Essential Soft Skills for FP&A Analysts to Influence Decisions and Build Strong Relationships
In this special episode, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A Guy, recaps key insights from the past six months of interviews on the "FP&A Tomorrow" podcast. He reflects on the soft and technical skills needed for financial planning and analysis (FP&A) professionals, shares standout advice from his expert guests, and dives into what makes great FP&A.
Paul Barnhurst, known as the FP&A Guy, is a finance professional with years of experience in the field of FP&A. Through his podcast, Paul brings in thought leaders to share their expertise, providing actionable advice for finance professionals looking to level up their skills. The episode is packed with tips from top CFOs, finance leaders, and FP&A professionals who have shaped the field.
Expect to Learn:
Learn the human skills that will help you collaborate better and drive impact in your organization.
Discover why financial modeling, Excel mastery, and understanding data are critical for FP&A success.
Hear expert perspectives on what makes FP&A teams truly world-class, with an emphasis on technology, data, and strategy.
How to translate complex financial data into actionable insights that your business partners can easily understand.
Why anticipating business needs and solving complex problems are vital traits for anyone in finance.
Here are a few relevant quotes from the episode:
"In FP&A, communication skills are crucial because you're translating complex finance into actionable insights." - Paul Barnhurst
"Learning to simplify is an art. Great FP&A professionals can take complex models and make them understandable." - Paul Barnhurst
"Understanding data architecture has been huge in my career—knowing how systems work together can set you apart." - Paul Barnhurst
"Great FP&A comes down to having the right people with the right skills, all working toward the same goal." - Paul Barnhurst
From mastering technical skills like financial modeling to honing soft skills like empathy and storytelling, Paul highlights how FP&A professionals can drive real business impact. By empowering teams with data, communicating clearly, and anticipating future needs, FP&A becomes more than just a financial function—it becomes a strategic partner to the business.
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Website - https://www.thefpandaguy.com
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguy
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Enroll for Financial Planning & Analysis Certificate Program:
Sign up for the 8 week online financial planning & analysis certificate program by Wharton Online and learn the art of forecasting, analysis, business partnering and financial storytelling: https://bit.ly/4flxfbO Use Code: THEFPAGUY300 to save $300.
Earn Your CPE Credit
For CPE credit please go to earmarkcpe.com, listen to the episode, download the app, and answer a few questions and earn your CPE certification. To earn education credits for FPAC Certificate, take the quiz on earmark and contact Paul Barnhurst for further details.
In Today’s Episode
[01:29] – Introduction and overview
[03:27] – Key soft skills in FP&A
[09:44] – Essential technical skills
[15:50] – Personal dinner choices
[20:10] – Defining great FP&A
[26:25] – Courses and training for FP&A
[31:41] – Business partnering in FP&A
[36:37] – Final reflections and wrap up
Full Show Transcript
[00:01:29] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Welcome to FP&A Tomorrow. The number one show about FP&A. It's brought to you by Paul Barnhurst aka the FP&A guy. I am your host of this show and we talk to industry experts, thought leaders, practitioners on a weekly basis, bringing many great guests this week. I'm really excited to have a special episode for you. We're going to highlight the many different things we've talked about over the last six months on this show.
[00:02:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Some of the great guests we've had on. We're going to talk about what are the top soft skills they want you to have, the top technical skills, what is great FP&A what does great FP&A look like? And we've had many different guests. We had Brian Lanier multiple times, CFO Tom Schultz, fractional CFO Andrew Jepsen, business partner training Ryan Sanders, who talked to us about what private equity and venture capital and investors look for from FP&A and finance. Jack McCullough, the head of CFO, Leadership Council and a CFO many times himself, talked with us and shared great advice on the board deck and many other things. Bonnie Tomei, who's been a CFO, Dara Gaurav and Navya Gupta, who both come from the product side, Urvi Kapada joined us. Christian Wattig, the program director for Wall Street Prep, joined us, and the list goes on and on. Jim Cook, who was the first CFO, first finance hire at Netflix, and others. Trevor Anthony, chief of staff. How he got into that? Zach Rial, Julio Martinez, the CFO of Abacum. Ron Monteiro, my business partner Julian Castelli, Doctor Liran Edelist and many others. Great guests covering all kinds of different subjects. So where I want to start are what are some of the top soft skills that have been listed by each of these. Every episode we ask people to tell us what's the top soft skill? What's the top technical skill FP&A professionals need to learn and if people know I like to call them human skills, kind of non-technical skills instead of soft skills.
[00:03:50] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Not a huge fan of that term, but you get the idea. There's a theme in the soft skills almost all of them have to do with communicating, which isn't surprising, but there's different ways that's shared. Like Jim, Jim shared: look, it's about active listening. What I love about that answer is it goes beyond communication. Active listening means you listen to learn, not to respond. Next time you're in a conversation, ask yourself, am I thinking about what I should say next? Or am I actually listening and trying to empathize with that person? Multiple people talked about the art of persuasion and the ability to influence. Many have even mentioned that book, the Art of Influence or the Persuasion of Influence by Cialdini, I believe, as he wrote, that Robert Cialdini. So that's a great book that you could check out. One I really liked is Christian Wattig said building meaningful professional relationships. So not just building professional relationships, but meaningful where you can make a difference where they can be fulfilling. Collaboration came up, you know, in FP&A we're collaborating all the time. And if you're not, you're not doing it right. Then lots of people said communication just gave that word. Communication skills. One I love that gave more than communication was Jim Cook. He said data storytelling. Jim is a master.
[00:05:14] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Check him out on LinkedIn. Listen to some of his videos. Listen to the podcast he's done. This is a man who knows how to tell a story, knows how to present, and can draw you in. So Carl Seidman, we had an episode where we talked all about presenting. He's a master presenter. He understands the value and the art of communication. Probably my favorite answer, and I've had this a couple times. I don't think all those episodes have been released of who said this, but Jack McCullough. Empathy sometimes gets confused with sympathy. You can empathize with somebody even if you don't agree with them. So I love empathy. I think that's a great one. And I think we all need to be more empathetic, understanding where others are coming forward, be better in our jobs, better in the world. Another one who said empathy is Bonnie Tomei. That's who the CFO and I recently had a third person who said that on an episode that will be coming, a different one that was kind of unique, that I thought was out there, was Tyler Cipher's. Learning to set expectations. And I think that's a really good one, because in FP&A, our job is to help the business achieve their goals, and we need to hold them accountable and to be able to hold them accountable, we have to set the proper expectations. This is an area I wasn't really good at and something I would focus on more if I went back into FP&A is making sure you set the expectations for your employees and for your business partners, so everybody is on the same page.
[00:06:47] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Another interesting one gets to the communication, but it was very detailed. And the answer is Philip Watson. Translate spreadsheets so non-finance people understand them. So basically communicating and translating finance for non-finance people don't use finance terms, speak to them in their language, make sure they know what you're talking about. Maybe instead of using acronyms like T and E, say the travel expenses were up. This is what we saw. Or you know, make sure you say revenue and use really clear what you're talking about, not bookings, but you're talking about P and L revenue because they can confuse that. Well why does your number not match my number. Well there are accounting differences. When you say accrual explain what that means. Make sure you're really trying to talk to them in their terms. Liran Edelist said understanding business processes. I think this is a great one. One of the top things you can do as an FP&A professional. I'm not sure if it's a skill, but that you can do for sure is learn the business. Spend time understanding the business. One of the best decisions I ever made is I changed the process when we brought a new employee in, instead of having them learn the business or reading documents and things. Even though we hadn't read some stuff, we spent most of the first week having them meet with different people in the business, joining a sales call, talking to a product person, sitting on a customer service call, and really getting to know the business and see what others do.
