The Power of Partnerships in Finance
Show Notes
Welcome to FP&A Tomorrow, where we discuss financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects, with your host Paul Barnhurst.
In today’s episode, Paul engages with Andrew Jepson, to discuss the world of Financial Planning and Analysis.
Andrew, founder of the FBPteam, has over 20 years of experience in financial planning and analysis, starting his career as an auditor and evolving into a sought-after business partner and trainer. As a passionate advocate for professional development, Andrew has authored a book on business partnering, facilitated numerous training programs worldwide, and is dedicated to elevating the capabilities of finance professionals.
Here is a concise summary of the key points from the discussion:
The great FP&A professionals go beyond just reporting numbers—they anticipate future trends and needs. This proactive approach is crucial for providing real value to the organization.
Transitioning from a focus on being right to being effective is vital. Andrew shares his personal journey of learning to communicate better and build stronger relationships within the business.
Business partnering involves working cohesively with other departments to solve real business problems and achieve strategic goals. Andrew outlines a framework for becoming an effective business partner, emphasizing understanding the business, effective communication, and building strong relationships.
Time management, perception of finance, and systems and processes are common barriers to effective business partnering. Andrew provides practical advice on how to navigate and overcome these challenges.
Mental Health and Work-Life Balance and the importance of seeking professional help. This episode highlights the need for self-awareness and taking care of one's mental health to maintain a successful career in finance.
Quotes:
Here are a few relevant quotes from the episode
"You do have time. What you've got to decide is what you choose to do at that time.”-Andrew Jepson
"It's not what you say, it's how you say it. Your energy, all that sort of stuff."-Andrew Jepson
"I think FP&A has a spectrum from average to really good. I think the average FP&A person is generally just pumping out numbers to their organization."-Andrew Jepson
In this episode, Andrew shares his journey from auditor to business partner and offers valuable insights into the evolving landscape of FP&A. Remember to prioritize your mental health and continuously seek ways to improve your processes and time management.
Link to courses:
FP&A Business Partnering (thinkific.com)
Modern Microsoft Excel (thinkific.com)
Follow Andrew:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/financebusinesspartnering/
Website - https://www.thefbpteam.com/
Follow Paul:
Website - https://www.thefpandaguy.com
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguy
In today's episode:
[01:01] - Introduction
[01:43] - Guest Introduction
[02:35] - Defining Great FP&A
[03:34] - Anticipation in FP&A
[05:21] - Andrew’s Career Journey
[08:10] - Importance of Business Partnering
[11:45] - Key Skills for FP&A Professionals
[15:45] - Transitioning from Being Right to Being Effective
[28:10] - Common Themes in FP&A Struggles
[43:17] - Rapid Fire Session
[50:01] - Get to know the Guest
[53:15] - Conclusion
Full Show Transcript:
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 prospects. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, guiding you through the evolving landscape of FP&A. Each week we are joined by thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who share their insights and experiences, helping us navigate today's complexities and tomorrow's uncertainty. 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 welcome to the show Andrew Jepson. Andrew, welcome to the show.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Hi, Paul. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Excited to have you. Excited to have someone from down under. So give you a little bit about Andrew. And then in a few minutes, I'll give him an opportunity to tell us a little bit more about his background. So Andrew's coming to us from Australia. He had a 20-year career and started his career as an auditor. The pretty common path there then worked in the industry. Today he runs his own training company. He's been doing that for the last eight years, called the FBPteam. And Andrew, we like to start every interview with this question. It's a standard question. We ask everybody, what does great FP&A look like to you?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Good question. It's pretty broad. I like to narrow it down. I think FP&A has a spectrum so average, really, good. I think the average FP&A person is generally just pumping out numbers to their organization. A little bit of commentary, but nothing that's of value. The great FP&A people, they're scanning, they're looking out, anticipating, taking what the average person is doing and going, okay, well, what does this mean for us and what can we do about it, which requires a very, very different skill set to what most FP&A people have. So that's what I say, is as great as you get further into your career, you realize this is what people want, and this is how I extend my career in the organization. So it's more anticipating and scanning outwards and what you can do about it.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I love that you used the word 'anticipate'. We had Carl Seidman on we called the the interview the Great Anticipator because he said the top skill you need in an FP&A professional is the ability to anticipate and anticipate where things are going, and anticipate what others need. It's about anticipating. So I found it very interesting that you used that word, because it's only the second time I have had someone use that specific word for FP&A, and I think it makes a lot of sense. I heard someone else one time refer to it as I need FP&A to kind of be able to peek around corners and help me understand what might be coming and the different options. So I think that's a great way to look at it. And so before we jump into the interview and ask some more questions, you made me think of another one. I'd love for you to just tell our audience about yourself and your background. What you're doing today, how you got there.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Sure. As you mentioned, I'm in a little old Australia, in a city called Sydney, which you may remember from the 2000 Olympics. I grew up in Melbourne, in Victoria. I started off as an auditor, so I left university here in Australia.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I won't hold that against you.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: No, no, I certainly don't hold it against myself. But you start off in Australia, you generally go to university for three years, get a university degree, then you join a firm and you do your professional qualification over about two years while you're working. And I was auditing and I loved it for about four years. And then I realized no one likes what it is sort of started to not like myself and what I was doing. So I thought, to hell with this, I'm going to pack this in and I'm going to try and get a job in industry, and I'm also going to move overseas. So I went over to London for about four years and did the old Australian thing where you go to London and they pay you lots of money and you work fewer hours and you just travel around all the time. I worked in the industry there, mainly in group roles, so big group, 5100 companies where everyone's reporting to you and you're consolidating things and a lot of technical effects. I was part of an office transition back then, so that's a while ago that shows my age, and did that for about four years. And I came back and met a lovely lady from Sydney. She dragged me back to Sydney and started our life here. I had a few more years in the industry, mainly in roles with finance people.