A compelling FP&A story is essential. In this second (and final) session from FP&ACon 2024, Glenn hosts Soufyan Hamid, FP&A leader for 16 years who runs the Financial Storytelling Program, and Matthew Herbert, Chewy Director of Finance.
- First poll: How confident are you in your ability to craft a compelling FP&A Story:?
- The move from numbers to storytelling
- Soufyan on why the finance director was always frustrated by my business presentations (when I was even invited to meetings)
- By contrast Matthew was forced to get to grips with storytelling early in investment banking (but faced a different challenge as an FP&A business partner at Walmart)
- The gap between perception and reality in our storytelling
- When information becomes insights
- The connection between business partnering and storytelling
- What (selfishly) do FP&A pros get by developing storytelling skills?
- Remember you are not giving a TED Talk
- The 5 Points that FP&A Pros Most Struggle with in their Storytelling
- Actionable tips in your presentation
Follow and connect with Soufyan Hamid: https://www.linkedin.com/in/soufyanhamid/
Follow and connect with Matthew Herbert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-herbert-6a56637/
Matthew’s training course at https://biztrix.us/
Soufyan (The Finance Circle) training www.thefinancecircle.com
Glenn Hopper:
Welcome everyone. Uh, welcome back to FP&A CON 2024. Today’s session is on getting to a winning FP&A story. Today we’re gonna dive into the art and science of crafting and delivering a compelling FP&A story. We’ll explore the key elements of a winning narrative, share tips for developing and refining your story, and discuss strategies for effectively engaging your stakeholders. We are recording today’s session, and we’ll send a link to that recording after the event. And, uh, notice that we have chat and Q&A enabled here. So please be sure to submit your questions as we go. Um, as, as we get to the end of the presentation, if we haven’t covered any of the questions there, we’ll try to wrap those up at the end. Um, this session will also appear as a special episode of FP&A Today, the number one podcast for FP&Apros.
I’m Glenn Hopper, the host of FP&A Today, and the head of AI Research and Development at Eventus Advisory Group. I was a startup CFO for 15 years and came up through the FP&A ranks. So this stuff is all near and dear to my heart. Um, I’m also a, an author and a lecturer on artificial intelligence and its implications in finance and accounting. And as passionate as I am about AI and its potential benefits, what AI affords us is the ability to spend more time on the storytelling parts of our jobs and less on the maths. Um, I’m excited to introduce our expert panelists. Today we have Soufyan Hamid and Matthew Herbert. Uh, Soufyan is living proof that you can become a specialist on a topic that you once struggled with through dedication and hard work with Over 17 years of corporate experience, Soufyan has made it his mission to help FP&A teams worldwide improve their presentation skills through his global consulting firm,
The Finance Circle. Soufyan’s Proprietary Training Method, the Financial Storytelling Program has been followed by more than 200 financial finance professionals worldwide. He has become a top storytelling voice on LinkedIn with nearly 75,000 followers who look to him for insights and guidance.
Matt is the director of strategic initiatives within the Commercial finance team at Chewy, the online pet retailer. With a 17 year career in finance, Matthew has held senior leadership positions at global brands like Walmart, the Lego, the Lego Group, and Credit Suisse. Matt has global experience from the US to South Korea, where he lived as an expat, as a regular advisor to c-Suite executives. Matthew is also passionate about learning and development. He taught himself C Sharp SQL and VBA. He runs Biz Tricks, which teaches business relevant technology and skills across Excel VBA, SQL, PowerPoint, and Word. He also enjoys analyzing financial markets in his spare time. Above all, Matt is a dedicated father and husband there, and thus concludes my reading <laugh>. Gentlemen, welcome to the program. You’re
Matthew Herbert:
A great reader, Glenn. Thanks, <laugh>. Thank you, Glen.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. So let’s, uh, let’s kick off the show today with a poll. Um, and this is kind of just to level set where we are, uh, with the audience. Um, the first poll is, how confident are you in your ability to craft a compelling FP&A story? So we run the gamut here from very confident all the way down to not confident and unsure, and we’ll give people a couple of minutes to, uh, respond here. And, you know, I, while people are responding, guys, I think for me, no one ever told me early in my FP&A career, Hey, you’re a storyteller. But it kind of, it just, it comes out of the job. And I think now people are embracing it and leaning into it. Obviously, uh, no one more than you two. But, um, what do you think, um, in your career, when did you see that shift happen where it was really started to be understood more that FP&A really is as much about the storytelling as the numbers and, and, uh, Soufyan, maybe we will kick off with you your thoughts on that
Soufyan Hamid:
<laugh>. Well, it, it, it came, it, it came like six or seven years ago because I was, uh, the pure technician. I was, uh, really interested in everything that was related to, to financial modeling, Excel, power query, power pivot, VBA, everything that I could learn. I learned it. Um, and it worked until I decided to join the, uh, company as a finance business partner. And at that moment, I realized that I was not invited to meetings. I was not involved in the business cases soon enough to be able to participate. And I just thought it was that, that way that things were done and I was maybe expecting too much. Uh, but the finance director, just in the monthly meeting in which I had to present the result of the business unit that was responsible of, um, was always frustrated by my presentation. He, uh, he asked a lot of questions.
