The Power of Partnerships in Finance With Andrew Jepson

What's the common theme or themes you hear that your clients are struggling with when it comes to business partners?

The three main problems. I hear the three main barriers. First one's, there's a couple of components. The first one's working cohesively. Second thing, solving real business problems, hoarding and all that sort of stuff is not strategic goals, that's finance, hygiene factors. How do you lift yourself out and get into the projects or the work that's related to the organization strategically achieving their objectives. Performance versus the way you did things. So your style and culture. And if you're high in performance, but you weren't high on this, you weren't in the talent spectrum, you had to be high on the culture. And even if your performance was low, there might be reasons for it, but if you were good in the culture, you got rewarded for it. Communication and how you do things and say things is really important. Second one is understanding the business. You don't get that from spreadsheets. You don't get that from sitting at your desk. You get up from.

This week's title sponsor is Plan Buddies, the number one planning community for planning professionals. Check it out at plan-buddies.com and join me in the community today. Hello, everyone. Welcome to FPA Tomorrow where we delve into the world of financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and futures prospects. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, guiding you through the evolving landscape of FP&A. Each week we are joined by thought leaders, industry experts and practitioners who share their insights and experiences, helping us navigate today's complexities and and tomorrow's uncertainty. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your journey in fpa, this show has something for everyone this week. I'm thrilled to welcome to the show Andrew Jepson. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Hi Paul. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Excited to have you. Excited to have someone from down under. So give you a little bit about Andrew and then in a few minutes I'll give him an opportunity to tell us a little bit more about his back wound. So Andrew's coming to us from Australia. He had a 20 year career. Started his career as an auditor, pretty common path there, then worked in industry. Today he runs his own training company. He's been doing that for the last eight years called the FBP Team. And Andrew, we like to start every interview with this question. It's a standard question we ask everybody. What does great FP and A look like to you?

Good question. It's Pretty broad. I like to narrow it down. I think FP and A has a spectrum. So average, really, really good. I think the average FP and A person is generally just pumping out numbers to their organization. Little bit of commentary, but nothing that's really of value. The great FP and A people, they're scanning, they're looking out, anticipating, taking what the average person's doing and going, okay, well, what does this mean for us? And what can we do about it? Which requires a very, very different skill set to what most FP and A people have. So that's what I see. As great as you get further into your career, you realize this is what people really want. And this is. This is how I extend my career in the organization. So it's more anticipating and scanning outwards and what you can do.

I love that you use that word anticipate. We had a Carl Seidman on. We actually called the interview the Great Anticipator because he said, the top skill you need as an FPA professional is the ability to anticipate. Anticipate where things are going, anticipate what others need. It's really about anticipating. So I found it very interesting that you use that word because it's only the second time I've had someone use that specific word for FP&A. And I think it makes a lot of sense. I heard someone else one time refer to it as, I need FP and A to kind of be able to peek around corners and help me understand what might be coming. The different options.

Yeah.

And so I think that's a great way to look at it. And so before we jump into the interview and ask some more questions, you made me think of another one. I'd love for you to just tell our audience about yourself and your background, you know, what you're doing today, how you got there.

Sure. As you mentioned, I'm in little old Australia, in a city called Sydney, which you may remember from the 2000 Olympics. I grew up in Melbourne, actually, in Victoria. I started off as an auditor, so I left university here in Australia.

I won't hold that again.

