Paul BarnhurstFP&A Expert Empowering Finance Professionals to Excel Everday

AI can scale output. Leadership must scale value.

1 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the speaker argues that AI enables finance planning and analysis (FP&A) teams to operate with far fewer staff—potentially halving headcount—while boosting output. However, the speaker warns that FP&A leaders are not evolving their approach: they continue to manage as before, failing to recognize the new dynamics of AI‑driven production. This lack of leadership shift threatens the partnership between FP&A and the broader business, risking reduced insight, diminished value delivery, and eroding trust because the FP&A function is no longer deeply engaged with the data and skills required to interpret AI‑generated results.

Chapters

I don't need an FP&A team of 10 people anymore. I could do it with 5 because I have AI. The production goes up, but that FP&A leader isn't recognizing when production goes up, how are you now making sure that the business is getting greater value, greater partnership, and getting better insight if the production is coming from AI? And I don't think that shift in leadership is really happening. I think a lot of times people are just managing it the same way that they always have, and that is eventually down the road could potentially deteriorate the trust between the business and FP&A because FP&A is not really doing the work and learning the skills and the data.