Developing Business Acumen necessary to become a strategic business partner with Robert Blanding

What have you found works well in developing teams? Like, how do you think about that, of trying to make sure you have a high-performing team that gets the opportunities and the growth they need?

Yeah, so I think a couple things come to mind. So first off, today's guest is Robert Blanding. He is the CFO at Fall Creek. Robert brings a broad operational and financial perspective to the agtech sector, combining strategic finance leadership with a passion for innovation and developing high-performing teams that drive lasting impact. You're really connected to the business, you have that partnership, you're being consulted by your stakeholders. They're seeking you out. That's to me a great indicator that you've got great FP&A. There will be times in your career where your best move is to go lateral, not up, because you're getting the breadth piece. And that can be a hard choice. That was a breadth play that eventually got me here. One of the biggest networking opportunities is networking your timeline. And by that I mean when you start your first job, your peers at that job, a lot of them are eventually going to be CEOs those are CFOs.

What advice would you offer to someone to help prepare themselves for their first CFO role?

For me, it goes back to make sure you—

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of FP&A Unlocked, where finance meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A Guy. Each week We bring you conversations and practical advice from thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who are reshaping the role of FP&A in today's business world. Together, we'll uncover the strategies and experiences that separate good FP&A from great, helping you elevate your career and drive strategic impact. This week, I'm joined by Robert Blanding. Robert, welcome to the show.

Thanks.

Appreciate it, Paul. Yeah, really excited to have you. I know we've, uh, I think we first chatted a few months ago, and I'm glad we were able to find some time together to go through this. I'm excited to chat with you.

Yeah, me as well.

So let me give a little bit of Robert's background. He's a native Oregonian. He, um, somehow found his way back to Eugene after a career path that crossed industries, company sizes, and leadership challenges across the country. He earned a BA in business administration. With a concentration in finance from the University of Washington, and later an MBA in finance with a minor in marketing from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. He began his career in litigation financial consulting before returning to graduate school and then spending 18 years at Intel, where he developed deep experience in finance, operations, and large-scale global business environments. Over the following decade, he pursued the right private company leadership opportunities, working across a diverse set of industries that included heavy industrial manufacturing, Fortune 100 technology, and a small technology manufacturing business. Today, he brings that broad operational and financial perspective to the agtech sector, where he combines strategic finance leadership with a passion for innovation, long-term business building, and developing high-performing teams that creates lasting organizational impact. Love the background. Love the ag sector. My, uh, my wife's from Logan, which is an ag community in Utah, if you know it. So my father-in-law was originally wanting to be a farmer. They still own quite a bit of farmland, so I can preach the agriculture side.

Excellent. Yeah, it's a new industry for me out of the total lineup that I've been in. It's been super fun. Something that would've been more interesting sooner if I'd have realized how much there was here. So really happy to be where I am for sure.

Yeah. I can't imagine you pictured looking at your career background that you ever thought that that's where you'd end up.

Yeah. I, I mean, on a couple of levels, I mean, most of my background has definitely been high tech. And you know, also, you know, Oregon is a fairly small place. Eugene is a reasonably small place within it. Ending up back in Eugene is also not something I would've guessed ever happened. It's a little bit strange. I'm about a mile where I currently work from where my dad spent 30 years working for a small farmers cooperative during his career.

Yeah. Well, and I would imagine Eugene, I mean, correct me wrong, it's Nike and college town.

It is.

There's probably not a ton of opportunities beyond, I imagine Portland is where most the opportunities would be, I would think.

In Oregon for sure. Although there's a handful of, of pretty good companies that are Eugene based. So more than you might imagine.

Sure. Yeah. It's just not the place you typically think of, you know, when you're thinking of the map, if you hear Eugene, you think Nike or the University of Oregon, you don't think opportunities to go be a CFO.

Yeah, it's for sure.

Yeah, exactly. So that's great. It worked out. You get to kind of be back home. Yeah.

Fantastic.

Right. So this is the question we like to start off with every guest, because I always love the diversity of answers we get here. So if I asked you, what does great FP&A look like? How would you define it? Or what would be the answer you'd give?

So a few things. I mean, there's a lot you can pack into that question and answer, right? You know, for me, it starts with being connected to the business. That really is, for me, a big distinction between finance and accounting, if you will. Accounting still needs to be connected to the business, but there's another step further if you're in FP&A. And, you know, that involves great partnership with stakeholders, very strong business acumen around whatever the company, you know, is doing, the industry it plays in. But it also includes being very forward thinking if you're connected to the business, right? What's happening today that has implications for the future? What dynamics are going on? You gotta help the business see what's coming next. And if you're doing all that well and you're really connected to the business, you have that partnership, you have the acumen, you are being consulted by your stakeholders, right? You're involved in things as they're thinking about what comes next. They're seeking you out. That's to me a great indicator that you've got great FP&A. With that, you've obviously gotta be technically capable. You gotta be in command of the numbers and the data. But back to that acumen piece, you have to have context around that and be able to provide that context to the business in a way that helps them make decisions and see what possibilities are out there for the future. You know, the last thing I'd, I'd throw in there is you have to be fast on the learning curve. I've had the advantage or the fun of doing a bunch of different industries, different companies, different roles within companies. And part of that is learning to get down the learning curve, to develop the acumen, to understand the business, to connect with your stakeholders. It has to be different in every circumstance, and you have to be adaptable to make that happen. So if you can package all of that together, which, you know, at various points in time is tougher than others, that's, I think, what, what makes you a great FP&A person. And if you can get a group of people together that are all hitting those things, then you've got a great FP&A team.