No, no, I. I certainly don't hold it against. But you start off in Australia, you generally go to university for three years, get a university degree, then you join a firm and you do your professional qualification over about two years, or you're working. And I was auditing, and I loved it for about four years. And then I realized no one really likes auditors. Sort of started to not like myself and what I was doing. So I thought, to hell with this, I'm going to pack this in and I'm going to try and get a job in industry and I'm also going to move overseas. So I went over to London for a about four years and did the old Australian thing where you go to London and they pay you lots of money and you work less hours and you just travel around all the time. I worked in industry there, mainly group roles. So Big Group FTSE, 100 companies where everyone's reporting into you and you're consolidating things and a lot of technical ifrs. I was part of an IFRS transition back then, so that's a while ago that shows my age. Did that for about four years. Then I came back, met a lovely lady from Sydney, she drove me back to Sydney and started our life here. And I had a few more years in industry, mainly in roles with finance people. So big group roles surrounded in big teams of finance people. And evidently I was pretty good at it because I used to get promoted a lot and had a pretty good career. And then I thought, well, I want to get out of this technical stuff. I mean, it's interesting and everything, but I don't really feel like I'm adding much value. I want to solve business problems and help the business be more profitable and hit their strategic objectives and that sort of thing. So I took another role which was in a smaller company. So you're talking about billion dollar companies. I've gone into a company that's 250 million turnover, so still quite big, but a lot smaller than what I did as a head of finance and I had my team of about 20 people, but I was generally spending most of my time with non finance people, which I hadn't done a lot of before. And for about two or three years I just pretty much pissed everyone off and just annoyed people and frustrated them because I was behaving like I did in finance with finance people, where it's very data based and you know exactly what you've got to do and you can talk a certain way to people and they get it. That wasn't working for me with non finance people, but they saw something in me which was good because they saw something enough where they gave me a coach and coach sat me down and he said, andrew, would you rather be right or would you rather be effective? And I thought about that for about two seconds and said, both, please, I'll take both. And he said, good, because at the moment you spend all your time being right and none of it Being effective. And we need to change that because if you don't change it, your career is going to plateau and your organization, you're not going to be much used to your organization. So we need to work on your style and how you go about stuff. And I said, oh well, okay, radio, let's get into it. So I was lucky enough, I got that coach, I got access to a whole lot of different things which was, which was awesome. Like different stuff from different functions. Selling, marketing, speech, coaching, all sorts of different weird stuff which was. I was very lucky. I was very lucky. And when I did it, I was thinking, this is exactly what every finance person needs if they want to get through. There's like a, there's the old saying, what got you here won't get you there. There's this ceiling that if you don't learn these things, you just sort of peter out and plateau. And I was certainly in that space and I wanted to do something about it. So at the Same time, about 2009, I started working with the institute here in Australia, which is Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, the member body. When you, you know, the people who give you those couple letters after, you know, I started marking exams and facilitating the program to do that. And you're a bit nervous when you start doing that because you think I don't, do I know all this. What I found was I actually really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the teaching and the, and seeing people respond to how you were positioning stuff with them so that they could learn. And I got a lot of personal energy out. It was really weird. I felt really good when I did that sort of stuff. So about eight years ago, 2016, I left the corporate world and I thought I want to try and give back and I want to, I want to lift the capability of finance people because a lot of our training is around technical stuff, accounting standards, even Excel and all those sorts of things which are generally the things that are towards sort of mid career finance stuff. I wanted to propel people's careers a bit further up into the C suite. And the things that don't get you here, they get you there. So I wrote a whole lot of programs, I did some research, wrote a book which sitting behind me there, wrote that quite a while ago actually, but that book, then I got my fellowship with the institute for that. They recognized that book and gave me another letter after my name, gave me my fellowship, which was pretty cool. And now I represent them, I do their subject matter expert for business partnering for them, train a whole lot of Stuff. Covid was very good to me. So I live in Sydney. Australia is a big place. So Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane was pretty much where I did my training. And then Covid hit and I got stuck on the screen like this, where you got to do everything virtually. And I thought, oh, this isn't going to work. I'm going to have to go back and get a job. But it opened everything up. It opened everything up. I now do workshops in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Singapore, London, Dubai, New York, L.A. wherever. Wherever people want to get trained. I can do that as long as I'm prepared to be awake. So I'm very lucky. I love what I do. It's not something that I thought I would be doing 20 years ago or 25 years ago, but I love it. I get a lot of energy out of it. Yeah, I wouldn't. Wouldn't change a thing. It's a good file.

Great. Well, thank you for sharing that backstory. Appreciate that. And really like how you talked about there's this, the glass ceiling, as you mentioned, that we can only go so far with the technical skills, with the being great at Excel or modeling or analysis, that we really have to go beyond that. So I'm curious, if you had to define business partnering, how do you define it? When people ask you, what is business partnering, what's your answer?

Yeah, so I have a standard spiel for this, Paul, as you would expect. So finance people working cohesively with the rest of the organization to solve real business problems and help them achieve their strategic objectives. So there's a couple of components for that. The first ones work cohesively. So a lot of finance people have this combative nature. This is what we must do. And if you're not doing it, I'm going to get out the stick and bop you over the head with it. Which business partner doesn't work? Like, you've got context. Okay. There's the finance lens, and there's every other functions lens, and they're all differently and all different, and you've got to join them together. You've got to be able to see what the other person's perspective is. And sometimes you're right, sometimes they're right, and sometimes the answer's that, and sometimes the answer's that. So it's that meshing it and knitting it together, which is. Which is really important, which talks to your relationships. It talks to how you turn up. It talks to your style, and it talks to people feeling safe and comfortable around you, that they'll share information so you can get to a better place. That's the first thing. The cohesion. Second thing, solving real business problems and punching out a lot of spreadsheets and reports. You know, it's probably a compliance thing that's telling us what's happening and what might be happening, but it doesn't really solve the problem. You've got to keep. Get involved in the business to be able to do that. And then the piece on the organization, strategic goals. Well, as I said, reporting and all that sort of stuff is not strategic goals. That's finance hygiene factors. So how do you lift yourself out and get into the projects or the work that's related to the organization strategically achieving their objectives? That's a different space altogether. And spending four months a year doing budgets makes that really, really hard. If you, if you're spending all your time doing that, kind of stepping back.

I think that was a great answer. I really like that. I liked how you mentioned the three different parts. So you mentioned in your career, you got sat down and told, look, you're right, but you're not effective. So how did you make that transition? What were the things you did to go from, you know, being right to being effective, Whether you were necessarily right or not right, realizing that it's a combination, how did you make the transition? You mentioned you had a lot of coaching, a lot of help. Yeah, but what were the key things that allowed you to get kind of through that chasm or cross that bridge?

Yeah, I'm a very proactive, direct person, or I was 10 years ago. The first coaching session I had, he. He said to me, andrew, we need to make you more beige. And. And I'm thinking, what does that mean? More vanilla? And I'm thinking, how do I move this company forward if I'm going to be. Going to be beige? And when you, when you're at that level in your organization, what he's talking about is you're going to go to an executive level and you're going to represent the company, and you got to take the risk out of your behavior and your style, because as I said, you're representing the company, and they don't want you to be flippant and say something that may come off the wrong way. So we've got to just make you a little bit beige. And all that comes down to is style and communication. So how do you say things to people that puts them in the position that you want them to be? How do you listen properly? How do you ask instead of tell all these just different communication techniques? Was the first start of that and just calming down. Like, I was always in a hurry. And I mean, I'm a credit in profiling, all that sort of stuff. So this direct. We call it fiery red without. With our accreditation that we do. But I want stuff done. I want it now, now, now, now, now. There's a lot of people out there who, you know, go well in their career because they've got that attitude, but it comes at a cost, comes at a big benefit, but it also comes at a cost. And you've got to balance that. And just being open to that was. Is the first step.