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: So big group roles surrounded by big teams of finance people. And evidently, I was pretty good at it because I used to get promoted a lot and had a pretty good career. And then I thought, well, I want to get out of this technical stuff. It's I mean, it's interesting and everything, but I don't, I don't feel like I'm adding much value. I want to solve business problems and help the business be more profitable and hit their strategic objectives and that sort of thing. So, I took another role, which was in a smaller company. So you're talking about billion-dollar companies. I've gone into a company that's 250 million turnover. So still quite big, but a lot smaller than what I did asfinanced I had finance and, and I had my team of about 20 people, but I was generally spending most of my time with non-finance people, which I hadn't done a lot of before, and for about 2 or 3 years, I just pretty much-pissed everyone off and just annoyed people and frustrated them because I was behaving as I did in finance, with finance people, where it's a very data-based and you know exactly what you've got to do, and you can talk a certain way to people and they get it. That wasn't working for me with non-finance people, but they saw something in me, which was good because they saw something enough where they gave me a coach, and coach sat me down and he said, Andrew, would you rather be right or would you rather be effective? And I thought about that for about two seconds and said, both players, I'll take both.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: And he said, good, because at the moment you spend all your time being right and none of it being effective. And we need to change that because if you don't change it, your career is going to plateau and your organization, you're not going to be much use to your organization. So we need to work on your style and how you go about stuff. And I thought, oh, well, okay, rodeo, let's get into it. So I was lucky enough. I got that coach. I got access to a whole lot of different things, which was which was awesome, like different stuff from different functions selling, marketing, speech, coaching, all sorts of different weird stuff. which was I was very lucky. I was very lucky. And when I did it, I was thinking, this is exactly what every finance person needs. If they want to get through, there's like a, there's the old saying, what got you here won't get you there. There's this ceiling that if you don't learn these things, you just sort of Peter out and plateau.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: And I'll certainly be in that space and I and I wanted to do something about it. So at the same time, in about 2009, I started working with the institute here in Australia, which is Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, the member body. When you the people who give you those couple after I started marking exams and facilitating the program to do that. And you're a bit nervous when you start doing that because you think, oh no, do I know all this? What I found was I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the teaching and the and seeing people respond to how you were positioning stuff with them so that they could learn. And I got a lot of personal energy out. It was weird. I felt good when I did that sort of stuff. So about eight years ago, in 2016, I left the corporate world and I thought, I want to try and give back and I want to I want to lift the capability of finance people because a lot of our training is around technical stuff, accounting standards even Excel and all those sorts of things, which are generally the things that are towards sort of mid-career finance stuff. I wanted to propel people's careers a bit further up into the C-suite and the things that don't get you here, they get you there. So I wrote a whole lot of programs.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: I did some research and wrote a book which, sitting behind me there, wrote that quite a while ago. But that book, Then I got my fellowship with the Institute for that. They recognized that book and gave me another letter after my name giving my fellowship, which was pretty cool. and now I represent them. I do their subject matter expert for business, partnering with them, training a whole lot of stuff. Covid was very good to me. So I live in Sydney. Australia is a big place. So Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane were pretty much where I did my training. And then Covid hit and I got stuck on the screen like this where you got to do everything virtually. And I thought, ah, this isn't going to work. I'm going to have to go back and get a job. But it opened everything up. It opened everything up. I now do workshops in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Singapore, London, Dubai, New York, LA, wherever, wherever. People want to get trained. I can do that as long as I'm prepared to be awake. So I'm very lucky. I love what I do. It's not something that I thought I would be doing 20 years ago or 25 years ago, but I love it. I get a lot of energy out of it. Yeah. I wouldn't wouldn't change a thing. It's good fun.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Great. Well, thank you for sharing that backstory. Appreciate that. And liked how you talked about there's this glass ceiling, as you mentioned, that we can only go so far with the technical.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: With the being great at Excel or modeling or analysis we have to go beyond that. So I'm curious, if you hadn't defined business partnering, how do you define it? When people ask you what is business partnering? What's your answer?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Yeah. So I have a standard spiel for this, Paul, as you would expect. So finance people work cohesively with the rest of the organization to solve real business problems and help them achieve their strategic objectives. So there are a couple of components for that. The first one is to work cohesively. So a lot of finance people have this combative nature. This is what we must do. And if you're not doing it, I'm going to get out the stick and pop you over the head with it. Which business partner doesn't work like you've got context? Okay, there's the finance lens and there's every other functions lens and they're all differently and all different. And you've got to join them together. You've got to be able to see what the other person's perspective is. And sometimes you're right, sometimes they're right, and sometimes the answers are, and sometimes the answers are that. So it's that meshing it and knitting it together, which is important, which talks to your relationships. It talks about how you turn up. It talks to your style, and it talks to people feeling safe and comfortable around you, that they'll share information so you can get to a better place. So that's the first thing, the cohesion. The second thing, solving real business problems and punching out a lot of spreadsheets and reports. That's probably a compliance thing that's telling us what's happening and what might be happening, but it doesn't solve the problem. You've got to get involved in the business to be able to do that. And then the piece on the organization, and strategic goals. Well, as I said, reporting and all that sort of stuff are not strategic goals. That's finance hygiene factors. So how do you lift yourself out and get into the projects or the work that's related to the organization strategically achieving their objectives? That's a different space altogether. And spending four months of the year doing budgets makes that really, hard. If you if you're spending all your time doing that.