Storytelling Skills for FP&A Professionals to Elevate Business Partnering with Greg Adams

When you're at parties out in the world, you always ask, what do you do? And as an accountant or somebody in finance, you go, yeah, I'm an accountant. But you have to describe like, no, it's not boring and technical. So I got tired of kind of hearing that. So I wanted to create a book that has a hero as an accountant.

Greg is a CPA. For over 25 years, he has held senior finance positions, CFO, COO, and director the FPA department.

They have to work with everybody in the organization.

Can you Describe what great FP&A looks like?

Presenting a good story, Change behavior to improve performance, but more importantly, gathering information and data, not only internal data, but also external data from various sources. And it just makes us more efficient and immediately see trends. Rather than telling the story of what happened. They're expected to say, okay, what's going to happen? That's the art.

What advice would you offer to our audience to be a better FPA business partner?

First of all, come into the office. Biggest advice would probably be get up.

And now a brief message from our title sponsor, Workday. Are you looking for an EPM solution that will give your business the agility, connectivity and scalability it needs to succeed with powerful AI Workday? Adaptive planning delivers insights that help you make better decisions faster. Our advanced data visualization and powerful reporting tools make it easy to elevate your budgeting, planning and modeling. See it for yourself at www.workday.com. hello everyone. Welcome to FP&A tomorrow. This is the podcast where we delve into the world of financial planning and and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, AKA the FP and a guy. Each week we're joined by thought leaders, industry experts and practitioners who share their insights and experiences, helping us navigate today's complexities and tomorrow's uncertainties. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your journey in FP&A, this show has something for everyone this week. I'm thrilled to be joined on the show by Greg Adams. Greg, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Paul. I'm very excited to to join you and look forward to our discussion.

I do too. I know we only just recently met at Fate and you know, we. I got your book there and got to chat a little bit. I thought it'd be great to have you on the show. Got a little bit of bio. We'll do a little bit of background and then we'll jump into the conversation here. So Greg is a cpa, so he has he has one on me. He is the SVP and cfo. I haven't been a cfo, so he has two on me. Of the American Management Association. He has held Senior Finance position, CFO, CEO and Director for over 25 years in both the public and private sector. Greg is also an author, having released a financial resource oriented guidebook in the form of an international crime thriller. We'll get into that titled Green Shades. But not only Green Shades, but the dollar at the end. And it is. Accountants aren't supposed to die this way. I don't like to die at all. Okay. So for three of his 11 years he spent in public accounting they were at KPMG. He lived in Sydney, which is one of the key areas setting for his protagonist adventures in this book. His leadership mission is to help employees and business leaders achieve corporate excellence. How was that for an intro?

That's fantastic, Paul. It's been a fun run.

Love it. So these. We start with a few standard questions up the beginning and the first one here. In one sentence or less, how would you define FP and A?

I would define it as a trusted strategic financial advisor who will work with all departments organizations to improve performance.

I like it. So basically a trusted advisor who works with the entire business to improve performance.

Exactly, exactly.

All right, so kind of along those lines, can you Describe what great FP&A looks like? How do you know if you're accomplishing what you talked about there? What does it look like in an organization?

Well, it looks like an organization and particularly organizations that I worked with and the excellent FPA folks at my company. It's really presenting a good story to change behavior to improve performance. But more importantly gathering information and data, not only internal data but also external data from various sources. And I think sometimes we miss on that and that we, we are seeing on with data mining a lot of lot of information but we also need to look at it compared to the industry and compared to other performances. So yeah, I think that I was taught very young in my career that if you control information, you control the world. So that's what FPA does.

Data is the new oil and you know, data becomes information, so to speak. So that's right. We control there, you know. And one other thing that stuck out to me is you talked about the external data. I was excited to see and I think we'll see more of this. One of the big FPA tools just bought a company that completely focused on helping senior leaders forecast the external environment. So they have like 5 million different data points they bring in use a lot of AI and one of the big FP and A tools just brought them to integrate into that planning process. And I think with where AI is going and different things, we'll see more of that and more of that machine learning that goes beyond just well, what was our historics, what are our numbers and really looking externally more because it can only improve what we're doing and make us aware of pitfalls and weaknesses.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, to build on that. I've been involved in my career. I've been very fortunate on my career. One of my CFO positions was in the late 1990s, right during the dot com convergence of the dot com and the convergence of the SEC's EDGAR database as well. I was able to get very intimate and familiar with not only SEC filings that were now all being filed electronically and data mined through various APIs, but also I worked with the SEC and the various committees of XBRL International. And XBRL is extensible business reporting language. And many of our listeners may or may not know, but every SEC filing, whether it's a 10k, a 10q, a form 8k for material events, they have XBRL tags which basically is barcoding all the information and what you BarCode information with XML tags, you can then rip that out and integrate it into your data presentation story and then see the trends and compare yourself throughout the industry.

