Four things your Finance team should stop to help the business more

By Andy Burrows

I’ve worked as a senior leader in many Finance teams. And over the years I’ve noticed several things that we do that really hamper our effectiveness.

‘Effectiveness’ can be defined as the extent to which we’re achieving our mission.

I’ll come to that mission more specifically at the end of this article. But for now, let’s just take it in general terms that we exist in the business to help the business. We don’t do anything for its own sake, just to satisfy ourselves as accountants. We don’t produce reports just to be able to admire a nice report. We don’t do analysis just so that we can admire a financial model that balances. All the things we do should help the business.

And so, I want to talk about things I’ve come to see as unhelpful. Some of them we take for granted. We just do them, we accept that they exist and we perpetuate them. Some of them almost have the status of sacred cows that we...

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Business Performance Reporting - It's Not All About the P&L!

By Andy Burrows [originally published September 2016]

If you are going to be successful in managing your business, you need measurement. You need facts that tell you how well you are doing and where you need to improve.

And those measures of success are much broader than just financial measures, such as profit, cash, margins, etc, however important they are.

How do you make sure that your business is heading in the right direction? How do you make sure that your strategies are working? How can you even tell if your strategies are being implemented correctly?

Is profit the only measure of success? Does profit tell you anything about whether you are achieving your vision?

Let’s say my vision was to become number 1 in a particular market. How would I know how close I was to achieving that? Not by looking at my profit in isolation.

And just asking that question leads to other useful questions that clarify what I am aiming at. For instance, what does becoming number 1 mean? Number...

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Are Your Monthly Reports Leading The Business Astray?

By Andy Burrows

[First published 29th March 2018]

I remember hearing the old sayings about performance measurement early on in my career, and thinking they were pretty astute – catchy and encapsulating a profound truth. Things like:

“If you don’t measure it, you don’t manage it!”

“What gets measured gets done!”

And I’ve always taken them to mean something positive – if you really value your objective, then measure your progress towards it. If you’re not measuring it, it shows you don’t really care. So, if you really do care, and you want it to get done, then measure it, report it, etc.

But recently that last one – “what gets measured gets done” – has been making me think. There’s a negative side to it as well.

The way you drive

The truth of that saying – “what gets measured gets done” – struck me when I drove my son’s Merc once.

The dashboard has a mode to...

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The Purpose-Driven CFO Part 10: Finding purpose in the boring bits of Finance

By Andy Burrows

[First published 26th December 2017]

[This article is also on LinkedIn - why not "Follow+" Andy and give the article a "like"?]

I haven’t written in this series for a while. So, for new readers, I’ll just briefly reiterate the premise of The Purpose-Driven CFO.

 What I set out to do was to investigate what difference it makes going back to first principles with the things we do in Finance, and asking “why?” I know from experience that understanding why we do things can increase our motivation in doing them. Once you can see the end goal, and see the benefits of that goal, any tedious, mundane, difficult or complex steps towards it become less burdensome. And often asking “why” reveals implications that will change the way we do things. That has certainly been the case with all the other areas I’ve looked at from this angle. 

You can find links to the previous articles at the end.

What I’m...

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The Purpose-Driven CFO Part 4: Financial Reporting for What?

By Andy Burrows

[First published 6th March 2017]

[This article is also on LinkedIn - why not "Follow+" Andy and give the article a "like"?]

This is part of a series of articles looking at Finance activities, and basically asking 'why?' The premise is that understanding why we do things helps us to do them better. It may even fundamentally change the way that we do them. If you haven't seen it already, take a look at the introductory article that explains the approach I'm taking: The Purpose-Driven CFO Part 1: Why be Purpose-Driven?

I’ll give you the links to the other articles in the series at the end.

What Do You Mean, “Why”?

Of all the areas of activity in Finance, the one that is probably most taken for granted (aside from transactional activities such as invoicing and Accounts Payable) is Financial Reporting. I’m guessing that even asking the question, “why do we do financial reporting?”, would get quizzical looks. What do I...

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