Leadership Skills for FP&A Professionals to Improve Forecasting and Analysis with Brett Hampson
In this episode, Paul Barnhurst dives deep into practical frameworks and leadership strategies for finance professionals with guest Brett Hampson. Brett discusses what he believes constitutes great FP&A and how grassroots finance transformations, rather than top-down technology implementations, can foster a proactive, value-creating FP&A culture.
Brett Hampson has spent over a decade in corporate FP&A, working with some of the world’s largest companies. He is the author of The FP&A Operating System, a book that outlines his approach to establishing a high-functioning FP&A department. Brett is also the founder of Forecasting Performance, a platform that promotes best practices in financial analysis and forecasting.
Expect to Learn
What grassroots finance transformation entails and why it’s preferable to technology-centric approaches.
How to implement Brett’s FP&A Operating System and FP&A Flywheel framework to drive efficiency and value.
The importance of setting a clear vision and objectives for FP&A teams to move from reactive to proactive operations.
How to leverage attribution analysis and storytelling to enhance FP&A’s influence on business decisions.
Tips on creating a culture of continuous improvement within FP&A by focusing on people, processes, and technology in that order.
Here are a few relevant quotes from the episode:
“Grassroots finance transformation happens when each person on the team has their own vision and works towards solving specific challenges.” - Brett Hampson
“Technology alone doesn’t solve problems. It might fix one, but often creates new ones if cultural issues aren’t addressed first.” - Brett Hampson
“Our greatest challenge in FP&A is often ourselves – we need to avoid being too introspective and focus on the business.” - Brett Hampson
With insights into creating effective FP&A systems and teams, Brett Hampson provides a refreshing perspective on FP&A transformation. He highlights the importance of people, process, and then technology, in that order, as the foundation for a high-performing FP&A team.
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In Today’s Episode
[02:12] - Brett’s Background and Introduction
[05:17] - The Creation of The FP&A Operating System
[08:04] - Developing a Proactive FP&A Culture
[13:22] - Grassroots FP&A Transformation
[16:32] - People and Process Before Technology
[29:28] - Building the Right Team and Culture
[35:11] - Establishing Efficient Processes with the FP&A Flywheel
[39:52] - Case Study: Turning Around Forecast Accuracy
[52:16] - Final Advice and Wrap-Up
Full Show Transcript
[00:01:48] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Hello everyone! Welcome to FP&A tomorrow, where we delve into the world of financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects. I am your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A Guy, and I will be guiding you through the evolving landscape of FP&A. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your journey in FP&A, this show has something for everyone. This week, I'm thrilled to be joined on the show by Brett Hampson. Brett, welcome to the show.
[00:02:18] Guest: Brett Hampson: Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you. So let me give you a little bit of background for Brett. Brett comes to us from Ohio. He spent the last decade in corporate FP&A for some of the largest and fastest growing companies in the world. Brett is the author of the book "The FP&A Operating System". And he's founded Forecasting Performance as a way to teach FP&A best practices to others. So, Brett, I want to start with this question. What does great FP&A look like in your mind? What's great FP&A?
[00:02:51] Guest: Brett Hampson: That's a tough question, because I feel like oftentimes you can feel what great FP&A looks like before you can actually see it. And what it feels like to me when I'm in a great FP&A operation is it's proactive, it's efficient, and it's driving value. So what it looks like from the outside, it's hard to tell, but sometimes, like the teams are small, but those teams, those small teams are critical for business success. So it's less about team size. It's less about sophistication. It's more about like are these teams driving value for the business partners? It's almost like a role where you don't know how valuable they are because they're working behind the scenes and working through business partners to drive the value. It's like if you see a healthy company, you probably have a healthy FP&A team sitting behind it, driving it forward.
[00:03:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I really like how you said that sitting behind because we're not out front as FP&A. And if a business is performing well, especially of a certain scale where it's large enough to have FP&A, there's probably a good FP&A team behind that. They did a study where they found, based on some criteria they used, they graded a bunch of teams FP&A on, you know, best practice. And they found in general, those companies that graded high on their FP&A had faster growth rates, higher profit margins. Yeah. Which gets to what you say. You could generally see it in the bottom line.
[00:04:10] Guest: Brett Hampson: Right. And you keep the company out of bad news stories. Like so many times in the last few years, you see companies that staff up 5000 people only to staff down 5000 people. A few months later and you're like, that's an FP&A. Like, it's not exclusively, but you know it when you see it. You know, bad when you see it and you know good when you see it. And it's easy to feel when you're in it and to your point, like the company results tend to show you the fruit of what I would call the FP&A trees labor. It's like a healthy tree is going to bear healthy fruit. Just look for the fruit and you'll see it.
[00:04:41] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I love that example. And I think, you know, to go with that, you have to have a healthy culture or company as a whole for FP&A to really be able to show those results. Because I've worked in companies where I felt like we had good FP&A, but we had just a really toxic company that made bad decisions. And so you didn't see it in the results per se, even though I think we had a really good FP&A function given the environment. So I think it's kind of that symbiotic relationship. Good company and good FP&A tend to go together. If you don't have one or the other, you're going to end up with problems.
[00:05:16] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yeah. Couldn't agree more.
[00:05:17] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. So I want to start with. You wrote a book called the FP&A Operating System. Kind of talk about that. Why did you write the book? Let's start there.
[00:05:27] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yeah. Great question. So probably five or so years into my career, I had a mentor who's now like the chief operating officer at some company. He's doing big things, but at the time he was like a VP of sales, who I was supporting as an FP&A business partner. He came to me one day and it was like a little mentor session. I think he could tell like, hey, you're going to be good at your job. And he challenged me one day and he said, What's the Brett playbook? He's like, as you become a leader. I think I was talking to him about leadership or or like growing my career further. He's like, the next thing for you is creating more versions of yourself who are running around getting the same impact that you would do, but you've got to work through other people. And so he's like, what's the playbook for Brett? And I was like, okay, that's a really interesting question.
