The Real Reason CFOs Have the Shortest Careers With Steve Rosvold

The most difficult things for me were becoming strategic. I thought I was the smartest in the room and I very quickly learned that was not the case. But I think the more strategic and the more being able to work with the executives from other departments and making sure I saw how they saw the business because my biggest transition was typically.

The CFO has the shortest tenure. Is it because they're being asked to do so much?

That role is challenging enough to be end of your career finance and accounting people. We love the details, but I think with all these changes there's expectations that a lot of CFOs are finding finance leaders can't meet yet.

What does great FP and A look like?

One thing is impartial and data driven.

What's the number one technical skill? FP and a professional should ask you.

Need to understand financial statements.

What's the number one soft skill?

Being able to connect with people.

Many people on the show want to be CFOs. What advice would you offer them? Where should they get started?

Being bold and being willing.

This week's title sponsor of FP&A tomorrow is Kpop. And now a message from our sponsor.

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Welcome to FP&A tomorrow where we delve into the world of financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects. I'm your host Paul Barnhurst, AKA the FPA Guy and I will be guiding you through the evolving landscape of fpa. 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 tomorrow's uncertainties. I'm thrilled to welcome to the show Steve Rosbold. Steve, welcome to the show.

It's great to be on with you Paul. I'm really looking forward to this.

Yeah, excited to have you. This will be a fun time. So a little bit about Steve. Steve comes to us from the State of Washington. He's in the Vancouver area. He is the founder and principal of CFO University, providing content for people, training courses, information for those who want to be a CFO helping them get there. During his career, he was the CFO of conagra Brands. He earned his cpa. He did his undergrad in history, might ask him about that, and did an MBA in finance. So we're thrilled to have him. So, you know, first question I want to ask is, how did you go from being a CFO of conagra to starting your own business? How did that happen?

Well, yeah, you know, I'd spent 22 years in the corporate world a bunch with Cargill and then with conagra for four years as the. As the CFO of their molting company. And conagra and the other owner of this joint venture decided they want. They wanted us to move from Vancouver to Omaha. So they removed the headquarters office from Vancouver. And we had kids in high school at the time, and Pat and I started talking about it and saying, you know, this might be a great opportunity to get out of the helter skelter of the multinational and try something on my own. So my entrepreneurial bent was kind of. I was pretty excited about that. This gave us the opportunity. It gave me the opportunity to kind of test that. And so when we moved the office, I didn't move and I stayed here, Vancouver, and. And the rest is history, let me put it that way.

Right, Great. And we'll jump more into that, both CFO University and some of the consulting you've done. But I want to go back to your days in corporate. You know, you worked in corporate, worked your way up and eventually becoming a cfo. I'm curious, what was the hardest part of making that adjustment from, you know, being a team member to being over the entire function to being that cfo?

Yeah. You know, I'd spent my career in accounting and finance with these multinational companies, which can be their own career paths. Right. And so when I became the CFO at Conagar Mall, I think that the most difficult things were for me were becoming strategic. So all of a sudden, the tactical pieces where I'd been really successful with certain areas, whether it was, you know, the P and L division in Cargill's grain department, or whether it was in our. Our energy department, where I kind of ran some old logistics, I didn't have that strategic bent. So that was a big shift where all of a sudden, you know, you have to really not get caught in the weeds. So I had to pull myself up from the weeds. I think another area was working with execs from really directly with sales, sales and marketing, with operations, with some of the logistics people. And making sure that we worked together with them. In the past, I could do a lot of things on my own and come up with ideas, and it really didn't impact them as much. Now the decisions I was making was going to impact them. And I think the third area, when I was, I never had treasury operations. So at CFO University, we consider finance, accounting, treasury and leadership as the four pillars of the cfo. And at my Cargill days, Treasury was centralized. And so I never had that cash management fundraising experience I got thrown into as a CFO at the conagra joint venture. And so I think for me, that was very specific, a technical area I didn't have skills in. But I think the more strategic and the more being able to work with the executives from other departments and making sure I saw how they saw the business, because that was my, my biggest transition was I thought I was, you know, I thought I was the smartest in the room. And I very quickly learned that was not the case. And I better be able to work with these people and learn what they're, what they're all about. And so those were kind of the three big shifts I made when I became a cfo.

Yeah. And I want to dig into one of those. And that's the first one you mentioned of that becoming more strategic and also being able to see big picture versus being in the details, in the weeds. Because I think that's a common challenge FP&A professionals have in general. I know it was a real challenge for me. I had to work on is okay, they don't need all the details. My boss doesn't care. He doesn't want them. He wants the strategic and the big picture. How did you make that adjustment?

Well, I think one of the things that helps a lot as a CFO is you have a team to help you do that. So you still need somebody in the weeds, somebody to do all the hard, that heavy lifting. And so that. But being able to manage them rather than wanting to do it. So, you know, and especially finance and accounting, you know, we're used to delivering results. We're used to doing the work. We don't, we don't mind hard work. And so, you know, if you kind of enjoy that part of your role, all of a sudden, all that detail you're getting in, where you're creating those insights from all that, you know, somebody else is going to start doing that for you or you're not going to be in that CFO job very long. So I think for my background, it was Being able to accept others are going to do great work and I just need to be able to lead them and, you know, nurture their great work and use it more strategically than tactically. And so that was, I think, kind of the biggest framework or, you know, mindset change for me was others are going to do the work. So it's not so much that you don't do the work or the. Or the group doesn't do the work, just that you're not doing the work. Right. As much gratification as that used to come, when I get that big project done, you kind of have to step back from that.

