Paul Barnhurst nearly lost a promotion because he buried decision-makers in analytical detail. His manager had to remind him to cut the noise and stick to what mattered. The lesson: give enough to build trust, not a play-by-play of your entire process.
One of the biggest problems I had, and it nearly stopped me from getting promoted, is I was too detail-oriented. You want to tell everything, and so sometimes you want to put all that exploratory stuff. And more and more further along I've gotten my career, the more I've realized that no, they want to be able to trust you. You need to give enough detail they can trust you, but you need to just give them what they need to make a decision at the end. They're looking for you to help make a decision. You don't need to relitigate the analysis you did. You don't need all the exploratory. And so I think that's a struggle a lot of people have. I had boss that would DM me every time I got too into the weeds, he'd like bring it back up. That was kind of the agreement he had. He helped me. And so I'd get these Slack messages— I think it was Skype at the time, but whatever it was— and he'd be like, all right, you're losing everybody, bring it back up. And it was really helpful because it's not something we're taught. It takes time to learn what's important.
Trust and Leadership Lessons for FP&A From 100+ Top Leaders with CFO Jon Laudie