That's great. I wasn't aware of that. I didn't know about the xbrl. I will admit I could see where that could be really helpful in making it easier to get all that external public data.

Yeah. What really blew me away when I first saw XBRL and was really out of Seattle, came from the area through Microsoft guys and they were playing with some Excel add ins and they were building spreadsheets and they put in the ticker symbol and all of a sudden information just popped, populates that spreadsheet directly from the SEC's EDGAR system and you right click on a number and all of a sudden you're jumping to that section of the. That filing which was to me was remarkable.

It's amazing what technology can do. I mean we're living in an age where it's just so rapid right now.

Oh absolutely. Especially all the new AI tools as. As you're very familiar with, Paul.

It's, you know, I hear from a company almost every week. I saw a new one this morning that doing some unique things with AI and kind of an interesting approach in finance and it was, it was fascinating to see and how they thought about it. It just amazes me all the different ways people can think about this. Because at the end of the day, whether it's reporting or planning or budgeting or analytics, how many different ways can you do it? You know, there's some differences. At its core, it's very similar, yet we have hundreds of different solutions of how to do it.

That's right. Yeah, exactly. And it just makes us more efficient. And we're able to step away now from creating a data entry work and immediately see trends. And that's the biggest thing is I. I tell our staff and our FBA staff need to add value. You know, historical data is great, and we all know the historical data, what's going to happen going forward. And that's, that's the art right there.

Yep, I. I agree. Two things that kind of came to mind as you said. That is, you know, one, I still remember Jack Alexander. If you know who that is, you might recognize that name. He wrote a book on FP&A. He tells the story where an analyst, you know, brought him this data. He goes, here's the analysis you wanted. And he flipped through it and there was no recommendation, no, nothing goes, no, this is a report. There's no analysis here. That's why, where's the recommendation or the what we should be doing or how we should be thinking about this? He goes, that was the last time he ever brought me a report. You know, he realized pretty quickly that, I want your thoughts on this. Your job is to not just regurgitate what's out there, but give me more.

Yeah, exactly. I recently wrote an article for Accounting Today about how people in finance and finance leaders should leverage that art of story storytelling. And it's basically seven Storytelling hints. That is really an easy roadmap. You know, the obvious one, know your audience. The second one, you know, set the scene set, you know, what's going on. Third is, you know, engage your audience. The fourth is make them care. And then the fifth is they use some tension or conflict, similar to my book. So this is kind of reeling into green shades. And the fifth is really know your punchline. What's the answer you want? I. E. What's the recommendation that you're going to deliver and that you want? And then, yeah, then the end with a really heartfelt conclusion. So it's. It's the old spar with your partner, spar with your audience, which means, you know, identify the situation, identify the problem, create an action which would then drive the result, love it.

And you know, when you think of storytelling. One of my favorite all time books. I have the COVID here, I have the book upstairs. You've ever read this? Effective Data Storytelling by Brent Dykes. Phenomenal. He gets into the psychology of why facts are not enough and you need to tell a story to replace the prior narrative. Your audience had their prior story. Facts don't do that. And we're wired to learn things in stories in a lot of ways. And you know, he talks about how data storytelling is very different than telling a story with data. Like you know, there's a difference between the two. So if you ever get a chance. Brilliant book. I had him on just a few weeks ago, ah, podcast. And he lives here locally so we've got to be friends over the last couple years as we both started our businesses about the same time. So fun.

He's preaching to the choir.

Yeah, he, he, he is and he's done a ton of research and so I love that when you can back it up versus not just an antidote. Well, I've heard this but you know, show me some evidence. And he does a good job of that, which I like.

Yeah.

So you're currently the SVP and cfo I think as you mentioned of the American Management Association. So can you tell our audience a little bit of what AMA is, what its role in all this is? I know we have a, there's a number of different organizations out there with CPA and the different things. So maybe just spend a minute and kind of walk through how to think of ama.

Yeah, I think of ama. First of all, the American Management association is a non for profit education training company. Been around for over a century. We actually last year we celebrated our 100th anniversary and it's really about teaching employees to bring about positive change in their behavior which then will drive results at your company. And for a finance person I, I consider these to be soft skills or I like to label them power skills. These power skills, you know, whether it's communication and presentation skills, critical thinking, business acumen, leadership skills, it all leads to having, making the worker better. So AMA is, is been a tremendous organization for me to work with. I've been here five years. Most people have worked here. It's probably been 20, 25 years. It's a great, not for profit. We're based in New York City. We've teached, educated millions of people over that, that's those centuries in a hundred different countries. Part of my role too is I've work with all our International affiliates that they report to me. So it's, you know, I don't want to say it's teaching the American management style, but it's basically teaching those power skills that really, I think are critical for the advancement for every employee. And, you know, unfortunately, some companies don't invest enough in their employees through training. And that's, you know, that should happen as an automatic thing.