Makes total sense. As a cfo. What if you're in a role where you're still pretty hands on, but you're managing or we're not managing, but you're supporting high level people who want the big picture. Any advice of how you make that transition or focus on making things high level? Right. Because you have to get into the weeds, but the people you may be supporting don't want you in the weeds. They want that big picture. And I know for me, it was difficult to make that adjustment or that switch. It took a lot of practice.

That is such a great question. And I still to this day, people look at a PowerPoint presentation of mine, they say, how come there's so much on there? So I have to consciously think, remove, remove, remove. Because my background give, give them all that work I did. Because it's great detail.

Yeah.

So you really have to step back from that and say what's really important. And one of the best ways you can do that is to, you know, find some mentors to test with. And so what I would do is I had my CEO at conagra was great at this, but even other people that you're not necessarily presenting to go over your presentations with them. Here's my message and you'll get that great feedback. So that's one way to get real life feedback on. Here's what I was going to say and let somebody kind of say, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, that is way over the top. I just need the executive summary and that really helps. Will help you.

Yeah, I think that's great. To get feedback from others. I. I've told this story many times on different podcast episodes. I had a boss that was extremely detailed. So we got along great because I'm very detailed. He wanted everything. Then all of a sudden they let him go through a reorg and I had a new boss that wanted everything high level and she didn't like me. And it was, you know, pretty, pretty apparent. It was like, he does good work. Just give him time there people, you know, telling her that when she complain. And one guy would literally on meetings, he would DM me on the sides, like bring it up. You're getting too detailed. And he would, we had an agreement. He would always tell me. And that was something that forced me to start thinking more big picture because I would want to get so much into the weed. So it was definitely a hard transition for me.

Yeah. And I think it's something you have to consciously think about. And especially again, finance and accounting people, we love the details. That's partly, you know, a lot of us have the roots where we, the deep analysis is kind of what we, you know, bringing something new to by looking at things very carefully is kind of in our DNA. And so there's all this tension to say, well, now I want you to know all the work I did. And I think that's what you got to steer away from. You know, don't worry. That's, that's, that's a sunk cost figure out we need to know to do their jobs. And that's when you can hit gold nuggets for sure.

Agree. Next question. I'm going to ask you two here. First, how have you seen the role of the CFO change over the last decade or even for when you were a CFO to now? What are maybe some of the biggest changes you've seen?

You know, I kind of think there's a few of them. One of them, the CFO used to be the steward of the balance sheet and the cost control guru. Right. So if you look at it and they're still the c, that's still the case, certainly from the balance sheet. Stewarding the balance sheet, cost control is still important, but where the CFOs are getting much more involved is above the gross margin line. And so you see them get involved in procurement more, in sales more. I mean, you and I did a talk on pricing in the finance team and 20 years ago that wouldn't have been a discussion, you know, so being able to have input in above the gross margin line, I think is a huge opportunity and a huge change, a shift in the CFO role. So that's exciting. It's whether it's selling, figuring out what information you have you can sell, figuring out how to price better, you know, looking at product mix more carefully and having an influence on that. I think those are really important. And then I think the other two big changes are Human capital has become much more important. So you know, the idea of how do we measure human capital? It's a, you know, we don't have it on the balance, balance sheet, you know, we expense it. How do we really know the value is becoming a really interesting area for CFOs and finance people to get involved in. So really, really bright people working on that. And then the other area is just technology. I mean there are so many tools now, you know this with all the work that you do on, on evaluating tools for FP and A, that is all over the CFO suite, not just in FP and A, but in, you know, billing systems and accounting systems. And so I think those three areas have been, have supercharged the CFO role, made it really important, but also made it much more difficult. So I think, you know, you find a good CFO that can adopt all that and get to those areas, you know, super valuable.

When you talked about it, makes it much more challenging, but much more valuable. That led me to a question. I saw something recently that showed of your typical sea level employees, like your CRO, cpo, whatever you want to call them, the different ones you took coo, right, all those different ones. Typically the CFO has the shortest tenure and you've probably seen that part. Why is that? Is it because they're being asked to do so much? You think it's burnout or just naturally they're ready for the next challenge? Or why do you think that is?

You know, it's a great question. I know that from my, my background that role is challenging enough to be a career, you know, the end of your career. I mean, but, but I do think that with all these things there is a big burnout factor. You mentioned that. I don't think the CFO is being the scapegoat, but I think with all these changes, there's expectations that a lot of CFOs or finance leaders can't meet. Yet. Of those three areas that we described, whether it's, you know, having a focus, having more impact on the strategic part of the business that the above the gross margin line from a P and L standpoint, understanding how human dynamics work. So being able to keep staff, train staff and build a good staff, that necessarily wasn't in the CFO's realm 15 and 20 years ago. Now they, now it's demanded. You have to be able to manage people well to keep them, attract them and grow them. And so I think they're part of it is, I don't want to call it A competency issue, but there's an experience issue that people are still trying to go through to be able to achieve those capabilities and that. So the expectations versus the performance, there might be a disconnect there because the expectations are that those three areas I mentioned earlier are getting done. And I'm not sure all CFOs are ready to jump on board with that yet.

You know, so I'm hearing this. I think it's the expectations have continued to increase, no doubt. And with that there may be a little bit bigger gap of people being able to meet all those and adjust, especially first time CFOs. Plus there's sometimes a burnout factor as well to that role that probably is contributing to that shorter tenure.

I could have not said that better myself. That was a great summary, Paul.