[00:06:10] Guest: Brett Hampson: But but the way he framed it too was like in the sales world, like sales playbooks, that's a very common thing. Finance. We don't talk about it. So like I made this connection. I think he was pushing me into it . Hey, if you can document your SOPs, your processes, your playbook, you can start to replicate that within your team. So all I did this for an operating system book that I wrote is literally just like everything that I've learned on how to do the FP&A job. Well, everything from reporting to analysis to forecasting to business partnership, setting a vision for a team, executing that vision, prioritization how to create like a prioritization roadmap for your team and then execute against those parties.
[00:06:52] Guest: Brett Hampson: It's like literally everything you need to run an efficient, high value FP&A operating system into just as many pages as it took in order to do that. So there's obviously like micro decisions you have to make every day. But the book was really just like, what are the large things that I'm working towards? The cool thing about the book was like, I hadn't actually put this on paper before, but that mentor forcing me to put it on paper actually was like, whoa, wow. There's a process here. There's a repeatable process for if you haven't run a high value, efficient FP&A operating system, and then you then learn to run one and put it on paper, you can actually replicate it over and over and over again. So then throughout the rest of my career, like ever since then, that was probably five, seven years ago, I've been able to take that same playbook. I don't reread the book, but it's like it's all up in my head. I'm just running the same playbook over and over and over again, taking teams from, I'd call it reactive to proactive, that value added, efficient, everything we just talked about earlier, that's what the playbook has helped me to do. But originally it was literally just how do I get it out of my head? So I can teach my team this as I'm getting a larger and larger team working for me?
[00:07:56] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. So really, it started as how do I get what I have in my head on paper and got turned into a book at the end of the day. And so is there. You talked a lot about helping teams be proactive. Is there a key framework in there or methodology you like to do to help making sure your finance team, the people that are under you that you manage are proactive?
[00:08:19] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yeah, that's a good question. I feel like a lot of FP&A teams, the main issue that you'll find is they will fall victim to, I'll call it the squeaky wheel impact. So if you've got a business partner who wants something a certain way or they need something, or the business is putting pressure on you to get something specific. Oftentimes that thing is not perfectly or directly lined up to like, what's going to be the most value added thing for the company. So what happens with a lot of folks who are in FP&A who are great at serving their business partners, being in great relationship with them, doing great analytics for them. Building reports for them is they're often doing that stuff in the wrong direction, so they're not pushing it towards where the company needs it the most. So then what happens is if you go down that path for long enough, you sort of don't impact the business the way that you should. So I think for me, having a proactive FP&A culture is all about taking a step back and saying, what is the ideal vision for FP&A like, what is the ideal vision specifically for the four key elements in my FP&A operating system, which is reporting, analysis, forecasting and business partnering.
[00:09:25] Guest: Brett Hampson: If you can set a concrete vision for each one of those four, and then look at where your team is at today and then start to move towards that vision, you will become a proactive, FP&A organization. You won't get thrown aside by shiny objects. Or this hey, change the report color from red to green like I want it to change the columns, right? Like all that's so small and so inconsequential. But if you set your own vision, you take a step back and you really think about, like I said, reporting, analysis, forecasting and consulting, and you move towards those four, you will become a proactive, FP&A organization. So I know that was a little bit complex, but like if you set that vision, you look at your current state and you just map out the path to get there. I found that that's the best framework that I use to drive that proactive FP&A organization.
[00:10:11] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It sounds a lot to me like some of these seen maturity models that you have out there, where you assess yourself on anywhere from 3 to 6 different elements. You have four in your case, reporting, consulting or business partnering, forecasting.
[00:10:25] Guest: Brett Hampson: And analysis.
[00:10:27] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Analysis. Thank you. It slipped my mind for a minute there. And so you're just saying okay, what do I need to meet my objectives for the company. What would it look like in each of these where others may say, okay, high performing or able to do these things, you set out a path to get there. It sounds like a similar method, a little different approach, but same basic idea. Would that be a good summary?
[00:10:47] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yeah, And the hardest part? It sounds easy to say. Well, okay, just put the vision on a piece of paper for reporting, but like, literally like, if you're listening to this stop this podcast. Try to put your vision for reporting on a piece of paper and a couple of sentences because you're going to sit there and go, should it be automated? Should it not be automated? Should I be spending 30% of my time or 70% of my time? Like, you're going to have to work through some really complex questions to get to like a fundamental. Here's what I think it should look like. So you're trying to get to these like should statements. Reporting should be automated, should it not. And so you're going to work through these in order to get to your vision. And then once you have clarity on that vision the rest is easy. The rest is just steps and tactics to get there. But getting that concrete vision is actually the hard part. And like, yeah, just like if you can get there, you can become proactive. I think that's where a lot of FP&A teams go sideways is they actually don't have a vision for where they're going. They're just doing work. And I just have a fundamental belief that that is the issue. Root cause issue of a lot of FP&A teams. Not being proactive is a lack of vision.
[00:11:53] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I think it was. It was either last year or the year before. I can't remember now. We did a training with a company where we it was their finance department for one of the teams. That person is now the CFO of the whole company, and we came in and helped them establish a mission vision. But what were the behaviors that went with that? So it was the organization as a whole. And we spent a good, you know, day on that. It wasn't just a simple no, because every group came up with different ideas. Then they had to debate it as a group, like, well, is this the right word? Should we add this? Which one do we like best? And it takes time to come up with something that's meaningful that everybody can get behind. Right.