Got it. Yeah. I know you mean by being open. And you know, for me, I had to learn not to be so detailed.

Yeah.

And I had to learn to figure that right balance of holding people accountable. The way one of my managers put it. And VP goes, paul, you're not mean enough to the business. And I was kind of like, well, I don't. Because he came across as very gruff. He was a very strong personality. I'm sitting there thinking, I don't want to be like you. And I didn't realize what he meant. Later on, it was like, you're not holding people accountable enough. And really having those conversations, the difficult conversations, when they need to happen in such a way that you can help move the business forward.

Right.

If you build trust, you can have those conversations. Those are really was actually a surprisingly good learning lesson. I look back now and I understand what he was saying at the time. I'm like, what are you talking about? I was kind of on that opposite end where I was probably too soft sometimes and not willing to say, look, this isn't working. We got to figure out the solution or no, in finance, I can't approve this deal. Here are some options we can do, but it just doesn't make sense for the business. And those are the type of things he was talking about where you just gotta take control from your perspective in such a way that you can influence, not be the, you know, the jerk, which we could all be if we have to, but it rarely is that ever effective.

No, no. We talk about that in our. In our programs is, well, how do you feel when you're around someone like that and everyone says the same thing? I feel threatened. I feel, you know, I feel like I'm under pressure and you're in that fight, flight, freeze, headspace where nothing good happens. So.

Exactly.

If you feel like that when someone does it to you, well, I'll let you know a little secret. The other person feels like that when you do it to them. So as you say, when you're in that headspace, everything's slow, everything comes with friction. You got this sort of resistance to really ineffective place to be. Go the opposite end. You can actually do some really good stuff. And you talked about trust. I was lucky enough to work in a culture that was massive on it, and they, they rewarded you for relationships, trust, connection, all that sort of thing. We actually used to have a talent matrix and performance versus the way you did things. So your style and culture. And if you're high in performance, but you weren't high on this, you actually weren't in the, you weren't in the talent spectrum. You had to be high on the culture. And even if your performance was low, there might be reasons for it, but if you were good in the culture, you got rewarded for it.

There's something to be said for that. You know, you can be the. The jerk or have a toxic culture, and sure, you can get results in the short term, and we can all define what that is. But over the long run, to truly have sustained success and for people to be happy and which is so much more than just a financial success, successful in a career, you need that healthy culture. That doesn't mean. I think sometimes people confuse saying, well, does that mean I can't just be open? Sure, you can be open. You can have difficult conversations and have a great healthy culture. In fact, you should. If you're never disagreeing, then you probably have. You have a problem with your culture. Just like if you're.

You've got a good culture, those conversations are really easy. I mean, as I said, I was lucky to be in a culture where I had a leadership team and we, we were like mates, okay? We knew each other's family and knew stuff about each other. We could literally walk into each other's room and just have a difficult conversation straight away. And there was no, I'm not here to unravel you. I'm not. It's not me versus you. It's just, I've noticed this. Are you aware of it yet? And that do the same to me. And there was no friction. There could be because you knew each other. Like, you can have those conversations with your wife, with your wife or husband, your partner, your mother, your father, your family. Why? Because you've got a strong relationship and a bond with them. And it, I mean, I'm not saying try and make it like your partner or your mother and father at work, but that strong connection allows those conversations to happen. When you have it, everything goes quickly, which is really important when no one's.

Got time, when you can just say what you're thinking, right? You can really have those open conversations. You know, I've, I have that with one of the guys I work with a lot. And we're just very blunt sometimes with each other. Like, okay, you need to tone it down here. You need to do that. And we know we always have each other's interests at heart. So we, you know, we just go, okay, appreciate the feedback and make the adjustments and move on. Versus all right, I don't like this person. He was mean to me or whatever. You know what I mean? Not that he was mean, but there's just real value in being able to have that open where you can have those honest, difficult conversations that don't always feel difficult because that's what you expect. That's what's accepted in the culture and you're all trying to improve. But, you know, kind of coming back around to business partnering, I'm really curious. You mentioned the three steps, but is there like a main framework that you think people should follow? Like if somebody really wants to get better today, you talk about what you did, but what's a framework or what can they start doing? What's the number one thing people should be doing if they're looking at it and going, okay, I'm not going anywhere in my career. I don't have great relationships with the business and I want to change that.

