Paul Barnhurst tells FP&A professionals to stop hiding in spreadsheets and talk to people across the business, especially front-line staff near customers. Without that context, your numbers and plans will be biased and miss what's actually happening.
Stop only looking at Excel sheets and numbers and actually take the time to communicate and get to know the business. So if you're working corporate fpa, understand the business really well. Go down to not just talk to the heads, talk to everybody else, the people who are closest to the customer. Understand the challenges and opportunities. If you cannot understand the big picture and everything else around it, you're planning and analysis is going to be meaningless or you're going to fall into so many different biases because of the numbers that you don't understand and you're going to make conclusions that might not be actually accurate. So that's the first one communication that's a great one.
Trust and Leadership Lessons for FP&A From 100+ Top Leaders with CFO Jon Laudie