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Kind of stepping back, I think that was a great answer. I liked that. I liked how you mentioned the three different parts. So you mentioned in your career you got set down and told, look, you're right, but you're not effective. So how did you make that transition? What were the things you did to go from being right to being effective, whether you were necessarily right or not? Right, realizing that it's a combination. How did you make the transition? You mentioned you had a lot of coaching and a lot of help. Yeah. But what were the key things that allowed you to get kind of through that chasm or cross that bridge?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Yes, I'm a very proactive, direct person or I was ten years ago, In the first coaching session I had, he said to me, Andrew, we need to make you more beige. And I'm thinking, what does that mean? More vanilla? And I'm thinking, how do I move this company forward if I'm going to be going to be beige? And when you're at that level in your organization, what he's talking about is you're going to go to an executive level and you're going to represent the company. And you got to take the risk out of your behavior and your style because as I said, you're representing the company and they don't want you to be flippant and say something that may come off the wrong way. So we've got to just make you a little bit beige. And all that comes down to is style and communication. So how do you say things to people that put them in the position that you want them to be? How do you listen properly? How do you ask instead of tell? All these different communication techniques were the first start of that and just calming down like I was always in a hurry. And I mean, I'm an in profiling all that sort of stuff. So this direct we call it fiery red with our, with our accreditation that we do. But I want stuff done. I want it now, now, now, now, now. And there's a lot of people out there who go well in their career because they've got that attitude, but it comes at a cost, comes at a big benefit, but it also comes at a cost. And you've got to balance that. And just being open to that is the first step.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Got it. Yeah, I know what you mean by being open. And you know, for me I had to learn not to be so detailed. Yeah. And I had to learn to figure out the right balance of holding people accountable the way one of my managers put it. And the VP goes, Paul, you're not mean enough to the business. And I was kind of like, well, I don't, because he came across as very gruff. He was a very strong personality. I don't want to be like you. And I didn't realize what he meant. Later on. It was like, you're not holding people accountable enough and having those conversations, the difficult conversations when they need to happen in such a way that you can help move the business forward. Right? If you build trust, you can have those conversations. Those are it was a surprisingly good learning lesson. And I look back now and I understand what he was saying at the time. I'm like, well, are you talking about that's kind of that opposite end where I was probably too soft sometimes and not willing to say, look, this isn't working. We have to figure out the solution or not, in finance, I can't approve this deal. Here are some options we can do, but it just doesn't make sense for the business. Yeah, and those are the types of things he was talking about where you just got to take control from your perspective in such a way that you can influence, not be the jerk, which we can all be if we have to. But it rarely is that ever effective.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: No, no, we talk about that in our programs as well, how do you feel when you're around someone like that? And everyone says the same thing? I feel threatened. I feel I feel like I'm under pressure and you're in that fight, flight, freeze, headspace where nothing good happens. So. Exactly. You feel like that when someone does it to you? I'll let you in on a little secret. The other person feels like that when you do it to them. So as you say, when you're in that headspace, everything's slow. Everything comes with friction. You've got this sort of resistance, ineffective place to be. Go to the opposite end. You can do some good stuff and talk about trust. I was lucky enough to work in a culture that was massive on it, and they rewarded you for relationships, trust, connection, all that sort of thing. We used to have a talent matrix and performance versus the way you did things. So your style and culture, and if you're high in performance but you weren't high on this, you weren't in you weren't in the talent spectrum. You had to be high on the culture. And even if your performance was low, there might be reasons for it. But if you were good in the culture, you got rewarded for it.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: There's something to be said for that. you can be a jerk or have a toxic culture. And sure, you can get results in the short term and we can all define what that is. But over the long run, to truly have sustained success and for people to be happy, which is so much more than just financial success, and success in a career, you need that healthy culture. That doesn't mean I think sometimes people confuse saying, well, does that mean I can't just be open? Sure, you can be open. You can have difficult conversations and have a great, healthy culture. In fact, you should. If you're never disagreeing, then you probably have. You have a problem with your culture. Just like if you're.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: You've got a good culture. Those conversations are easy. I mean, as I said, I was lucky to be in a culture where I had a leadership team and we were like mates, okay? We knew each other's family and knew stuff about each other. We could walk into each other's room and just have a difficult conversation straight away. And there was no, I'm not here to unravel you. I'm not. It's not me versus you. It's just I've noticed this. Are you aware of it? Yeah. And they'd do the same to me. And there was no friction there because you knew each other. You can have those conversations with your wife, with your wife or husband, your partner, your mother, your father, your family. Why? Because you've got a strong relationship and a bond with them. And I mean, I'm not saying try and make it like your partner or your mother and father at work, but that strong connection allows those conversations to happen. When you have it, everything goes quickly, which is important when no one's got time.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: When you can just say what you're thinking, right, you can have those open conversations. I have that with one of the guys I work with a lot. And we're just very blunt sometimes with each other like, okay, you need to tone it down here. You need to do that. And we know we always have each other's interests at heart. So we we just go, okay, I appreciate the feedback and make the adjustments and move on versus all right, I don't like this person. He was mean to me or whatever. You know what I mean? Not that he was mean, but there's just real value in being able to have that open where you can have those honest, difficult conversations that don't always feel difficult because that's what you expect. That's what's accepted in the culture, and you're all trying to improve. But kind of coming back around to business partners. I'm curious. You mentioned the three steps, but is there a main framework that you think people should follow? Like if somebody wants to get better today, you talked about what you did, but what's a framework or what can they start doing? What's the number one thing people should be doing if they're looking at it and going, okay, I'm not going anywhere in my career. I don't have great relationships with the business and I want to change that.