Yeah. And I love how you said, you know, if you can get everybody, you have a team. Because, you know, getting somebody that can do that sometimes can be a challenge, right? It's just, you have to have a strong technical and a strong soft skill set, you know, and then try to get a team of that. Everybody's different in one area or the other, or you got to get a really strong team that has a very rounded skill set. So it can be a challenge. I really liked the mention where you said kind of difference of accounting and FP&A. They both have to know the business. It's just in a different way. I think what I think of is accounting has to have relationship with the business. FP&A has to really understand the operations of the business. I think it goes deeper than accounting, like you mentioned. And so I, I appreciate that answer. I, uh, can definitely relate to it. I love that you said, uh, business acumen because it's not mentioned enough in my, in my mind. We don't, we don't think about that enough in finance. And I'm sure as a CFO, that's something you use every day.

It is. And for me, again, if you really boil what I said down, it's the business acumen piece that really is the, I don't know, secret ingredient, special ingredient, whatever you want to say. It's what makes you truly useful for your stakeholders is understanding that context. And ideally that context in relation to their strategy and their objectives as well.

Great point is the context in relation to what they're trying to accomplish. I'd love to know a little bit of your background. How did you land your first CFO role and how did you end up where you're at today? I know you spent a long time at Intel kind of learning in a big global organization, but talk a little bit more about your path and how you ended up where you're at.

Yeah. So pathwise, you know, I'll give you the standard answer first. There's, there's probably a, and also a colorful story and how the first CFO job actually came to be. That I can get to at the end. But you know, part of it for me was really building breadth of experience, right? And I, and I think as is probably more typical for FP&A-oriented folks, I don't have my CPA. So I'm, I'm definitely reliant more on the operational finance element. And so a lot of my background was trying to get good breadth in understanding different businesses, different stakeholders, different roles within FP&A. You know, there's budgeting, there's strategic planning, there are project ROIs, you know, a whole bunch of different angles that you can pursue to get that breadth. The other thing for me was making sure I had enough accounting to at least know when to ask the right questions. But it really was a background put together of how do I find a collection of experiences that would enable me to lead a broader organization from a finance perspective. So, you know, as you know, kind of a path through consulting early, which that was actually a lot of forensic accounting, on to two different Fortune 100 companies, the big chunk at Intel. And Intel had a rotation-based culture. So I worked about half of my career supporting manufacturing organizations with Intel and the other half supporting business units and strategic organizations. But lots of different rotations, lots of different people that gave me exposure to a number of things. And from Intel, I really was looking for broader finance leadership role at a smaller company was what I wanted to do. And the private side is what interested me the most, just given the, you know, you get out from under the quarterly public part that is, you know, for some super enjoyable. For me, I was more interested in long-term nature of what you can find in the private sector. So started down that path, you know, found a couple of different opportunities, but you know, didn't land the first CFO role until after I had actually bounced back to a Fortune 100 and I was looking for a role and, you know, plenty of rejections along the way. Plenty of, hey, you're not a CPA, we're gonna go with the CPA, and plenty of, Hey, you've not been one before, so we're gonna go with the guy who has been one before. So, you know, it really, you know, getting down to how did the breakthrough happen? It, it happened in an industry that my background supported really, really well. Intel, in fact, was actually a pretty major customer of the company that I became CFO at for the first time. And just, you know, if you looked at the background, it was a manufacturing-oriented company. We, we sold products into Intel. In the groups that I used to support. So there was a lot of background there that really supported getting that breakthrough and that connection with the company. And then just the finance experience that came with that as well.

A lot to unpack there. I mean, the first thing I appreciate is just the honesty, transparency of saying, look, it took a lot. It wasn't like I just applied for a CFO role and lo and behold, I have one. Because I think sometimes people think that's it. Well, I've done everything. That's the next step. I should just be promoted. Rarely is that how life works.

For me, you know, when I joined the company I joined outside of, uh, leaving Intel, I was on the CFO succession path, but that company I joined at like perfectly the wrong time. They hit their 100-year revenue peak the year before I joined, and then the industry went into a multi-year downturn that really impacted the business, and it was super clear that it just wasn't gonna happen there, which led, you know, led to me leaving. Great experience there from what I learned, but led to me leaving, bouncing back to Fortune 50, which wasn't really the plan, and then searching for what the opportunity was. But yeah, it, as you say, it doesn't, it's, it's rarely a straight line. I mean, ideally you would find the succession-based approach to it. But more often than not, it's probably going to be outside of wherever you are. So yeah, I, I'll share with you the colorful story part of it though, because it is kind of a weird one. The other places that I've landed roles have really been through the usual network and recruiting and those kinds of things. This one, I was working a lot of hours at the Fortune 100 company that I was at. Family knew that I wanted to go do leadership, smaller company, and I just, I really did not have the time to do the career search. And my, uh, my son who was about 15 at the time came to me and he said, teach me how to find you the job that you need. And, you know, it was touching and, and a little funny and interesting, but I was like, okay, here's what I'm looking for. And within a few weeks, he actually came back. He was doing his own internet searches. He actually came back and said, okay, I found this job for you to apply to. I really was not expecting much, right? And so I pulled it over, looked at it, was like, yeah, actually this fits really well. I'm a good fit. It is for the CFO. And they were doing their own no recruiter search, all internal. So I threw my resume over the wall and got the interview, which again, from a how does it usually work standpoint, none of this falls into that category, right?

Yeah, this is not the typical path everybody tells you of how to find a job.

Yes. So huge credit for my, my son for finding that. And then when I went into the interview, I actually got food poisoning the night before and I was violently ill all the way through into the morning. And so I called them. I think I had like a 1 o'clock interview. I called them and said, hey, I don't think I can make it in. And they've flown in a senior exec from their parent company and said, hey, this is it. We have, you know, two finalist candidates. You're one of the two. If you don't come in, you're done. And so I, you know, I basically gutted it up, literally. And, you know, had my wife drive me to the interview because I was weak enough that I did not trust myself to be able to, you know, drive on the road, you know, went in, did the interview. And it's one of those things where, you know, usually there's a fair amount of stress with interviews. You're, you know, trying to do your best. Sometimes you can get into your own head. And in that interview, I was so focused on not throwing up that everything, just everything, the good stuff, the information part just flowed. And it was probably the most natural interview because it was just— they asked the question, I had the answer. All of my focus was on not being sick.. And so it just, it came out, it was a really good interview. It was probably the best I've done because I wasn't so focused on being stressed of, you know, what the interview was all about. And I remember walking out across the parking lot, getting in the car, my wife waited for me and telling her, I said, you know, interview went really well. And as I mentioned previously, that job, that company fit really well with my background. So what I had put together from a breadth standpoint did match really well.

And I told my wife, I said, yeah, that went really well.

I'd be really surprised if I don't get the offer here, which again is not a usual feeling walking out of those interviews.

Yeah, you usually either think it went bad or you don't have a good feel. Usually you walk out thinking it went good, but at least I found that's, that's not the majority of the time.

Yeah, so that was, that was definitely one of the most memorable interviews and whole setups in my entire career. And yeah, it was definitely— would not want to repeat the sickness part. That was— I'm not sure that was worth it for the result, but, uh, But anyway, it makes for an interesting story of how the, how the first CFO job actually happened.

So the moral of the story is get sick the night before an interview. No, I'm kidding.

Oh, no, don't eat the raw oysters.

It sounds like you still have trauma from that one. It sounds like it was an awful—

Yeah. If, you know, I've had food poisoning a few times in my life. It's never, never fun, right? When you, when you have—

Of course. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I, I've had it a few times and wouldn't wish it on anyone. It's always been awful. And the older I get, the worst it gets, but that's another story.

Yeah. You know, the other, the other fun little tidbit in that is it's also the only interview that I can recall in my entire career where they actually had a food plate in the interview. Smell of which was like, it's like, eh, you know, that, that is, I, I appreciate the gesture, but, uh, the smell is not doing me any favors.

Yeah. At the time you were, you were thinking, Please, please. No, just get Rick at it. I could imagine that. So I think you've been at Fall Creek now for about 2.5, 3 years roughly. Maybe tell our audience a little bit about what Fall Creek does, what this experience has been like for you so far.

Sure. So it's been fantastic. So it's, you know, private company, family-owned, agtech. So it's a great combination of, we have a strong R&D organization. There's actually a 10-plus-year pipeline of R&D projects in crossing blueberry varieties that leads to eventual commercialization. So you have a good technology bent to it, which, you know, obviously is the tech part of AgTech, and that leads to production in, you know, we're producing plants in nurseries, but selling to farmers around the world. We're global in nature. We have our facilities on every continent except for Antarctica and Australia. And we sell millions of blueberry plants every year.

So you sell the plants, you're not doing any of the harvesting or any of that?

Correct. No, no fruit, just the, just the plants to enable what, you know, we call our mission, which is building a world with better blueberries. And so bigger, crunchier, more flavorful, available 52 weeks per year, trying to make it a year-round superfood, superfruit that again, from a business support standpoint, you get to look at R&D projects, you get to look at manufacturing and the costs associated there. You have a whole commercial organization and regional teams that are all about serving the customers. But it really is about delivering some absolutely fantastic, very large blueberries out to the world that are great to eat and good for you.

I'm a big blueberry fan. I would— I want some berry bushes, but I haven't Haven't done that yet. So I definitely appreciate that. I was, I have some upstairs at the moment. So like I said, so you're all distribution. Are you selling directly at all or is it all?

It's all business to business. And so, you know, it depends on what country you're talking about. Sometimes it's small family farms. Other times it's large agricultural companies that are planting thousands of hectares of blueberries to hit whatever market they're trying to serve.

So it's everything from those who are selling it to an end user to those who are planting it. They need it for their entire farm.

So as far as the fruit goes, yes, it really is though that business to business and most of the people we sell to are then selling the fruit to distributors. You know, our stuff—

God, it's almost everything you're selling, they're farming versus like go, I go to Home Depot or Lowe's or wherever. Pick up a blueberry bush, it's not likely not going to be Fall Creek.

Correct. We have a small, you know, nursery business that is in that nature, but the core element of what we do globally is, is, yeah, volume-wise, millions, tens of millions of blueberry plants to major growers who are growing the fruit for retail like Costco or Sam's Club or, you know, local grocery markets.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, wherever you pick up your, the actual blueberries. Versus— makes sense. And you mentioned you're global, so appreciate that background. That's helpful. I want to shift gears a little bit and ask a question. When you and I chatted, you said something about, you know, a high-level FP&A team can't achieve its goals without a high-level accounting team. Elaborate a little bit on that, if you would. I'd love to kind of get your take there.

