We are all storytellers in a sense but FP&A stories need particular skills to be great. In an era led by technology, data and automation, where do the stories fit? How will the FP&A stories of the future be told? What are the skills needed to be a great FP&A storyteller? 

One day in November, a worried operations manager for a transport company was preparing for a meeting with the group’s financial director. He’d been ordered to explain the overspending on his region’s fuel account for the first 10 months of the financial year. The variance was huge and the MD had hit the roof! There were many reasons for the variance.

Language is important and the words we use are critical if we don’t want to be misunderstood. Being explicit and specific in the words and sentences we use, will leave less to interpretation and is critical in order to be effective.  In this article I analyse three common phrases I hear regularly in the organisations I work with, what I suggest they really mean and how to break through the ambiguity of them.

These notes were made during the meeting of the FP&A Board on 6th February 2020 in London.  They are a mixture of comments made by attendees and thoughts of those who presented case studies. These notes are the copyright of the FP&A Board and are for the attendees of the FP&A Board and their business colleagues. They are not to be used in publications unless authorized by the FP&A Board.