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: So well, as I said, I've got my book behind me. There's a framework in that called The Quiet Approach. I won't go into that because that's an hour-long conversation itself. If anyone wants to, anyone wants to read it, they can download it from our website. So just just go there and get a digital copy. But quiet is twofold. It's an acronym. So Q Uite they all mean five different things. If you're good at those five things, you're going to be good at business partners. If you've got a problem, it's probably in one of those spaces. Quiet is also people go, what? You want people to be quiet and silent and not say anything. I'm like, no, no, no, quiet is a take on you don't want to be this combative, condescending, in-your-face, finance policeman type role that has a place. It's called compliance and governance and audit and all that sort of stuff that has a place in every organization. It needs to be there. When your business partners, it does not work. It does not work. Why? Because you push people away from you. So the style is more it's more subtle. It's more nuanced. It's more composed, controlled, and you just sort of sit on someone's shoulder and whisper in their ear, what's happening? That's the sort of style that works. You're in the background there up front, okay?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: And if you don't like that, well, go and get the role where you're upfront because there are plenty of jobs in sales and marketing and ops where you can do that as your job as a business partner is you're sitting there supporting people and showing them stuff. So that's the framework I use. If I narrow it down to three things, it's three things that if you want to be a good finance business partner, you've got to know one's your communication and your style. Okay. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. That's really, important. That's what's going to draw people into you or push people away. So communication and how you do things and say things is important. The second one is understanding the business. So you don't get that from spreadsheets. You don't get that from sitting at your desk. You get it from getting away from your desk and spending time in the business. Because on the screen you're seeing outcomes, outcomes of a whole lot of stuff that people are doing. And if you understand the stuff people are doing, it makes those numbers easy to understand. And it also provides you with a language that you can talk to people who are doing those things. They don't understand the financial outcomes of what they're doing a lot of the time.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: So you've got to speak in that language and you've got to be the conduit between them. So you got to get out in the business and understand it. The best example I can give is Coke and Pepsi. They both sell brown fizzy water, but they do things very differently. They have different focuses at different times, and if you walk in the front door of both of those places, it's going to be very different. So you've got to go and understand your business. And then the third thing is your relationships, your connection to people with good relationships. Everything speeds up. You get your questions answered, you get the information that you ask for. And if you've got good ones, they bring stuff to you, they come to you and invite you in, which is powerful and efficient. If you don't have good relationships, no one answers your questions. No one gives you the information you ask them for. And guess what? They work around you. They work around you and they don't invite you in, which is slow and frustrating. You get brought in late and it's just it just doesn't work. So your relationships, that's what that comes down to. So now those three things are your communication and your style. Understand the business focus on your relationships and making sure people want to work with you.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I like that. I like how you boiled it down to the three things of your style, the way you communicate, the no, the business couldn't agree more. So important. And then relationships. When I think relationships I think trust. And there's a book called The Speed of Trust. And when you're saying that, it made me think of right, if you don't have trust, there's a tax and it's a tax on the business that slows things down. If they're trying to go around you and not work with you, it causes issues. It slows things down. If you have that trust, that's a dividend. Things work better, you can get better returns. And so the sooner you realize you don't need to be the police, that you need to be the partner, the influencer, the better. Everybody is off. I've worked in environments where a kind of finance is kept at arm's length. They don't want to tell you what's going on, and it's hard to you're trying to build that relationship and get in. And then I've worked in ones where it was almost like all right, back off a little bit. I know you want me to do everything, but I'm not the business here, you know? But I preferred that over the other if I had to choose one. It's like, at least they trusted me and I was involved in every conversation and relied on.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: I'd rather that one where you're choosing what you need to work on, but that that speed of trust book with the bank account, or the trust account where you get a deposit, and then there's withdrawal finance. We've got a lot of withdrawals just because of the nature of the job that we do, where it's checking admin type role, we're not front facing, we're in the background and we're making sure things are, for want of a better word, done right now. That means automatically you're going to be in that space where your trust bank account is probably going to have some withdrawals. So to balance it up, you've got to make deposits. You've got to constantly put more deposits in than perhaps other functions need to. That's okay. Just got to understand that.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Yes, it makes a lot of sense to me. So you do need those deposits because some of the compliance, some things we have to do are going to be withdrawals, like reporting bad numbers can be a withdrawal even if you do nothing wrong in reporting it because it's just emotionally everybody is frustrated and you were the bearer of the news. That's nothing to do with you. You just basically said, look, our numbers are bad. Nobody's you didn't say it, but everybody took it as, okay, we're not getting our bonus this year.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: But even conversations where sales are going, we're going to do this deal. It's going to be great, great, great volumes. And you're sitting in the background going, what's the profitability on that? that's like a that's like a drainer like that can just drain the energy out of the room. So you got to be conscious of how you position that and how you bring it up. Because if you drain the room you trust, it goes right down. And people probably won't mention that deal in front of you again. And then that causes even more friction.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Yeah, no, it's so true. The sales are like, we're going to get all this revenue and you're going, yeah, but you know, it's going to do to our bottom line. Let me show you. So how do you manage that? Because you have to influence without power. So how do you manage that type of situation when sales are like, hey, we got this deal. It's gonna be great revenue. You may have worked with a salesman or you've seen some insights of that deal and it's not going to be a very good deal. How do you manage that? What advice would you give to somebody in those situations? Hey there. It's your host, the FP&A Guy. And today I'm thrilled to talk to you about Plan Buddies, one of my passions. It's where professionals meet excellence. This isn't just any community. It is a community run by and for planning professionals. Our plan buddies were all about fostering connections, sharing knowledge, and providing mentorship among our members. Ready to elevate your career? Visit planbuddies.com and become a member today. And here's a special treat. Use the promo code theFPandAGuy, theFPandAGuy for an exclusive 25% discount on your first-year membership.