have together is used for pure value creation.
We know this is a mind-blowing suggestion for most finance professionals, but we’re confident that you’ll be blowing your business stakeholders away and supercharging company performance as a result!
Have you already taken the plunge? Let us know in the comments how you have transformed your management reporting and the impact that you’ve seen.
This was the sixth and final article in my new series "It's time to fix management reporting". You can read the previous articles below.
Don't forget to check out my latest series "Building the FP&A team of the future". You can read all the articles below.
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Anders Liu-Lindberg ?is the co-founder and a partner at?Business Partnering Institute ?and the owner of the largest?group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering ?on LinkedIn with more than 11,000 members. I have ten years of experience as a business partner at the global transport and logistics company?Maersk . I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner ” and a?long-time Finance Blogger ?on LinkedIn with 150,000+ followers and 225,000+ subscribers to my blog. I am also an advisory board member at?Born Capital ?where I help identify and grow the next big thing in?#CFOTech .?Finally, I'm a member of the board of directors at?PACE - Profitability Analytics Center of Excellence ?where I support the development of new analytics frameworks that can improve profitability in companies around the world.
Plant Controller with FP&A | Cost Accounting | MBA & Master's in Finance | bachelor's in Administration | Startup with Shelter | Financial Modeling | Automation | BI | Maquiladora | IMMEX | IFRS | US GAAP | AI | SOX
1 年This is a very complete analysis teacher Anders Liu-Lindberg. I′ll read it with careful.
Trusted co-pilot driving the optimization of your finance function in complex organizations ?Architect with a subtle sense of humor ? Founding Partner at NX Partners
1 年Ditching those nicely prepared slides would indeed be a bold move. If you are in a politically strong position, it will ensure that - next time - the participants will adequately prepare. But at least the first meeting you apply this strategy will be impacted negatively (this is an understatement), regardless of whether you are in a strong position.
I teach Storytelling to Finance Teams | Course Facilitator | Keynote Speaker
1 年Pre-reads are often sent but I wonder whether slides are the good medium for that. And that's why I appreciate that you speak of management reporting rather than slides because in the first case, it's good for reading but terrible as backup for your presentation. But if your slides are meant to be presented, they would do a terrible job at being read. So if you send a report before, slides won't totally be necessary. Provided everybody reads it before, and it doesn't happen that often, let's be honest