Sure. Well, as I said, I've got my book behind me. There's a framework in that called the quiet approach. I won't go into that because that's an hour long conversation itself. If anyone wants to, anyone wants to read it, they can download it from our website. So just, just go there. You can get a digital copy. But quiet is, is twofold. It's an acronym. So Q, U, I, E, T. They all mean five different things. If you're good at those five things, you're going to be good at business partnering. If you've got a problem, it's probably in one of those spaces. Quiet is also. People go, what? You want people to be quiet and silent and not say anything? I'm like, no, no, no. Quiet is a take on. You don't want to be this combative, condescending, in your face, finance, finance policeman type role that has a place, it's called compliance and governance and audit and all that sort of stuff that has a place in every organization and needs to be there when you're business Partnering. It does not work. It does not work. Why? Because you push people away from you. So the style is more. It's more subtle, it's more nuanced, it's more composed, controlled. And you're just sort of sitting on someone's shoulder and whispering in their ear, what's happening. That's the sort of style that works. You're in the background, they're up front. Okay. And if you don't like that, well, go and get the role where you're up front. Because there's plenty of jobs in sales and marketing and ops where you can do that as a job as a business partner is you're sitting there supporting people and showing stuff. So that's the framework I use. If I narrow it down to three things, it's three things that if you want to be a good finance business partner, you've got to know. One's your communication and your style. It's not what you say, it's how you say it that's really, really important. That's what's going to draw people into you or push people away. So communication and how you do things and say things is really important. Second one is understanding the business. So you don't get that from spreadsheets. You don't get that from sitting at your desk. You get it from getting away from your desk and going. Spending time in the business. Because on the screen, you're seeing outcomes, outcomes of a whole lot of stuff that people are doing. And if you understand the stuff people are doing, it makes those numbers easy to understand. And it also provides you with a language that you can talk to people who are doing those things. They don't understand the financial outcomes of what they're doing a lot of the time. So you've got to speak in that language, and you've got to be the conduit between them. So you've got to get out in the business and understand it. Best example, I can give Coke and Pepsi, they both sell brown fizzy water, but they do things very differently. They have different focuses at different times. And if you walk in the front door of both of those places, it's going to be very different. So you've got to go and understand your business. And then the third thing is your relationships, your connection to people. With good relationships, everything speeds up. You get your questions answered, you get the information that you ask for. And if you've got really good ones, they bring stuff to you, they come to you and invite you in, which is really powerful and really efficient. If you don't have good relationships. No one answers your questions, no one gives you the information you ask them for. And guess what? They work around you. They work around you and they don't invite you in, which is slow and frustrating. You brought in late and it just doesn't work. So your relationships, that's what that comes down to. So now those three things get your communication and your style right, understand the business and focus on your relationships and making sure people want to work with you.

I like that. I like how you boiled it down to the three things of your style. The way you communicate, the know the business. Couldn't agree more. So important. And then relationships. When I think relationships, you know, I think trust. And there's a book called the Speed of Trust. And when you're saying that it made me think of, you know, right. If you don't have trust, there's a tax and it's a tax on the business. It slows things down. If they're trying to go around you and not work with you, it causes issues. It slows things down. If you have that trust, that's a dividend. Things work better. You can get better returns. And so the sooner you realize you don't need to be the police, that you need to be the partner, the influencer, the better. Everybody is off. I've worked in environments where, you know, kind of finance is kept at arm length. They don't want to tell you what's going on and it's really hard to. You're trying to build that relationship and get in. And then I've worked in ones where it was almost like, all right, back off a little bit. I know you want me to do everything, but I'm not the business here, you know. But I preferred that over the other. If I had to choose one, it's like at least they trusted me and I was involved in every conversation and relied on.

I'd rather that one where you're choosing what you need to work on. But that, that speed of trust book with the bank account or the trust account where you get a deposit and then there's withdrawal finance. We've got a lot of withdrawals just because of the nature of the job that we do. We're a checking admin type role. We're not front facing, we're in the background and we're making sure things are, for want of a better word, done right now. That means automatically you're going to be in that space where your trust bank account is probably going to have some withdrawals. So to balance it up, you've got to make deposits. You've got to constantly put more deposits in. Thanks. Perhaps other functions need to. That's okay. Just gotta understand that.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me. So, you know, really, you do need those deposits because. Yeah, some of the compliance, some things we have to do are gonna be withdrawals. Like reporting bad numbers can be a withdrawal even if you do nothing wrong in reporting it because it just emotionally everybody is frustrated. And you were the bearer of the news. Has nothing to do with you. You just basically said, look, our numbers are bad. Nobody's. You didn't say it, but everybody took it as okay, we're not getting our bonus this year.

Building conversations where sales are going. We're going to do this deal. It's going to be great, great, great volumes. And you're sitting in the background going, what's the profitability on that? That's like, that's like a drainer. Like that can just drain the energy out of the room. So you got to be conscious of how you position that and how you bring it up. Because if you drain the room, your trust account goes right down and people probably won't mention that deal in front of you again. And then that, that causes even more friction.

Yeah, no, it's so true. The sales is like, well, we're gonna get all this revenue. And you're going, yeah, but you know, it's going to do to our bottom line. Let me show you. So how do you manage that? Because you have to influence without power. So how do you manage that type of situation when cells is like, hey, we got this deal, it's gonna be great revenue and you know, you've maybe worked with that salesman or you've seen some insight to that deal and you know it's not going to be a very good deal. How do you manage that? What advice would you give to somebody in those situations? Hey there, it's your host, the FPA guy. And today I'm thrilled to talk to you about Plan Buddies, one of my passions. It's where professionals meet excellence. This isn't just any community. It is a community ran by and for planning professionals. At Plan Buddies, we're all about fostering connections, sharing knowledge, and providing mentorship among our members. Ready to elevate your career? Visit plan-beddies.com and become a member today. And here's a special treat. Use the promo code the FPNDand a guy, the FP and a guy for an exclusive 25% discount on your first year membership.

We actually do exercises in this, in our program of how to actually manage that conflict and that tension. So I won't give away too many of the sequence, but it's all in how you position it. So what you want to do. They're coming up with an idea that you think, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard. They think it's wonderful. And you just think that's just going to cost us a hell of a lot of money. So you've got a natural tension there. But the best way to dispel any tension. Police people, this is a lot of the training that we do. We take things from other areas and, and show you how you can apply it in finance. So security police, they're trained when you're in an awkward situation, you've got conflict or tension is how do you diffuse it? And you defuse it by. You diffuse it by generally agreeing with the person, which is hard because they've got this stupid deal going on. What you're going to agree to it? Well, you can't do that. You can't agree with that idea because it doesn't make sense from your perspective. So you're going to find something to agree with the best way. The thing you can always find to agree with their intention, their objective, what are they trying to achieve? Okay? And it's pretty obvious they want to. Want to achieve sales, but there might be something else underneath it that you can agree to. So you can do that first, that'll diffuse the situation. And then you simply ask them questions about how they could do it differently. So you get what you want, okay? So you got to defuse the situation, take the tension out of the room so that they're on side with you and they think that you can help them.