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: We do exercises in this in our in our program of how to manage that, that conflict, and that tension. So I won't give away too many of the secrets, but it's all in all in how you position it. So what you want to do there, coming up with an idea that you think that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard, that's they think it's wonderful, and you just think that's just going to cost us a hell of a lot of money. So you've got a natural tension there. But the best way to dispel any tension among police people is a lot of the training that we do. We take things from other areas and show you how you can apply them in finance. So security police, they're trained when you're in an awkward situation you've got conflict or tension is how do you defuze it and you defuze it by generally agreeing with the person, which is hard because they've got this stupid deal going on. What? You're going to agree to it? Well, you can't do that. That you can't agree with that idea because it doesn't make sense from your perspective. So you've got to find something to agree with the best way.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: The thing you can always find to agree with is their intention, their objective, what are they trying to achieve? Okay. And it's pretty obvious they want to want to achieve sales, but there might be something else under underneath it that you can agree to. So you can do that first. That'll defuze the situation, and then you simply ask some questions about how they could do it differently. So you get what you want. Okay. So you get to defuze a situation, take the tension out of the room so that they're on side with you and they think that you can help them. And then from that it's how do you position the next statement or question to them so that they open up and can see your perspective. And there's a number of techniques that you can do around that. And that's all the stuff that we teach is the words you can use, the way you say it. How do you navigate through that tricky conversation when they say this is how you respond? It can get you there. But the whole point is to communicate better. You can share your perspective, they can share their perspective, and you can, as I said before, work cohesively together.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Two things came to mind. Chris Voss never split the difference. It's like you start with agreeing, find those areas of agreement. And the other one Abraham Lincoln, was known for. one of my heroes I like reading about is he'd kind of give away conceit almost every single point. Just kind of agree with him on everything and he was more of a lawyer. And then hold back on that one key issue to discuss. But he recognized there's no problem in agreeing on a lot of things that get you on the right path. There may be areas where you have to bring them along. You're ultimately going to disagree. But as you said, manage it through questions versus the adversarial of let me tell you why your deal sucks.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Yes. Chris Voss's books are very, very good. It's got a lot of techniques. One of them that he talks about in that space is terrorist negotiator, terrorist negotiator, FBI negotiator. so we're not doing that in finance as much as people think that we're some people probably think we are the terrorists. So in that situation, he's got a technique where he's like, how could I do that for you? Like, how could I do that for you? So that the person has demanded? You've put me in a position. How can I do that for you? Like, that's a powerful question to ask someone because it puts them into the space of suddenly seeing your perspective. Now some people will go, I don't care, that's your problem. Well, no, we're going to work cohesively together, so it's our problem. But help me here. Can I do that for you? Because I've got to do this. And then you get into a conversation or you read that book, he talks about it, it diffuses it, and it starts to create this empathy where you're connecting with the other person.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Yeah, I love the empathy he talks about. He's like, you don't have to agree with what they're trying to do. You can still show empathy. Those are two different things and it goes a lot into that. And it's a great book. I think for anyone. It's just great around relationships, and negotiation. There are a lot of great things you can take away for business partners, so it's one I'd highly recommend. I enjoyed it.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: There was a lot of stuff in there, very simple techniques, and we take some of those techniques, but when we do it in our programs, we show you how does it how do we do this for finance. Because he's he's techniques, as I said around terrorist negotiation. Well, how do you flip that and use it? Finance.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: It's a little different when it's a bank hostage or there's someone in a third-world country holding a bunch of people versus folks.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Are a little bit higher than someone who puts something in the wrong cost center.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I think sometimes people act like it's the end of the world when it's in the wrong cost center, but that's another story. We won't go there. So I know you do a lot of training. As you've mentioned, you've trained people all over the world. So I'm curious, what's the common theme or themes you hear that your clients are struggling with when it comes to business partnering? What do they typically tell you?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: We address this in workshop one, mainly because we want to get out what's specific to them. But the three main problems are here. The three main barriers. The first one is time. I don't have enough time. The second one is the perception of finance. So how do the other functions perceive us? Oh, that's in the way we can't we? They don't want us to help them with all that sort of stuff. And the third one is systems and processes that get in the way all the time, which is interesting in this day and age with AI and automation and all that sort of stuff. So the first one, you do have time. You do have time. Because guess what? I've been on this planet for many, many years and every day has been the same 24 hours, 60 minutes in every, every hour. 60s in every minute. Times are fixed. Okay. You do have time. What you've got to decide is what you choose to do at that time. So you can't do everything. I've never had a to-do list. It's finished and people need to need to accept that. What you have to do is prioritize what you're working on. And often we prioritize the things that are hygiene factors in finance, rather than trying to get that as small as possible through automation or delegation or eliminating stuff, you want to try and reduce that.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: That'll free up your time so you can work on business partnering. The other thing that gets in the way is how a lot of organizations have tried to implement business partnering, which is, well, we're going to do finance business partnering. The first thing we're going to do is change everyone's title. So let's do that. and now the finance business partners, but they haven't changed their role too much. Or they tried to change their role, but they just keep getting sucked back into month ends, budgets, forecasts, all that sort of stuff. Now. I'm a massive advocate for if you are going to set up a finance business partnering team, you've got to get them out of that stuff because month ends take a few days every month, forecasts take a few days and budgets take a few months. And if your finance team is working on those, they won't have the time to business partner, because the business doesn't stop just because it's the 30th of the month. And a problem comes up that finance needs to be involved with, so we can't do it. The month ends here. All you're doing in that setup is, one, having people go, I haven't got time to do anything, but you're also pushing people away. You're conditioning the rest of the business to know that you aren't available to partner with them.