Yeah, unfortunately, I'd say a lot of companies, it's always the first budget to cut, and everybody's like, I don't have time. And the reality is, if you really develop a good program and a culture that you care about your people and they're learning, you'll be more effective as an organization. The data is pretty much undisputable.

Yeah, absolutely. And one statistic that jumps out at me is people are the great individual contributors, are all of a sudden main managers. And they've had zero management training. They say. Actually, over 68% of people say they've never received any formal management training. So, you know, picture yourself as a great accountant or an FPA person. All of a sudden you say, all right, here's 10 people that you got to work for you. What do you do? So that's why I really enjoy working at the ama. To have a difference in people's lives and be able to change behavior for the good and help them succeed, which ultimately helps their business succeed.

You know, I have to give a shout out. I first became a manager at American Express, and almost immediately they put me in some training for leadership, how to manage and stuff. A couple day training. He did a really good job there. But many other companies, not so much. And like you said, the other example I think of, take financial modeling, right? We get out of college, you take a role, you're asked to build a model. You've never built one before. You've never had any training. Corporate finance is terrible at providing, providing modeling training to employees. But if you go into investment banking, you are building a model till you've had some training. Yeah, I find it fascinating because it's like, okay, is the investment banking more important than our budget and forecast and all the modeling we do in corporate finance? No, not really. Would argue different. They're both important. So I just think sometimes that training we can really fall short. And I know it was until I got some training quite a while in that I was able to build even a halfway decent model. And I'm like, I wish I would have had a good training course to get me started. I wouldn't have had near the pain, learning it as I did.

Yeah. And then one, one thing that frustrates me a little bit, the AMA is that we have well over 30 courses that are CPE credited courses for CPAs. But yet that's not our sweet spot. You know, our sweet spot is, is more the manager, you know, supervisor turning into a manager. And you know, CPAs or accountants or people finance an FPA that got great technical skills. It's almost a given that you have those technical skills. But understanding and learning those power skills or soft skills, that's critical really to any organization.

Yeah, I 100% agree. I often will call them human skills. I'm not a fan of the soft skills like you. There's other. I've called them power before. I've even said essentially a lot of people didn't like that one because like, well, the technical art essential. I'm like, I know, I know, I get it. But so important when I teach FP and A, we spend probably more time on soft skills than we do on the technical because there's plenty of resources for the technical, you can learn that. And most people are solid on the technical. But the area where you're going to advance your career is generally not the technical. It might get you that first promotion, but after that you got to start showing that you have the leadership, the business partnering, the empathy and list goes on and on. Presentation. Yeah, presentation, influencing type skills. I'm with you. So I, I'm curious, how did you end up at ama? Because I know you spent a long time public as a CFO going kind of to a non profit training organization. What led to that decision?

Yeah, you know, I've been CFO of three different public companies, you know, which has its own challenges, mostly in the technology arena. So it's been fun. And especially, you know, my career started in the 80s in public accounting and then as a 90s, as I became CFO in the 90s and 2000s, you know, the technology world was changing so quickly. So that was fun. And I've also been CFO of some private companies. And what attracted me to the AMA really was now I can make a difference in people's lives. I've been through so many things of what goes on in the organization because as a CFO similar to an FPA professional, you see the entire company.

Yes.

You know what's going on in all the departments, more or less, you know.

Where the bodies are buried.

Yes. You know where they are. Exactly. And you know, so I wanted sort of and my career you know, for people that can't see me, I have a little bit of gray hair. Not too much gray hair, but I have a little bit of gray hair. And I sort of want to try to have it an impact on people's lives and particular people in the finance arena. And that's one of the things also that drove me to write this crazy novel.