Uh, he asked me to simplify, and I think that one day he just couldn’t anymore. And, uh, he, he told me, yes, Soufyan, you are a technician, but the people I will present it to are not. And so you need to bring me the story out of your or figures. And that, that was the first time I heard of story in the, in the field of finance. For me, story storytelling was a marketing concept for salespeople to, to invent things so that they could convince others to buy their products. But eventually I realized it was important in our jobs too, because when you don’t sell your job, when you don’t sell your work, it’s basically hidden. And if it’s hidden, it’s not worth anything. So this is where I started to understand why it was important and I started to train.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, makes sense. And, uh, let’s go ahead and let’s show the results. And while we’re pulling the results up, Matt, how about you? What’s your, uh, your first exposure and, and your understanding of the, uh, of the transition?
Matthew Herbert:
Yeah, I think mine’s a little bit different in the sense that I started my career off in investment banking and investment banking. Storytelling’s huge ’cause the, the firm, the bank is in the business of either pitching opportunities to executives, whether it be say, a merger and acquisition or a deputy financing, maybe a initial public offering, or when they get to a stage that they want to move a product forward to syndication, they’ve got to pass that through the investment committee. And so the storytelling would happen on two fronts. It’s pitch ideas from a sales standpoint, and then pitch ideas from an execution, uh, to enable that syndication and Credit Suisse was very buttoned up in the sense that they had, uh, a rubric and a style guide for putting information and detail together. So I feel fortunate enough, very early in my career to be a part of a situation where it was storytelling is the meat and potatoes of our business and our success hinges on our ability to craft that narrative and make it compelling for the marketplace.
Now, that said, I didn’t always live my career in investment banking, and also shifted, as you noted to, uh, Walmart as an example, uh, and very quickly saw through, as Soufyanhad said, as a business partner, how important it is in that setting to ensure that that message in that narrative comes across. Even though I wasn’t selling a product like I was in investment banking, it was still helping to communicate the figures, the storyline, and, and enabling the business to be empowered with that information and that narrative so that they can go make better informed, uh, decisions with the business. So for me, it’s first began in banking, and then I saw its direct applicability and shift in corporate finance when I shifted out of banking.
Glenn Hopper:
Right. Um, I is, I, I, I think everyone is seeing the poll results here. I love this as, and I think this audience really likes this, this is, could you find a, a, a poll that had a better standard, uh, distribution than this does? You know, we’ve got the tails with, uh, very confident and unsure both at six and at seven and 6% respectfully, and then somewhat confident, you know, the middle. We, I, I feel like we’ve got, I guess we’re not exactly even with confident and not confident, but I, I love when we do these polls, it, it doesn’t happen a lot where you get this, uh, distribution like this. So does, do these results surprise you guys? Is this about what you expected? Is this kind of what you see when you, uh, talk to audiences?
Soufyan Hamid:
Well, I, I’m, I’m a bit surprised, honestly, because, um, when, when I ran polls in the, in the audience of finance stories and finance presentations, well, the result is some somewhat different from what we observe here. I understand from the results here that people feel quite confident in, uh, in how to craft an FP&A story. But when I ask finance leaders like, FP&A managers, FP&A Directors uh, CFOs and finance directors, like 83% of them are not satisfied by the level of presentations that are offered in finance. So I think there’s a gap between the perception and the confidence in our own skills.
Glenn Hopper:
Are you, are you referencing the, uh, Dunning Kruger effect here as <laugh>? Maybe you know you from Indeed. Indeed. How about you, Matt?
Matthew Herbert:
Um, I would, uh, tend to agree with what Soufyanhas said. As I’ve grown in my career and I’ve taken on more senior opportunities, I find oftentimes with what material is presented, that there’s often a pillar of context that may be missing. And so just using my own empirical information and the local discussions that I have with my peers, it seems to align with what Soufyanhas said. So I think individuals, uh, may tend to bias towards their capabilities versus what the leaders are actually ingesting and taking in as they have those meetings and they do those discussions. Uh, and so for me, it’s, uh, I look at that and that Soufyan’s comments resonate.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. So, and this is a great transition and this is why we’re here today. So let’s, um, let’s, uh, let’s go ahead and dive in. I wanna talk first about, um, the importance of a compelling FP&A story. You know, we, we get so many, so many charts and graphs, and there’s so many ways to slice and dice it, but, um, thinking about why it’s important for us as FP&A professionals to understand the message and, and get that across. So, uh, Soufyan, let’s, let’s start with you. Um, share your thoughts on what the audience the audience. Well, to your earlier point, you know, what we think we’re doing as technicians, and we under, we see all the numbers and we see all of it. But what does the audience get out of a well-crafted FP&A story?
Soufyan Hamid:
Well, the, the goal, uh, you have to think about the goal of representation. Generally. We, we consider the goal of representation as informative. We present the results, and we just want to throw the information as such. But what the audience expects is what to do about it, what to do about the information they get. And eventually, this is not an information anymore. This becomes an insight. And this is what we have to, to, to inject in that information. We have to inject not only, um, what’s Im, why it is important for them, the emotion, and also what to do about it. Because people don’t want to have to think in your place.
You have to come with somehow additional information to go beyond the simple information. You have to go towards the future. And that’s why I think that the message is not the information. And this is where I think that a lot of finance people struggle. It’s to go beyond simply transferring the information you got from your analysis. It’s adding value to it that will make the difference in storytelling.
Matthew Herbert:
I, I want to just chime in. ’cause something that Soufyan said is really, in my opinion, critical. With my teams I’ll often tell them our role obviously is here to be a business partner first and foremost. So we need to ensure that we’re managing our partner’s expectations, and we get lots of questions. They come in and they come in about many different topics. Uh, and irrespective of whether it’s say, an accounting, what I’ll call an accounting or a transactional based FP&A questions such as how are we tracking the numbers versus the budget, or it’s something that’s more strategic in nature, like, should we run this promotion? Uh, for me, it’s the same what Soufyan had said. That informative part is, in my opinion, the answer to the question. So should we run the marketing promotion, great, I can go do the analysis and I can come back.
The insight is where you really start to help your business partner understand the value that you bring to the situation. And that’s where, to Soufyan’s point the narrative and the story starts to come out running the promotion. You may think as a binary situation, but as a partner, I could come forward and say, I ran the analysis. This doesn’t have a great return on ad spend, but if we were to tweak it, maybe we could co-promote this with another item that actually has a spend that seems to make sense. And when that happens to ion’s point, now you’re bringing value to the table, and that’s when the leaders and the partners start, start to see you in a different way. Um, and so I mentioned that because that’s a framework that can be applied, whether you’re reporting the numbers from a budgetary standpoint or whether you’re reporting the numbers from an analysis standpoint.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, great point. And I, so, you know, you guys might have thoughts on this, but I, and I, and I wanna be careful with how I say this, because thinking about what the stakeholders get out of it, when you craft this narrative is, um, is one thing. But also as those of us who are responsible for putting this narrative together, I think treating an assignment or, or what you’re reporting understanding going in that it’s a narrative is important, but you also don’t wanna go in with sort of a predetermined outcome that you want the numbers to say, you know, then you get into that sort of lies, damn lies and statistics <laugh> thing that we, that we know we’ve probably all been asked to do in our career, but we want to go and, and actually, but we want to think about the narrative. And so I guess with this storytelling narrative structure, we know what we’re doing for the audience, but as the people who are putting it together, um, what do the, what do the FP&A pros themselves get when they develop these storytelling skills? And Matt, we’ll start with you and then, and sufian get your thoughts as well.
Matthew Herbert:
Yeah. So, uh, we’ll probably touch on some of what I’ll say later in the presentation, but for me, I think the intellectual curiosity that comes as a result of doing that diligence is immeasurable and invaluable. Part of our role, in my opinion, is to, to be knowledge onsumers of the business. We, we should understand the business in a way that many of our partners won’t get the opportunity to do. Finance, to me, is this unique intersection in the business, because why we manage the entirety of the P&L, everything from sales all the way down to profit. That’s gonna include things like headcount, facilities, uh, operational components, marketing, all of these different components that are, that sit outside of someone else’s discipline. Let’s take marketing as an example where within marketing, they may be very narrow on. I’m gonna focus on what our role and function is to help advertise the business, create awareness, whatever the objectives may be, whereas finance sits with that whole spectrum of opportunity.
And so for me, just to report the informative piece, going back to just piggyback on Soufyan’s model here is a missed opportunity to understand that whole spectrum of the P&L or the independent process. So jumping in with an open mindset to say, what else is there here that I can learn? Or what other piece of information may help support the argument? Or there may be information that refutes it as well. That process of working through the collection of that information and connecting with the various stakeholders helps to build a multitude of, uh, skills, whether it’s relationship management, that knowledge gaining, uh, the analysis perspective. Because as you talk to others, they may say, oh, this is how I view it. I didn’t think about that before. That’s a really interesting point. All of those pieces are things that you’re just tacking into that toolbox to help make you more well-rounded and turn you into that forward thinker.
Because at the end of the day, uh, our leaders in the business, they wear many different hats. I mean, think about a CFO who reports ’em to a CFO, the chief marketing officer, the chief technology officer, the chief operations officer, the chief financial officer, the chief accounting officer. He’s got this vision of the whole broad spectrum of the business, and he’s thinking about it from all those different angles, angles as opposed to a silo piece. And I think where we sit in help crafting that narrative, as you move through that process, you’re building that skillset of turning into a leader who can provide the insight for the entirety of the business, not just the narrow field like transactional FP&A
Soufyan Hamid:
Great points. Great. And Ian? Yeah, I, I like what, what, what Matthew said, because my answer will be in two parts. The first one is that indeed Matt, Matt is totally right. Because to evolve into the CFO role, you need to buildthat to build a variety of skills. And not only technical, but also partnering, seeing the world in different angles, and also having to participate to different kinds of meeting by understanding all the audience needs. That’s one part, and I think that Matt explained that, uh, great, uh, in a great way. The other part, and to come back to the original question of what do finance professionals get from storytelling, uh, I will have a more selfish answer. It’s the visibility. When you learn how to present, how to pass a message, how to communicate with non-finance people, you increase your visibility.