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: So it's a contradiction and it comes in the setup. So that's one big problem, I don't have time. And how do you solve it? The second is the perception of finance. Well, guess what? Perceptions are built from our experience. There are a lot of them from our from our early age. But people have perceptions and the lens through which they look. And it's all different for everyone based on their experiences. And that might be their experiences with you, and it might be their experiences with other people in the finance team. It might be their experiences in other organizations with different finance teams. You can't do anything about that. The only thing you can do is change their perception of what you're going to work with them going forward, and that means you are in with them and showing what you can do to help them. Once they start to see that, the perception will change very, very quickly. But if you're just going to sit at your desk and go, they've got a bad perception of me, I can't do anything about it. Well, of course, nothing's going to change. Nothing changes if nothing changes. So there are ways of doing it. It comes with your style. It usually comes with your relationships, usually comes with understanding their perspective. So you can change that very quickly. The systems and processes one that's situational.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: It's different for everyone. A lot of the time it comes with data. It comes with just not keeping your standards high around process, around having good people in roles and checks, and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, always. I mean, you're more tech-savvy than me. You probably run into this more. But data being dirty and spending time having to clean it, that's a bit of a nightmare. But business partners, that is all the time. Because guess what you're dealing with? If you're doing business partnering right, you're generally dealing with business problems and issues that probably haven't been seen before. They're new or they need some thought put to them. And guess what? You don't have the data at hand to do that. You've got to find it and mesh it together and make sure it's directionally right. Okay. You're going for you're going for a pass mark. You're not going for that board report. That has to be 100% perfect. Because if you get one number wrong, all of them are wrong. That's a different approach. Okay. So your data is going to be murky. It's going to be dirty. But you've just got to make sure that it's directionally going in the way that you think it is because you're dealing with something new. Most of the time if you're doing business partnering right.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I love the three things you mentioned. I think that's great. The time perception, that's something we talk about in a lot of the training I do is how the business perceives finance. Let's talk about how we're perceived, how we want to be perceived and why there's a gap right there. There definitely is. And the third, systems and processes, if you ask the average finance person, they don't have the systems or processes they need. And I always say a lot of that's a mindset. You're never going to have a perfect system. You can overcome a lot of that by managing time by other things doesn't mean you may not need new systems, but you're not always going to get them. So I think those are three great points there. So I want to shift gears a little bit for a few minutes. Then we'll move into our rapid fire. as you mentioned.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Time the systems and processes is often a fixed it's not a variable because I to change your systems and processes, you need to get it on board and fill out 387 business cases. And that's a big change. That's a big change. So you're stuck with the systems and processes you've got. Your job is to work out how can I extract what I need from it really, efficiently. And you know, I used to do this I used to do this. I used to go through stages where I'd sit at home for like two hours of a night, just trying to set stuff up, stuff that I did all the time, just trying to set it up so that I could sort of automate it in Excel or whatever, which I'm talking to the right guy here about this automated in Excel so that I could just press a button and it'll push it out. The stuff I did over and over again. Now that's two hours. That sort of sucked because it was family time, but I got it back very, very quickly. And doing it at work was very, very hard because you're in meetings and all sorts of stuff pops up. So just it was like my own little personal sprint that I did at home just to, just to get things sorted. But I had to do it. No one's going to do it for me, and no one's going to change the system with a $38 million new system to come in. That's just not going to happen quickly.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I mean, the reality of it is you need to always focus on improving your processes and find the time to invest to improve them. If you're always blaming it on the system, it's an excuse and it's going to be a roadblock till you remove the excuse. That doesn't mean a new system will make you more effective. And maybe the company needs one. I've been in companies where they need one, but I didn't use that as an excuse. I spent a crap load of time cleaning data so that I could be a good business partner and answer the questions. I just figured it out and did the best I could, and that's all you can do. That's the attitude you have.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Make a meal with the ingredients you've got.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Yeah, sometimes I won't want to eat it, but I'll make it salty. Yeah, exactly. One thing you mentioned with that with trying to find the time perception not always being great, things like that. Finance can be a very stressful career, especially when you're doing month-end trying to partner and clean data. you're up late at night. I think the pressure of month end. And so I know taking care of yourself is important. This is something you and I have talked about a fair amount, the mental health area. I've dealt with a lot of mental health issues. I've lost family members to mental health. And we just love to get your perspective because I know we've talked about this personally. Aside from the podcast, how do you manage that? How do you make sure that you're trying to be that great business partner and do everything they need and if you're not careful, can suck up all your time? How do you make sure you're taking care of yourself as you're doing this? Any thoughts or advice there?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Yeah. So me personally, personally, I've done a lot of work knowing myself, knowing about what drains my energy and what I get energy from. Unfortunately, I run my own business. So there's there's things that I have to do that drain my energy now to do those I plan them, I plan them, and I'm disciplined. Around Thursday, 1030 I'm doing I've got to do this. It's got to be done. And I'm not doing anything else until it's done. And I block that workout, and I've got to be disciplined to it because I know that if I just do what I want, I'll do the fun and easy stuff because that's how I that's how our brains work. Our brains are on the path of least resistance. We'll do the fun stuff all the time. So I know myself very well around where my energies are good and where they're not. And I plan the stuff that's that's not the mental health stuff. I'm pretty lucky I can deal with that a lot. I did have an incident personally for myself a while ago. This was sort of 8 or 9 years ago. I was I had an incident at work. Something happened at work that was the path that I wanted to go on. Suddenly it was like, okay, well, that's getting a bit murky for me now. And I came home and I was in tears. I was sitting at, um the dinner table crying whilst looking at me going, what is wrong with you? Like, you didn't even cry when we had children. I don't know what's wrong. I don't know how to manage.