The ultimate guide to decision-making for Finance professionals
Anders Liu-Lindberg
Leading advisor to senior Finance and FP&A leaders on creating impact through business partnering | Interim | VP Finance | Business Finance
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The explosion of interest in the idea of business partnering is one of the most important developments of the last decade, not only in finance but throughout the world of business.
It represents a shift in focus, with value creation becoming the primary metric and concern of successful Finance Functions. As they adopt business partnering roles, Finance professionals need to take on many different activities and types of work. But if we can distill the essence of business partnering down to one imperative, it would be this: to facilitate better decisions.
Decisions, decisions, decisions
Whereas before our time was primarily spent wrangling data and producing reports, today this is no longer "valuable" work. Digital transformation means most of this work can be easily automated, freeing us to move further up the value chain.
The value we bring to our organizations is now associated not with producing information, but with ensuring that our stakeholders are making the best possible decisions that generate the best possible real-world outcomes.
This requires a change in mindset (more details of which can be found in a previous series here on LinkedIn ), but also the development of new skills.
How do we get there?
Paramount amongst those skills is the ability to translate information into insight.
This is an important distinction. Information is raw data, reports. These are of increasingly limited use, particularly as they often tell recipients little that they didn't already know, and because the technical work required in order to put them together can now be handed off to machines.
Insights, on the other hand, put that information in its proper context and allow stakeholders to understand its real-world implications. If data is dumb, then insights are smart; they are the raw materials that decision-makers use in order to generate better outcomes.
As business partners, we need to develop our insight-generation skills. But crucially, we also need to work on our ability to influence. We are providing the information and the insight - so we should be trying to influence the decisions that they produce as well.
In this way, the Finance Function can move firmly into the drivers' seats of our organizations, helping to set the course and maximize the benefits.
The follow-up
But the work of the business partner doesn't stop when a decision is reached. It's important to remember that decisions are not the same as actions. It's all very well coming to an agreement, but as anyone with experience in a large organization will know, agreement alone isn't enough.
It's also our responsibility to follow up on the decisions that are taken, in order to ensure that they are followed through. We should also be gathering and collating information on the success (or otherwise) of those decisions. There is no point of completion; instead, every decision leads to another decision, which in turn leads to another.
Do this today
In this series, we're going to take a deep dive into decision-making. We're going to consider some of the fundamental skills Finance professionals need to make and facilitate better decisions, and some of the challenges that you are likely to come up against.
How are you involved in decision-making in your organization today? Are you actively facilitating better decisions or simply at the tail-end of the fallout from decisions made? Only one of these ways is a value-adding way! Don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter to be notified when we publish the next articles in this series.
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This was the first article in my new series "The ultimate guide to decision-making for Finance professionals". You can read all articles in my latest series "The Mindset For The Future of Finance" below.
If you want to learn more about one of the key roles of the future "finance business partner" you can check out my recent series "The personality of a business partner" below.
If you want to hear from other business partners talking about their career journey and energize them about business partnering, check out some of the interviews below.
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To learn more about how to become a business partner you can read my ten-article series "Becoming a business partner" below.
If you want to become a better business partner, 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.
All Successful Business Partners Are "Leaders" ?(the last article in the series about our new capability model)
Should We Keep Talking About Business Partnering? ?(part of a 17-article series where we deep-dive on the WHY, WHAT, and HOW of business partnering by putting it on a formula)
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)
Anders Liu-Lindberg ?is the co-founder and a partner at the?Business Partnering Institute ?and owner of the largest?group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering ?on LinkedIn with close to 10,000 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 60.000+ followers and 140.000+ subscribers to my blog. Recently I became an advisory board member at?Born Capital ?to help identify and grow the next big thing in #CFOTech.
Financial auditor/ Financial advisor
3 年Numbers tell a story, and it is our skill to know exactly what the story is behind these numbers, and to make the right decision at the right time
Non-Executive Director | Financial Transformation & Strategic Leadership Expert | Proven Track Record in Driving Organisational Change, Corporate Governance, and Sustainable Growth in Healthcare, Technology & Finance
3 年Absolutely Anders Liu-Lindberg
Finance Manager, FP&A, Shared Services, Audit, Business Partnering, Lean Six Sigma
3 年I love this!! We need to facilitate decision making. We need to hold up the mirror. Be at the forefront, not the fire fighter at the end. You will be ignored, ridiculed, and you will hear many other comments that will demotivate, but keep going! Data and numbers are important, but how you tell the story from it is even more powerful!