And.

And then from that it's how do you position the next statement or question to them so that they open up and can see your perspective. And there's a number of techniques that you can do around that. And that's all the stuff that we teach is the words you can use, the way you say it. How do you navigate through that tricky conversation? When they say this, this is how you respond. It can get you there. But the whole point is to communicate better. You can share your perspective, they can share their perspective, and you can, as I said before, work cohesively together.

Two things came to mind. Chris Voss, you know, never split the difference. It's like you start with agreeing, find those areas of agreement, and you know, the other one, Abraham Lincoln Was known for, you know, one of my heroes I like reading about is he'd kind of give away, concede almost every single point. Just kind of agree with him on everything, you know, and he was more of a lawyer and then hold back on that one key issue to discuss. But he recognized there's no problem in agreeing on a lot of things that gets you. Gets you on that right path. There may be areas where you have to bring them along. You're ultimately going to disagree. But like you said, manage it through questions versus the adversarial of. Let me tell you why your deal sucks.

Yeah, that Chris Voss book's very, very good. It's got a lot of techniques. One of them he talks about in that space is terrorist negotiator. Terrorist negotiator, FBI negotiator. You know, we're not doing that in finance as much as people think that we're. Some people probably think we are the terrorists. So in that situation, he's got a technique where he's like, how could I do that for you? Like, how could I do that for. So that the person has demands. You put me in a position. How can I do that for you? Look, that's a really powerful question to ask someone because it puts them into the space of suddenly seeing your perspective. Now, some people will go, I don't care. That's your problem. Well, no, we're going to work cohesively together, so it's our problem. But help me here. Can I do that for you? Because I've got to do this. And then you get into a conversation. I mean, you read that book. He talks about it, it diffuses it and starts to create this empathy where you're connecting with the other person.

Yeah, I love the. The empathy he talks about. He's like, you don't have to agree with what they're trying to do. You can still show empathy. Those are two different things. And he goes a lot into that. And I. It's a great book, I think, for anyone. It's just great around relationships, negotiation. There's a lot of great things you can take away for business partnering. So it's one I'd highly recommend. I really enjoy.

There is a lot of stuff in there, very simple techniques, and we take some of those techniques. But when we do it in our programs, we show you, well, how does it. How do we do this for finance? Because his techniques are, as I said, around terrorist negotiation. Well, how do you flip that and use a finance.

I mean, it's a little difference when It's a bank hostage or there's someone in a third world country holding a bunch of people versus stakes are a.

Little bit higher than someone who, you know, puts something in the wrong cost center.

I think sometimes people act like it's the end of the world when it's in the wrong cost center, but that's another story. We won't go there. So I know you do a lot of training. As you've mentioned, you've trained people all over the world. So I'm curious, what's the common theme or themes you hear that your clients are struggling with when it comes to business partners? What do they typically tell you?

We address this in Workshop 1 mainly because we want to get out what's specific to them. But the three main problems, I hear the three main barriers. First one's time. I don't have enough time. Second one's the perception of finance. So how does the other functions perceive us? Oh, that's in the way. We can't, we. They don't want us to help them. All that, all that sort of stuff. And the third one, systems and processes, that gets in the way all the time. Which, which is interesting in this day and age with AI and automation and all that sort of stuff. So the first one, you do have time. You do have time, because guess what, I've been on this planet, you know, many, many years and every day has been the same. 24 hours, 60 minutes in every hour, 60 seconds in every minute. Times are fixed. Okay, you do have time. What you've got to decide is what you choose to do in that time. So you can't do everything. I've never had a to do list that's finished and people need to accept that. What you got to do is prioritize what you're working on, and we prioritize the things that are hygiene factors in finance. Rather than trying to get that as small as possible through automation or delegation or eliminating stuff, you want to try and reduce that. That'll free up your time so you can work on business partnering. The other thing that gets in the way is how a lot of organizations have tried to implement business partnering, which is, well, we're going to do finance business partnering. First thing we're going to do is change everyone's title. So let's do that. And now they're finance business partners, but they haven't really changed their role too much or they tried to change their role, but they just keep getting sucked back into month ends, budgets, forecasts, all that sort of stuff. Now, I'm a massive advocate for if you are going to set up a finance business partnering team, you've got to get them out of that stuff because month ends take a few days every month, forecasts take a few days and budgets take a few months. And if your finance team is working on those, they won't have the time to business partner because the business doesn't stop just because it's the 30th of the month and a problem comes up that finance needs to be involved with. Sorry, we can't do it. Month ends here. All you're doing in that setup is one, having people go, I haven't got time to do anything. But you're also pushing people away. You're actually conditioning the rest of the business to know that you aren't available to partner them. So it's a contradiction and it comes in the setup. So that's one big problem is I don't have time. And how do you solve them? The second one, perception of finance, well, guess what? Perceptions are built from our experiences, a lot of them from our, from our early age. But people have perceptions and the lens through which they look. And it's all different for everyone based on their experiences. And that might be their experiences with you and might be their experiences with other people in the finance team. It might be their experiences in other organizations with different finance teams. You can't do anything about that. The only thing you can do is change their perception of what you're going to work with them going forward. And that means you in with them and showing what you can do to help them. Once they start to see that, their perception will change very, very quickly. But if you're just going to sit at your desk and go, they've got a bad perception of me. I can't do anything about it. Well, of course nothing's going to change. Nothing changes if nothing changes. So there's ways of doing it. It comes with your style, it usually comes with your relationships, usually comes with understanding their perspective. So you can change that very quickly. The systems and processes. One that's situational, it's different for everyone. A lot of the time it comes with data. It comes with just not keeping your standards high around process, around having good people in roles and checks and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, I always, I mean, you're more tech savvy than me. You probably run into this more that data being dirty and spending time having to clean it. That, that's a bit of a nightmare. But business partnering, that is all the Time. Because guess what you're dealing with. If you're doing business partnering right, you're generally dealing with business problems and issues that probably haven't been seen before. They're new or they need some thought put to them. And guess what? You don't have the data at hand to do that. You got to find it and mesh it together and, and make sure it's directionally right. Okay. You're going for, you're going for a pass mark. You're not going for that board report that has to be 100% perfect. Because if you get one number wrong, all of them are wrong. That's a different approach. Okay, so your data is going to be murky, it's going to be dirty, but you've just got to make sure that it's directionally going in the, in the way that you think it is because you're dealing with something that's new most of the time. If you're doing business partnering right.