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: I don't know what is going on here. I know it has something to do with work and the disappointment of career or whatever it was. And I thought, I just need to talk to someone. So I went and spoke to someone and it helped me significantly. What I found out is that people who don't know me my father died when I was young. My father died on the day after my fourth birthday. So I grew up without a father, and I didn't, I didn't I didn't think too much of it because most of my memories are without a father. I only have memories of the life that I did have, which was pretty good. My mother was very good good to me. So I didn't think too much about it. But that time, that thing that happened at work, coincided once I started talking to someone about it. And a lot of your stuff goes back to your childhood. It was at the exact same time my son had turned four and he dug out of my subconscious, whatever it do, that that thought of me being four and losing my father, I know how to son, that was for. And what if something happened to me? What if something happened to me? What his life would be like? That those thoughts were suppressed and he managed to get that out of me and mix it up with the work stuff. And he said that's what's going on here. And you just need to work through that and unpack it a little bit. So talking to someone about it was massive. I've got two.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: I was lucky I got through that sort of spacing 3 or 4 weeks just by talking to someone regularly. But there are other people who this takes years for them to work through. And it's really, hard. And I think there's a lot that can be done. Just to have someone at work that you're working with is just off a little bit. There's usually something going on behind the whites of the eyes. Now, they're probably not going to share it with you, but you've got to you've got to be considerate of it. I've seen people who are brilliant people in my team who had like, star performers, and then they're off. Why are they off? And your relationships bring that out your relationships. If you've got good relationships, they'll share it with you. I had a guy who worked for me who was a good performer, and we found out like he was off and we found out his wife had been diagnosed with cancer and she only had like six months to live. Now, I couldn't imagine what that would be like in your life. And then having to turn up to work and front up to work. Well, no wonder he's off. So then you start to think about, well, how do we how do we help this person so that they can deal with that? Because that's bigger than work. So I think through your relationships and your connections with people, that understanding and that appreciation that there's a lot of other stuff going on i important, especially in this day and age.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I heard you talk there. There are kind of two thoughts that came to mind that I'd leave with people. And the first is when the pressure gets to you when you feel off when whatever it might be, don't be afraid to talk to a professional. I'm a huge believer that we should all see somebody at some point in our life that they're just helping, giving us coping skills to manage life. There's nothing to be afraid of. There used to be a stigma. Oh, if you go see a therapist or a counselor or whatever you want to call it, you're going to see the shrink and something's wrong with if I have a broken leg, I go to the doctor. There's nothing wrong with me. If you're off emotionally. Mentally, it's the same idea. Seek professional help. The second is a coworker. Look out for those you work with. If you see they're off and you have those good relationships, try to figure out how to help them. Talk to them. As you said, they may not share what's going on, but even if they share nothing, they're going to appreciate that you came to them and that you let them know you care and that you're trying to help them in any way you can. And so I think those are two things that are important, because the reality is we all have stuff going on in our private lives, and sometimes it's going well and sometimes it's going rough and nobody knows and it's going to impact work or sometimes just the stress of work like you mentioned and maybe not career going off the rails.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: The other way.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: And then you have something else going on. And so the biggest advice I'd offer is as managers learn the signs and symptoms, there are training programs out there that can help you teach. How do you spot when employees are having a hard time, or maybe dealing with some mental health and be willing to be there for them and support them? And then the second is an individual should not be afraid to ask for help, whether that's seeing a therapist, going to a doctor, talking to a close friend, whatever it may be. It's it's always worth it because there are people there who will support you and help you through it.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Yes, 100%. It's often easier to see other people. You can see when someone else is off. If you know them well, you can see the signal, okay, they're off here. It's very hard to see it yourself. You have to be very tapped in and tuned into you and your energy levels. Often someone might give you a clue. They'll say, are you okay at the moment? What's happening in your world? Oh, there's a clue and you have to think about it. But our egos get in the way, our egos get in the way, and we don't. We don't do something about it. It's like a health check. Oh, you might have something wrong with your arm. And you're like, it just doesn't feel right. Do you go to the doctor straight away? No, no, you let it get bad before you do. Don't do that.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: And then you try some medicine and throw an ice on it and go, oh, it will get better. Then finally, when you're dragging behind.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Google doesn't help and doesn't give you the answers. Yeah. Go and see someone who knows how to diagnose it and sort it out. And you, you'll be in a better space a lot quicker.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I 100% agree. All right. So I appreciate you having that conversation. Anyone who knows me, that's a real passion of mine. And I felt that would be a good conversation. We could have. Now we're going to move up to the end of the interview. So I have what I kind of call a call, a rapid-fire, but it's an FP&A section where I have four questions I ask. The goal is to kind of answer these quickly short answers around different subjects. So the first one is what is the number one technical skill that FP&A professionals need to master?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: I'm going to be very boring here. Debits and credits. Okay. Debits and credits. Now the world's moved on from Kalamazoo's and physically writing down debits and credits into a big book with a pen. A lot of systems do it for you. But often in finance, you get to fix things. You get to get something and fix it and sort it out. And the amount of journal entries that go wrong and then create rework to fix it. And the amount of accounting people who aren't over their journal entries, is it just bewilders me because that's the foundation of everything we do. Debits and credits. I mark exams for the institute. There are always debits and credits in that and you probably get 40% of people get them right. 