Successful Business Partners Do Not Hang Around In The Finance Department

Why did you want a career in Finance? Was it because you like to work with numbers and deep dive into complex data sets? Or because you were curious about how a company makes money and what you can do to optimize value creation? The former is surely needed to do your job, but it is the latter that will make you successful in the future. Why is that?

Numbers in themselves are mostly meaningless. Put a context around them and suddenly they tell a story of how your business is doing. Therefore, any finance professional that works with numbers must invest in developing their business acumen. How do you develop your business acumen? 

You do that by going out to explore the business. You must speak with people in Sales to understand how products are sold. You must speak with people in Operations to understand how products are delivered. And you must speak with people in business development to understand how products are created. In addition, you must understand your company’s strategy and business model. 

This will help you speak the language of business rather than that of numbers. It will help you build trust and gain the respect of your business stakeholders. If you understand their world you increase your chance of influencing their decisions significantly. This week we look closer at how you can further develop business acumen.

Business partnering starts outside the finance office

If you are of the first type that went into Finance because you like numbers, then you probably also like sitting in the finance office. Here you are in a safe space with like-minded colleagues and can focus on analyzing the numbers. However, to give meaning to your analysis you must understand the reasons behind why the numbers move. 

You cannot get that understanding from sitting behind your desk. You can try sending e-mails to business stakeholders and ask them what happened, but it will be ineffective. Because you will not be able to explain in-depth the situation, complication, and proposed resolution. At the first clarifying question you receive from management, you will stall and have a need to go back and get more information. 

Here is what you should try instead...

• Step 1: Move out of the finance office and go sit next to your stakeholders. If you sit in different locations plan to go visit them a few times per year.
• Step 2: Once on location be curious about their business, ask questions, understand what their strategy is and what actions they are taking to realize it.
• Step 3: Go on customer or site visits with them to learn more about your business in the real world. Get input from customers on how they value your product. Listen to the challenges that store managers are facing. Experience how products are produced and understand how production heads are trying to optimize the operations.
• Step 4: Now look at the numbers with your newly gained context. Develop insights into how the existing business can be optimized and how tomorrow’s business can be grown.
• Step 5: Share your insights with your stakeholders and if possible, the people you met during your visits. Discuss if you have a correct understanding of business developments using business language rather than financial language.
• Step 6: Create a continual loop where you get a chance to experience the business first-hand at least a few times per year. This will continue to grow your business acumen and your influence with your stakeholders.

Regardless of the industry that you work in or if you are a junior or senior professional you can start this process today. Maybe you have already taken some of the steps and then you just need to continue taking the next ones. If you are just starting in a new role you should make this your priority. You cannot be a good business partner without understanding the business and speaking their language. It is that simple. 

Getting embarrassed by the senior vice president

Here is a story from Anders of what happens if you do not make developing business acumen a priority. Afterwards, we will share what Anders should have done instead. 

Situation 

In mid-2014 Anders starts a new regional business partner role in Maersk Line. It is his first job in this business unit and he only has a very high-level understanding of the business. He is charged with driving the performance management of one line item in the P&L called demurrage and detention or D&D (a fee customers pay for having a container in their custody for a longer than an agreed period). 

Once a month each region was called for a performance review with the SVP of Commercial. 

Complication 

Anders was yet to make any site visits and had not built relationships with business leaders in the country offices in the region. He did not fully understand the underlying drivers of how D&D would develop. That meant that he accepted the variance explanations from the countries at face value and would bring them to the performance review. 

Resolution 

One of the biggest drivers of performance from a country perspective was Russia. They as were suffering from poor performance and had explained it with lack of container volumes. However, many other countries had also seen lower volumes. Hence, when Anders explained why Russia was performing poorly on D&D, he received the natural counter-question from the SVP, “Why is this only impacting Russia negatively when other countries are seeing similarly low volumes?”. Anders simply did not know what to respond and the regional manager had to smoothen things out. 

Impact 

Anders failed to be a good business partner in front of the SVP. What is worse he lost the confidence of the regional manager. This not only took him several months to recover from but also hampered his future career. 

What went wrong in this story? Anders did not make developing business acumen and understanding the container shipping business a priority. In some ways, he thought he could wing it with a high-level commentary on business developments. The fallout of even such a simple episode can be very detrimental for a business partner’s chance of succeeding. 

Instead, Anders should have invested time in developing business acumen first. He should not have tried to be a business partner in front of senior stakeholders when he did not have the insights to back it up. 

Business partners must be curious about and interested in the business

Finance professionals can develop business acumen in any industry if they follow the six steps. However, they must also have a natural interest in the specific business and industry. If there is nothing that gets them excited about the business, they will also fail in being successful business partners. 

• If you are a business partner, ask yourself what makes you excited about working in your current company and industry? If you do not have a good answer then perhaps you should start searching for a different opportunity that makes you excited. 
• If you are a leader of business partners make sure you push them out of the door to experience the business. If they come back all excited, then build on it and see their performance grow. If not, try to explore what about your business that made them interested to work there in the first place. 
• If you are recruiting for business partners, you must be aware of their natural interest too. They might be great at building relationships and communicating with impact, but they also need a specific purpose for working in your company. 

Knowing that business partnering starts outside of Finance, having a natural interest in the business and industry, and following the six steps outlined in this article will help anyone build business acumen. Do not get stuck behind your screen nose-deep into the numbers. Get up and out to talk with business stakeholders and explore how your business works. 

This will make your insights much more valuable and you can start to see your influence grow. What is stopping you from starting to develop your business acumen? If you have already developed business acumen then tell us what steps you took to get there? 

Business Partnering Institute can help you become better at influencing your business stakeholder’s decisions. In that way, you can best help them meet or beat their targets! You can reach us today by sending a message on LinkedIn or get directly in touch with Anders on +45 2926 6410.  

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This was the twelfth article in the series "Business Partnering On A Formula". You can read past articles in the series below.

This Is How We Succeed With Business Partnering

Business Partnering On A Formula

This Is How Business Partners Have Impact And Drive Value Creation

Here's Why You Want A Business Partner At The Table

Decision ≠ Action - But What Can Finance Do About It?

How Do Business Partners Generate Insights?

A Business Partner Is Like A Mechanic, Always Looking To Optimize The Engine Room

Performance Management Done Right Is A Gold Mine Of Insight

Here Is How Finance Can Grow The Business

If Only It Was Enough For Finance To Be Right

If you want to become a better business partner you should consider taking our online course "Business Partnering Explained - Value Creation Unlocked" to get a better handle on the role. It's accredited for 5.5 CPD hours.

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.

Your Journey To Successful Business Partnering Explained

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)

The Future Of FP&A: Two Ways To Take The Reins

What Is The Accounting Profession Paradox?

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

Finance Business Partner Is A Bullshit Job

How Business Partners Keep A Plan On Track

Anders Liu-Lindberg is the co-founder, COO (Chief Operating Officer), and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 8,500 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 45.000+ followers.