I love the three things you mentioned. I think that's great. You know, the time perception, that's something we talk about. A lot of the training I do is how does the business perceive finance? Let's talk about how we're perceived, how we want to be perceived, and why there's a gap right there. There definitely is. And the third, systems and processes. If you ask the average finance person, they don't have the systems or processes they need. And I always say a lot of that's a mindset. You're never going to have perfect systems. You can overcome a lot of that by managing time, by other things. Doesn't mean you may not need new systems, but you're not always going to get them. So I think those are three great points there. So I want to shift gears a little bit for a few minutes, then we'll move into a rapid fire.

You know, as you mentioned, the systems and processes is. Is often a fixed. It's not a variable. Because to change your systems and processes, you need to get it on board and fill out 387 business cases. That's a big change. That's a big change. So you're stuck with the systems and processes you've got. Your job is to work out how can I extract what I need from it really, really efficiently. And, you know, I used to do this. I used to do this. I used to go through stages where I'd sit at home for like two hours of a night just trying to set stuff up, stuff that I did all the time, just trying to set it up so that I could, you know, sort of automated in Excel or whatever, which I'm talking to the right guy here about this automated in Excel so that I could just press a button and push it out. The stuff I did over and over again now that two hours, that sort of sucked because it was family time, but I got it back very, very quickly and doing it at work was very, very hard because you're in meetings and all sorts of stuff pops up. So just. It was like my own little personal sprint that I did at home just to. Just to get things sorted. But I had to do it. No one's going to do it for me and no one's going to change the system with a, you know, $38 million new system to come in. That's just not going to happen quick.

Yeah, I mean, the reality of it is you need to always be focusing on improving your processes and find the time to invest to improve them. If you're always blaming on the system, it's an excuse and it's going to be a roadblock. Till you remove the excuse doesn't mean a new system will make you more effective. And maybe the company needs one. I've been in companies where they definitely need one, but I didn't use that as an excuse. I spent a crapload of time cleaning data so that I could be a good business partner and answer the questions. I just figured it out and did the best I could. And that's all you can do. That's the attitude you have.

Make a meal with the ingredients you've got.

Yeah, sometimes I won't want to eat it, but I'll make it.

Salt tubero.

Yeah, exactly. One thing you mentioned with that, you know, with trying to find the time perception not always being great, things like that, finance can be a very stressful career, especially you're doing month end trying to partner and cleaning data. You know, you're up late nights. I think the pressure of month end and so I know taking care of yourself is really important. This is something you and I have talked about a fair amount. The mental health area. I, I've dealt with a lot of mental health issues. I've lost family members to mental health. And we just love to get your perspective because I know we've talked about this personally. Aside from the podcast, how do you manage that? How do you make sure where you're trying to be that great business partner and do everything they need and if you're not careful, can suck up all your time. How do you make sure you're taking care of yourself as you're doing this. Any thoughts or advice there?