60% of people or probably 40% get them right, probably 20% just get them completely wrong and 40% get a little bit of it right. So it just causes mayhem and causes work. It doesn't need to be there if you get them right. And just being able to know your journal entries quickly is important. Accounting standards, you got to know them back to front. It's very easy. Once you move out of the firm and go into the industry, it's a lot easier because when you're in the industry, you only need to know 1 or 2 accounting standards that are specific to that industry. So you don't need to know the whole book but know the ones that are appropriate for your industry and make sure they're being applied. So they're the technical things that I think any person in finance has to know.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Know your accounting.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: The tax person who does tax, don't worry about that. The tax person does that.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Yes, I hear you on that one. All right. So we've talked about this. I think I have a pretty good idea of what you'll answer here. I know there are a few ways you could go, but what's the number one human skill we need to master?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Communication.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: That's what I figured you'd say. Yeah.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: It's not what you say. It's how you say it. Your energy, all that sort of stuff. There are a thousand different ways you can do things. How you think you're saying something. The other person hears it differently. Get off email. If you could shut down Outlook and never use it again, that'd probably be a good start.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I was going to say I have a story about that, but we don't have time, so we'll keep going here. Are you currently using generative AI today and if so, how?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: I've dabbled in it. I don't use it a lot, because a lot of the stuff dealing with, with clients or training is the AI hasn't worked it out yet, so it's sort of ambiguous and complex. So that's generally the space that I'm working in terms of marketing and all that sort of stuff. I use it to just sense-check what I'm writing in terms of posts on LinkedIn or anything like that. Sure, I don't quite trust it. I asked it about business partnering and it gave me some answers. I thought, I know more about this than you, which worried me a little bit, and it gave me some names of people that I'd never heard of. So. And then when I looked them up, they, they don't do this stuff. So in terms of a tech head, I'm that little curve of the early adopters and laggards and all that sort of stuff. I'm not a laggard, but I'll let everyone else work it out when they've worked it out. Then I'll come in and go, give me the good stuff. So yeah, I use it a little bit. I dabble in it, but I just haven't got the time to dig down into it too much. And I don't need it for what I do at the moment. So. But I shouldn't say that finance people need to get into it. They need to get into it because it's very helpful. It's very helpful in terms of shortcutting stuff for them. So I tend to think of like, ChatGPT I go there instead of Google. Just gives you a better answer.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: No, I hear you. All right. So now we're going to move into the get to know you section. I have a couple of questions we're going to ask here and then we'll let you go. So what's your favorite hobby or passion when you're not doing business partnering, what do you like to do in your free time?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Sports. Other. Victorian. So if anyone for an Australian listener, you'll understand Victorians are obsessed with sport. They put a cockroach on the MCG or two cockroaches on the MCG and let them race and the 100,000 people turn up to watch that. So I'm into the sport and I'm a Victorian. So AFL, which is a quirky little Australian sport that only Australians play. I'm right into that. I got into whiskey a while ago, about three years ago in Covid. Surprise, surprise. In Covid, I got into whiskey and I learned a lot about whiskey, around distilling and tastes and all the different types of whiskeys around the world. So it's a bit of a dangerous, dangerous hobby to have. But yeah, I do like I do like whiskey. So yeah, they're probably. That sounds bad. I'm into sports and alcohol, but.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: You see it that way. But I wasn't going to go there.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: I also grew up my sense of humor is very much driven by a sitcom from the 90s called Seinfeld. So if you want to talk to me about Seinfeld, I'll laugh about that all day long. I went and saw him the other night in Sydney, which was which was a bit of a bucket list thing for me. So, yeah. Sports, comedy, alcohol. I sound like a bit of a freak.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: All right, well, there's our tagline for this episode. I'll listen to Andrew talk sports, comedy, and alcohol, particularly whiskey now. All right. For numbers. If you could go anywhere in the world tomorrow, what's your what's your place? You're going. What's kind of that favorite travel destination?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Yes, I'll go anywhere. I'm a traveler. So as long as it's different, I'll go anywhere. I love different cultures. I love different food. I'm just fascinated by what's going on here. This is different. So I've got my 20th wedding anniversary in two weeks time. We're going to Fiji for a week. A bit of luxury. I love Fiji because of the Fiji time, if you go there, Fiji time is a thing. If you want something in a hurry, it's not happening in Fiji. So if you want to relax, you go there. You don't have a choice because everything's just slow. Everything's on Fiji time. So a good place to relax. As I said, a traveler guy. On the other end of the spectrum, one of the most interesting places I've ever been to is Iceland. So we went back with the family in 2019 and traveled, and I said, we're going to Iceland again because I found that fascinating, cold, different, and just a bit weird and possibly the furthest place on earth from where I am at the moment.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Iceland would be fine, and Fiji would be fine. Any great location? Well, I want to take a minute and just thank you for joining me today. I've enjoyed having you on the show. If people want to reach out to you or learn more about you or your business, what's the best way for them to do that?
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Yes. Best way. I'm obviously on LinkedIn like you, Paul, so you can connect with me on LinkedIn. We've got our website theFBPteam.com. You can get on there. There are plenty of free resources in my book. we run a boot camp every month if you want to see what we do, it's free. We've got newsletters, all that sort of stuff. So that's the best way to contact me. All right.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Well, great. Well, thank you for being on the show. I enjoyed chatting with you and look forward to the audience getting the opportunity to listen to this. So thanks, Andrew. You enjoy the rest of your day.
Guest: Andrew Jepson:: Not a problem. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. You do a good job. So it's a pleasure to be invited on and have a chat.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: So thank you. 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.