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And I'm holding up to the camera. Yes, I have my everywhere else. Obviously you see it in the show links later. Really what drove me to write this? And it only took me about 10 years to write it, but it was fun. Originally I started off as an accounting research book, but then I realized something was going on in the accounting and finance profession. When you're at parties, when you're out in the world, you always ask, what do you do? And as an accountant or somebody in finance, you go, yeah, I'm an accountant or I'm a finance but. And you have to. The but has to describe like, no, it's not boring and technical. It's kind of adventurous. You're seeing everything. So I got tired of kind of hearing that you're having to give that but answer. So I wanted to create a book that has a hero as a, as an accountant, you know, like a Jack Reacher type character. You know, you have all these series on the, on various shows. Netflix, for example. You know, you have a cop or a CIA agent or A nurse or a doctor or a lawyer, but there's no accountants that are heroes. So. And that's really what drove me to write Green Shades and that. And when you write, you write basically two things. You write based on what you know and based on your research. When my book takes place, a lot of the book takes place in New York City, where I am now today. A lot of the book takes place in Australia, where I spent three years with KPMG there, as well as in Barbados and India, where I spell some, spend some time with various businesses. So again, you write no. And then you also write based on research and you're able to look at research. So the book is quite a journey. The protagonist's name is Dex McCord, kind of a cool character who I'll give a little synopsis of the book. Dex McCord is a senior manager at a large accounting firm in New York City. He asked his friend in Australia to do a simple audit of an XBRL facility that is data mining and helping SEC filings be converted into XBRL before the file with the sec. Well, his friend that he sends to do an audit up in India comes back to Australia and all of a sudden, a few days later his body is found up dead on the the Northern Beaches of Sydney. And then when McCord goes to the funeral, he starts finding out that the authorities say it's a surfing accident, but it wasn't a surfing accident. There's something going on behind his friend's death and from there it goes around the world and not only implications in the finance arena, but also international implications in the political arena. So a very different story that most accountants would read and most accountants would see. Of course there's a lot of information about accounting in the book, but in order not to break up the fun exciting story, that information for finance and accounting and other things and SEC filings, that's all the exhibits in the back of the book. If people want to learn that or if they want to learn what simplest what are salaries of big accounting firms for various levels and how our partners pay, for example.

Got it. I, I, I love it. So what was your favorite part of writing this book? What did you enjoy most?

Yeah, you know, what I joined most was just sort of reaching out for the research to some of the experts about, you know, for example, some of the book talks about insider trading or, and algorithmic trading, quant trading, you know, what are, how is quant trading happen? What, what is, what kind of quantitative data is utilizing in, in Quantra compared to some qualitative data which is a little bit more soft. So doing research like that was, Was a riot. And reaching out to, to some friends and the, you know, making some old acquaintances. And since the book has been out for the, you know, the past five months, it's been amazing how many folks have reached out to me that I've known decades ago or new people have reached out to me. So it's, it's been a lot of fun in that respect of hearing people's stories and, and saying, you know, it's finally, we finally have a hero in accounting. This Dex McCord.

Is that. Is that mostly kind of the comments you hear is something around we have a hero or what. What's the feedback you typically get?

Yeah, the feedback I typically get is that I didn't realize that someone in finance could have such an adventurous background and understanding and do so many different things in my own opinion. For example, when I was working in Australia, I took a helicopter, a plane and a helicopter to the middle of nowhere to a gold mine in Queensland. Now what kind of a. Do accountants do? People think accounts do those type of things? Probably not.

Mostly just do my taxes, what I think.

Right, exactly. Let's say taxes. So, you know, accountants do all sorts of different things and people in finance do all different things. And that's why I get back to you. The finance world, the FPA world, you're exposed to all facets, not only of companies, but you could be exposed to all facets of industries. So you're not pigeonholed into one industry necessarily. Like you, Paul, with, you know, starting American Express or whatever it may be, you, you've branched out to various things. And even myself, you know, I've been CFO of a technology company of a company that put automated cameras in basketball arenas around the world that follow the action of technology services companies. But also a green oil. We are making oil out of amyl fat. Another company called G Oil. So various industries, which. That's the biggest thing is people say, oh, finally people can see that you're exposed and you see a lot of different industries as accountants. So maybe it's not so boring. Maybe we need to change the perception and the image of finance leaders and people in accounting.

Well, my basketball fandom, thank you for the automated cameras in the.

That's right.

Quite a diverse. I don't think people realize finance in general, you know, the role they can play. I think there's often that stereotype and particularly FP&A, like you said earlier. And I've heard CEO say it. There's really two kind of two groups or I'd say almost two people that have a 360 view of the business other than the CEO, the CFO and typically FP&A. Right?

Yeah, that's correct.

One CEO who came from finance, I love the way he described it. He's like, I want my FPA team to help peek around corners, help me kind of see where we're going. Or as Carl Seidmans put it a few times called it, you know, one of the most important skills for FP and A people is that ability to anticipate. Trying to help anticipate where we need to go. That's part of what the budgeting exercise is and forecasting and these analysis we do. It's not just about doing the analysis. It's that, that insight and that intellectual thinking that they really want. The model is the way to project it.

Yeah. That's why it's so, so critical that that critical thinking, that business acumen to be able to forecast and project trends. And that's what business leaders are looking for. FBNA is a unique position, as you said, Paul. You could be speaking to the CEO directly or CFO directly. There's not many other groups or individual departments that could do that.

Yeah, or the CRO sometimes too. Right? All the different leaders.

Exactly. Yeah. Operations all the time. Exactly. All different leaders. So that's the biggest feedback. Someone, one person said particular. You finally disclose that somebody in finance could do anything in any country and be successful.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. And so a lot of people have shared that. You know, there's the fun, there's the fiction side of the book. But what do you hope people learn or take away beyond just hey, finance can be fun. Is there some educational, technical stuff you're hoping people to get with all those exhibits? Kind of walk me through that side of it.