[00:12:28] Guest: Brett Hampson: And gives you enough structure to tell you where to go, but not so much structure that you get paralyzed by every little decision. Like it's a worthwhile exercise. I encourage anybody who wants to be an FP&A leader in any capacity, whether it's even an individual contributor who's leading their little team, or a leader like a CFO of an organization. If you can do this and put this on paper, I find that oftentimes you are 5 or 6 steps ahead of others who cannot do this. It's just a skill. So like practicing it, trying it out, it takes a day. It takes a week. You're going to reflect on it. It takes a while to get it. But once you get it, you can actually start to move in the correct direction based on what you believe is correct. Yeah.
[00:13:07] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Thanks I appreciate that. So I want to ask the next question. I'm not a huge fan of this term, but it feels like for the last two decades we've all heard it probably a million times. Finance transformation. Got to get that new technology and transform your department. You talked about when we were getting ready for this episode, the idea of grass roots fan transformations, and how you like that better than what we often hear today and often comes from, hey, buy the latest technology and we'll transform your department. So talk about what is a grass roots FP&A transformation.
[00:13:41] Guest: Brett Hampson: I think I share a similar dislike for that phrase. I've sort of avoided it too for a long time, and what I want to do is actually reclaim the phrase finance transformation, but in this kind of grassroots way. So the way that it works today, as you, as you pointed out, is a CFO feels that their team is not proactive. They're reactive, they're overstaffed, whatever it might be. They have cultural issues and they want to get better at it. The problem is the CFO from the top down can only pull a few levers. You can staff up, you can staff down, you can implement technology. There might be 1 or 2 smaller levers, but those are really the levers you have. The easiest one to do is implement a new technology. The problem is technology doesn't solve problems. Sometimes it will solve some problems, but sometimes it will create new problems. And dropping technology on an unhealthy culture doesn't fix the culture problem. It maybe fixes the technology problem, and in some cases it's the right move. So I'm not discounting that, but it's usually the only lever from the top down that a CFO can pull. What I advocate for is a little bit of what I was talking about with the operating system, which is like, how do you empower everybody who's on the front lines doing the work or leading the teams doing the work to come up with their own vision and move towards that vision in a way that's specific, unique and actually solves the problems that they specifically have.
[00:15:03] Guest: Brett Hampson: That might require technology at a local level, a small, bite sized piece of technology. It's not some massive ERP system overlay. Again, that might be the answer one day, but at each local level, you might have a small little software tool that you can implement. That's a few thousand dollars a month for solving a very specific problem that you need help solving. But this grassroots finance transformation effort, in my mind, is all about looking at your process, every single person and every single seat and saying, what are my gaps to achieving my vision? So it requires every single person going through what I was talking about with setting that vision and then moving step by step towards actually achieving that vision. If every single person does that from the ground up, the entire organization's culture changes without some massive overlay top down technology. In my opinion, I've seen that work really well as I've held enough different roles on enough different teams and implemented the same system over and over. You can start to see the entire department or organization start to shift, start to become more proactive, start to reach that really valuable end state where you're efficient, you're adding value, your forecasts are accurate enough, like you can get there over time. It's a slower moving process, but it's free to do this bottoms up level transformation work. It's harder, but I think it's actually more valuable to changing the long term culture of an organization.
[00:16:27] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I really like the way you said that, you know, starting with the bottom, the whole operating system, the mission vision. I've always said it's people, you know, process and then technology or some say platform, right. The three P's, if you start with technology, it's not going to solve your problems. It may address immediate pain points, but it's not going to create a high performing organization that comes through the right people with the right skill set. Having that process, that continuous process mindset. And then you can achieve even more when you implement technology that allows you to be more efficient. So you're not spending all your time cleaning data, because we've all been there where you may have great people, but the systems are so bad that you're still going to spend most of your time cleaning data, which prevents you from really focusing on your strategy, your mission, the moving the business forward.
[00:17:22] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yes, exactly. And I think I'm intentionally de-emphasizing technology because the pendulum has swung way too far, in my opinion, way too far in a tech only that's how you transform. I'm intentionally going a little bit further the other way and saying, put technology in last like I challenge you to think about your process, the product that you create, the people that you hire. What kind of talent are you bringing in? How are you ascending the right talent? How are you rewarding them? How are you retaining them like those are? I think more important questions that are easy to that's hard work, which is why grassroots transformation is not easy. But I think it's the right way. If somebody's willing and patient enough, I think it's the right way to transform an organization, then bring technology in at the last minute and solve very specific problems that you have.
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[00:19:30] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I agree with you that if I have to pick, I'm always going with people and process first. Yep. And you know what's interesting though, is I don't think most people see it that way. I did a poll on LinkedIn one time where I asked most people if they had the tools and technology to do their job to meet the business's needs. And overwhelmingly, people said no. Why do you think that is? Why do you think so many people are like, well, I can't do my job because of the technology?
[00:19:56] Guest: Brett Hampson: It's tough. We talked about it like, FP&A is the glue. It's sort of behind the business. I say this, it's kind of controversial for folks, and I'm okay with that. I say finance is a cost center. I get that we do drive value through the business. But at the end of the day, if you're looking to invest the next dollar in a business, it's often going to go towards marketing, product, sales, engineering something that more directly influences revenue or net income for the business. Finance tends to be at least a couple rows back in that line. We're almost never going to lead an organization in our tech solutions. What's worse is companies are having to change so rapidly nowadays from a marketing sales standpoint. Every company out there is trying new tech because they're trying to grow faster. They're trying to grow more profitably.
[00:20:46] Guest: Brett Hampson: So they're changing the tech systems underneath. And finance at its core is just a data function. We bring data and information forward to the business to make better decisions. So if they're changing their technology and we don't have budget to do good technology, we're just like three steps behind already. So like I get it and there's no there's no right answer. There's no easy answer. I think for finance leaders it's all about like, how do you have a vision for that? How do you just sit in that for a minute and go, we're never going to be the first. We're never going to have the best. What's a flexible solution we can implement that's going to help us to be more efficient? Can we offset the cost by doing something less of something? Maybe we have a technology that instead of staffing up three people over the next two years, we staff up one person.