Thank you, I appreciate that. I try to summarize it. So. But now let's talk FP and A. So we've talked a little bit of CFO. How is F. How have you seen FP and a change over the last 10, 20 years during your career from when you were a CFO to kind of how you think about it today?

Well, in my day it was, you know, the accounting function kind of ruled and, and a lot of the reporting and analysis came out of the controller function. And what's happened is FPA has been able to carve out a place that says hey, there is more to our role. We, in fact we want a separate role that doesn't have to do with all the recording, all the governance and the internal controls that kind of get, get kind of wrapped around that controller function or accounting function. And so I think there was a recognition that this forward looking and I don't use that as a negative against accounting because I'll tell you, without a great solid accounting team, FP and A can't go very far.

And you're not agreeing data.

So, so I think that the foundation is still that accounting piece. But FP&A recognizes hey and I think business leaders recognized that having this forward focus, kind of, you know, insights driven, analysis driven is kind of a separate group, potentially a separate group from that recording and reporting function, internal control function. And so that split and there's still a lot of small companies that kind of have one area where the controller does a lot of the FP and A function. But as the companies get bigger they recognize that we need this separate group focused on just the future. And so FPA is a great fit for that. And fpa, you know, it is the, the shining Bright spot in the CFO suite right now. Right. I mean, if you think about all the data analytics and AI that's all being kind of flushed under the FP and A area. And again, not to say accounting is. Accounting is super important. And if you don't do that. Right, you're never going to have a strong FP and A function. But FPA is recognized right now as really important to the growth engines of any company. And, and, and that's. It's an exciting area to be in for sure.

And I had planned on titling this episode. Steve says accountants are not important.

Well, that would be a mischaracterization completely.

So I didn't summarize that one. Well, all right.

No, you get an F on that one. Yeah.

As I've often said, a good accountant is FP and a best friend. If those books aren't right and you don't have a good understanding of them, it's really hard to take that and project forward and understand what you think is going to happen. So it's a partnership. It's like you said, it's not that one's more important than the other. They both fill different roles and they need to work together. The best FP and A team works well with their accounting. Best accounting teams work well with their fpa. Goes both ways.

Yep. They leverage each other. And to remember one thing, the roots of accounting and FPA are really in the financial statement.

Yes.

So as much as we want to kind of separate these, the roots all come from the same place. And so from that perspective, there is that commonality that really binds accounting and FP&A. And that's a good understanding of the financial statements.

Yeah. The CFO manages finance and accounting. Right. And accounting and finance are all part of those financial statements at the end of the day.

And we add treasury to that too, by the way.

But yes, accounting, treasury is important as well. There's, there's no question, especially if you're going to be a cfo. Like, that's one thing I haven't really dealt with. I dealt a little bit with treasury at American Express. We had a. I supported Travelers check and so we had a 2 billion dollar liability on the balance sheet for all those on and cash checks that we invested. So I had to work with treasury to understand that and meet with the monthly, hey, what's the rates we're earning? Trying to project what would get called potentially, you know, how much cash we needed to have in that portfolio. So that was my experience with treasury, but more the traditional raising funds, those type things that you often think about it as the CFO I'd never got involved in, but I definitely did get involved in some of it. Supporting a prepaid business because of all that money you get up front.

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Really important for FP&A, the cash flow forecasting is related directly to treasury, right? So treasury has to either raise funds. If we're not, if, if we're not giving the right terms to customers or, or vendors aren't giving us the right terms. All of a sudden treasury is the one who gets a burden because they got to go raise the fund. So FPA has a direct link to treasury in just on the cash side for sure.

I mean the example like that with the, the bonds at one point, if it dropped below a certain amount, we would have had to put money in or liquidate, move it elsewhere. They changed some of the rules within how the company was incorporated to allow us to keep it the way it was. And that was treasury that managed that with legal and tax and all those people. But it had a big impact on our business because if they hadn't done it, there would have been a big hit as we continued to wind down. You know, when I Support travelers check eight years ago now, eight, 10 years ago, it was definitely not a growing product as you could imagine, right? Half the people listening to this will probably be like what's a traveler's check?

What's a travel. Well, what you just described though is the teamwork that where you know, the CFO suite, FP&A accounting touches so many parts of the business. That's why it's just such a great education. Whether it's FP and A or accounting, you get exposed to every part of the business. Unlike any other department in a company. Normally you're touching every part of the business and, and that starts with the accounting group and goes right to the FP and a group. When it comes to budgeting, planning, forecasting and doing investment analysis, you really get to, to know the other. In fact, a lot of at Cargill, the strategic, the strategic planning group, really kind of an outcropping of the, the finance team and the cfo.

I mean you hear the term a lot now. I see people, they're over financial planning and strategy or you hear that you see the term strategic finance. Originally a lot of that was by the vendors to make it sound, you know, better for selling. But you're seeing more and more of that in titles and roles and finances being asked to be more strategic. And so I have one more, one more question this front and then we'll jump into some things about CFO University and talking about being a cfo. Because a lot of people who listen to this podcast have aspirations, right? They want to be a cfo, they're working in FP and A. And to figure out how do I get to the top. So the question I have around FP and A kind of relates a little bit to the CFO. I had Jack McCullough on the show. I know you know him, CFO Leadership Council. He predicted that going forward within the next couple years, the majority of, of CFOs would come out of FP and A versus controllership. What's your thoughts on that?

