In this article, we explore the real reasons why modern planning techniques are not widely adopted, despite their clear advantages, and what it takes to drive true FP&A transformation.
Grant Tait
After boarding school in Scotland and an accounting apprenticeship in England, where he qualified with the ICAEW, he was an auditor in London and Paris and, by this time, had saved enough money to pay for an MBA at INSEAD in France. His career continued in the European HQ of a US company in Paris, then three years in Switzerland as Finance Director. After that, he worked in Europe with multinational companies for 35 years. This involved intensive travel, which was fun. Travel included projects abroad: distribution agreements in Tokyo and Amsterdam, new offices in Barcelona, and fraud in Geneva. He attended many meetings from Denver to Amsterdam and managed teams in the USA and around Europe.
Working in corporations is typically stressful. Stress increases during crises: takeovers, financial difficulties, and more, when working with toxic managers. He worked for several bosses who never made decisions. This resulted in his first book after he retired: "How to become a no-decision manager", which won a silver medal from the Non-Fiction Authors Association in the USA. His latest book, ‘Fun with Accountants,’ was published in November 2024. Grant also has a blog on https://granttait.com.
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The financial manager must accept that if the plan goes well and is considered excellent, credit goes to the boss. If it goes badly, then the no-decision manager blames the financial manager. The no-decision boss will present the plan as though it is their own and will never reveal that it was prepared by someone else.
A plan, for an incompetent manager, is just an administrative task that needs to be completed to satisfy the boss and headquarters. Nothing else. There is no attempt to think about objectives, goals, roadmaps or any of the classic planning principles. For a boss this behaviour should be easy to detect, but if they are unaware of their inherent incompetence, then the incompetent managers will remain undetected.
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