And that way you also increase your career opportunities because it, it’s harsh to say, and maybe, um, will, you will excuse my English, but you’re no one if you are not seen in a company. You are, you, you remain a sort of back office department. If you stay behind your spreadsheets and when you want to work, when you want, when you want a promotion, well, you, you, you better be seen because it’s not only based on your technical skills that your manager will say, yeah, you will now have a, a role in which you will be in contact with other leaders.
You will be in contact with a bu uh, director. You will be in contact with an mc, uh, management committee, uh, executive. They will have to be sure that at least you know how to communicate with, with this kind of people and other people will interfere in that decision. And when you want to work, uh, above and when you want to be promoted, you have to be visible that that’s something I’ve learned and I didn’t know in the past. And I was frustrated because I thought that only my technical skills would make the, the, would make the work. But no, you have to be seen and working on your storytelling skills, on your presentation skills and actually do it is a way for you to reach that goal.
Matthew Herbert:
I think. Great. Great.
Soufyan Hamid:
There’s two, oh yeah, go
Matthew Herbert:
Ahead. Yeah, there’s two things that came to mind. My wife has this great saying, it’s a closed mouths, don’t get fed. So to piggyback off of Soufyan’s comments, number one, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Like, a good leader is someone who’s gonna help you in that development process. So, to Soufyan’s point, if you want to be seen, you need to let your manager know that you want to be seen, and you can come up with a plan on how to do that. Maybe in the weekly staff meeting, there’s an opportunity for you to share something. You could put together a lunch and learn where you’re presenting to a broader audience, and maybe you put together a cross departmental lunch and learn where you invite marketing to come in, and you have a chance to do that, to, to gain some of that exposure.
There’s some really safe spaces to do that, to fail and get your nerves out without feeling like you’re jeopardizing your career because somebody views you as, oh, they don’t know how to command a room in terms of presentation or con to control the audience, to move the narrative towards the objective. Uh, that’s one thing that I wanted to piggyback off of. Uh, two is Soufyan’s a hundred percent, right? I’ve been through, every, every company has a form of what they’ll call Cal annual calibration. These are the meetings where they bring everybody to the table, and maybe there’s a PowerPoint slide with everybody’s picture. And they’re going through this process of how do we rank these employees this year? You know, where on, on a scale of zero to a hundred percent, where did they fall? And to Soufyan’s point, ’cause I’ve been in all these meetings, <laugh>, where you end up in large part is a function of the number of people in that room to advocate for you and to speak on your behalf.
And like Soufyan said, it’s a double-edged sword. You can have someone, you want as many people to speak positively about you as possible. Uh, you may get some detractors where people have poor experiences, but that can out be outweighed by a larger population of people who have good experiences. However, if no one in that room has anything to say about you, the probability that you’re gonna get ranked higher to the 100% is really, really low. So if career progression and movement is of interest to you, it’s something that you should jot down and note and take action on as how do I create these opportunities for me to be seen across the organization by a broad set of individuals so that I can ensure that some of that progression can happen? So I just wanted to add some additional color to Soufyan’s comments ’cause uh, they’re very, very relevant and real in the workplace.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And I would
Soufyan Hamid:
Add experience that <laugh> both of us, I think <laugh>. Yeah, <laugh>, this is why I advocate for this. It’s, it’s so important. And it’s not just, um, the, the evaluation you get is how people know you. Yeah. And, uh, if you’re seen as a leader, you are, you will get promoted as, as such, but without that, you, you have no chance.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And I think it’s even more important now because like, there’s so many software tools out there, and whether it’s an advanced ERP system or Datarails or something that people are using to automate things that used to take a lot of our time, or obviously with AI and, and the automation capabilities that are coming out of that, it’s where do we provide value in the, the value of entering data and, um, transforming data and, and making these models as that becomes more and more automated or easier to do or more democratized, where is our real value gonna be? And there’s a quote that I use all the time because I think it’s so relevant to how we need to look at ourselves as FP&A professionals and as we move up in our careers and add greater value to an organization. So there’s this quote by, um, Clifford Stoll, and it is, uh, data is not information.
Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding and understanding is not wisdom. So I think about that as kind of a pyramid of the value that you’re adding. So taking raw data and turning it in, in information that’s first kind of the ETL kind of just gather this, clean it, turn it into something. Now it’s information. What am I gonna do with this information? And where we are in our FP&A career and where we are adding value is the higher we can be up on this pyramid. So if we’re taking this knowledge and turning it into understanding, that’s something that we can do in storytelling. And so as more and more of those lower level items get automated, um, uh, then it becomes very, uh, very important that we’re able to provide that human level value on top and, and be that strategic influence. And, uh, Georgette is asked to repeat the pyramid, so I’ll go, it’s Clifford Stoles, the guy who, uh, said this.
