The author Andrew Codd is the producer of the Strength in the Numbers Podcast which interviews real finance practitioners to break down their hard-won lessons and deconstruct their practical methods that work on the job and which you won't typically find in textbooks or exams so that we create more influential finance professionals worldwide who solve meaningful problems for their organisations and in return have fun, rewarding and successful careers in finance. Within any organisation you’ll find some groups of people who are the most well-known and highly valued. Given there are many functions, groups, roles & people within our organisations today how can FP&A become, and be seen to be more valued?
Like many of you, I have spent significant time thinking about 1) What does FP&A do and 2) What should FP&A do? My team and I landed on this very “packed” vision statement for our finance business partnering group.
Does a career purely in finance hinder your ability to be a senior finance leader? Making sideways movements such as becoming a project manager which still has a massive link back into finance, or moving to a strategy department which requires an understanding of the financial implications of company’s strategy can be beneficial.
What are the fundamental attributes of somebody in a finance manager role and what makes a good finance manager, and for that matter a good finance team?
There is hardly any book on human relationships and influence that is as revered as Dale Carnegie’s ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’. A great many leaders across the world have sworn by and largely benefited from this masterpiece.
There is no lack of discussion about the skill sets that FP&A professionals need throughout their careers to be successful; even a cursory search on the Internet would provide a wealth of resources. Broadly speaking, those articles focus on four areas of skills: