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.

Change was the other name of 2019 and the area of corporate finance was no different to experience massive fast-paced change. We saw many topics which were “great discussions” in the past now being implemented... these changes are going to stay and will intensify further in the year of 2020 & beyond.