He’s a real fascinating guy. If you don’t know him, I’d look him up after the, the show. But it’s data is not information. Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding and understanding is not wisdom is the, uh, is the quote. Um, but I do, I I want to, I want to keep moving on this too. Um, and I think, and there was a question earlier about bringing other members, um, to, of the board to come in and contribute. And I think that when we think about the audience, um, C-Suite, senior leadership, other departments in the company, the, um, who, the audience of these stories, um, I guess let’s go, let’s go Matt to you on this. Um, and then Soufyan we will get your thoughts as well. But, um, in your experience, how does a compelling FP&A narrative influence decision makers and drive action within an organization? And maybe as part of that, thinking about getting other people to contribute to your story and to get those other, other insights may if that we can break it into two questions, if that’s too much to grapple in one. But,
Matthew Herbert:
Uh, yes. So I know Soufyan’s big on what I’m about to say, but audience is key. He, he said early on in the presentation, what’s the objective of the meeting? It is critical. Who the audience is equally as critical, how you present to your line manager versus maybe the VP of the finance organization versus the CFO of the organization to CEO, whomever it may be. Those all have different levels of, of attack from a storytelling standpoint. The closer you may be to your peers, the more you’re gonna get into the details because you’re, you’re considering methodologies and how should we analyze this and what are the mechanisms or the tools that we should go about doing this? It’s a little more freeform, uh, whiteboarding if you will, in that sense. But as you start to ladder up no different than what you talked about in the terms of the pyramid, you then have to put yourself in the shoes of that audience.
Uh, as much as the CFO may care about the technical details and the way that you actually built that model, that’s not as important to him. If you’re a strong finance group and he views your organization that way, he’s gonna trust your methodologies. He’s gonna wanna know what are the risks and the trade-offs, and how does this impact the dependencies within the business? And so to your point, it’s this higher level of insight as opposed to the lower level of insight. So, uh, for me, I always take a step back and say, who is it that’s consuming this? Going back to Soufyan’s point, what do they need to know, uh, and how, so there’s the information piece, but how does that information piece build into the insight so that they feel like they can action forward? I tell people often that when you give a narrative, you should always state your position and what your recommendation may be. It may not always be what leadership aligns to, and that’s okay. But if you’ve empowered your audience to have that information where they can develop a point of view on it, again, whether it aligns or it’s in a rebuttal to it, then in my opinion, that’s the greatest success. That’s the greatest value that you can bring to the organization, is packaging that information in a way that a leader can make a decision in action. So I’ll, it’s probably part of your question and yeah, I’ll let Soufyan go for part one. <laugh>. Yeah.
Soufyan Hamid:
But yeah, I wanted to add up on, on what you said because it, it, everything you said is true. And I think that there’s something, maybe a tip that I would like to give to, to everyone is that in, in a presentation, in a meeting, it’s a business meeting. It’s not, it’s not a TED talk. You are not there to present one to many. It’s a meeting. And in that sense, you have to, to be a sort of thermostat and feel the moment you ha you are, you, you have the hat of the presenter and feel, the moment you have the hat of the facilitator and the facilitating skills is not exactly the same as the storyteller skills. This is why you are, you have to be able to switch the one and the other to make the others participate. Because, and this is maybe something that I would defer with, with Matt. When you come as a finance professionals, you have a different set of audience. Some are familiar with finance, some are not. Some like finance departments, some don’t. And the, the safest way for you is to come with options. Not state clearly what you want things to happen, but come with a set of options, a sort of Chinese menu in which you are, you only not only have your recommendations with, with an S and the impact you think that they will, will have on the budget, on the forecast or on the future strategy.
And in that moment, you become the facilitator in which you come with the option, you discuss, you ask the, the opinion. And that way it’ll be an exchange because this is basically what you want. If people just are in the meeting and do not participate, there’s a part of the goal that you didn’t reach. But if you are in that facilitation mode, and this is a different set, set of skills, but it’s somehow super important, well, you are able to animate the debate and you will not be the actor, but you will be the one in enhancing the acting of the audience in the room.
Matthew Herbert:
Yeah. And that’s, uh, that’s a really good point in my, from my standpoint, that’s the part of the trade off piece. Uh, I totally agree. But if you come blaring in with just your narrow point of view, uh, and I found this in my own career very quickly, the meeting may end early <laugh>, because oftentimes to your point of Soufyan, it’s like, well, what did marketing think about that? That’s very different than we went and talked to marketing. And they instructed us that their strategy, their objective is this, this is why we think an action as such would be beneficial to the organization. I mean, those are two, just even that simple example, two very different approaches in how you address the audience. Uh, ’cause Soufyan’s a hundred percent correct. Like the, the higher leaders, they sit with more information. Their job has many more different meetings that they’re a part of on different aspects of the business.
And they’re gonna come with their own perspective and their own mindset. But to hear and see you, oh, we did think about that. Stock marketing, that’s an interesting idea. But what you don’t know is we’ve made a decision to do this and that’s why that might not work, but we could take it and pivot in this direction. Or can you go back and run this analysis on it? ’cause that would be an in interesting add on that we might need to consider as an organization. So a hundred percent, yeah, totally aligned with, uh, that commentary that’s there. And, and I think only ’cause, only ’cause I saw it on the side where someone had kind of said, how do you help an organization who’s not necessarily aligned to finance, get on board with finance? Some of that takes time. If, if you’re in an organization where, where finance is not a finance forward, uh, organization, meaning does finance kind of, are they viewed as the right hand to the CFO or to the C not to the CFO.