[00:08:23] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And when I did that, I found the employees integrated much better. They came up to speed quicker. Anything you can do to help your FP&A employees understand the business is huge. And then Renato, CFO of Get Parallel, or CEO, I should say he's the co-founder. Understanding of what the company is trying to accomplish, and what the leader that you report to wants from you in the role. I thought that was really interesting. Understanding what their needs are and understanding what the business is trying to accomplish, which he's getting back to. Understanding that helps you deliver the end of the day. The most important thing for FP&A is delivering on what the business needs. Those are soft skills. As you can see, there are a number of different ones. Some of them is about setting expectations. Most of it is about communicating. One other Julian Castelli telling stories through charts. So really being able to tell the story clearly, communicate with the business and build relationships, come out again and again as a theme. And if that's something you're struggling with, take a communication course, read a book. A great one is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
[00:09:36] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And there are so many others. There's things you can do to get better at those skills. So make the investment today. Now let's talk technical skills. Again on technical skills, I would say as I'm looking at the list here, it didn't have as much variation as we did in soft skills, but there are definitely some different ones at the top of the list. Clearly the top two and I think they go together is mastering spreadsheets. Most people said Excel if they mentioned one, and financial modeling that came up again and again. Different words were used. Driver based modeling, you know, clean, simple financial model, speed and Excel error free model, flexible model. And some said just forecasting. So going beyond modeling. But at the end of the day, as an FP&A professional you need to understand how to build models. That's why I'm such a huge fan of what Financial Modeling Institute is doing with the AFM and building certifications. If any of you are interested in invalidating your modeling skills and getting a certification. I have an affiliate with FMI. They sponsor my other podcast, Financial Modelers Corner, and if you use the code Podcast, you can save $100 on their test. You could save 15% on their trainings that they have. They have a fundamentals training for modeling and I highly recommend it. I learned a lot. And so I think modeling is very important. Some people talk about three statement modeling.
[00:11:06] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And that's going to vary depending on your role. If you have to be able to build a three statement model. But it's a good skill to have. And so that came up the most. But what were some of the others that came up? I love this one from Brian Lanier and I'll share an experience. Brian said learning the art of the sniff test. How many of you have ever worked with somebody that they present a number to you and you're like, how could that be possible? I remember somebody saying, you got a number that was like $1 trillion and the whole business was 10 billion. And the person goes, well, that's what the system gave me. Yes, but didn't you look at that and think, that's not possible? And I worked with a guy who had taken over a job that I had. He'd been trained on the process, who was running a report, developed a number and put it in front of people, and the number was like 100 billion. And the entire revenue for the year was like 150 million. And he had no idea that it was wrong. But I ran the process. That's not enough learning the art to be able to look at something and say, it doesn't smell right, it doesn't look right. My gut tells me something's wrong here, and I should dig further and try to validate if what I'm thinking is true or not. Sometimes it may turn out it's right, but it's really good to develop that skill.
[00:12:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So I love that one from Brian Lanier. You know, Jack McCullough says; Analytics. We have to be able to analyze data. It's not FP, it's FP&A and I, like CJ Gustafson once said, for the longest time he thought FP&A was fat on the P. Really good job doing a lot of work on the planning and skinny on the A. We need to do more around the A. Some other interesting ones. Tyler Cypher said copywriting. Really? That one surprised me, but he explained it. So if you haven't heard it, go listen to that episode. I think that's a little tease for you. Go check it out and see why he said that. Being a data architect, that's been huge to me in my career. I love that one. By Ken Lane and Andrew Jepsen both said accounting debits and credits. That's the language of business. It's the building block. It's the foundation where all the numbers start from, and you have to understand financial statements. I think that's a very important skill to have. Another one, and this is probably one of my two favorite answers. The other would be from Ron Monteiro, my business training partners from Carl Seidman. Carl Seidman said the number one technical skill is critical thinking. Can you think critically? Can you use a framework? Can you dig through things? Can you do hypothesis testing? Can you really get your hands dirty and think about the different possibilities? And that kind of goes with something he said.
[00:13:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Another time is FP&A should be the great anticipator being able to anticipate what's coming. I think critical thinking goes closely with that. Another one that I really like, probably my second favorite, was by Ron Monteiro. And he said, basically the art of simplifying, being able to simplify that is huge. Can we simplify what we're doing? That's a weakness of mine. I'm very detailed. I'm trying to get better and better at simplifying, but often my models are more complex than they should be. That's a skill to work on. Two others around data that I liked. One, Liran Edelist, who I like to call him the doctor. Doctor Liran, he said understanding data, which didn't surprise me. He came from consulting and installing tools a lot. On the technical side, for me, understanding data was huge. I started in a finance analyst. It was called finance analyst role, but it was really a report writing for a year. And I had to learn how the databases worked. I learned a lot about data structure, and that has served me extremely well throughout my career, and it's helped me do things that other FP&A professionals couldn't. The other on data that I thought was really interesting is from Jim Cook. So what Jim Cook said is a forensic expert of systems. You need to be able to understand systems, how they work together, how you can get the data out of them.