[00:21:32] Guest: Brett Hampson: But we implement this technology at the same time. Like I think it takes a little bit more of a thoughtful, long term approach. And having a finance leader, CFO, whoever's making the decision who's well equipped to make that decision. Technology is changing really fast nowadays, too. So what you implement today may not be the best thing for you in three years, but you just don't know that unless you've, like, steeped in this technology culture, which I would argue a lot of CFOs and finance leaders just aren't until they have to. So there's a lot of reasons why. But I get it. And I see it and, and I think that's why FP&A like we become like Swiss army knives. We can kind of work with anything. That's why Excel is such a valued tool, because it can kind of do anything. So we become the type of person who it's like, well, that system is kind of broken. That system is kind of broken. I don't really trust that data, but I can bring you something together that I, that I actually kind of believe in. We're really good at that. And that's like, that's our bread and butter. So, like our downfall, which is not having great technology or data or whatever actually becomes our strength. If we can kind of just sit back, acknowledge it and then lean into it and tell people, hey, if I had this tool, I could have done so much more for you. But this is my limitations, and here's what I'm able to bring you with the time and the capacity that I have.
[00:22:44] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Great answer. A lot to unpack there. So I'll start with your comment about Cost Center. I've never liked when people say finance is a revenue center, we don't generate revenue. I will often use the term value creation or value creation cost center. We're to help create value. We don't generate the value. I mean the business does. We help them create it. And so yes can we help bring profit. But like you said, we're never going to be the first in line for investment unless it's regulatory. Or things are so broken that it impacts the rest of the business. Right. If it's just finance that's broken, rarely ever are they going to be like, oh yeah, yeah, we'll give the first dollars to you guys. There's a reason almost every study shows that finance is last when it comes to technology. As far as behind the other departments and using it. There are some other reasons we tend to be risk averse. And if you're a public company, you better be sure whatever you're implementing is going to be right. Or if you make a mistake on a marketing email, not not a huge deal. You get someone's name wrong or whatever. But if you release something publicly and your financials are wrong, you know someone's probably getting fired, right? So there is there's other reasons for it as well. But I think a big part of it is, like you said, we're just not going to be first in line.
[00:23:53] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And so developing that mindset to be kind of the Swiss Army knife is often what we have to do out of necessity, and then make those strategic bets on the technology where it's going to drive the most value over time, because it can make a huge difference. And I'm with you. I, you know, I've given it some thought of why do so many people think they don't have the tools? It's because, well, they probably don't have the tools to do everything they want. But you don't have clean data either. Nobody does. And so I think sometimes we have to change that mindset to say, I can be efficient in what I'm doing. I can deliver good value to the business. Even though I may not have good systems. I had to learn that in one role that I had where I spent a good year, finally getting actually probably almost 18 months till I finally got the data and the model to the point where I really felt I could hold the business accountable because it was just so terrible and we did not have money for systems, or our investors were not going to spend it. So you just had to figure it out on the back end.
[00:24:50] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yeah. And honestly even within Excel there's so much greatness. Things like Power Query even at a minimum like that's a game changer. If I had that when I was an analyst, like that it would be night and day from what we had. So I think yeah, it's to your point, it's it's adopt the mindset of like, this won't be perfect. I will never have perfect data. I think a lot of times we like to say, like when I have forget that you're not going to have perfect. You'll never. There's probably not a company out there that's going to have perfect data because. Or they will, but it's a dying company and they haven't changed in 30 years, so they've had a chance to catch up the data. Cool. But it's probably not where you want to work anyway. Like they probably don't actually need good FP&A.
[00:25:31] Guest: Brett Hampson: So any company that's worth your time and energy is going to have messiness. So I'd say like become the person, build your brand around being the person who can walk into a messy situation and create clarity out of it. Now that's what you can build a career on. That's what people like. Your name will spread like wildfire if you become that person. So I hear you too. Like a lot of folks are like, oh, I don't have the data and tools I need. I'm so frustrated. For me, I'm like, cool, this is not an easy thing. Let me do the hard thing. And if I can do the hard thing, I can start to win and my brand can start to show through based on the results I can get. Everybody knows how messy it is. Everybody's talked about how messy it is. Let me talk about how I cleaned it up a little bit and like move the ball forward. So I think it's an opportunity like and I'm not just trying to spin it that way. That's literally how I operate, like, if it's not going to change, like, what am I going to do? I either need to change or I need to find something new.
[00:26:25] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Really, that's what it comes down to. If you're not going to get the systems you want, you're not happy. You either need to change your perspective in the company you're working for, or find a new company to work for because you're not going to be proactive. Productive. If you're in an environment where you get caught up and it's easy to do in finance. Complain. As I like to joke, I saw this quote and it was around data science, but I changed it to finance. How do you summarize an FP&A professional's job? And it was you spend 80% of your time cleaning data and 20% complaining about the data you're cleaning. And I was like, yeah, that sometimes feels like the job. There are definitely days when that feels like that's all you've done.
[00:27:03] Guest: Brett Hampson: If you've built a brand where people trust you and people are like, wow, he makes something out of nothing. It was dirty and now it's clean. And this guy keeps helping us out. And if you've got a brand and people trust it, that last 20% of like, hey guys, I could have done this ten times faster if we had clean data or a better system. Just FYI, if you say that enough times that people trust you, the people in power will be like, hey, like, what can we buy you? Like we want to keep you. We want to keep you happy. Like, at some point, somebody's going to wake up and go. We need better systems. I've heard this enough times. We could have done this way faster. And the person I trust that's doing the work tells me that they've got a solution, and they're ready to book a demo as soon as I say, okay. Like there's ways that you can move this ball forward. And I think unfortunately, though, it starts with 18 months of cleaning up data and finally getting it to a spot where people can trust you, trust your judgment around the situation.