I can tell you two stories there. So what— when, when I joined Esco Day 1 for me, this is the job I took right out of Intel. Day 1 for me, they announced a major reorganization. They were basically going from one big company to 3 divisions. You know, my job was to lead finance for the biggest division we had. And that reorg, at the announcement, that was basically the extent of the work that had been done. So no P&L, no financial information whatsoever, no managerial financial information. For the division and for the product lines within the division. And, and so, you know, the accounting team could obviously be compliant with financial reporting because they had everything they needed for total company. We had nothing for the division. And, you know, we obviously were going to get measured on how well the division did, how well the products did, which products are the ones that we want to focus on, should we get rid of products, etc. None of the plumbing existed. And so the first 3 months or so was really the FP&A team working very closely with the accounting team to actually get the plumbing in place. And back to what I said before, you know, different kinds of business acumen needed. You, you absolutely— accounting team had to understand the business, had to understand their stakeholders in the finance and the operational team they supported. But it really was, you know, connecting new pipes, moving pipes, all of that to get the financial information to a place where it was usable for FP&A to do their job. So without that partnership with accounting and without their understanding of how we needed to see information on the FP&A part, absolutely would've been a non-starter. I mean, we literally had nothing. So, you know, Once we had all of that partnership in place, then we started to be able to produce product line financials, you know, obviously a P&L, but product line financials, margin analytics, hey, you know, figured out, hey, this major product line is actually a money loser, we should get out of this product line, all of that. None of that information was really visible in the old structure. And you know, this wasn't an ERP change or transformation. This was just a, hey, in the existing system, work with accounting to connect all of the accounts to the right places and make sure we understand the why and the where. So that, that's the, that's what I mean by we were completely in the dark without the accounting team helping us get there.

Sure. Whenever you have these new reorgs, often the plumbing's behind. And you got to kind of reorganize it. I dealt with that a little bit. You know, there's a bunch of tangled stuff in the P&L. I remember I had a big project where I had to try to untangle it all and had a lot of intercompany entries. So that was fun. Trying to untangle those from years old because the business that it all originally went in was Traveler's Check, which is the oldest business for American Express. And, you know, they'd added a bunch of new businesses all kind of commingled in it. And, you know, looking back, I could tell I was part of preparing it for the sell. You know, I left, but after that it was all sold off and I could see why they were trying to pull everything out of Traveler's Check because that wasn't a business they were going to sell in 2020, right? The rest of it was, so they needed to split it all out. At the time, I didn't think as much about it, but looking back, I'd left a company, so I was like, ah, I know what all that work went for.

Right. And well, as you say too, I mean, intercompany is a key detail within what I was describing, right? Because if you are in a global business, which that was, and the current company I'm at is global as well, the intercompany piece, I mean, it's the accounting team that can give you the, you know, the Rosetta Stone to get things to the right place. Your FP&A folks, they're not, they shouldn't be in the intercompany piece. That part all has to be worked out, but the end result has to be something that again, supports the business, which is the 's where you get the partnership between FP&A and accounting.

You got to work with accounting because if an intercompany entry shows up wrong in, in a business, in your P&L line, regardless of whether it was accounted for properly, which 99% of the time it was, it's the right entities, but the rollup is wrong. Also, you got $3 million showing up in expenses with no offset, and it's just an intercompany that really doesn't impact the business per se. It just has to do with the legal and the tax side. You're like, All right, I, I gotta go fix this. And that's when you go to accounting.

Right. And if you don't, you know, if you're not in sync there and you don't recognize what you just said, then, you know, you, you can be putting bad information supporting bad decisions across. So again, that partnership piece and, you know, you and I were also talking a little bit about the job here and, you know, we just did an ERP transformation. Here, and we were running off of multiple charts of accounts and consolidations was really tough. It's another one where, as we've gone to here, a new ERP and cleaned up to get one global chart of accounts, it's another one where we're good on the financial accounting side. We needed to make sure the managerial's tracked. And so again, here, just what we're going through and not completely done with, great partnership between FP&A and accounting. To get things into the right place so that it's decision useful. It describes the business and actually you're much more efficient. You're not spending days and days chasing, is the data good? You're actually cleaned up and good to go support the business in a timely fashion, which is also critical and why that partnership and really the acumen on both sides is, is really critical.

Yeah, you know, you make a lot of great points there. Any advice? Let's say you have an FP&A team and they feel like they're not getting the support they need from accounting. Like everybody's experienced it at some level one way or the other. You can go both ways. Would love a little bit of your thought. What advice would you give to an FP&A professional if they feel like they're not getting the support and they're struggling on the accounting side?

Yeah, I don't, you know, I don't know that that's any different than any stakeholder issue, right? If you're not getting the right support from your operational person, I think it comes down to Have you built the right relationship? Have you developed the right understanding in terms of, hey, here's the business need, here's why we're here. But, but probably more important than that, you know, are you investing the time outside of the times of crisis or crunch time to, to have the right relationship with people, to connect with them? Uh, because it's, it's pretty rare in my experience that you've got a strong connection with somebody and they're not delivering for you. Usually it's a lack of understanding or a lack of connection that is driving that, or, you know, in some cases prioritization. But usually if you've got the strong relationship, you work through the prioritization piece and you get to the right piece. So I mean, I think for me, regardless of the circumstance, whether it's finance accounting, accounting finance, or finance to operational stakeholders, it really comes down to get the right relationship and invest the time to do it.