[00:15:21] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Because at the end of the day, data is, as has been said, is the new oil. The decisions, the recommendations you make, the things you do all come from data. It starts with that data and builds from there. So he says, become an expert of the systems, being able to get that data out. Being able to help them make sure they're getting the right information in. And so I really like that one. I thought that was a unique one. So those are many of the different ones we had around top soft and top technical skills. Next you know a little fun of who did people want for dinner. I'll just share a few of these. Leslie Stuart wants to have dinner with her husband in Italy. Winnie wants to have dinner with her 93 year old grandma. So I love those answers. Jack McCullough. It's my wife. Richard Tame, my wife and Jose Maria and some others that we got. Zach Rial was a smart aleck and said he would take me to dinner. I didn't hold it against him.
[00:16:17] Host: Paul Barnhurst: FP&A guy here today, I want to talk about the FP&A Guys ultimate FP&A course bundle. This bundle includes over ten hours of content recorded by Ron Monteiro and myself. Many templates and great lessons to make you a better FP&A professional. The content includes FP&A business partnering, how to manage tough conversations, build world class relationships, and hold the business accountable. Includes modern Excel, which is a real game changer for the way you'll work in Excel. Excel tables the gateway to modern Excel. Power query A game changer for transforming your manual processes and loading data, and then dynamic arrays. Next, we cover modeling design principles. In this course, we talk about the importance of designing models in a certain way and how important it is that you think about design. And last but not least, driving value through smart analysis how you can conduct data analysis to be a better FP&A professional. Go ahead and sign up for this bundle at thefpandaguy.com. That's the fp and a guy.com. Use the code Podcast to save 25% get started learning today.
[00:17:34] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Ron's talking to Oprah Winfrey. Jim Caltabiano is talking to Phil Jackson where Jon Laudie wants to talk to Andy Reid. So you can see some of those clear sports clubs in there. We saw Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, was there, my doctor Liran, and many others. One said Steph Curry, right. They have their sports. They're a huge sports fan. Four people said Warren Buffett. That was a very common one. Elon Musk was in there and others. Mother Teresa, Bonnie got to go with someone who has passed away. Navya Gupta went with Michelle Obama. Ryan Sanders broke my heart being a Chicago fan since I'm Utah Jazz and went with Michael Jordan.
[00:18:19] Host: Paul Barnhurst: We had Elon Musk a couple times, Jeff Bezos, Malcolm Gladwell. What I find interesting is almost most people, almost everybody had somebody different. There were a few the same, you know, Warren Buffett's common, but I love the different reasoning. Sometimes it was very personal. I don't know how much longer my grandma's here. I want to be with her. It's obviously my wife. Sometimes it was somebody they admired that they learned from, like Ron: Oprah Winfrey. Love how she's so passionate and found her love and interviewing people and was so good at it and so successful. Others picked that person that was extremely successful in business Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk. Some went with the sports hero and they all have their different reasons. And I think that's so true of people. We are all different. We all have our different reasons for why we want to do what we want to do. And as FP&A professionals, the better we can understand those we work with, the better we can work with them. And I think this is just an example of going through each of these lists, how different we all are. Like, if I go to the next one, books. Never split the difference. The hard thing about Hard Things. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The catcher in the Rye. Principles by Ray Dalio. Fred factor. Five dysfunctions of teams. Thinking fast and slow. How to win friends and influence people. The Storyteller by David Grohl.
[00:19:44] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Amp It Up by Frank Slootman Lincoln on leadership. Right. That's so many different lists and different areas. Historical figures, story based like a Fred factor, someone's life principles, many others in there. One person just said science fiction in the mystery book was their list, which I thought was interesting. So you got a little bit of everything. The last thing I want to talk about is I want to spend a few minutes going over what people said makes great FP&A. At the end of the day, if you're listening to this show, you want to be better at FP&A. You're not listening to it for entertainment. It's not what you're doing in your free time. For most of you, you're doing it because you love listening to these conversations. It makes you think. Hopefully it helps you be better at your job. And we all want to be great at FP&A or create a great FP&A function. So let's start with Leslie. Leslie Stuart worked for Walmart, has done a number of transformation projects as a transformation specialist. There's a lot of traditional FP&A functions that have really evolved into great ones by leveraging more technology, leveraging more data. And that's really where I see teams excelling and what I've seen throughout my career, that those teams are doing wonderful things because they're starting to leverage new information, new ways of working and an evolving economy. What a great answer. I really like that answer from Leslie, because it takes a very different approach and says you can get good FP&A.