You know, I don't, I won't disagree with Jack on that, but I would say part of the reason is accounting. There's, there's going to be more FP and A people than accounting people that just, it's going to happen that way. And so part of it's just a lot of accounting people are going to move into FPA partly because of shortage of jobs. What, what accounting is, you know, you're going to have your CPAs and your chartered accountants, all the attestation piece that's going to stay there and, but those people are learning skills that aren't necessarily key to becoming a CFO anymore, right? I mean those skills, they're very important. They're going to help you get funding, they're going to help your investors understand the business. They're going to be important, but they're not going to create as many CFOs as they have in the past. In fact, that's changed quite a bit already. So the CPA and Chartered Accountant World. I think that number is going down from 44% ten years ago to 34% in today's market in the public companies. So you're seeing less CPAs, but there's still going to be a lot of CPAs. So where then? And the training at FP&A, the training that you get, the strategic part of FP and A is perfect for a cfo. So I think there's skills that. There's a supply issue. You're going to have more supply from FP and A, but there's also a capability issue that I think you're getting more. There was more capabilities that the CFOs will need in the future that are going to come out of FP and A.

Makes sense. I. I would agree with both those. We're definitely seeing.

We got to find something to disagree with here, Paul, because we're agreeing on everything. So you got to ask me a question that we can just fight about.

Let's see. I disagree with wearing coats. Vests are much better.

Okay, well, I've got all this old inventory sitting in my closet, and the second somebody says you got to get a vest for something, I got to go to the store and buy it so I can just pull this out of my. Jet out of my closet. I don't have to go to the store. So it's an efficiency thing for me.

Spoken like a true finance person. I can't even argue that one. Dang it.

You can't.

You. You ran the math and you figured it was cheaper to just throw on the inventory that you had than go buy new stuff.

Just. Just go to my closet and throw something on, and then. Well, if I could grow a beard like yours, I would. So that's another place we agree. But I can't grow a beard like that. So I'm. I'm kind of. I'm kind of stuck with what I got, you know?

Well, there's really only two things to growing a beard. Genetics and time. One of them, you either have it or you don't. And the other one, you just have to be patient.

I definitely have the time, but I don't have the genetics, I guess.

I won't comment on the time. I'm. I'm grateful we have a few young people on the show. I'm going to get myself in trouble. All right, back to the regularly scheduled program here. So you run CFO University. Tell us about that.

Well, CFO University, and I use the dot because that happens to be our URL. So we Use that in our branding. But CFO University, you know, it's a, it's a place to develop CFOs. Anybody who reports to a CFO towards a CFO position, so normally a CFO has been in their job more than five years, doesn't believe we can help them. I might disagree with that. But so we. So it's usually what you might call inexperienced, five year and less CFOs and anybody reports to the CFO. That's kind of our target market. And we are a practical, convenient and performance enhancing platform for people to use. And how we look at that is we are, you know, we're not trying to be an MBA school, trying to, you know, teach MBAs, the Black Scholes pricing model or whatever it's going to be. We're trying to get practical advice on how to be a cfo. And that means how to run the departments of a cfo, which again we talk about that being accounting, finance, treasury and then a leadership quality. So that's what we teach in practical, practical terms. And how we do that is we do that through courses. We do a lot of thought leadership that's all free and in our, our website, a lot of that. But then we also have courses people can take under our four pillars and we have tools that shine a bright light, you know, on kind of really important aspects of the CFO role. And those tools are normally short, easy to, easy to implement and they're really meant to get information that you can deliver to your board, your executive team, your team to kind of show how an issue, how you could position an issue that might be really important to your business in a really easy light. So it kind of tries to take that complexity of some of our roles or some of what our jobs that we do and try to make it, you know, bite size ready for a board or an executive team or your CEO. And then we have coaching. So we do some coaching. I do some coaching with Andy Burroughs out of the Supercharged Finance Group out of the uk. Got to know Andy over the years and so we do some coaching as well.

What does the coaching mostly consist of? Is that helping with soft skills, time management. What do people usually come to you for help with on the coaching side?

Well, you know, what we do is we kind of do an assessment. So we have a CFO readiness assessment that assesses more the experiential part of somebody's career and we can identify with the four pillars where they've had experience. So we'll use that. We'll also use an assessment on their team and their operations. And that usually involves more than just the cfo. They'll use the executive team too and so will Mary their competencies individually, their professional competencies with what the business needs. And then we'll create a professional development program for them. And as that and then how the mechanics work is, we'll go through that, discuss that with them and then we have a monthly check in meeting where we help them kind of manage their progress, see what they're doing. And you know, if it's a, if it's somebody we recognize pretty quickly, is it the soft skills they need? Are they, do they have, does their business require some technical skills they don't have? And we had talked about this earlier, I think Paul, but one of the technical part of the job really depends on the company you're with. You know, you don't have to have much finance at all. If you're a public company CFO who's got, you know, a chief accounting officer, you'll have all these other resources. A lot of the public company CFOs aren't necessarily financially trained, but if you're at a small or medium sized company, you will need, you better be a top financial expert because you're, you're the one who's driving all that. So kind of depends what you need there. And we, we cater to the small and medium sized enterprises. There's not a lot of public companies who are coming to CFO University. I shouldn't say yet because I think we can train all en masse, all the executives below the CFO at any public company. But, but we really, that isn't our target market. But.

So you're saying when I plan on becoming CFO of Apple, you probably wouldn't be the target for me?

Well, I wouldn't be your coach, but of course I could be your coach. But, but our platform could help you train all your team. That's that and that's I think a market that we're, we're, we're trying to dabble in and find our footing there. Haven't been very successful yet. But, but it isn't going to be you as the CFO of Apple who's going to spend a bunch of time with me. It would be your team that spends a bunch of time with CFO University.