[00:27:57] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, 18 months, 12 months, whatever it is that the company. But it takes some time. It's not going to happen from day one. Huge fan of Power Query. Generative AI can help. Now you got Python in Excel Copilot starting to work with Python. I mean, what can be done now to even just two years ago, three years ago, if you're willing to invest is huge and you can really start to make a difference. I mean, the first person I hired when I became a director, and I really got promoted as a director because of what I was able to do with Power Query, of cleaning up data and delivering insights that nobody could because it was such a mess. They were, you know, so impressed. As I hired a data person, I didn't hire a finance person. You didn't want anything to do with finance, but I knew I needed to offload fixing the data to someone who could help manage it in the environment I was in. So that was the very first hire I did. And within a month, the CFO was like, hey, can we use them for all the other departments? Wait, that was supposed to be my person?
[00:28:49] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yeah. It takes some risk and it takes some. Like, I'm willing to step into the mess and try to make clarity out of the mess. And technically, there's potential failure there. But like, worst case scenario, you also don't do what the last five people behind you haven't been able to do. Okay, not the worst thing. Best case scenario, you're able to make some sort of step forward and people will look at you as like, oh, he did what they couldn't do. So it's not always about comparison, but like think about the pros and cons of stepping into that sort of challenge is what I view it as.
[00:29:21] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And I like how you said that. Look at the pros and cons. What do you have to lose? I mean, digging in and really focusing on that can make a big difference. But I want to step back for a minute. We've talked quite a bit about data, you know, how do you know that you have the right team in place before we talk processes, how do you ensure you have the right team and the right skills? Because we talk transformation, I think grassroots it's going to start with the people and the culture before processes or technology. So how do you make sure you have that in a good place?
[00:29:51] Guest: Brett Hampson: I've largely not found that there's a team out there that doesn't have the right makeup of people or kind of people. I think oftentimes the people are missing is a common vision or a roadmap on how to get there, and somebody who's willing to advocate for them to help them get there. So I think oftentimes people like they've all got there. Every single person in this world has strength and a superpower. Like that's I'm just fully convinced of that. It's our job as leaders to pull that out of them. So we may not have, like every, every skill set that we ever could want on our team today. But like, what do we have? So then therefore what can we move forward? What are people passionate about? So for me it's a little bit more about like, how do I draw that superpower out of the person and then move that, that piece of the vision forward. And then let's say that person goes and rotates to another team or whatever. I get somebody new, they've got a new superpower. So then I can kind of use that superpower to move something forward. And after a couple of years of doing that, if you stay with the team long enough, the whole team will have moved forward because you've rotated people, you've developed people. People are using their superpower to move the team forward. So I think, yeah, for me it's less about having the right team or the right makeup.
[00:30:59] Guest: Brett Hampson: And maybe I've just gotten lucky, but there's different ideas on how to structure a team that's best. The problem is, like as a company scales and as a finance team scales, you have to think about it so differently. A one person VP or like one person VP of finance team is very different than a ten person FP&A team. And like the path from one to the other isn't linear as well. It's not like you add this role and then you add this role and then you add it's you add this role and this role. And then you've got to like shift it a little bit. And then you add this role and this role and then you probably shift or add a manager role. Then you add this role and it's not a linear path. And you've got to adapt with the change of the business. So I think like more than anything it's like especially if you come in fresh to a team and you're a new leader, what's my vision? And are the people on my team able to move a piece of the vision forward? And if so, let's start there and then we can evaluate what skill sets we don't have that we need to go buy or build within our team?
[00:31:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So again, what I'm hearing is it comes back to the leadership, the vision and finding out how each person can contribute to that with the team you have. As a general rule, you should have a team that will allow you to get started and move forward. Occasionally you may have to replace someone or have someone that's not a good fit, but I would agree with you. Everybody has a superpower. There is some strength they have. How do you tap into that? Within the team you have.
[00:32:23] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yeah. No perfect science there. And I think that's why leadership is such a highly coveted skill set. Because it's people you're working with, people changing a business environment. And how do you bridge that gap? How do you enable the people to move the business forward? I haven't found a formula that works except for walk in, assess the situation, take a shot, and if something doesn't work, you pivot and you try something new.
[00:32:45] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I like it relatively simple. You see that you kind of plan, assess the situation, act and adjust. Not rocket science. Nope. Good leaders are pretty rare. I'd say at least great leaders. Maybe. There's a lot of average to good leaders out there, but great leaders are rare, and it's because they have that ability to tap into people's superpowers and get the most out of them. Yep. We've probably all worked for. I'm guessing you've worked for somebody like, I'd run through a brick wall for that person. And then you've worked for others where you're like, I can't wait till the day I'm on another team. And you want to get out of it? Could be a lot better technically. Could have a lot more experience, but they just don't bring out that leadership.
[00:33:25] Guest: Brett Hampson: Right. They don't have a clear vision. There may be over responsive to business partners. I'll put it that way. Maybe they don't. They don't stand their ground when it comes to, hey, we're over capacity. We need some support. Like, a great leader sort of runs that line of defense, but also sets the vision and paves the way for the people to go, like to your point, like step into that space where they can help drive the vision forward. So yeah, it's all I think a lot of it's intuition. I wish I could teach it because if I could teach it, I'd probably be in a different line of work.
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[00:35:05] Guest: Brett Hampson: There you go. Perfect, I love it.
[00:35:06] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Alrighty. Great. Well, now that we have our new business idea down, let's talk about the process. We've talked quite a bit about people. We've talked about technology. Where do you start with processes? How do you build that culture and mindset to have a team that's process oriented?