Yeah, it's twofold. One for the person that's familiar in the finance world is to realize that your profession is cool. I hate to say this, but I'm trying to make accountants cool again. We've been the trusted advisor for years and maybe I should make a maca hat or something. Whatever it may be, let's make it count in school again. My protagonist definitely does that. But for the non finance reader to learn a little bit about accounting, to learn a little bit about what's in SEC filings, you know, how much data is in there, how what's the process of companies filing with the sec? What's the Process of black box trading, for example. What do auditors do? Simple things like that. So I think a lot of people who read the book come back and realize I don't really, I didn't realize all these things are going on in the finance world. I just thought I have to send my expense report in again. Oh geez. And deal with the accountants on, on all the errors. But you know, most folks come back and say, wow, I didn't realize all these things are going on behind the scenes.

You know, numbers are the language we speak, but especially you know, fpa. Other areas that are forward looking, treasury, they're counting critical. But it's kind of that backward looking. Nothing wrong with that. But right, it's get the historicals right, you get into the financial and, and that forward looking and there's so much strategic stuff that goes into it beyond just the language of numbers. And you know, accountants can play a role obviously in the strategic but typically, you know, their focus, the general accountant, not as you move up is hey, how do I make sure these books are right? How do I make sure we have good data? As I always like to say, FPA's best friend is a good accountant because I can't do my job without that good accountant.

The other thing with green shades too, I always have to warn people, you know, that, you know, there is some violence in there, there's some sexual tension and romance that goes on. But there's also numbers in there. But the scariest thing to them is that there's some accounting equations in the book too. So they could be scared by that as well.

All right, well, let's make accounting equations great again. Yeah, man, I don't know.

No, but as you know, Paul too, or hopefully some of our readers know that the CPA industry in particular is sort of in a crisis. Since 2000, there's been a 40% plus decline of people taking the CPA exam. That has various reasons. One reason is they extended the credits that you almost see the fifth year of college to take the cpu.

Correct.

Yeah, I know that's starting to be addressed and corrected. But you know, part of it too is image and image and branding. And I open my book in some sort of way changes that image and brand to realize that really this is a very cool profession. There's really neat things you could do. You can travel the world as an accountant and see different things. So the pipeline issue is a real, real problem for the, for the finance industry. And hopefully my, my book will do a small part of getting someone you're young, in college or high school that reads this book that might say, hey, wow, maybe I should be an accountant.

There you go. If you want to be an accountant and you're not sure, read green shades first.

That's it. That's right, exactly.

Or pick up the phone and call Greg. You know, listen to this podcast. Lots of options, but there, there is one. He's working to make that difference. Love it. So I think we've done a good job kind of talking about the book. That's been a lot of fun. I'd like to get your thoughts. You've been a CFO at a lot of companies. What's the number one thing you're looking for? Characteristic traits, skill set, however you want to define it. When you're hiring an FPA professional, the.

Biggest thing one is, believe it or not, outgoing personality. I want someone that gets back to the storytelling. I want someone to. Can communicate well and present. You think I would say someone technical that's a whiz in Excel and can do all these things. But no, the number one thing I like to see is someone who can communicate and deliver in a smart way and present their findings. So true. And come up with recommendations. What bothers me the most, Finances. People always present you with problems and I always say well go, go away. Come back with that problem and tell me what their recommendation is. And so those are the type of critical thinkers that you know also business acumen, having common sense and, and deliver what they're supposed to deliver. But that, that's sometimes a fault. That again, get back to the technical stills that too focused, laser focused on getting the right answer when often there is no right answer and often you do have to throw some mud pies against the wall and see which ones stick. And that's. That's common in FBA that you have to be bold. You have to be that voice in the room, that calm voice in the room to say this is what I'm seeing, this is where we're heading. And boy, we better. Somebody's moved our cheese. We better make some changes.

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That's right.

It's a different type of emotion. And that. That's a. Takes a. It takes a skill set and practice and I tend to agree with you. I don't know if I would have said that outgoing personality and presenting is the first thing I looked for, but I've always thought the technical skills for the most part can be taught. Do I want someone with them? Yes. Are they going to have a leg up if they have those all else equal? Of course they are. I think anyone who tells you otherwise is probably lying to you.

Yeah, right.

Unless they just like a challenge. But you don't want someone with just technical skills who can't help with the other. There may be times it's an appropriate role. You know, I once hired somebody that is it was a statistician and data experience and he wasn't someone who wanted to present or is outgoing. But I need someone to fix my data on the back end. And that was his full role. You know, he wasn't a traditional FPA hire. I hired him for a very specific purpose and said I'll take care of managing the relationships because until I have good to data, I can't do my job.

That's right. Exactly. And that's a. Yeah, you definitely need those people in the background that can create that. You just want to try to hopefully groom them to be a little less introverted and be out there.