Got it. Helping kind of upskill that team to prepare them for more senior roles and.

That type of thing.

All right, so as we talked about a little bit earlier, you know, many people on the show want to be CFOs, what advice would you offer them? Where should they get started? If they're thinking, hey, you know, at some point I want to be a cfo, but they're like, I'm not sure how to get there. They're working in FB and A today. Maybe they've been in their career three to five years, analyst, senior analyst, maybe the first manager role somewhere in that area. What advice would you offer to them?

Well, let's assume they have the technical skills for the most part, and by that they understand a balance sheet and a P and L. They know how they work, they know the big metrics. They can look at a balance sheet of the financial statements and make some quick assessments and ask some really smart questions. So I'm going to assume that that's a start. And so a general, general background that you know it, that they understand enough of the big picture items that they know how the moving parts work, then I would say it gets into more, you know, being bold and being willing to share your insight. So now it becomes, okay, I've been in my financial analyst role. I've kind of, you know, the information's kind of bubbled to the top. I'm going to be more, and I don't want to say dramatic, but I want to be a bigger presence. So how do I do that? So talking to your boss about how do I give the presentation rather than you give the presentation, how do I, how do I have more influence within our teams? I think I have a lot of ideas. So being able to share those ideas, not just do what you're told, but do what you think should be done right. And so I think that's a big part of it. And I think in that if that sounds like, hey, go be a big mouth and just blab away, I caution you that we have two ears and one mouth for one reason. And you learn a lot more when you listen than when you talk. So you got to kind of couple that really be strategic in how you're absorbing information from your company, who you're meeting with and when you're. And so I think that's really important that you strategically get around the right people. And that isn't just the networking people. It's more, you know, who can you learn from and who's willing to teach you. And that's really important. So one of the real soft skills and then, you know, kind of thinking about strategically. When I have a business interaction, there's two outcomes. One is I want to make the business better and the other is, how do I make my career better? So if you kind of position, you know, all your business interactions with that second question, what can I do? Do I have to deliver more? Can I be better prepared? How can this person help me? How can I help them so they want to help me. All those strategic things that, you know, you kind of give an answer to a question, a spreadsheet gives us an answer, we kind of deliver that to somebody and throw it on their desk. That all has to change. It has to be how do I nurture these relationships with giving great information and how do I solve a business problem and how do I make improve my career?

Thank you. Great advice and I really like, you know, one, how do you solve a business problem? How does that help you improve your career? Learning to listen and also ask questions. I had a boss say he started to move up when he started to ask smart questions during meetings. You know, they could tell he was listening and thinking and he had done preparation, not, hey, this number doesn't tie or you use the wrong font there. You know, sometimes finance can have that pointing out every little technical thing that's wrong. That's not what we mean by bringing up more things in a meeting. That's not going to help you advance. But I've seen that where sometimes people think, but I'm commenting. Yeah, but you're not helping your cause.

Yeah, that's the, you know, kind of having self awareness and understanding how you're being perceived is, becomes really important and, and frankly that's an easy thing to not be. Especially finance people who have continually getting praised for your good work. So that's a great report. Thank you for that, you know, for that kind of stuff and not thinking, okay, how do I deliver this in a way that's going to, you know, people are going to want to absorb it, they're going to want to do more, they're going to ask me more questions. And I think that's that self awareness piece is where you know, the person asking that question, hey, the font is the wrong size on that slide. Can you change it for me? That they are not very self aware.

Yeah, exactly. It's I think self awareness. There's something else you mentioned in there is that ability to take things to the next level. You can be great at your job. In the sense I deliver all my reports on time, my forecasts are generally accurate, my models are well built. But you're not actually providing recommendations or being proactive, help the business move forward, which I think it goes with that self aware, like you said, when you start to combine those together, that's when you really will start to see opportunities open up because you're making others lives easy, not just doing your job requirements really well. Job requirements are the table stakes. That's what we expect. It's how do you take that and make more out of it in the sense of adding value to the business.

Yep, great points, great points. Taking that extra effort to think about that and, and manage it, you know, don't just let it happen, but think about how can I make this better.

And, and I wish I would have spent more time during my career, a lot of time just kind of doing the job versus thinking about how do I manage this to make things better. Because it really, it makes a difference. We're going to move into the FP and A section here. I have a couple different FPA questions I'm going to ask you and we're going to start with what does great FP&A look like? What is great FP&A in your mind, Steve?

You know, I think one thing is impartial and data driven. So you want your FP and A not to be sponsored by a sales department or the operations people. So I think, you know, we want to look to the FP&A. You're going to get great data analysis and that they're data driven. So it isn't somebody's opinion. It isn't. And so I think FP and A is kind of based on that independence of thought, using data. So that's a kind of a really important concept, I think for people to understand. I think FP and A teams, that means all the people in the team need to be intellectually curious. So I think you want to understand the next level. You have this craving to know more. And normally it should be about the business craving to know more. How can we make this better? But this intellectual curiosity that says what would happen if we did this? Nobody's ever thought of that before. What, you know, how can we. And I think that's, that's a great kind of. It is maybe innate. I don't know if you can build that, but you want people that will have that burning desire to be that way. And then I think, you know, dynamic and strategic insight. So they want, you want to, you want to be able to be flexible. So you want to be able to cater to people's needs and adjust your thinking. Because I think that if anywhere people need to evaluate options so they need to come up with options. So I don't think. I think they have to be very open to dynamic changing of a business and strategic so thinking on a high level and then I think, you know, being able to give actionable, insightful, you know, important insights, you know, that are so being able to raise above to say here's what's important, you know that, you know the paperclips aren't that big a deal. If you buy 10,000 more, it's not going to kill us. But boy, if we don't sell product C more of that, you know, we can see products D, E and F are going to decline. So you know that insights that say what depend the dependencies in the business. And it all comes down to, you know, capital allocation. How do they understand how we best allocate capital and how we. And that's really when it comes down to it. FPA is all about how companies should be reallocating capital and deploying capital. And so thinking at that level strategically is important. And then yeah, so I guess I.