Yeah. So me personally, me personally, I've done a lot of work knowing myself, knowing about what drains my energy and what I get energy from. Unfortunately, I, I run my own business, so there's, there's things that I have to do that drain my energy now to do those, I, I, I plan them. I plan them and I'm disciplined. Around Thursday, 10:30, I'm doing, I've got to do this, it's got to be done, and I'm not doing anything else until it's done. And I block that work out and I've got to be disciplined to it because I, I know that if I just do what I want, I'll do the fun and easy stuff because that's how, that's how our brains work. Our brains are the path of least resistance. We'll do the fun stuff all the time. So I know myself very well around where my energies are good and where they're not. And I plan the stuff that's, that's not the mental health stuff. I'm, I'm pretty lucky. I can deal with that a lot. I did have an incident personally for myself a while ago. This is sort of eight or nine years ago. I, I was, I had an incident at work. Something happened at work that, you know, the path that I wanted to go on. Suddenly I was like, okay, well, that's getting a bit murky for me now. And I came home and I was, I was in tears. I was sitting at, you know, the dinner table crying. My wife's looking at me going, what is wrong with you? Like, you didn't even cry when we had children. I don't know what's wrong. I don't know how to manage. I don't know what, what is going on, you know, I know it's something to do with work and the disappointment of career or whatever it was. And I thought, I just need to talk to someone. So I went and spoke to someone and it helped me significantly. What I found out is for people who don't know me, my father died when I was really young. My father died on the day after my fourth birthday. So I grew up without a father. And I didn't, I didn't, I didn't think too much of it because most of my memories are without a father. I only have memories of the, of the life that I did have, which, which was pretty good. My mother was, was very good, good to me. So I didn't Think too much about it. But that time, that thing that happened at work coincided once I started talking to someone about it. And a lot of your stuff goes back to your childhood. It was at the exact same time my son had turned four and he dug out of my subconscious whatever it do that. That sort of me being four and losing my father. I know how to son. That was four. And what if something happened to me? What if something happened to me, what his life would be like now? Those thoughts were suppressed. And he managed to get that out of me and mix it up with the work stuff. And he said, that's what's going on here. And you just, we need to work through that and unpack it a little bit. So talking to someone about it was massive. You know, I got to. I was lucky. I got through that sort of spacing, you know, three or four weeks just by talking to someone regularly. But there's other people who, you know, this takes years for them to work through and it's really, really hard. And I think there's a lot that can be done just to have. If someone at work that you're working with is just off, off a little bit, there's usually something going on behind the whites of the eyes. Now, they're probably not going to share it with you, but you've got to. You've got to be considerate of it. I've seen people who are brilliant people in my team who would like star performers. And then they're off. Why are they off? And your relationships bring that out. Your relationships. If you've got good relationships, I'll share it with you. I had a guy who worked for me who was a good performer and we found out, like, he was really off. And we found out his wife had been diagnosed with cancer and she only had like six months to live. Now, I couldn't imagine what that would be like in your life. And then having to turn up to work and front up to work, well, no wonder he's off. So then you start to think about, well, how do we. How do we actually help this person so that they can deal with that? Because that's bigger than work. So, yeah, I think through your relationships and your connections with people, that understanding and the appreciation that there's a lot of other stuff going on is. Is really important, especially in this day and age.

I heard you talk there. There are kind of two thoughts that came to mind that I'd leave with people. And the first is, you know, when the pressure gets to you, when you fill off when whatever it might be, don't be afraid to talk to a professional. I'm a huge believer that we should all see somebody at some point in our life, that they're just helping, giving us coping skills to manage life. There's nothing to be afraid of. There used to be the stigma. Oh, if you go see a therapist or a counselor or whatever you want to call it, you're going to see the shrink and something's wrong with you? No, if I have a broken leg, I go to the doctor. There's nothing wrong with me. If you're off emotionally, mentally, it's the same idea. Seek professional help. The second, as a co worker, look out for those you work with. With. If you see they're off and you have those good relationships, try to figure out how to help them, talk to them. Like you said, they may not share what's going on, but even if they share nothing, they're going to appreciate that you came to them, that you let them know you care and that you're trying to help them in any way you can. And so I think those are two things that are really important because the reality is we all have stuff going on in our private lives, and sometimes it's going really well, sometimes it's going really rough and nobody knows, and it's going to impact work or sometimes just the stress of work, like you mentioned. Maybe not career going off the rails.

Yeah, the other way.

And then you have something else going on. And so the biggest advice I'd offer is, as managers learn the signs and symptoms, there are training programs out there that can help you teach. How do you spot when employees are having a hard time or maybe dealing with some mental health and be willing to be there for them and support them. And then the second is an individual is don't be afraid to ask for help. Whether that's seeing a therapist, going to a doctor, talking to a close friend, whatever it may be, you know, it's. It's always worth it because there's people there that will support you and help you through it.

Yeah, 100%. It's. It's often easier to see other people. You can see when someone else is off. If you know them really well, you can set the signals, okay, they're off you. It's very hard to see it yourself. You have to be very tapped in and tuned into you and your energy levels. Often someone might give you a clue. They'll say, you okay at the moment? What's happening in your world? Oh, there's a clue. And you have to think about it. But our egos get in the way. Our egos get in the way and we don't do something about it. It's like a health check where you might have something wrong with your arm and you're like, it just doesn't feel right. Do you go to the doctor straight away? No. No. You let it get really bad before you do. Don't do that.

And then you try some medicine and throw an ice on it will get better than finally, when you're dragging behind Google.

Doesn't help. Doesn't give you the answers. Yeah. Go and see someone who, who knows how to diagnose it and sort it out. And you. You'll be in a better space a lot quicker.

100% agree. All right, So I appreciate you having that conversation. Anyone who knows me, that's a real passion of mine and I felt that would be a good conversation we could have. Now we're going to move up to the end of the interview. So I have what I kind of call it call a rapid fire. But it's an FPA section where I have four questions I ask. The goal is kind of answer these quickly short answers around different subjects. So the first one is what is the number one technical skill that FPA professionals need to master?

I'm going to be very boring here. Debits and credits. Okay, debits and credits. Now the world's moved on from, you know, kalamazoos and physically writing down debits and credits into a big book with a pen. A lot of systems do it for you, but often in finance, you gotta fix things. You gotta get something and fix it and sort it out. And the amount of journal entries that go wrong and then create rework to actually fix it. And the amount of accounting people that aren't over their journal entries is. It just bewilders me because that's the foundation of everything we do. Debits and credits. I mark exams for the institute. You know, there's always debits and credits in that. And you probably get probably 40% of people get them right. 60% of people, or probably 40% of get them right. Probably 20% just get them completely wrong. And 40% get a little bit of it right. So it just causes mayhem and causes work. It doesn't need to be there if you get them right. And just being able to know you journal entries really quick is important. Accounting standards, you got to know them back to front. It's very easy once when you move out of firm and you Go into industry, it's a lot easier because when you're in industry, you only really need to know one or two accounting standards that are specific for that industry. So you don't need to know the whole book, but know the ones that are appropriate for your industry and make sure they're being applied. So they're the technical things that I think any person in finance has to know.