Yeah. And he was great and he got better and it was. It ended up being a fabulous hire in this case. So I was really happy with that. So, you know, we got your thoughts there. You've been a CFO for almost 30 years. I've been asking a little bit of how you've seen the role change, but I'm going to get your thoughts on something. I asked. Someone asked me this the other day and I was shocked. Can't remember who it was. It's been one of those weeks, you know. But he said when do you think the term CFO first got used? When do you think people started using it?

Wow. You know that, that is a very good question. You know, my guess would probably be in the, as soon as the 30s after the stock market crash that need someone that to have a little, you know, look at the numbers now there's some things going on but that, that it might be that old. It might be working now on almost 100 years of the CFO role I.

Said a priority 1900s. The person goes, yeah, you would have thought that 1970s, wow. Was really the first time the CFO term started getting used.

You know, it's probably because the CFO role has evolved so much over the years of being a bean counter. Backwards looking.

Yep.

You starting in the 70s with everything changing so quickly.

Hyperinflation, the interest rates, that stagflation period and conglomerate conglomerates became. Started to become big and right.

So CEOs started realizing I need a finance person attached to my hip. I need someone to be my advisor. And that. Yes, that is surprising.

Yeah, I was shocked by it. I would have never guessed that. I thought you'd find that really interesting and I think our audience will as well. It just, it goes to show even though finance accounting has been around forever, this idea of finance is a value creator and a C level role and really being critical to the business is new and developing. It's in our lifetime.

Yeah.

Not that old.

Very true. Wow.

So I think that's fascinating when I, when I heard that. So speaking of being a CFO with almost 30 years of experience, how you've you seen the role change in your time?

You know, in my time it's a lot more outward facing. You weren't put out as much with your stakeholders. And in the beginning as a cfo I was more particular internal to a degree. And then as public companies became more under scrutiny and Sarbanes Okley and on investors really wanted to. Investors really often want to talk to the CFO and not necessarily the CEO. Sometimes the analysts in particular the analysts don't even. They rarely talk to the CEO. Sometimes seems like the analysts spend most of the time with the cfo. So I say the role has changed there. Our stakeholders have increased and not Only your investors and your employees and your shareholders, obviously, but also the community. The community wants to hear what's going on from a financial standpoint. So I would say the CFO's audience has gotten wider and the expectation that you are a trusted strategic advisor to the CEO to ensure. I always told my CEOs my number one job first is keep all of us out of jail.

Hard to argue with that one. That's at the top of my list. I really don't like. I don't look good in pinstripes.

No. Yeah. Because believe me, I've had a few CEOs want to do some crazy accounting and now you have to educate them. You can't do that. It's too dangerous. So yeah, the role has definitely changed in that, you know, the CFOs are much, much more involved now in all aspects of the business and really attached to the hip with the CEO. I, I sit in my, you know, right. The office right next to me is my CEO.

Yeah.

And I probably spend half the day in his office and he's probably spending much of the day in my office. We're back. We're that close that we're constantly communicating and talking. So that. That is the biggest change.

Yeah, it makes sense. What about FP and A. What's the biggest change you've seen there?

You know, FPA was sort of an afterthought or wasn't label as much 20 years ago. And so now it has become much, much more prominent now. It just like the CFO and controller. Controller's always been there. The FPA personnel is a given. It is rely because you the FBA department again they have to work with everybody in the organization. They have to see everything in the organization. But rather than telling the story of what happened, they're expecting to say okay, what's going to happen? What's the forecast? What's the trend? What's happening out there? And that's why it's so important, I think in the FP and a group to get different sources of information besides internal information, go out there and get SEC filings. There's a plethora of information by industry that's buried in the millions and millions of pages that are filed each year with the sec. And it's just a right click to get it into your download into your Excel spreadsheet. And so it's, you know that that's important. So the FPA industry has changed in that I would say just like I spent a lot of time my CFO, CEOs office. I spent a lot of time in my director of FP&A as well in her office.

Yep.

Yeah. So they're really integral part now of the company and you know, they work with all the leaders to say this is what we did. Look at this is what I'm seeing the trends are and this is what we have to look out for.

I hear you. In many ways, you know, FP&A is kind of a mini CFO for that general manager or whoever they support. You know, we're seeing more and more FPA people become CFOs.

Yep.

We're seeing more CFOs become CEOs.

Yes.

Interesting stat. Last year was over 30% of S&P 500 CFOs. That left their role. Left it to become a first time CEO.

Wow. Yeah. And that does not surprise me at all. The back of my book A Green Shade is an exhibit. I end it with a story of the CBS cfo. When they're purchased by Viacom. All of a sudden the Viacom CEO kind of. Kind of got a little bit of a me too trouble. And who did they promote to CEO? The cfo. They needed to make it steady again. And I further go on to say how much money he made when they were bought.