Would say FPA Guy here today I want to talk about the FPA Guys Ultimate FPA Course Bundle. This bundle includes over 10 hours of content recorded by Ron Montero and myself, many templates and great lessons to make you a better FPA professional. The content includes FP and a business partnering, how to manage tough conversations, build world class relationships and hold the business accountable. Includes Modern Excel which is a real game changer for the way you'll work in Excel. Excel Tables, the gateway to modern Excel Power Query, a game changer for transforming your manual processes and loading data into and then dynamic arrays. Next we cover modeling design principles. In this course we talk about the importance of designing models in a certain way and how important it is that you think about design. And last but not least, driving value through smart analysis, how you can conduct data analysis to be a better FPA professional. Go ahead and sign up for this bundle@the fpnaguy.com that's the fpnd a n d a guy.com use the code podcast to save 25% get started learning today. As you said that especially the capital allocation I couldn't think of, couldn't help but think of Warren Buffett. Could you see him in an FP A department?

He would make a great FPA guy. Wouldn't have he?

Yeah, I mean because he said once, you know, that's kind of what he was born to do type of thing is allocate capital. Right? That's what he's doing it as an investor in FP&A we're helping ensure how we're allocating capital is smart. It's really what it comes down to when you boil it all down is are we doing a good job of allocating capital? And you'll know by the returns in your P and L you're constantly losing money or your numbers are getting worse and worse, then you're not doing a good job of allocating capital. Now there may be external factors for that. That's your job to help the business understand that and determine if you need to go in a different direction. But at the end of the day it will be pretty obvious in your financials if you're doing a bad job well.

And FP and A, it is their most important role. But it's not something we necessarily task them with the first. But when you think about it, there's, we've allocated capital. How is that doing? And where would we reallocate? Where should we reallocate capital? That's a really tough question because you have to kind of see that third dimension. And so I think, you know, challenging FP and A people to think about if we didn't have this product, where would the capital to make that product go? Or if we weren't in this geography, where would the capital to run that geography go? And that's a, that's a kind of a third tier question. That's, but that's where, you know, a really thoughtful, curious FP and a team is thinking about, you know, yeah, you guys say we make a bunch, we sell a lot of this product, but is it really, you know, are we really getting a return on the capital? And I think that's kind of an exciting area for FPA and where a lot of data and analytics can help us and we're really moving much closer to that than we were, you know, 15 or 20 years ago.

Got it. Thanks for that. All right, next one. What's the number one technical skill FP and a professional should master?

The number one technical skill. You know, I talked about our roots accounting and finance and so I still think account you need to understand financial statements and, and kind of how, how, how businesses make money, which is how, you know, so, so understanding, you know, how a financial state, how they interact and what, what they mean is, is super important. Now you stick that in a chat GPT and it's going to tell you Excel modeling skills.

Right.

I mean so, and I, I, I'm sure but I think it's more fundamental than that. It's understandable.

We're going to try that right now. Live. Keep going.

Okay, you do do that right now and see what happens. But I, so I think the fundamental understanding of finance be able to communicate. I mean finance financial statements are what we use the language of business. I mean it is the language of business. As much as, you know, they seem like they're, you know, a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper that people want to, you know, disparage, there's still how we communicate in business. Right.

Are you ready for the answer from Chat GPT?

I'm ready for the answer.

It disagreed with you. So we have another area of disagreement.

Okay. Okay, good.

Number one technical skill for FP&A professionals to master is not accounting. It's advanced Excel proficiency.

So advanced versus just Excel. So okay, okay. We can argue about that if you want but you know, I think and those, and, and you're, you're deep into it. I saw your modding skills when we did a, we did a job with Prashant and I saw your high level and those are very valuable. But I think what came first was the understanding of accounting and financial statements. In fact, I know it. I'm sure I, I, I would bet my life on it.

You have to have a fundamental understanding of finance.

Yeah. And so, but, and frankly, you know, okay, so here's what I did today. This morning, preparation. I stuck in a fake financial statements, just, you know, sales into ChatGPT and said make me, make me a forecast. Okay. Some averages makes a four. Just like you would do in Excel. You make. Okay, I'm going to use an average. There's no, I'm not giving you any other information. And then, and then I said, well, now tell me. So this is the fun part. Now tell me what happens. Where, where I should, what should I focus on? What area of the P and L should I focus on to improve my business the most? And it made up an answer and it wasn't, it was an okay answer. But that answer is going to get better and better and better. So your ability to use finance, use Excel, I think is, that's great right now. I think we still really need it, but eventually it's going to be asking questions. It's going to be asking the right question. Not being able to use dynamic arrays and all those big fancy things you do that I, that right. I mean it's, it's not going to be that something else is going to do that for you, but being able to ask the right in is, is going to be what's Important.