Yeah, I think you make a great point, right? Relationships are so important. And there's something you said in there that I want to kind of repeat is make sure you're developing that relationship beyond times of crisis. One of the best examples I've heard is Christian Wadick. He runs— he's a program director for Wharton. He talks a lot about the emotional bank account. And when, when I talk about that, I say, look, in finance, we have more withdrawals because of the role. If you're doing a reorg, you're having to tell people they have to cut heads, budget season, those are going to be withdrawals, even if it goes great, because there are going to be parts of it that nobody likes of no fault of your own. So I'm like, make sure you're putting in those deposits throughout the year so the emotional bank account, the relationship can withstand understand those withdrawals that are negative just by the nature of them, no matter how well you can.

Yeah, no, I think that's true. I absolutely use the emotional bank account metaphor frequently in those conversations. The, you know, the other one that's useful, and I'm not sure I'm going to get it perfectly right, but you know, if you do any youth sports coaching, you know, they will tell you it needs to be, it's something like a 10-to-1 ratio of positive reinforcement versus negative, you know, hey, this needs to be our corrective reinforcement. And, and again, I think that also lends itself to if you're only dealing with people in times of crisis or crunch time, man, you have not spent the 10-to-1 ratio right in terms of developing that, that emotional bank account.

Yeah, it's similar to— I, I haven't done much, I've never really done youth sports, but I did a lot of Boy Scouts for years. Similar idea. If you want to learn, you need to really focus on being positive with them, not just You messed up your tent. Oh, you didn't clean up after yourself. I mean, it's true with kids. You want to try to, and I, I find myself guilty of that sometimes. I'm sure you can remember as a parent where you're like, oh, I was just negative all day with them. No wonder why they're grumpy and not, not doing what I want instead of focusing on the positive side and trying to help them see in addition to that, here's the other things I need, you know, you need to be doing. So I think it's, that's just, it's a great relate. Doesn't matter what the relationship is. There's just a lot of value, like you said there, and especially with youth of that positive reinforcement and building the bank account.

Right. Absolutely. It, I mean, as you said, it transcends what the circumstance is. It's if, you know, humans are dealing with humans, you need to get a positive, productive relationship to really make things work.

Great. Just advice for life goes far beyond anything we'll talk about finance. So I love that. You know, another thing we deal with, another challenge, and this is challenging across the business as well, but, you know, high-performing teams, something that allows you to be a high-performing team is often good systems, or at least makes it easier. You know, if you have a lot of really bad systems, really bad data, it can become a real challenge, right? Often the company grows and you're lagging behind. I think you, you talk about NetSuite going through that implementation. I'm sure some of that's because company growth. And now there's a lag or some tech debt that you had to solve. So any advice, you know, to the people kind of on the front line, you know, the average FP&A person often doesn't get to say much about the system, but it can sometimes feel limiting. Any, any advice? How do you manage those situations? How should they kind of think through that? Because, you know, I look at it and say, the last thing people want to hear is always, hey, I can't do it because the system's That doesn't solve anything. So what it, but it's, there's some reality to a certain extent. So how do you handle those type of situations?

Yeah, I think two things. One is, I mean, at least for me when I was frontline and e, even today when in thinking about certain other circumstances, it, part of being successful is being a creative problem solver. You can't be too creative, right? You have to be creative within some bounds, right? But, you know, if the system—

You don't want to hallucinate answers.

Yeah. Or you don't want to go hire somebody on the side to construct an outside system without IT knowing it, right? There's, there are boundaries, but within those types of boundaries, which are fairly broad, is how do you figure out how to make, you know, if you're, if you're in the short term where the system is not going to change, how do you make it work for you as best you can? Using creative problem-solving skills and likely your internal network on, hey, I'm really struggling with how to do this. Maybe somebody else has actually cracked that nut and you can get a best-known method from them to help you. So that's kind of, you know, step one in the crisis. Rather than being defeatist, have that growth mindset, look on it as a challenge and figure out how do you get your best workaround. Around to get there. And typically that is what people, most people will do. The other thing I would say, if you step more into the kind of short to medium term, it really is make sure you're investing in the underlying processes and keeping it as simple as you can. Because, you know, I've seen a couple of groups where, and these are non-finance groups that are coming to mind that, you know, think somebody who's supported by a CRM or an HRIS system or a warehouse management system. Who have said, you know, our major problem is we don't have the right system. If you look a little bit deeper, their major problem is actually they have really bad underlying processes, and if they automated it with a system, it would be a disaster. And so that's the other controllable element here, is take a step back, look at the underlying processes, and do those need to change in a way that simplifies, makes them more straightforward, and produces cleaner data that enables you to get where you need to. Because before you ever change the system, put in a new system, whatever, you really need to have solid processes and good data. Those are the key things. And that's, you know, there's a lot that's there that's controllable without a system changing.

Yeah, 100% agree. One of my favorite quotes was Hassard Consulting said, Old processes plus new technology equals expensive old broken processes.

Haven't heard that one.