Obviously they are. But to the CEO, sometimes that relationship takes longer to build. But if you can come to the table and understand that group, where is their position? Where are they coming from? You learn their perspective, their culture, so to speak. Then over time you can start to think through what, what is it that I can say, or what is the information and the data that can help position my argument to be compelling to them? And those are ways that you can start to bridge those gaps and to build that continuity across departments. And then as you bring other ideas forward, they’ll view you yet less as the no, no sayer, because often finance gets labeled as the nos sayer, uh, and more as the collaborator who helps bring ideas forward. Some will be yes, and some will be no.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, that’s, those are great points because I think about what we do, and there’s a big part of our job that is creating our dashboards. We have our standard reports, we’re tracking and reporting on the KPIs, and these are all standard and kind of, once we set ’em up and we monitor ’em, and we make sure that everybody’s kind of singing from the same sheet of music, um, as, as we go through and look at our KPIs and our reporting, that becomes standard. But then thinking about when you, a lot of times as an FP&A professional, you’re presenting up, you’re, you may be the lowest ranking person in the room if you’re with department heads and with c-suite executives, and you’re going in. And, uh, Soufyan, great point about you’re not there to do a TED talk. And this is very hard. And you think about those of us who went into finance and accounting, we normally don’t associate public speaking and sort of the litigating and rhetoric with that.
But being able, and, and going back to career pathing too, but being able to go into a meeting where you are prepared, you know the information, you know the narrative, and you are the subject matter expert that’s coming in to talk about the numbers of the business and be able to have this interactive back and forth. I mean, if you’re able to successfully do that, that suggests, you know, that that’s like the recipe for promotion is you can come in and it’s not just he’s in the background, uh, building these great models. It’s able to communicate them and also bring, you know, clarity to some items, but also give the back and forth. So I think that’s a, a great thing to think about as we, uh, as FP&A pros, we’re not just doing the dashboards. We’re not just, um, you know, reactively providing reports. Where are we adding that value to the company?
Matthew Herbert:
Yeah. ’cause those dashboards to that end, ’cause a lot of times lower entry level, what, what are functions, it’s to create the dashboards, to write the commentary for the variance explanations. But you’re in a position where you’re learning the, the details at the lowest level. And those details can act as a filter for you to understand where to inspect the business further. And oftentimes in that inspection, you’re in a position to uncover something that’s valuable to the organization. You know, something very simple, uh, customer attrition is up. Or maybe you start to see the trend change. Well, why is it changing? Let me dig into it. Oh, there’s a certain business unit that has a loss in customers that’s greater than another. Why might that be? And it’s just to say that you can use that to your advantage to go find that insight and then bubble it up and resurface it to the organization well ahead of when it may surface or build to a point that it’s a breaking point.
And then everybody realizes, wait, customer attrition is up. Like, when did we first know that? And they’re trying to back into when that was, and they want to demand answers. Well, why didn’t you surface this sooner? You can be empowered to do that and say, I think that there’s something here that’s meaningful. Let’s tease it out. Work with your leadership team i’s a great point. Develop that further, or let’s keep an eye on it. I’ll, I’ll let my VP know about it and we’ll just kind of test it as, as time goes on to see if it’s a real issue or not.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. I can’t believe how fast time is going here. I feel like we’ve got a million things left to talk about <laugh>. Yeah. Um, I do wanna throw another poll up. Um, this next poll question is, what aspect of FP&A storytelling do you find most challenging? Structuring the narrative, presenting data and insights, engaging stakeholders effectively, tailoring the story to the different audiences and getting the message out of the data, finding the, uh, signal from the noise or others. So this is, uh, I’ll be interested to see here. Do you guys, uh, han do you have any guesses on what, uh,
Soufyan Hamid:
What we might be seeing here? I’m super curious about this, uh, because, uh, in, in, in all my trainings about storytelling and, um, and the conferences I’ve had, uh, I ask the questions and, uh, there are always five main points that come out, but I won’t say them. I will wait for people to answer, and I will see if they align. But generally, I know the one that’s the, the, the most painful for, uh, finance people.
Glenn Hopper:
Matt, we’ll give ’em about 30 more seconds to answer here. What do you, what do you think we’re gonna say?
Matthew Herbert:
Uh, I’m biased towards the first one. Yeah. The structuring of the narrative.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Okay. We’ll give a couple more seconds here and then we’ll flip over and, and see the results. All right. Last few coming in. And what do we got? So our distribution on this, we’ve got the highest being engaging stakeholders effectively and followed by, it looks like structuring the narrative and then, um, getting the message outta the data, which to me that’s the most fun part, is dig, you know, digging through all that and trying to find where to, it’s, uh, let’s see. Oh, it tail tailoring the story to different audiences. I skipped that. So what, I don’t know, what do you guys think here?