Yeah, there's definitely an element of being able to get something else to help you think about it. I mean I can use CHAT GPT to write formulas for me now I can use co pilot, they can help enhance my Excel skills. You need that understanding still to be able to validate things. And so I think when you have the knowledge, you're more deadly with CHAT GPT. But there are definitely areas where it's going to change. And over time ChatGPT, I think will do two things, will make us more strategic and more big picture human. The soft skills. It's also going to make us a little more technical, but in a different way. A basic understanding of coding like Python and data science will allow you to do things that you could never do before without years of that.

Yeah.

And so you'll see more of that needed than how to write a vlookup.

Yeah, yeah.

Right. And so that, that's what I see happening is a little bit more technical, but in a different way and not the same depth.

Yeah.

And more strategic.

And we're still building on the same platform.

Right?

You're still building on the same roots. So I think that's a great point. And what I, you know, I don't know, we haven't talked much about, you know, generative processing yet. But if, but if I think about it, how, how I see that happening is using it as a reference tool. So when I, when I use it, and I don't want to pre, pre jump on a question you're going to ask, but ChatGPT, for example, is something I use. I'll, I'll try to get my own answers first. Here's what I expect to see whether, and then let me see what that says and compare the two. And it almost always gives me new ideas, very rarely better ideas by the way, but very more ideas that I can leverage. And so I think that's the, the tools that we have available to us in AI are going to certainly do those things you mentioned and just help us get better. But you can't let it think for you.

Right?

I mean it's not going to think for you. You're going to have to have a stable of really a good background to begin with and even some hypothesis yourself. I think otherwise you're going to kind of blindly travel into areas that you're going to make a lot of mistakes.

Yeah, I totally get what you're saying. So let's go ahead and go to that question for a second. You shared a little bit of how you're using generative AI. So a two part question. What are you mostly using it for? And do you have a tool you prefer? Is there one you mostly use? Are you trying all of them?

You know, I don't think I'm as far along as you are on this. So I still a chat GPT. I use Claude for a little bit that didn't and kind of got out of that. But you know, when I'm how I use it is as a. To check something and to maybe an example would be we're forming an advisory board. So I put out, here's the skills I think we need, here's the dynamics, here's how, here's what I think I want out of this advisory board and here's how I want to put it together. Here's the skill sets we need for a company like ours And I put that together and then I ran through ChatGPT and I got a really, a really pretty, a lot of interesting ideas and thoughts like oh, I missed this and this is. And so that's where it augments, you know, it augments kind of my initial thoughts and frankly, for the millions of people it's checking at, you know, who am I to think that it's not better than me in some of that? So I think we got to be realistic that some of these areas, if we're not the technical experts or the deep expert in a certain area, chat GPT is going to go to a lot of, a lot of areas that have that expertise. So I think that's where if, if you're not the subject matter expert in the world on a specific area, you know, using it to help you is, is a, is a real, is a real bonus.

Yeah, I think, I think it's a great point there. I agree. All right, so now back to the next question for FPA professionals to master. What's the number one soft skill, you.

Know, in the general realm of communication? I would say being able to connect with people and so, you know, call that part of the influence but you know, understanding how people are perceiving your message and being able to change that if people aren't receiving your message. And so how often do you hear somebody complain, I told them that and they didn't do it. It, you know, I told, I told them to do that and it didn't. And why didn't they do it? Well, look in the mirror and say they didn't do it because they didn't believe you or they didn't take you seriously. So if you ever hear anybody saying I told them and they didn't do it, then look in the mirror because you didn't tell them. Right. You didn't use the right language, you didn't have the right support, whatever. But so I would say that piece of connecting with your audience so they know, so they can understand you better is really important. And that again comes back to self awareness, you know, so how do you become self aware and connect with the audience? So that's, and that's how you get people to listen to you. When they, when you connect with them, they listen to you. If you're not connected with them, they kind of, you know, toss you aside.

And I asked ChatGPT this question as well, figured we'd it, gave two responses and told me to let them know which one I prefer. We won't read through all of them. They're a little long. But both of them said the number one soft skill is effective communication. And then they went on to talk about data storytelling. Translate complex, you know, ideas, data driven recommendations to non finance stakeholders, you know, that were a bridge between finance and the broader business. So I think a lot of things you're talking, you took a different approach, but I think there's definitely some similarities between them.

Looks at me as an expert.

That it does. You, you. They probably went to CFO University and.

Just said, here's what Steve said.

All your stuff for their training. It's amazing how much material they have. All right, we're going to move into the get to know you section. So this is where I get to ask some questions about you. You're a little nervous, I know, but you'll do okay. I think you can pass. Favorite hobby or passion? What do you do in your spare time?

You know, when we're not chasing grandkids.

I knew grandkids were going to come up.

Yeah, we're not chasing your head. I'm a pretty big cyclist. I love getting on the bike and tooling around, mostly Clark county, which is where I live in Vancouver. And that's kind of my healthy habit and my way to get away from work and the solitude, you know, that, that I get. So that's, that would be my biggest hobby.

Love that one. All right, what is the one book you'd recommend to our audience? If you could recommend any book, what you going to tell us to read?