I like that one a lot. You know, and it's, it's true. I mean, I, I think you summed it up that I'd say 3 things that you summed up really well there. First, you just have to have the growth mindset, be creative, look at it as a challenge to solve versus woe is me. 2 is look at the processes. Are there ways you could simplify? And the third thing I kind of think I heard there is, you know, you mentioned a little bit around that was the data, but right, doing that, you can overcome a lot. You still may not solve everything. Sometimes you can't give what, give the business what they want, but you'll get closer for sure.

Yeah. And along the way of doing that, you'll actually build the business case for upgrading the system as well.

100% agree. Because when you can start showing, you can continually be, okay, I've done all this. I've given you, well, we need this. That's not a fill. That's not available. Well, what would it take? And you start putting that bug in people's ears. Well, we either have to do this to the existing system or upgrade to a new one. Then all of a sudden, well, what's the business case? Before you know it, you, you, hopefully it starts, you know, driving some change that allows you to make everybody's life easier, assuming you get the implementation right. That's a whole nother story.

You gotta have a good team and you gotta have everybody on board. So.

That's for sure. Having just gone through an implementation, yeah, you would, uh, definitely be able to relate to that one.

Yeah. And, you know, to give, to give credit while we're in that general topic, our team really came together well, not just finance team, but the global team. And yeah, it's been, you know, I, I would hesitate to call any ERP implementation fun, but the result has been great. And it's gonna really enable the business to, to scale. So it's, it's been a very good team effort.

Here. I think having just gone through it, you'll laugh at this one as well. My co-host Glenn Hopper, he always jokes that there's two things that will get a CFO fired. One is fraud, and the second is tell your CEO you want to do an ERP implementation.

Well, it is, it is funny you say that, because what the board told our CEO when we embarked on this is only one, one of the things that gets CEOs fired is a bad ERP implementation. So I can see how that rolls downhill into his comment.

Exactly. You know, and he's been a— he's gone through a few implementations, have been a CFO a few times. So he, you know, but yeah, it's definitely one of those things that is everybody hopes goes right and is real challenge. So I'm glad it's gone really well. I want to touch on one other topic and then we're going to move into the FP&A section and get to know you. So, you know, I saw a study somewhere that said something to the effect of, you know, in general CFOs have said the hardest role to fill is FP&A roles. And I'd love to get your thought on it. What do you thought about kind of the challenges of building a, you know, high-performing FP&A team and filling those roles?

Yeah, I, you know, interesting question. Uh, I'd love to see the study, not, not one I'm familiar with. Uh, and you know, I've been fortunate both at Esco and at here at Fall Creek that I've inherited a really good core FP&A team, which, you know, obviously is fortunate and gives you a good running start. You know, I think it's always somewhat challenging to do hiring well, right? And I'm not sure I see a difference between hiring a controller or accounting manager versus hiring an FP&A, you know, manager or analyst. I think the people are out there. It's a matter of whether or not you can tap into them and whether you can run a good enough process to identify and land that talent. So I, you know, it's definitely, you gotta have people who fulfill all the things we talked about at the front end around great FPA, right? People who are technically competent, can partner, all of those sorts of things. So yeah, those are tough skills, but there's a lot of, Schools and companies that educate and give experience to people. I, you know, I guess I, I think it's more a challenge in how you execute finding them and landing them than whether or not they exist, which is kind of how I took the finding it part. But I think there's enough people out there that for me, with a good process, you can find the right people and bring them in. Doesn't mean you're not going to make mistakes from time to time. But that's not one I worry about so much. For me, it's more the concern is how do you continually develop people along the way, which, you know, takes effort, process, engagement, all of those things. Not to say that that's, you know, there's mysticism around it, but you gotta make sure you're paying attention to it.

And that's where I was gonna go next, was that's a little bit of a development. So that kind of leads perfectly. The thing I'd say when you mentioned You know, hiring and getting good process is hard, right? You never know if the person on the other side of the table is being forthcoming with you. You can get ideas, but it could be difficult. I had a boss, the way he put it once, he goes, hiring's hard. I will never fault someone for getting a hire wrong. It happens. I will fault you if you don't fix it. And that could be development, that could be moving the person to another role. Sometimes that means having to displace somebody. And I, I thought that was good, like. You've made the decision. Now you need to figure out how to make it work best for the company, whatever that means. That was a good way. I'd never heard it put that way and always kind of stuck with me. Like, because I always felt like, oh, I'm going to mess up this hire. But you do, you do. What you do afterwards is on you. I won't hold you responsible for messing it up. Yes.

No, I agree. And, and yeah, the, the key there gets back to, to what I was saying. It's how do you coach and develop and., you know, as-needed performance manage. And, you know, that can be both high performers and low performers, but how do you make the right thing happen?

I'd love a little bit of advice there. I mean, what have you found works well to, in developing teams? Like, how do you think about that, of trying to make sure you have a high-performing, you know, team that gets the opportunities and the growth they need?