[00:21:25] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You can be really good at things, but great FP&A comes when you're finding ways to enable your organization through technology and data, which is what her role is. So she looks at it and says, my job is to help unlock to enable great FP&A. I think you can be great without technology, and it's probably not how I would answer that question, but I really like that answer. It made me think because technology is huge. If you've ever been in a job where you're doing everything manual, it's much more likely to lose that employee. There's I'm done, I'm out, or you just get bored, frustrated. Next, Winnie, she joined with Jim Cook, I think episode 7 or 8. She goes, I always think that great FP&A is the balance of technical and soft skills. Balancing those two and taking it and translating that into actionable plans to communicate with the business. So basically taking those technical skills and translating them into something that can be actionable. How do you get the business to understand and make it actionable to achieve the goals? Gets back to communication. Grade A is having strong technical skills, but then being able to take those and influence the business with the analysis you've done. If you're not able to influence the business but you're great at analysis, you're going to fail. You're not going to make the difference.
[00:22:51] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That last mile of the presentation of the conversations, that's huge. It's usually where the decisions get made. I love this simple answer from Jim. Jim Caltabiano, who has worked at Campbell's and other companies. Great FP&A is all about the insights. It's all about being able to connect insights for the business, period. So how do we give the business meaningful insights that they can use to course correct or do things better, or improve the business in one way or another. Next one, I have Jack McCullough here, and his answer made me think. I think he summed it up very well. I really love the second sentence, he said, but I'm going to read the whole thing and then we'll dissect it. You know, it's a great question. The answer constantly changes, but fundamentally great for people. They empower people to make better decisions faster, and that's an oversimplification. But the tools are there. The workforce is there. The expertise is there. It's a critical skill. So I love that I'm going to review that main part. I want to say it one more time, fundamentally great FP&A people. They empower people to make better decisions faster. So think about that. Are you empowering yourselves team to make better decisions faster? Are you empowering your customer support team? What that requires is an understanding of data, a willingness to share it and to give insights means you have to be able to analyze it.
[00:24:39] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You have to be a real partner. You're going to need to understand the business. But if you're doing that, you're going to be loved. You're going to be a great business partner. And frankly, I would say Jack would agree you're on the path to CFO if that's what you want. More and more FP&A people are becoming CFOs and more CFOs are becoming CEOs. Finance is becoming more strategic, more commercial, more operational, less back office, less numbers based. Yes. You need to understand numbers. Obviously, the number one technical skill that most people listed was financial modeling and mastery of the spreadsheet. You have to know those things, but those are table stakes. That's not what great FP&A is. They are just how we talk to the business through the numbers. It's through the models, it's through the analysis. We do. But it's in the communication, the partnering, the collaboration that we drive change. This is a little longer answer, but I like this one from Ron. Great FP&A to me is being very involved in the business. It's being at the table, so to speak, and helping the business make better decisions for the future. You know, all the things we do in FP&A are important, but to me is: are we shaping the business? That's what matters. Are we shaping the future results? Are we looking forward? Are we looking backwards? To me, it's clear that super involved in the business is necessary for great FP&A are we implementing things going forward that are really impacting the business.
[00:26:19] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Are we challenging the business? And I really like this answer, and I'd say Ron is a fabulous person. If you're looking for somebody to do FP&A training, Ron is great. I'm lucky enough to be his partner, and I'm going to take a minute and talk about a couple of our upcoming courses.
[00:26:34] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Looking to level up your career and build skills that make you stand out to the hiring managers. How about earning a certificate from a world renowned business school? Wharton Online and Wall Street Prep have partnered to create an eight week online financial planning and analysis certificate program. You'll learn the art of forecasting, analysis, business partnering, and financial storytelling from Wharton Online's world class faculty, coupled with first hand exposure to technical and interpersonal skills with real world applications as practiced in top corporations, space is limited, so level up your career today and use the discount code, THEFP&AGuy300 to receive $300 off tuition. That is THEFP&AGuy300 to receive $300 off tuition. Learn more by going to wallstreetprep.wharton.upenn.edu/.