You know, I don't know how well this book is known, but, but it's called the Design of Business by Roger Martin and a friend here, Albrecht Enders, who's An innovation specialist, had me read it a few years ago and you know, I, I, the whole message to me stood out. And I, I like to think of myself as innovative, creative, curious and all this. And what he talks about is going from, you know, the, the heuristic to the, from the mysterious to the heuristic to the algorithmic. So all these things, you know, you look at the data analysis and all this and try trying to get a place, improve things so that it kind of happens automatically. And you think about that from a business standpoint, you say, well, that really is smart. How do we, how do we take that, you know, mysterious, something we don't know, to the heuristic, to something that we can kind of, we've practiced and now we can do it ourselves, to the algorithmic that now we just plug it in and it works. And so, and salespeople hate this when we talk about it because salespeople, one of their biggest strengths is their heuristic knowledge, right? They, they know it. Nobody else does. They have their customer Rolodex and nobody else does. So they, they don't necessarily like that. But if you could figure out how to do a sale without having a salesperson, and I love salespeople, so I gotta be careful. But, but you know, that's, that would be the algorithm that you'd want to use. And so I look at that innovation and so I've always taken that book. Book. Every couple years I read it again and highlight and I, I just take a lot out of it from an innovation standpoint and creative standpoint. So that's, that's one book that people may have not known that I'd recommend.

See, I, I, that's why I talk about software tools. So nobody can know as much as me all about containing that in.

That's right. That's where you create your value right here now.

All right, favorite travel destination. If you go anywhere in the world tomorrow, where are you going?

Okay. And okay, I'm going to Dallas, Texas.

Why Dallas?

Dallas because that's where our son took our two grandkids and his wife a few years ago.

So I figured there were grandkids involved.

I knew, actually, and our other, our oldest daughter and our youngest daughter, we have three kids all live close by here. So Dallas would be one place now if you said, but if you couldn't go to Dallas, where would you go? I think I'd book a ticket to Bermuda or to Geneva, Switzerland, for personal reasons. On Geneva and then Bermuda, just a beautiful place.

All right. I like it. So we got Bermuda, Geneva and Dallas. If you can figure out what those three have in common, let me know. I got a prize for you.

Oh, but I don't do it right now. I can do it later because I'll definitely give you an answer.

Sure. And I already have the. I already know what the prize is. I'll tell you offline, though. I don't want to, you know, get anyone too excited.

It. Okay.

All right. If you could have dinner with one person in the world that's alive, who you taking to dinner?

That's alive.

Yep. Gotta go. Alive. I should have added that to the question, but I. I'd like to add a little.

A couple. Couple things. So let's think about. Okay, so I'm gonna stay away from politics just because I. I think that I'm sick of politics with the election so close.

Yeah, we're right before the election, so anyone in the US Is probably like you. They're sick of it. Can we just get it over. Over with?

Right. So Tom Hanks, because I just love his movies, so I think. I think I would love him, but.

Run, Forest, run. Got it.

I hope I. And I hope I wouldn't be disappointed, but I. Tom Hanks would be one. And I think Stephen Covey, love his teaching. Love his teaching.

He. He taught at my alma. Before he started his own business. He taught at byu.

Do you ever have a class from him?

I didn't. We had a class where we did his 7 Habits book and discussed it. He had left. Left before I. A couple years before I got there.

Well, the Seven Habits I. I use. So I worked on a job 20 miles away, and I would leave on Monday mornings, come back Thursday or Friday nights, and I got the tapes from the seven, and I must listen to that book seven or eight times through my trips to. To Pendleton, Oregon. And I just really got to really like the way he. What he taught and what he preached. The other thing I would do, people. So, you know, you asked about who was alive, the people who are dead. I think it would be all the big religious leaders, whether that's, you know, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius, maybe even throw in a few philosophers, Socrates or something in there. But that would be. I think that would be pretty interesting.

Imagine sitting down at dinner with the great religious leaders over all time, like Martin Luther, you know, the Protestant revolution, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius, whoever it might be, of all the different religions out there. That would be really cool and really just spend a couple hours understanding them. That, that would be amazing. I'll be the fly on the wall for that one.

Okay, well, I'll invite you when I, When I go.

Okay. When you make that happen, let me know.

I'll let you know.

Another great book and then we'll wrap up here. I don't know if you read it by Stephen R. Covey. Is Principle Centered Leadership really? Good one. He talks, he makes that whole argument look great. Leaders have principles they don't violate, that they always follow. It starts on a base with being principally centered. Right. Those are those core values so you don't get yourself in trouble. It doesn't mean you can't be situational and you treat everybody different. You need that awareness, but you need that core to keep you grounded.

Well, I'll pick up that book for sure because I love his writing. His. His son. Do you ever read the Speed of Trust?

Trust? I, I know the concepts. I haven't read the whole book.

It's a pretty good book, too.

A little bit of the concepts in a couple of our courses that he has.

Yeah, it's a, it's a worthwhile read as well.

Yeah, it's definitely one I need to. All right, well, we're on wrap up time here. We've. We've had a great conversation almost a hour long here. So the question, last question, is any other advice you offer to anyone listening who wants to be a CFO one day? You can give them one more piece of advice or just kind of a wrap up.

What would you tell them that say, be curious, be bold, be heard, and be learning. And that means listen, be bold, be.

Curious, be heard, or be listening. And what was the fourth one?

Be learning, be learning.

Got it. Be heard, be learning, be curious, be bold. Love it. All right, if someone wants to learn more about you or get in touch, what's the best way for them to do that?

They can find me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with them. So just. Steve Roosevelt, R O S V O L D. And they can, you know, get, they can get to me pretty easy on LinkedIn. It's probably the best way.

Yeah, that usually is. It's quite easy these days. And we'll definitely put your profile in the show notes. So thanks for joining us, Steve. I enjoyed chatting and you have a great day.

What a pleasure, Paul. Thank you for having me.

Thanks. 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 earmark cpe.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.