Yeah, so I think a couple things come to mind. So first off, it, it really, you know, if you have a multi-level —organization, you need to have leadership at all levels that's engaged in this, right? It, it can't, especially if you're global and you're talking about multiple time zones, it would be a, a point of failure or lack of scalability if it depended on me to do all of the development for everybody across the globe, including those who don't report directly to me. So I gotta make sure I am making my managers accountable and understanding what good development looks like, and that we're making that happen in an empowered and scalable way. So, that's, you know, first off what's important if you're, you know, bigger organization. And there's an element too that is, hey, if you're not a manager, but you're a peer, reinforcing the importance of peer coaching, both giving and seeking that out to make sure that you're getting as much as you can. Then the other two things that are kind of connected for me in this space is, you know, most, most learning is experiential learning, right? There's, you know, usually when you go into the class, they give you the, the statistics around, hey, classroom learning is really a very small part of how people actually learn. It's really the experiential. And so it really is creating that environment where people are in situations where they part of a team, frontline partnering, having the stakeholders. It's, it is, they are having the experience and they have accountability and responsibility in an empowered way to get through with coaching and tools, systems, you know, all of those sorts of things that help them perform and get to a better place from an experience standpoint. So figuring out, you know, where are they in that and where can you plug them in that's situationally appropriate for where they are on the learning curve that'll stretch them a little bit and give them that experience. And then what I mentioned is connected to that is one thing I try and do with my FPA team is everybody has a designated, ideally, staff to be on, meaning they're in an operational staff as a staff person being their finance, or what I usually say, you're their mini CFO. So you need to support the business and do all the things I would do at the, at the total company level. You need to be doing for that organization. And that gets them involved. And if they're not in a position where they can be part of the staff, it's, hey, here are your 1 or 2 key stakeholders. There's no staff, but you're well connected with them and having the same kind of conversations. I think those are the things that really develop the high-performing team and get you into You know, we talked about great FP&A at the start, get you the opportunity to practice all of those things of being connected to the business, understanding it, using, you know, the numbers and the data with the context and being consulted by those stakeholders or that staff to help them figure out where the business needs to go.

That makes a lot of sense there. Appreciate that. Before we move into kind of an FP&A section where you ask some standard questions, I want to ask one more. I know we have some people listening to the episode, they want to be a CFO one day. What advice would you offer to someone to help prepare themselves for their first CFO role?

I think, uh, you know, I've touched on a couple of things. For me, it goes back to make sure you've got enough breadth in your foundation. It's, it's, you know, if you've only been a pricing FP&A person for 20 years, you're, you're probably not well positioned to do a CFO role that, you know, is much more than just pricing. And so, you know, find— it doesn't necessarily have to be different industries, although the one thing I really like about finance is it's pretty industry agnostic, right? So you can go a lot of different places as long as you pick up the learning curve part of it to understand the acumen of what's going on. But really is get the breadth, understand key components that a CFO overseas as part of their role, you know, from accounting through treasury. Your ability to cover everything is not going to be possible, but figure out how to get major blocks. And there will be times in your career where your best move is to go lateral, not up, because you're getting the breadth piece. And that can be a hard choice. There were a couple of times in my career where I actively chose lateral rather than up because it was a breadth play that eventually got me here. So that, that's probably for me the most important part. Then it just gets down into the growth mindset piece that we talked about, listening effectively and partnering well. But the other thing I will mention to people that I think, you know, we talk about networking a lot and usually that conversation goes to, you know, go out and join finance organizations, meet people, go to conferences. All good, all stuff people should do. But one of the biggest networking opportunities is networking your timeline. And by that I mean the people— when you start your first job, your peers at that job and maybe the first-level managers that you work with, a lot of them are eventually going to be CEOs or CFOs. I'm amazed at all the people I started with and where they are today. That is a tremendous network that if you cultivate as you go through your career, right, you can't, you can't pick up the phone and say, hey, 30 years ago we used to work together. Do you remember me? And now I'm networking with you. You have to maintain this network through your time horizon. But there's a very exponential impact of classmates and for people that you first started with. That go to amazing places that produce just an awesome network for you to not just find roles, but also just to help solve problems. Hey, I'm facing this for the first time. I know you faced it. Let me call you and, and talk to you and get some advice. Networking your timeline, it takes a long time and you don't necessarily see it maybe for the first decade, but man, after that it pays a lot. And There's a lot of people I started with that I call up and have maintained enough of a relationship with that, um, I know I can call them and they can obviously call me and, and we can have deep conversations with some shared history that help get us to the right place. And it's super valuable. So the breadth piece, but also just recognize the power of the time in your career.

And I've never had it kind of put that way. I really like that phrasing of network your timeline made me, made me think that was something I wish I would have done better throughout my career. So that's really good advice. Thank you. All right, these are some standard questions we ask every guest. What's the number one technical skill that you think FPA professionals need to master?

Well, I'm going to feel a little repetitive from what we talked about. I, I'm going to tell you it's the application of business acumen to your financial modeling. I, I mean, that implies you're pretty good at financial modeling, but I've seen some great financial models not connected to the business that don't really produce anything useful. They're really cool models though. The ones that are super effective is when you've developed the acumen, you've spent enough time with the stakeholders, you're building in stuff that really is impactful in terms of where the business goes. So that, that for me would be the number one. So, you know, I was listening to your State of the Union podcast from a little while ago. And so I'm going to resist the temptation to say empathy because you said I take that as a challenge. So I'm going to say actually an associated item for me, which is effective listening. And by that, I mean broader than usual that people say, right? I mean, there's the traditional, hey, make sure you're really absorbing, repeat things back. All of that. Absolutely mean all of that. But more than that, when you're presenting to a room or someone else is presenting and you're in there, it's reading body language. I, you know, I was in a board meeting a few board meetings ago and somebody who reported to me was doing a presentation and I could tell that one of the people in the room had real issues with what was being said, but they didn't say anything. It was all body language. Language, right? And I, I'd put that in the category of effective listening. That enabled me to find that person in a break, and we ended up in a conference room having a conversation around what the concerns were. Got a lot out in the open, worked through it, and got to a much better place. And that would have been hidden under the surface if I hadn't been paying attention and looking at what was going on. And like I said, that's a little beyond what most people consider effective listening. But the body language part I think is important, and making sure whether you're presenting or someone on your team is presenting or a stakeholder, you're taking it in and you're understanding and you're seeing things before they become issues. Great advice.

