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Getting Your Seat
To get this started, let's make an assumption. The assumption is that the finance team members you are targeting to "tell us why and drive it" have core financial analysis skills. They can put together a discounted cash flow, read and interpret financial statements, prepare financial models, and do "what if" analysis. They can access the necessary data, and run models to twist and cut it.
The skills of facilitation, relationship building, communication, and driving strategy are tougher to get your arms around. I call these the non-traditional finance skills. There are several ways to develop them. For me, the start came with my role as a cost accountant. I had the necessary mundane assignments of explaining different operations variances, but I was also very lucky. As a cost accountant, I was a new product development committee member. It's where I learned the inner workings of Sales, Marketing, Operations, R&D, and Quality Assurance.
In this role, I was able to learn how things work, and develop a foundation of institutional knowledge required to understand why certain decisions are made. After I developed it, I focused on these 3 skills to get my seat at the table:
1. Understand the business model
2. Build and sustain relationships
3. Communicate why things happen and drive change
1. Understand the Business Model - To get your seat at the table, you need to know and understand how the organization structure, purpose, products, services, customers, strategic partnerships, and supply chain come together to create and deliver value. Crunching numbers and sitting in your cube will help, but ultimately Finance leaders need to get their people out of their chairs. Whenever possible, your finance team members need to volunteer or "be volunteered" to work on cross functional projects that boost their business acumen. A few ways to get this done are to have them travel on sales calls, work in production, or complete job rotation assignments. Give your best and brightest people assignments that will stretch them well beyond their comfort zone.
2. Build and Sustain Relationships - Have you ever been in this position? You've been asked to find out why the average selling price is down this month. So...you head over to marketing and sales and talk to the people in the know. They divulge something that makes you scratch your head. You go to a cross functional meeting, and the subject comes up. You repeat what you heard, and the sales and marketing team feels that you threw them under the bus. Nice work.
To build and sustain relationships, you have to help colleagues achieve. If they come to you with an idea, work with them to figure out a way to get it done. It's easy to say no. An example that is commonly seen is when a sales person wants to close a large deal, but there are some credit terms that need to be worked through. If you follow the letter of the law, you just say no. However, if you come up with an idea on how they can get 80% of the way there instead of no, you now have that person's trust. The help you gave will spread like wild fire through the sales department, and they will view you as a problem solver - not a stop sign. Your seat at the table has been reserved.
3. Communicate and Drive Change - In Accounting 101, they tell students to be barometers, not thermometers. Ok, that's fine. However, there is so much more. The barometer needs to tell the business leaders more than which direction they are headed. Leaders want to know why they are headed in a certain direction, what can be done to keep it that way or change it, and finally, whether or not it's sustainable. Can someone provide this insightful analysis from cubicle land? Heck no. Finance people need to master skills 1 & 2. The third, communicating and driving change is actually a powerful reward for mastering the first two. You now have the ability to influence decisions, achieve consensus, and drive change across the business. Your toolbox is well stocked!
Developing these three competencies will earn Finance a seat at the table. It takes effort, skill, and sometimes a complete change of outlook. When it's done well, Finance earns a respected and valued role in establishing strategy, and the responsibility for owning the results of the business.
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