Know your accounting text.

Does text. Don't worry about that. Text Bo and do that.

Yeah, I hear you on that one. All right, so we've talked about this. I think I have a pretty good idea what you'll answer here. I know there's a few ways you could go, but what's the number one human skill we need to master?

Communication.

That's what I figured you'd say.

Yeah, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. Your energy, all that sort of stuff. There's a thousand different ways you can do things. How you think. Think you're saying something, the other person's hearing it differently. Get off email. You know, if you could shut down Outlook and never use it again, that. That'd probably be a good start.

I was going to say I have a story about that, but we don't have time, so we'll keep going here. Are you currently using generative AI today, and if so, how?

I. I've dabbled in it. I don't use it a lot because a lot of the stuff dealing with, with clients or training is the AI hasn't worked it out yet. So that's sort of ambiguous and complex. So that. That's generally the spot, the space that I'm working in, in terms of marketing and all that sort of stuff. I use it to just sense check what I'm writing in terms of posts on LinkedIn or anything like that.

Sure.

I don't quite trust it. I asked it about business partnering and it gave me some answers. I thought, I know more about this than you, which. Which worried me a little bit. And it gave me some names of people that I'd never heard of. So. And then when I looked them up, they. They don't actually do this stuff. So terms of a tech head, I'm a, you know, that little curve of the early adopters and laggards and all that sort of stuff. I'm not a laggard. Everyone else work it out and when they've worked it out, then I'll come in and go, give me the good stuff. So, yeah, I use it a little bit. I dabble in it, but I just haven't got the time to really dig down into it too much. And I don't need it for what I do at the moment, so. But it does. I shouldn't saying that finance people need to get into it. They need to get into it because it's very helpful. It's very helpful in terms of shortcutting stuff for them. So I tend to think of like ChatGPT. I go there instead of Google. Just gives you a better answer.

Yeah, no, I, I hear you. All right, so now we're going to move into the get to know you section. I have a couple questions we're going to ask here, and then we'll let you go. So what's your favorite hobby or passion when you're not doing business? Partnering? What do you like to do in your free time?

Sports. I'm a Victorian, so if anyone. For the Australian listeners, you'll understand. Victorians are obsessed with sport. They, you know, put a cockroach on the MCG or two cockroaches on the MCG and let them race, and 100,000 people turn up to watch that. So I'm into sport and I'm a Victorian. So afl, which is a quirky little Australian sport that only Australians play, I'm right into that. I got into whiskey a while ago, about three years ago in Covid. Surprise, surprise. In Covid, I got into whiskey and I learned a lot about whiskey around distilling and tastes and all the different types of whiskies around the world. So it's a bit of a dangerous, dangerous hobby to have. But, yeah, I, I do like. I do like whiskey. So, yeah, they're probably. That sounds really bad. I'm into sports and alcohol, but you.

Say it that way. Yeah, but I wasn't gonna go there.

I also, I grew up. My sense of humor is very much driven by a sitcom from the 90s called Seinfeld. So if you want to talk to me about Seinfeld, I'll laugh about that all day long. I went and seen him the other night in Sydney, which was. Which was a bit of a bucket listing for me. So, yeah, sports, comedy, alcohol. I sound like a bit of a freak.

All right, well, there's our tagline for this episode. Come listen to Andrew talk sports, comedy and alcohol, particularly whiskey. All right, numbers. If you could go anywhere in the world tomorrow, what's your. What's your place you're going? What's kind of that favorite travel destination?

Yeah, I'll go anywhere. I'm a traveler. So as long as it's different, I'll go anywhere. I love different cultures, I love different food. I'm just fascinated by what's going on here. This is, this is different. So I've actually got my 20th wedding anniversary in two weeks time. We're going to Fiji for a week. Bit of luxury. I love Fiji because of Fiji time. If you go there, Fiji time is a thing. If you want something in a hurry, it's not happening in Fiji. So if you want to relax, you go there. You don't have a choice because everything's just slow. Everything's on Fiji time. So good place to relax. As I said, I traveler, go the other end of the spectrum. One of the most interesting places I've ever been to is Iceland. So we went back with the family in 2019 and traveled and I said we're going to Iceland again because I found that fascinating, cold, different and just a bit weird and possibly the furthest place on earth from where I am at the moment.

Iceland would be fun. Fiji would be fun. Any great location. Well, I want to take a minute and just thank you for joining me today. I've really enjoyed having you on the show and if people want to reach out to you or learn more about you or your business, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, best way. I'm obviously on LinkedIn like you, Paul, so you can connect with me on LinkedIn. We've got our website, www.thefbpteam.com. you can get on there. There's plenty of free resources. I'm a book. We run a boot camp every month. If you want to see what we do. That's, that's totally free. We've got newsletters, all that sort of stuff. So that's the best way to contact me.

All right, well, great. Well, thank you for being on the show. Enjoyed chatting with you and look forward to the audience getting an opportunity to listen to this. So thanks, Andrew. You enjoy the rest of your day. Not a problem.

It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. You do a really good job. So it's a pleasure to be invited on and have a chat.

Well, thank you. 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. 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 earmark cpe.com downloading the app, taking a short quiz and getting your CPD certificate to earn continuing education credits for the FPAC certification. Take the quiz on earmark and contact me, the show host for further details. Not a problem.

It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. You do a really good job. So it's a pleasure to be invited on and have a chat.

Well, thank you. Thanks for listening to FPA 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.