Financial trainer, speaker, and author Andi Lonnen discusses the skills finance professionals need to develop to move into a finance business partner role. Lonnen’s formula for success sets out the ways finance professionals can upskill to move into the role with knowledge, creativity, and confidence.
She also discusses the importance of speaking the language of other departments, where a background in finance can be advantageous to the role, and how professionals looking to make the transition can develop a deeper understanding of their organisation’s goals and challenges.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
- Nine skills finance professionals need to be effective business partners.
- Ways to demonstrate and translate finance skills into business language.
- The importance of getting “personal” when forming connections across departments.
- How finance professionals can add value to their organisations in a business partner role.
- Why remembering to be human is fundamental to success.
Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:
— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Steph Brown at
Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.
Transcript
Steph Brown: Welcome to the FM podcast. I’m Steph Brown. It is the second day of UK & Ireland ENGAGE. We’re recording live from the event. I’m here with Andi Lonnen, a financial trainer, speaker, and author. We will be talking about the business partner role. What skills finance professionals have in their jobs that they can bring into this role, what skills they will need to develop further, the transition process into that role, and how finance professionals can bring the most success to their organisations as business partners.
Welcome to the podcast, Andi. Thanks for coming on.
Andi Lonnen: Thank you very much. Nice to meet you, Steph.
Brown: Can you tell me a bit about the business partner role and how a background in finance complements the demands of that role?
Lonnen: Absolutely. Business partner has been talked about for many decades now, but it’s only recently that it’s become really popular. I think people in finance, myself included, have many amazing skills and knowledge and experience, and they can really bring that to help drive an organisation forward and add some real value.
King Charles himself said, “accountants will save the world,” so he knows that accountants have some real magic in them.
I always remember sitting at a conference and someone saying to all the accountants in the room: “What is ordinary to you is extraordinary to everybody else.” I thought that’s so true because no one in the rest of the organisation fully understands what it is that happens in finance and they think it’s some kind of dark art. It’s finance bringing that unique and special skill set to help drive the organisation forward and help achieve those strategic and commercial priorities.
Brown: Thank you, Andi. You’re discussing in your session today some of the ways finance business partners can bring success to their organisations. Tell me more about this formula for success and what it means to you.
Lonnen: We created a finance business partner formula, as you say, the formula for business partnering success. We start off talking about the finance business partner mindset, skill set, and daily actions. The finance business partner mindset is about being focused and intentional on delivering real value to your organisation each and every day.
The skill set is our 9 Cs finance business partner formula. I can go through all those if you like, quite quickly. But those are the skills that people need to be a finance business partner, whether you’re called that or otherwise.
But most importantly, it’s those daily actions that you take. Every email. Every discussion. Every meeting. Every report. Every presentation. Everything that you do every single day is when you business partner. It’s not done at a special time, whatever on Earth that would mean. Finance business partner mindset, skill set, and daily actions. I can run through the 9 Cs model quickly if that will help.
Brown: Yes, please.
Lonnen: Sure. This will test my brain. The 9 Cs Model, sometimes called the 99 Cs Model, you can make up your own mind for this. The first C is connect and collaborate; the partner element of the finance business partner role. Relationship building; negotiating; influencing; networking. All that good stuff.
Communicating is the second C — communicate financial information effectively and simply in a way that the rest of the world can understand. The third one is clear strategic thinker: real business skill, looking forward [at a] high level, and really staying connected to those strategic goals.
The fourth C, commercial acumen, the business element of the finance business partner role. Fifth C, a favourite of many; change agent and challenge the status quo, challenge the way things are done around here so that you can be that agent for change and make a positive difference in your organisation. The sixth C is computer, digital mindset. Really embracing how you can automate and move things forward. It doesn’t necessarily mean a brand new fancy IT system. It’s what can you automate now? What can you systematise now? What software free or low cost can you use as well? How can you use what you already have better? A lot of us can probably only use a tiny percent of Excel, for example.
The seventh C; curiosity, creative, and can-do attitude. Research found that you have to be really self- motivated to be a business partner because it won’t always be welcomed by the rest of the organisation. I was previously called a spy where I worked because business partnering wasn’t well understood and they just thought I was there to take jobs, take their budget. There’s a lot of work to be curious in the organisation, to find out what challenges people have so that you as a business partner can help them do their jobs better, help them get over the finishing line, help achieve those strategic and commercial priorities that we talked about, and being creative in your solutions when you’re connecting and collaborating with people as well.
The eighth C, I love this one; calm, confident, in control. The PwC research report into business partnering found you have to earn that trust to sit at the decision-making table. One way to achieve that is being calm, confident, and in control.
The final one; competent finance professional. The finance element of the finance business partner role. It’s a bit of a jigsaw. We need all those things, which is a lot of things, to be a great finance business partner.
Brown: A lot of the Cs, I suppose, finance leaders and professionals use in their job just now. But perhaps in your conversations with those leaders and professionals, are there any areas they’ve said that they need to develop more skill and more ability there because they don’t necessarily use it in the day-to-day?
Lonnen: Exactly. Probably all of these things. We have a finance business partner competency assessment, which is based on the 9 Cs and we have five behaviours in each C category. At the start and end of a programme, we’ll get delegates to complete that to see where they’re at. If you’re talking about curiosity, you might go, “I’m really curious.” It’s like, “when was the last time you asked a question, what did you ask that question about, who did you ask it of?” Really getting into the nitty gritty. Communicating financial information effectively, “how much are you using jargon, are people just sat around the table being nodding dogs or are they actually understanding what you’re saying and getting involved in the discussions?” And so on.