I appreciate that, going beyond just what we typically think of when we hear listening. All right, so this is kind of a fun one going in a little different direction. If Excel removed one feature tomorrow, Which one would cause you the most panic if it went away?

You know, and this is, I will hold my hand up and say, I love Excel. I used to be very good at Excel. I'm not that good at Excel anymore. And I don't think you really want me to be that good at Excel.

No, that's a typical answer I get from CFOs.

However, however, I did, I have thought about this a little bit and I actually bounced it off of a couple of people who are very good in my organization where it would hurt and it really, What the answer I came up with, which I was pleased was very consistent with what they said, mine was just based on much older functions, is, is, yeah, is reference matching, right? So for me it was VLOOKUP, uh, for them it was a combination of either XLOOKUP or INDEX matching. Basically any function that takes away the ability to match things would be detrimental to the analytics side. Yes.

Yeah, no, I, I can understand that one there, whether it's the lookup, whether you're using Power Query, you lose that ability to match things. It's— we've all done several hours, if not years, of matching. So, all right, so now we're going to move to section Get to Know You. Have a couple questions, we'll wrap up here. What do you like to do in your spare time when you're not working? Kind of a hobby or passion you have?

Well, so two things. I'm a big basketball guy, so everything from coaching to watching and to playing, it's Playing is much harder as you get older. You know, I'm collecting a number of injuries that are all basketball related, but I do, for, for me, basketball in all of those forms I just mentioned is a big stress reliever just in terms of really getting into the sport. And really it's all levels. I, I enjoy the game and, and have a decently long connection to it one way or another. So really enjoy that. It's, you know, we're now actually, it's very nice that the WNBA has come up and filled the summer because now there's no long layoff with no basketball. So, you know, in the NBA final or playoffs now, I don't have a dog in the hunt with the NBA right now, but WNBA season is starting. Actually went to a game in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago. I saw the Aces play. So basketball is loads of fun for me in whatever form it's in, from youth to pro.

So do you know, were you a Sonics fan as a kid or?

So actually, given I grew up in Oregon, I'm a diehard Blazer fan.

You are a Blazer. Okay, I wasn't sure.

But I will say, given I went to, to school in Seattle, I became a Sonics fan, which is a little unusual because those are two pretty big rivals. Yeah, yeah, but I, I certainly— Northwest. Yes, I certainly would want the Blazers to win any matchup with them. But yeah, I grew— I had a roommate whose dad had courtside club tickets to the Sonics that, you know, I grew to love them with You know, X-Man and the teams of that era. As a result, I despise Oklahoma City's team for stealing the Sonics. You know, apologies to anyone who's a diehard Oklahoma City fan, but man, that was just a wrong thing for the NBA to do. But yes, the Blazers for me are my NBA team.

Yeah, I know. I, uh, I'm a big NBA fan. We could probably spend a whole podcast on that, but to get you We'll lose everybody by then. So we'll keep going, but I do, I love, love basketball as well. I played a lot of it as a kid and don't play much now, but I can relate to, I do a lot of running and it just feels like one injury after another now. Yeah. So the joy of aging. Yes.

It's, it's not so much the injuries. It's the recovery time actually.

Agreed. I'm, I'm recovering from pulling a calf muscle right now and it's just like, Why can't I? Why is it still hurty? I get it. All right. If you could have dinner with one person in the world, who would you pick and why?

So I'm going to stick kind of on the basketball path. I'm going to go with Mark Cuban. So for a couple of reasons. First, you know, like, like me, an Indiana Business School grad, he's got strong ties to, to the school. So there's an interesting set of conversations just around the university experience. That would be good. He also clearly loves basketball, big sports guy, and, you know, clearly an interesting personality as well. So there's, there's a lot of connectedness there. And, you know, business person can talk everything from business to basketball to Indiana. Really would, I think, lend itself to a very long, interesting conversation over dinner. All right.

Well, we'll go ahead and wrap up here, but if someone wants to maybe get in touch with you or kind of learn more, learn more about you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Via my LinkedIn profile is probably the best and easiest.

That, that's what I figured. That's the typical answer nowadays. All right. LinkedIn is, uh, I think it's, it's made it go from 6 degrees of separation to 2 or 3. Yeah.

And I, you know, I am not a daily LinkedIn person, but you know, I am on frequently enough that that's, that's going to be the best way to hunt me down.

Of course, makes sense. Well, Robert, thank you so much for joining. I enjoyed the conversation. It was a real pleasure having you on the show and appreciate everything you shared with the audience. I think they'll find it really valuable.

Yeah, I appreciate it. I've enjoyed listening to the podcast and, and this has been a fun conversation for me as well. So appreciate it.

That's it for today's episode of FP&A Unlocked. If you enjoy FP&A Unlocked, please take a moment to leave a 5-star rating and review. It's the best way to support the FP&A Guy and help more FP&A professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app, and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education credits for the FPAC certification, complete the quiz and reach out out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A Guy, and I'll see you next time.