Yeah, don't remind me of that kind of thing. I'm just trying to survive. I want my ten million, hundred million.

Yeah. Friend of mine, I played softball with kpmg now is doing well on the beaches.

Yeah, I'm sure we all have a few friends like that. All right, so I'm going to jump into our kind of fun FP and A section. I have a couple standard questions I ask people.

All right.

Get their thoughts. So we'll start with this one. In your opinion, what's the number one technical skill FP and a professional should master?

I would definitely say storytelling.

Okay.

Which includes communication and presentations.

All right. What about soft skills? So I call that technical. What would you say on the software? I thought you might have flipped that. So that's the soft human. We'll go storytelling, communication. Totally agree. What about technical? Technical.

I would say to ensure that one their Excel. Not Excel, but any power tools to use, they master that and that it's integrated with various sources of information internally and externally. Unfortunately, now, fortunately, unfortunately, I think Excel still dominates that technical tool. But so important to be able to leverage those tools and understand the information and data that's going into those tools.

Yeah. You know, it's pretty amazing the job Excel has done. Right. I Mean we're all going to use it. Do we sometimes abuse it? Yes. Is it ideal for everything? No. But the fabulous tool. I sure love Excel for a lot of things and it's amazing but you know, is it. They like to say if everything is an L, all you're going to use is a hammer. And kind of like Excel, if you think everything is supposed to be in a spreadsheet, all you're going to use is Excel. And sometimes you need a purpose built tool. It's on the analytics side, the reporting side, the planning side. There are a lot of great software that can help supplement what you're doing in a spreadsheet. I say supplement because you're not going to replace the spreadsheet. It's not going to go away. Whether it's Excel or Google Sheets or some other alternative, you still need it.

Yeah, there's enough application programming interfaces to bring in spirit information into those Excel spreadsheets that it's.

And Power Query has a lot of data connectors itself. There's, you know, I was talking to a company, they're getting ready to release and they'll have a, a freemium version. They'll paid as well. But connections where you can easily integrate with like 250 sources including QuickBooks and Xero and you know, so it's just, it's becoming so much easier to connect your data.

It certainly is. It certainly is.

All right, so this is kind of a fun one I like to ask because I never know people, where people are going to go with this one. If you could wave your magic wand and change one thing about fpa, what would you change?

Oh, if I. Well, first of all, first I would probably put on my FPA hat, which Paul is nice enough. He's, he's got. For those who are just listening and not seeing, Paul and I are both wearing his FP and a hat, which is a really. Paul, I love this hat. He gave it to me at the Financial Accounting Technology Expo a couple weeks ago.

And I have to thank my wife. She picked it and at first I. It's kind of like a white, like we'll see it. And I got it and I'm like, I love it.

It's, it's. I've been wearing it non stop. It's great. It's raining here in New York, but it hasn't rained for months and I wore it to the office today.

Love it. Thank you.

You know, you got, I got so excited about the hat. I think I forgot about the question.

I'll Ask it again if you could wave that magic wand and change One thing about FT&A. What are you changing?

I would say the, the receptiveness and perception of what it entails from employees within the organization, of how important it is and how you need to tie yourself to someone in FP and A if you're going to succeed in an organization.

Love it. That's a great answer. Now we're going to get moved to the little more personal section where we get to know a little bit more about you. We know you love writing thriller, romance, accounting books. We'll learn a little bit more. What's your favorite hobby or passion outside of work?

I would say softball. I played baseball, Division 1 baseball in college and at William and Mary in Virginia. And I just continued. I played a little bit after college, hardball, and then started playing softball. And I'm still playing. And the biggest thing about that is not necessarily the game is the camaraderie. It's the folks you're playing with, you know, And I even play in a coed team. It's a lot of fun.

Love it. I remember, you know, in Utah we had one of the top fast pitch softball teams in the world. Larry H. Miller ran it. He was a big softball guy. He loves softball.

Yeah. So it's, it's it now for me at this age, you know, playing with younger kids is always a challenge. You have to be careful out there. But I really like that. I'll see. I, I'll play. I, I like golf and like fishing. Exactly.

Like you like to get out outside and be active.

Exactly. You're in the office a lot. You want to be outside.

I hear you. All right. Other than Green Shades, what is one book you'll recommend to our audience?

Oh, yeah, so many of them. But I would say Rise to Rebellion by Jeff Shara and what that is historical fiction book about our nation and our founding fathers. But what makes it unique is that position that takes the view of both sides. Not only that, the colonialists and what we're trying to. The revolutionists are what we're trying to succeed from, but also the British or what they were trying to do. So I read a lot of historical fiction books and Jeff Char and Father Michael Schar that did Killer Angels about Battle of Gettysburg. They also did World War I, World War II books. And that kind of also helped me write Green Shades and respect that. Green Shades is almost an accounting historical fiction book with how the SEC's EOS system developed and how XBRL came about and how quant trading started to happen. So maybe that. That in back of my mind, that kind of drove me to write an accounting historical fiction type book.