We actually get the managers to complete this as well for the delegates. You get truth. People are terrified of that. But sometimes the managers can think you’re doing a better job than you think you’re doing yourself. But it also really helps identify gaps where people might think they’re strong. It’s not a bad thing, it just means that they need to work on it and develop it, but at least it is moving forward all the time. It’s always a work in progress. We should never stop learning. The Richard Bransons of this world don’t stop learning. We need to keep moving forward and keep developing each of these areas of skills there, for sure.
Brown: In August, we spoke to Paul Thambar, an associate professor of accounting and he talks about that there are some obstacles [to], for CFOs in particular, transitioning into a business partner role. Sometimes organisations might underestimate a finance leader’s ability to have, I suppose, business acumen, and because some of the ways they’re quite siloed, it’s difficult for them to transition into this pathway. I wonder what your thoughts are on that?
Lonnen: It’s so true. Actually, a research report found that the biggest complaint of operational managers, so perhaps a level down from CFO and C-suite, about finance is they don’t understand the business. A lot of finance professionals were really shocked at that and go, “Yes, I do.” How do you evidence that? How you evidencing your knowledge of the business in emails, discussions, meetings, presentations, reports? You have to talk business, not finance.
You have to connect the dots between your numbers and the commercial reality. What’s actually happening in your organisation? But you have to talk their language. Otherwise, they’re not listening in the way that you want them to listen and [paying] attention to what you’re saying. Yeah, it can be a challenge, but it’s getting stuck in. It’s being, I guess, the best way to say is just that bit more human. It’s the connect and collaborate piece. Get out into the business, have coffee chats with people. Even if you’re remote, you can organise things like that.
But find out what’s keeping people awake at night. What are their key challenges? How can you support them with those key challenges? Somethings to finance professionals are so obvious because of their training, qualification, and skills that they have, but it’s not obvious to everybody else. There’s so many ways that you can really help influence and support the business and it’s really important that you do that and demonstrate that, and that will help with that commercial piece.
Brown: What do you think organisations can do to encourage, I suppose, more collaboration in the C-suite, to make sure people have an understanding of each other’s roles, so they know [how to] build on this business knowledge and can have a clearer understanding of everyone’s contribution into the company?
Lonnen: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I think it’s lead by example. Don’t be siloed as a CFO yourself. Show that you’re getting involved in the business yourself and encourage your team to do that as well. I think it can be helpful for other C-suite executives to let their teams know to get involved with finance and the difference that that can actually make. Then you’ll find the complaints are, “but I don’t understand what they’re saying,” and that comes back to the communicate financial information simply and effectively. We think we’re doing that, but we might not be. We might be talking in numbers. We might be talking in jargon, and so on.
You’ve got to start somewhere. Start with something and see how that works. Like I said, I was called a spy, but I just got myself stuck into loads of different meetings and just gate crashed really. But then I found what their key challenges were. I thought, there’s a report we can do for that. I just didn’t know that was what they needed from us and they didn’t know that we could do that. Until you get out there and work with them, it’s difficult to know what their key challenges are and how you can better support.
Keep working at it. Be personal with people as well. Find out something about their lives, something that they love. Whether it’s sports teams or beekeeping or whatever it is. Something that you get to talk to them about on a personal level, so you break down scary, intimidating barriers that people have when having conversations with finance.
Because I know in finance people are really busy and it’s relentless and deadline driven, and everything else. It can be really easy to not make time for those coffee chats and just to say hello to someone, “how did you get on last weekend?” And that sort of thing. That couldn’t be more important instead of people thinking, here comes finance again. It’s like, brilliant, it’s such and such with a name.
In fact, actually, I was talking to a lady who in their finance team, the HR department moved into their open plan office and she heard a comment from one of the HR people who said, “Oh, they look more human than I thought.” She was really insulted and I said, “Oh my gosh, you should be really flattered that people [are] thinking [people in] finance are more like humans and real people.” Because people elsewhere in the organisation can think certain things of us in finance if we go back to the days of Scrooge. If you went into your local high street and asked, “how would you describe a typical accountant?” You can imagine what some people might say, and it’s your job as a finance business partner to break down those scary and intimidating barriers.
Brown: It’s interesting, talking about just seeing people as humans, there’s been such a trend in conversations through ENGAGE, in lots of different areas of business people mention that, so it’s really interesting.
I’d like to touch on value and what it means to bring value to the workplace. What does value creation encompass for those in finance who move into a business partner role?
Lonnen: I think that’s a good question because we’re always told to add value and people go, “what does that mean?” Adding value, to me, means helping your key stakeholders do their job better. I keep on saying it, but I want to keep saying it so that you can drive the organisation forward and you can help it achieve its strategic and commercial priorities.
That’s where you add real value. That might be cost improvement. It might be revenue or profit improvement. It might be efficiency improvement. It could be lots and lots of different things. But it’s no longer about here’s a bunch of numbers and off you go.To add real value, it’s knowing what the strategic and commercial priorities of your organisation actually are and then focusing relentlessly on everything that you do is geared towards achieving that.
Brown: That’s great. Thank you, Andi, for being on the FM podcast today. Thank you for sharing all those insights. I’m sure our members will be really happy to hear a different angle…[on]…the business partner role and what can be achieved there, and what skills are needed to make a difference in that role.
Is there anything else that we’ve not touched on in this conversation that you would like to add?
Lonnen: I think one more thing is about digital and embracing digital; but remember to be human. The World Economic Forum identified that some of the most important skills going forward, particularly in this digital age, are strategic thinking, commercial thinking, creativity. Things that only humans can currently do. So, remember to develop and keep working on those human skills and then you’ll really stand out as a value-adding finance business partner.
Brown: Thank you so much.
Lonnen: Thank you for having me.