Soufyan Hamid:
It, it’s aligned with, uh, with, uh, with the, the general, um, knowledge I have on this question. Uh, the, the, the five points that were mentioned here are the five ones that I generally, uh, get from the audiences I talk to. Uh, maybe not in that order, because generally where people struggle the most, and again, it’s maybe on the other side of the, the, the, the spectrum, because I ask the leader to, to, to tell me what they find is lacking the most in the presentations they get. And generally it’s more about the message when they go out of the meeting, they don’t know what they have to remember. They don’t know what they have to act upon. They don’t know what was important to remember. And so this is the number one issue that there was. But of course, there were five main orders, like the ones that are mentioned, and the structure of the narrative is also, uh, is also key in those five main issues that was, that were detected.
Glenn Hopper:
All right. Well, in the time that we, uh, in the time that we have left, I really want to get into some kind of actionable things that the, that the crowd can take away from this. So, uh, uh, sufian, if you’ll go first tell, walk us through the key elements of a winning FP&A story and that story, that the storytelling mindset that you advocate. Yeah.
Soufyan Hamid:
Well, um, it goes along with the, with the lack of main message of the presentation. And in that sense, if I have one advice to give to the finance professionals that are with us today is to use the three whats. When you start before even touching your slides before, before even understanding what, how you will interact with the audience, think of the three whats of your presentation, the what is simply informative, what, uh, what happened and why it happened. So there you already have to speak about the root causes. And the second is the so what? The, so what is the emotional part of your, uh, your presentation? It’s where you understand your audience. It’s where you understand why the information that you will tell them is important and can become an insight. And then you, you come with the, now what the next steps.
And this is the part in which you speak of your recommendations, of your options. You become the facilitator only with these three, whats, you have an insight that deserves the point of being told to the audience. And thanks to these three, what you will limit the number of information you will tell, because you will, sometimes you will think an information is important, but you will not find why it is important to the people in front of you. You will find an information that’s important, but somehow you, there’s nothing to do about it, or we cannot correct anything about this. And so thanks to this selection process, you will decrease the number of points you will mention up to two or three that people will remember from this presentation. So my big advice for a winning FP&A story is to first think about the message, the rest will come. But without that, don’t think about your slides. Don’t think about the body language you would use or the public speaking, uh, skills you need to develop. Don’t think about the, the narrative itself, because without message, those don’t exist.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, that’s great. And I, I love the way that you frame that, because I’ve heard, you know, thinking about who we are in FP&A, you know, some people say, think of yourself as an investigative journalist. Some people say ask why three times. But yours, I like it because what, here’s the issue. So what, what does it mean? What’s the impact now? What, that’s the, the prescriptive part, now what do we do about it? So I think that’s a very, a, a clear framework. So that’s great. Uh, Matthew, what do, what are your thoughts?
Matthew Herbert:
Yeah, totally aligned on that. Uh, just to give some other thoughts for inspiration, another common framework that’s used is situation complication resolution also follows that, that form of the what? The, so what the, now what sometimes I also find it helpful to just go through the a timeline. Where have we been? Where are we now, where are we going? Because that can help as you think about it. And then, um, just to echo what Soufyan had said, you know, why is this important? What do we need to do about it? Uh, because at the end of the day, just presenting a piece of information for information’s sake, though it may be valuable. It’s less helpful than if you can state what insight may be out of that or how it could be used with the business. Great. We beat gross profit. Okay. There’s this idea we’ve been thinking about for innovating with investment, with marketing.
Maybe we should take some of that excess and try it because we have it in the budget. So it’s just to say that those are two very different ways to position the same piece of information. Um, so for me, oftentimes that’s what I’ll do, and I totally agree with Soufyan. If you, if you don’t step out of the trees to see the forest first, you will walk through the forest and then when you step out, realize you’re very far away from the destination that you originally wanted to achieve. Um, and so it’s always best and in my opinion, best practice to begin by stepping back and getting a broader viewpoint as opposed to staying narrow.
Glenn Hopper:
That’s great. Yeah. And I, you know, as I think of what we do kind of every day being in, in the models and, and, and working on our dashboards and explaining the variances and everything, but I, I really like thinking about the part because I was, I was a CFO for so long. I was, well, it, it was a two-way street. One, I had to be the recipient and take in all this information, but then I was the one that had to present it to the CEO, to the board, to the investors. And also, you know, that that sort of presentation layer of this, that’s not just, here’s the report, it’s, here’s the additional value. I do think one thing that I’d like, especially if there’s, if there’s people who are maybe more junior in their FP&A career, I’d like them to get a little bit more about the, the, the presentation part of this.
And I know we only have, uh, about 10 minutes left, but Matt, I wonder if, you know, I wanna talk about the delivery of storytelling, not the written word, but when you were actually addressing that group, um, could you share some tips on like how to, how to most effectively deliver that FP&A story? And I’m thinking now about just phy like body language engagement. And I know we’ve, we’ve touched on some of this before with the, with the back and forth, but as you’re presenting to real people in a, well, I don’t know how often it’s in a real room. Now, maybe it’s zoom these days, <laugh> more than, more, more often than not. But,
Matthew Herbert:
Uh, so some of it too depends on the organization and the format in which they like to run those meetings. And I bring that up because for the vast majority of my career, things were ver the narrative was delivered in the PowerPoint format. Uh, since I’ve been at Chewy is a very document driven organization where they want something written up. You take the first couple minutes of the meeting to read the written document, and then you kick off into the discussion that happens. So just a, just a side point that obviously you wanna follow the style and the kind of accepted mechanism that your organization is doing, you can obviously work within those contexts, meaning get with your leaders and understand how that information should be packaged together and presented so that you’re ensuring that the format fits what the organization expects to receive.