[00:27:35] Host: Paul Barnhurst: In November we're having an advanced FP&A course where you can join us. We're going to get in deep on budgeting and forecasting and other topics around FP&A. It's going to be a six hour training we'd love to have you attend with us. We'll talk about practical storytelling and influencing the business.
[00:27:53] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It's going to be a great course. Then we also have in December our best practice FP&A course, the last 20 students from our last four courses who have completed the survey, all 20 recommended our courses to a colleague. Our Net promoter score. Think of a great Net Promoter score. I think Apple is in the 60s. You may have a business in the 70s, right? Those are outstanding net promoter scores on the quality of our course. It's 80 on the instruction like the trainers were at 90. And we've got 100 NPS from the last two cohorts. So the results have been fantastic. We have lots of testimonials so we'd love for you to join us. I won't continue to sell the course, but please consider bringing us in for a corporate training or joining one of our courses. All right, enough said on that. Carl Seidman, here's what he had to say. I think the great FP&A looks like a team of people who are equipped, from a technical standpoint, to be able to execute the kind of requests that are being asked of them. And I love that answer, because first, equipped from a technical standpoint, that could be tools, that could be knowledge, that could be a combination. But he's first saying, great. He has the skills to be great. If you don't have the skills to be great, there's a problem. You may not be able to deliver what the business needs, and then you can execute the requests that are being asked of them.
[00:29:26] Host: Paul Barnhurst: He goes on to say they have the ability to anticipate where the company is going, where questions may arrive, and then in addition to having the accounting or financial background, they have enough awareness and familiarity with the operations of the company. They can ultimately dive down deep into those individual functions of marketing and operations and sales and HR, and be able to lend an analytical mind and critical thinking perspective to the people who are in those groups. So great answer there. Another fun one that I like. Bonnie, Bonnie Tomei, we talk about great FP&A. It's about being great partners to all of our strategic executives and leadership team and not just being internally driven, but there's also an external component. You gave the example of great FP&A should be able to figure out what the roadmap is for the company financially, and what they need to do to achieve the targets. So at the end of the day, great FP&A helps achieve the targets. They know what the business needs to do financially, the numbers, how the strategy relates to that, and they're able to help the business achieve it. Let's run through a few more of these because I think we can all learn from the different ways people think about FP&A. My hope is as I talk about these, it will give you an idea of something you can work on.
[00:30:43] Host: Paul Barnhurst: My goal is always to give a call to action. My call to action to each of you, if you listen to this episode, is either find a soft skill or a technical skill to work on, or something you're going to do in your organization to go from good to great. Or if you're already great to go from great to really great, or maybe from average, wherever you're at, I want you to take something away from this episode to be better. Better as an individual, better as a team. You all have different roles and you can define what that better means. But my goal when I'm creating content is to help you, and I know I become better from listening to this. I can promise you, if I went into FP&A today, I would be a different FP&A professional than three years ago. When I left FP&A, I would act different. I would focus on things differently, particularly in that business partnering, the communication, the big picture, trying to simplify many of the things that we hear again and again from our guests. So let's run through a few more of what makes great FP&A. Great FP&A is about bringing people together. It's not about the numbers. It's not about all the reports and forecasts we pull together. It's about bringing different departments and teams together to help your business partners make the best decision possible for the company, and sometimes decisions that would not have come out if any one department was working on it by themselves.
[00:32:06] Host: Paul Barnhurst: But the collaboration. Not about the numbers. Not about the reports. It's not about the forecast, people. It's bringing people together and helping make better decisions. Let's run through a few more. I'm going to take, I think, probably 3 or 4 more here. Richard Tame. He's like, we could spend the whole time talking about what makes great FP&A. But from his perspective, and he's been a CFO at several companies, I would think I would say it's all about the people. Great. FP&A comes from having great people. So are you hiring the right people? Have they got the right skill sets and how do they blend together? If you think about, you know, great organizations, I think Jim Collins and some of the work he's talked about getting the right people on the bus and getting them in the right seat. Do they have the right skill sets? If they have that, they will then be able to influence the business and deliver on results. Jon Laudie, CFO at zerorez, great FP&A in my mind, is a function that is deeply integrated into the strategic planning and the decision making of any organization. I like how he talks about it's not just helping make bigger or better decisions. There's a strategic component. One of the first articles I wrote back in 2017 was how strategy was kind of the secret skill for FP&A, or kind of the myth skills one not talked about enough.