[00:35:22] Guest: Brett Hampson: So I'm like a two trick pony. I was talking to Paul about this earlier. I've got two tricks. One trick is my operating system. I love it, sort of documented everything I know as I was documenting that I felt this gap inside of me that was like, this is great, but it doesn't tell me how. The operating system is a very it's a what and a why, but what's the how. So I came up with this framework called the FP&A flywheel. And it's what I call it step by step. How do you work out that FP&A operating system? And what I'm finding that continues to be proven correct throughout my entire career is that FP&A can be boiled down to a certain set of steps and tasks that need to be done every month, largely call it 80% of companies share it, 80% of FP&A teams share the same tasks. So like, what are those 80% of tasks that are common, critical and value added that we need to be spending more time doing to drive the business forward? So I think part of my process answer is like, you've got to understand the 80% that drives the business forward. Then you've got to look at the rest and say, this is the rest of the 20%.
[00:36:28] Guest: Brett Hampson: If it doesn't drive the business forward, we should either eliminate or make it as efficient as humanly possible. So I think step one for me is you literally line up the monthly cycle with an FP&A or the quarterly cycle or the annual cycle, and you say, what are the critical steps in every single one of those? So it's a little bit tedious, but once you've identified those you say, how do I pour gasoline on those? How do we emphasize those? How do we spend more time on these, which is super counter to what most people talk about with FP&A where they're like, get more efficient, get more efficient. I'm here to say get more efficient on the things that don't matter, but get less efficient on the things that do matter. Spend the time, print out the report, literally print it out and sit down and read it and analyze it row by row. Use a ruler. I used to use a ruler with a pen, and I would circle things that seemed out of pattern and be like, okay, I got to talk so-and-so about this. You could automate that. Sure. But like, it's better if you don't.
[00:37:21] Guest: Brett Hampson: It's better if you sit down and study, use your brain to study that kind of stuff. So things like root cause analysis is one of the most critical things that FP&A can do to add more value to the business. So therefore we need to spend more time in that. Well, in order to spend more time doing root cause analysis, I think everybody would raise their hand and say, I wish I had more time for that. You got to look at the rest of the cycle and say, well, where am I spending too much time that I don't need to be? What can I automate? What can I streamline? What could I eliminate? What could I push back on business partners? What could I work with? Prioritization with my boss, key stakeholders to make sure that I'm doing less of that so I could do more of the stuff that actually drives the value. So for me, it's all about that FP&A flywheel and understanding the monthly cycle, the quarterly cycle, the annual cycle, finding the spots that are the most value added and putting those in the jar first and then taking out the stuff that doesn't matter or reducing it as much as humanly possible.
[00:38:15] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You said put it in the jar. I couldn't help but think of Stephen Covey and his golf ball example. Right? You know where you pour in all. You put all the rocks in after the golf balls are in there first, it fits. Put the rocks in. Then try to put the important stuff after and it doesn't fit.
[00:38:31] Guest: Brett Hampson: Exactly. Yeah. So if you identify the 80% that drives the most value, you put that in the jar first you're going to say, oh, I got to get to that other sand that's out there, all the requests, all the ad hoc stuff. And I'm like, I promise you that stuff can wait. It's urgent. It's actually not important. And if you wait an extra week, sometimes it just goes away. So I think a lot of folks will spend all of their time on the fire drills and the ad hoc requests that feel so urgent. But if you actually stop and you put the most important stuff in the jar first, sure, you can sneak in that little stuff around it when you've got a little bit extra time. But if you do it the other way around, it just doesn't work. So that's when I think process, that's what I'm thinking is like, what's the value added stuff? What's the low value stuff? And it's simple. Increase the value added. Decrease the low value.
[00:39:21] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Couldn't have said it better right? Decrease that low value. The time you're spending. Focus on the high value that will help you be more efficient in an organization. And when I say efficient, we're talking about driving value. Not necessarily. Hey, this thing I spent a lot of time on, I've reduced the amount of time I spent. You may spend more time on it if it's that important. And that's fine because it's a value add activity where you should be spending your time. All right. So you know, I have just 1 or 2 more questions. And then we're going to move into the kind of our standard sections that we have. So I'd love to know how have you used kind of that grassroots FP&A transformation in your roles. Like what's the first thing you do when you go into a new organization or a new role with the team? Kind of walk through maybe an example of how you've utilized these things? We've talked about the operating system, the flywheel and your crew.
[00:40:10] Guest: Brett Hampson: I'll go back to where I first started to develop some of these. I walked into a role in a large organization where I didn't realize it when I walked in, but I found out pretty quickly after we were being evaluated on our forecast accuracy every month or every quarter, whenever the forecast was due. So I didn't know this, but my senior leaders were getting a report card that had me next to it and said how accurate I was and how good my storyline was. So I very quickly said, thank you for that. I'm going to reverse engineer exactly how to win at this game.
[00:40:45] Guest: Brett Hampson: So it became a game to me. So it wasn't just like I'm doing work, I'm putting a forecast together. And when I walked into that team I was in, they said tier three, but I was in the lowest. I was in the bottom third of all the different business units and accuracy. So I walked in, couldn't have gotten worse, and I went, okay, we need to turn this around. So all we did was what we like and this is kind of a small example of it. But you look at okay, what's the biggest driver of my forecast accuracy missing. So you like almost back into your attribution of, like, net income. Okay, well, what's the biggest driver of net income? Okay, well, revenue is often the biggest driver. Okay, so my revenue forecast is wrong. Well, sure enough, it is. And if I look back over the last three months like it was not a good forecast. So it's like, okay, what's driving it to be wrong. And so you're just breaking it down into the driver based component.
[00:41:32] Guest: Brett Hampson: So you're getting into driver based forecasting. But then you analyze how you forecast. So and then all of a sudden what emerges is here's the three things that if I got better at these three picks the whole forecast becomes 80% better. So it's back to our last conversation which is like how do you put the most value added stuff in first, there's usually 20% of the stuff that drives 80% of the value, so I'm always looking for that 80%. I sort of accidentally learned this on the job when I got a bad report card and had to turn it around, and so I think it was like six months later we were in tier one with our forecast accuracy because we've just like doubled down on the biggest pieces that we're going to drive the entire net income forecast of being on or off and how much percentage we were missing.