Got it. Yeah. Now, I remember when we chatted for a few minutes, you mentioned you really liked historical fiction and that that was an area you read, so it makes sense. All right, when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? Were you. Were you five year old thinking, I want to be the accountant? I'm going to guess no, but you tell me.

You know, I grew up on Easter Long island and out on the water out there, and there's this. I met this tugboat captain once and he romanticized the profession. So originally I wanted to be a tugboat captain.

I like it. Yeah. It's funny how sometimes you hear someone talk about and you think that, and then as you get older, you're like, wait, no.

Exactly. It seems to be a little bit of a lowly job and dangerous potentially.

Definitely could be. All right, I'm going to give you two options with this last one. You can pick between the two. If you could have an alter ego, what would your alter ego be? Or if you don't want to have an alter ego, if you could be a superhero, who are you going to be?

I think the alter ego would be by choice. And. And what I would probably want to be was, would be some kind of improv actor like Robin Williams or something, to. To be able to be sharp, you know, be funny and have people laugh at your jokes and have high energy. So, yeah, my. So probably my alter ego is an improv actor, you know, and it's funny.

Enough you mentioned improv because I had two people on the show, Carl Seidman, Cathy Svetina, who both said one of the best things they did for storytelling and presenting was they did improv comedy.

Oh, really? That's great.

Yeah. One of them did a year at Second City and a year someone else. The other one did six months at Second. Second City. I've also heard if you want to be a great podcast host, that's really good to do because it forces you to be really quick on your feet. You're responding and things. So there you go.

So maybe that'll be my. My profession of retirement. I'll do improv.

All right, you let me know. I'll come to New York and watch a show.

All right, great.

Alrighty, we're gonna wrap up here. I got one more question and then we'll finish. What advice would you offer to our audience to Be a better FPA business partner. What should they start doing?

What they should start doing? I said the biggest advice would probably be get up from your desk and roam the halls. First of all, come into the office. You know, as, as nice it is to have remote work. And it works for a lot of people. Try to be in the office as much as you can and then roam the halls and sit down and be with people and listen. Be an active listener. That's the biggest thing that AMA teaches is really active listening. And, you know, don't think about what you're going to say next, but really engage who you're with. So I would say, you know, the biggest thing is get up from your desk and talk with people. Be in front of people. They'll, they'll tell you. Maybe I learned that from my auditing days. You just sort of have to wind people up to just ask them what they do and they'll go on. And so that's how you learn.

Love it. And guys, tell us one story because I think you'll laugh at it. I had Brian, I think it was Brian Lepus who tells the story. It might have been someone else, but they were. He was telling someone. He had this employee that did all virtually no work and was just not very helpful. But he was always talking to everybody and he would always come back and tell them something that the finance team didn't know and they were able to prepare for it. Kind of telling how he was terrible at what his job should be, but he was also really valuable because he could, you know, got to communicate with everybody and always brought back this good information of what was going on because he was always out talking to people and I just kind of had a laugh. You know, it's like that's really valuable to have.

It is. He was on reconnaissance. That was it. That was his mission.

So last part here, people want to learn more about you or get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to do that?

The best way is one, you can visit my website at cpa-author.com which you could sell me. Send me an email there, gregpa-author.com or you can even reach out to me at ama@the American Management Association@g.adams manet.org and also Paul, you know, if anybody wants to take a AMA course and learn some of those power skills, for the first three listeners, I'll comp them a course. Our courses are 2,000, $3,000 so they're not cheap. Two or three day courses either. In person or virtual. But yeah, just reach out to me and I'll be happy to say. But make sure you say Paul sent me.

All right, well, there you go. Couldn't get a better offer than that. Thank you so much for that, Greg. I have a feeling you'll be hearing from some people to take advantage of that. If not, I got to worry about my show. If nobody reaches out, I might be like, why am I talking to all these people?

Yeah, exactly. Now, apolog, it's been really great speaking with you. Can't tell you how much I appreciate it. But. But also, you know, the importance of the the FPA professional is really escalated over the past 10 years and it's really nice to be a part of the finance world and hopefully I can make a difference on changing the brand.

Well, thank you so much, Greg, and real pleasure chatting with you and you enjoy the rest of your day.

All right, thank you. Have a good day.

Thanks for listening to FP&A tomorrow. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating and a review on your podcast platform of choice. This allows us to continue to bring you great guests from around the globe. As a reminder, you can earn CPE credit by going to earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app, taking a short quiz, and getting your CPE certificate to earn continuing education credits for the FPAC certification. Take the quiz on earmark and contact me, the show host, for further details. SA.