[00:33:31] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Being able to bring a strategic focus to FP&A using frameworks. And the example I gave of that is British Airways decided to launch a low cost airline. FP&A should have seen that that didn't align with their overall strategy. They had a much higher cost structure and they couldn't be competitive. It really should have pushed back and cautioned the business that there was a huge risk here, because from a strategic standpoint, it didn't make sense what they were doing. When Core decided to launch a water product under the core name, it was the disaster. American Express launched prepaid for underserved and unbanked people didn't work well. The prepaid cards didn't really match with their high end exclusive cards and having a Premier card in the industry, they didn't align. All right, I'm going to read two more, and then we're going to wrap up here. I think I'm going to do Christian Wattig and we'll do Julian Castelli. Christian, to me, FP&A is at its best when you make a concrete recommendation that helps the business move forward. That's where your variance analysis, your financial model or your storytelling pays off because you can say, hey, I did this analysis. This is the insight I have, and this is what I think is where real opportunity lies, because then it's really rewarding if you have the chance to implement it. That's the fun part and see it through.
[00:34:52] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So really it's about giving concrete recommendations, helping implement those and making a difference for the business. All right. Last one here I want to share. Julian Castelli, he tells a story kind of gives an analogy, and that's what I like about it. Great FP&A looks like the windshield and dashboard of your car, so I hope everybody's picturing with me the windshield, your dashboard, all the little instrument readings and thinking about it, he goes, it's what is out in front of you. And if you don't have a windshield and headlight, you can't see if anyone's driven at night without their headlights working. Not fun. I'll tell a fun story. I shouldn't tell this, but it's probably about 17. My headlights had gone out. I was trying to get home, driving with a friend and an old beater truck that I had. I was speeding as well. Bad idea. I got pulled over by a cop and because my headlights were out and fortunately I was able to fix them. It was a fuze. I knew it was. It was a bug in this vehicle. I should have pulled over and fixed it right away. I was able to get a fuze in there and get the lights working, and he didn't give me a ticket, but I remember how hard I was straining to see how difficult it was to only look out that windshield without those headlights. So he says it's what's out in front of you.
[00:36:09] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And if you don't have a windshield and headlights, you can't see. So without FP&A, you can't see what's ahead of you, and you don't have the dials on the car to tell you whether you're going to run out of gas or how fast you're going, and whether your oil levels or pressure is too high or too low. So it's the dashboard and the windscreen of the car. And I'm always amazed at how many people don't really understand that. Again, you can see FP&A is critical and I could keep going.
[00:36:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: There are many more examples here, but I think I'm going to wrap up. I want to thank you for joining me for this special episode. But more than anything, I want to thank you for reading my content, for gaining value out of my content. I love the emails and the notes I get from people who say, I love your podcast, or I appreciate your content, or you've helped me with this. I try to respond to everybody. I may not always be able to do it, but I try to respond and help everybody in any way I can. And I love what I do. So thank you for supporting me. Thank you for coming on this journey as I started FP&A tomorrow six months ago, you know, started my own show. I've really enjoyed it. Please reach out, give me names of guests, people you'd like to have on the show, subjects.
[00:37:22] Host: Paul Barnhurst: At the end of the day, the more you tell me about your needs, the more I can address them and help you. So let's all go forward. Let's all find ways to make a big difference for the business to be better at FP&A. Let's go from great to world class. Let's have great communication skills, critical thinking, be able to drive those models, tell that story and help shape the business. As one of my favorite partners said to me one time, he's like, Paul, you don't just report the PNL, Paul, you help shape the PNL? Let's all help shape and impact the results in a positive way. That's what we want to do.
[00:38:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So thank you for joining me. I really enjoyed this episode. I hope you enjoyed the recap. And it wasn't too boring just listening to me talk, but thanks for coming along this journey with me and I hope to see you soon. Thanks for listening to FP&A tomorrow. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating and a review on your podcast platform of choice. This allows us to continue to bring you great guests from around the globe. As a reminder, you can earn CPE credit by going to earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app, taking a short quiz, and getting your CPE certificate to earn continuing education credits for the FPAC certification. Take the quiz on earmark and contact me, the show host for further details.