[00:42:14] Guest: Brett Hampson: So for me, like that's maybe a small example of an early win where I went, wait a minute, you can break this thing down into just attribution, small goals and then slowly work towards what's the analysis? I need to drive a better forecast. What processes in place do I need to get the right information from the right person at the right time to have a better customer churn forecast or new customer forecast or whatever it is, whatever the piece that was actually driving it. And what it does is it allows you to put this like tunnel vision on that. You say, I'm not going to talk about anything else. I'm not going to look at anything else except for the things that I'm being graded on.
[00:42:47] Guest: Brett Hampson: So I think it's almost maybe a helpful metaphor for people to say, what am I being graded on? And you get to create your own report card. By and large, in fact, there's no report card out there in my situation that was unique. I had a report card on me, but by and large, we don't have a report card. So you get to sit down and it goes back to that vision conversation. You define the vision. So therefore you define the scorecard. And then you get to define the tactics and steps that it takes for you to get from where you are to that vision, which is the report card. So then what are you going to do exclusively and focus on in order to get there? And it allows you to have that tunnel vision and say, I'm going to say no to everything else, and I'm just going to focus on these things, and you've just got to trust the process. If I do these ten things, I will get to the vision and usually you get pretty darn close. And if you don't hit it right on, you're within a couple inches of that thing and like, you're high fiving anyway. So I think that's like, that's an early win that I had that I think kind of cemented this realization that like, oh, this is this can be a process, this can be linear, I can work towards it. There's roadblocks along the way. Obviously, you got to veer left and right, but generally you're still going in the same direction.
[00:43:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You got to adjust. But in the example you gave increasing forecast accuracy, you have a very clear of where you're going regardless of what gets in the way. You always know that North Star and you know the key drivers. Once you've done your root cause analysis. So it's always going back to that and saying, okay, where's the breakdown? What's causing this to be less accurate. And if I improve that the numbers will get better.
[00:44:18] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yeah. And we could argue all day if that's even the right metric. Forecast accuracy. Right. But I think the beauty of it was measurable. It was quantifiable. I could see it on a piece of paper. What percentage of my net income was off from what my forecast was, and what tier that put me in compared to my peers. It was very objective. So I challenge people, as you're thinking through this, if you're thinking like, I want to do this, well, think of some metrics that you can put in place for your specific vision. So one I like is reporting automation. I like to come up with statements like what should reporting automation be at from a percentage. Just call it percentage. Should 80% of reports be automated? 7090 think through it. But like once you think through it, put a goal out there.
[00:45:00] Guest: Brett Hampson: And once you put a goal out there, then go look at your reports and say, which ones of these should I or could I automate which ones make sense? And you'll work through that and then you can move towards that. And so same thing with analysis. How many pieces of analysis should my team come up with every month? Well, I like to say each person presents one root cause analysis every month. If you do that and you've got a decent sized team, you're producing a ton of analysis that's driving the business forward every month. Should your forecast be accurate within 5% 10%? Who knows. But like put a goal out there and start to move towards it. I think sometimes those objective, concrete goals, those numerical goals actually help to move us versus like more of a theoretical how it should feel.
[00:45:43] Host: Paul Barnhurst: There's a reason they use the term smart for goals. You want to be able to measure it. And we could have a whole episode on forecast accuracy. And should that be a major goal or not. And there'd be lots of different opinions. But since we're near the end of our time, we'll save that for another episode because I think everybody has strong opinions on that. And that might be a fun LinkedIn live to do sometime. Get a few people and have a lively debate on that one because there are some strong opinions for sure. All right. So I'm going to move into some standard for questions we'd like to ask. These are just real quick answers. Get your first thought. What is the number one technical skill for FP&A professionals to master?
[00:46:21] Guest: Brett Hampson: I think it goes back to what we just talked about. But attribution analysis. If you are able to break down what's causing this into the actual attribution, the causation, Causational attribution analysis, like you could do anything. It doesn't matter what tool you're using, doesn't matter. Anything that wins in my opinion.
[00:46:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. What's the number one soft skill or human skill?
[00:46:40] Guest: Brett Hampson: It's probably in this vein of like storytelling or storylining results if you can create a compelling story. Humans love stories. So if you can create a compelling story, people will gravitate towards listening to you. They'll come to you for the story if you can tell a good story. So I love that one.
[00:46:55] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Next one if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about FP&A, what would you change?
[00:47:04] Guest: Brett Hampson: That's a tough one. If I could wave a magic wand and change. One thing about FP&A, I think, I think it would have to be how much we tend to focus on ourselves as a department. I'm going to be super controversial to myself. Everything I've talked about is improving FP&A, but at the end of the day, we're driving the business forward so it matters more about what the business is doing. I think oftentimes we can get so introspective about our tools, about our technologies that we forget to go look at the business model that we're supporting and actually truly understand the business. A lot of people are great at that. Bravo to them. But a lot of people just kind of stay in our FP&A world. And I think that's the one thing that I'd change, is I'd almost like to require a rotation in the business in order to do FP&A effectively over a long period of time.
[00:47:52] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I've said it many times, and I'll say it again here. After having run my own business for two and a half years and having been in the business before I went into FP&A, if I went back today, I would be a better FP&A professional. From what I've learned from seeing all these different aspects of the business. Yeah, I've always said one of the best things you can do is a rotation in operations, whether it's sales, operations, you know, go to market revenue wherever it might be. I think it gives you a real appreciation that you can't get from just FP&A.
[00:48:22] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yep. Agreed. Couldn't agree more. Yeah. I think my early role rotations in like a product organization, even accounting was a great one because I got to see actually how the income statement was created. I was the one posting the journal entries. So being on this side of the fence, I'm like, oh, I know the people who do that. And like, I can analyze it in a way that's just a little bit deeper than everybody else. So I think that's what you get is you get you get this rich depth, no matter what rotation you do, you're going to find that it's going to pay dividends in the future.
[00:48:50] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Agreed. All right. We're going to move on to the get to know you section. So we have a few questions to get to know more about Brett here. We've talked plenty of FP&A. We've learned all about that. So what's a hobby or passion that you have? What do you like to do in your free time?
[00:49:03] Guest: Brett Hampson: I don't have free time, Paul.
[00:49:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I knew you were gonna say that. I know you have a two year old.
[00:49:06] Guest: Brett Hampson: I've got a two year old. I've got another on the way. So my hobbies and my passions right now is taking care of the house, getting the nursery set up. And I'm generally just like a hobby hopper. And I'd say I'm in between hobbies right now. So like, I grew up playing guitar, mountain biking, doing triathlons, like I'm in between hobbies. So I'm looking for a new one. I'm thinking golf might be my next one. I grew up golfing as well, so I might just pick that back up, but we'll see. We'll see. Check back in in like six months and I might have a new hobby.
[00:49:31] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. We'll check back with you on that one. If you could recommend one book to our audience, what book are you going to recommend outside of your FP&A operating system?
[00:49:40] Guest: Brett Hampson: Of course. No, honestly, I'm going to go in the business world and like business books are a dime a dozen. But there's one that I continue to go back to over and over again, and it's called The Heart of Business by Hubert Jolly. So he was the Best Buy turnaround story, I think it was 2012. They were about to go bankrupt. But the way he did it was through people and process, kind of like we've been talking about today. It was not a tech implementation. It was not mass layoffs on day one. It was like a beautiful blueprint for how to run a real business full of, like, real people. So there might be a little bit of a revisionist history in that book, but I absolutely love that book. I think anybody can pick up amazing leadership lessons from that.
[00:50:22] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Right? Give us the name one more time just so everybody gets it.
[00:50:25] Guest: Brett Hampson: The heart of business.
[00:50:26] Host: Paul Barnhurst: The heart of business. Turnaround story of Best Buy.
[00:50:29] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yep. Hubert Joly I might be getting that wrong, but I believe he's the author.
[00:50:33] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Okay. Perfect. Great. What's your favorite travel destination? If you go anywhere in the world tomorrow, where are you going?
[00:50:40] Guest: Brett Hampson: I would go to Italy. I've never been. So this is sort of like an unfair answer. I've never been. But, like, it's like deep down within me, I know I'm going to love it. And my wife's been a bunch, so like, she's like, yes, I can confirm you are going to love it. But like generally anywhere with a beach and sunshine, I'm happy.
[00:50:57] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. And so wait, you're in Ohio and you want a beach and sunshine? Am I missing something here?
[00:51:02] Guest: Brett Hampson: No you're not. Real estate prices are a little better in Cincinnati than they were in Denver when I lived there. So. And we've got family here in Ohio. So like, we made an intentional decision to be close to family. And I don't regret that at all. Cincinnati is great, too. I don't tell people I'm from Ohio. I tell people I'm from Cincinnati because in my mind it's a lot different. It's a cool town.
[00:51:22] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I get it. I haven't been to Cincinnati and I don't live near the ocean too. I totally get living near family, so we all make the balance of all those different decisions. If you could have dinner with one person in the world that's alive, who would you pick and why?
[00:51:38] Guest: Brett Hampson: It's not a cop out answer. It's my real answer. I would honestly pick my wife and my family and like, I'm a bit of a homebody. I love hanging out with my family, especially having a two year old who's like, she'll say the wildest things or do the wildest things over the dinner table. So for me, like if I'm having dinner with them, I'm happy I'm not. I'm not much of a star chaser either. So like, I don't get all worked up about other people on their fame. Like, I'd rather just focus on kind of the people that are right next to me.
[00:52:06] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Great. There's a lot to learn from that answer. Thank you. You said it well. All right. We're going to head up to the wrap up section here. Just have two more questions for you and we'll let you go. First is what advice would you have for our audience to be a better FP&A business partner today? If you could give them a piece of advice, what would it be?
[00:52:24] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yeah, maybe the most actionable single thing that you can do today. And then every day from now until the last day of your career is to reach out to one business partner today with some piece of information for them. So if you reach out to one business partner or one key stakeholder every single day, you will force yourself to have something to bring to one key stakeholder or one business partner every single day, which means you will always be looking for value to bring to people. Which means you will always be finding value, which means you will be a value generating human being. So like I think if you put that in the bucket first you just say reach out to one person every single day. You'll find the thing to reach out to them about. You might scramble a couple days, you might miss a couple days, but your relationship with them will be like night and day different from where it is today.
[00:53:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I like it. One thing a day. Last question. If someone wants to get Ahold of you or learn more about you, what's the best way for them to do that?
[00:53:20] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yeah, LinkedIn is easy. That's a big one. Brett Hampson also, if you want to join my newsletter, it's free. I write sort of like whatever's top of mind for myself. And to me, it's a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about today about grassroots finance, transformation, FP&A operating system, all that kind of stuff. Just go to forecasting performance.com. And there's links everywhere for you to sign up for the newsletter.
[00:53:42] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Love it. Well thank you for joining us today. I really enjoyed getting to chat with you and you sharing about the grassroots, you know, transformation as we talked about it, the flywheel, the operating system, a lot of very practical things there you gave people. So I appreciate that and I hope the audience enjoys the conversation as much as I did. So thanks for joining me, Brett.
[00:54:00] Guest: Brett Hampson: Yeah. Thanks, Paul. We'll have to get that LinkedIn live forecast accuracy thing going.
[00:54:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So I have that on my list for next year, maybe Q1. We got to get through budget season first because nobody wants to join a LinkedIn live during budget season.
[00:54:13] Guest: Brett Hampson: That's right. Yeah. No thanks for having me, Paul. All right.
[00:54:16] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Thanks. 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.