So putting that aside, now that we’re all on the same plane, a lot of it for me is ensuring that you are speaking to the individuals who need the information. So if I’m walking into a meeting, we’re having a discussion about marketing promotions, oftentimes I like to ask a question to the head of marketing, we’ve done this analysis, we’re noticing these insights out of the information, the data, what do you think about that? Uh, to start to solicit, because I want them to, to give me that information, understand their position, where are they coming from? Because a couple situations may happen. Maybe they come in ’cause they’re defensive, they don’t like what it is that you have to say, and they wanna protect, uh, their area or their department, or they need to have some time to think about it and digest it and consider whether they want to make a change in the direction.
So oftentimes I want to give them an opportunity to explain to me, uh, what their position is and how they’re thinking about that information so that then I can take the, the direction from there to whether it’s to resolve a concern or to add extra information that may help from the arguments standpoint, uh, or to help drive action whether I need to go find another piece of information or another stakeholder who’s important to that process. So for me, I think it’s structure ensuring that your structure is there so that you’re meeting the mechanism so that you’re not gonna get blindsided by somebody saying, oh, you didn’t provide the document, like, we’re done with the meeting. And then ensuring that you’re soliciting the audience to help them put forward their perspective and their understanding so that you know how to address that and facilitate, as Sufian had said earlier, uh, to ensure that there’s an appropriate outcome.
Glenn Hopper:
That’s great. And Sufian, I really, that, that really resonated with me that you said you’re not giving a TED talk. This is an engagement, and I just, I’m picturing the difference when, you know, your TED Talk, you’ve got your 18 minute timer and you’re basically reciting a monologue versus actual a, a discourse and, um, and conversation. So I’m, I’m wondering in that framework, how do you recommend handling questions during or after the presentation? Um, you know, sort of how you have that engagement when you know, you have your story you want to get across, but you also need to be, you know, providing this, this two-way communication. And I guess adjunct to that is, you know, I I’m thinking about, again, more junior people who aren’t used to doing this kind of thing, and what role confidence plays in all that.
Soufyan Hamid:
Yeah. Well, uh, first it’s, it’s important to, to remain open for questions during the whole presentation, because it’s not that you are going to say, uh, leave your questions for the end of the meeting, and there will be a Q&A. It works for a big presentation, but if you are in a, in an EXCO meeting or in a board meeting, it will not work. Or if you try, I, I would like to see the reaction and, uh, and see how, how it works. But no, you, you have to be open to answer to questions. And of course, it’s a question of practice, because when you have your structure of the narrative, and I, I insist in speaking of structure, you have to, to have your bullet points in your head, you will find in the way you respond to questions, a way to transition to the next point.
And that’s a question of practicing because you know your topic, you know your structure and in the questions that there, there are sometimes it’s, it’s hard, but it’s always possible to make sure there’s a link in your answer to go to the next point because you don’t want to stay blocked on, um, on, on, on a question during like 30 or 50% of the meeting. Sometimes it’s hard. But in those cases, you have to use some techniques in order to, to, to, to diffuse the bone, let’s say. You know, there, there, there’s a stinky bone. Uh, in, in the meeting there’s a question that would take hours. Well, in those cases you can use the boomerang technique and that’s a way for you to either throw the, the, the question back to the asker by asking the opinion or throw back in the future saying, of course it’ll require some more time, it’ll require some more analysis.
Can we do that outside of this meeting offline? And that way I will be able to answer you with more details and satisfy your needs. Of course, don’t do that with every single question you get during the meeting, because otherwise you lose your credibility. You, you can use like one or two times in a meeting because you really feel that answering that question will not add a value to your point, to your story. And that it’ll take too much time to answer. In those cases, it’s a sort of facilitation skill that you have to get. It’s to be able to answer difficult questions or react to difficult situations. And the brewing technique is one of them.
Matthew Herbert:
And I think just to add on to that, to what Soufyan had said, ’cause this is something that I’ve watched and observed, uh, been a part of during meetings, is oftentimes you want to be perceived as the person who has all the answers. And sometimes when those questions come, you don’t have the answer. But more often than not, you know, when someone is fumbling through it just to try to give a response as a way to answer the question, instead of stating, I don’t have that answer, or I know I can get to that answer to Ion’s point, it’s gonna take me some time, or I am not sure and I need some help, is there someone within the organization who can do that? And for me, I’ve found those who are just forward with that, it helps to retain that credibility instead of often they give, uh, an answer that may be a fluff answer, and then it comes with a follow-up question.
It’s like you’re digging the hole even deeper <laugh>, because then it’s like, Ooh, I just like somehow made it through that first one and there’s no way I’m making it through the second one you, and there’ll come a point in that line of reasoning and questions where it will become apparent that you don’t have the answer. Yeah. And I feel it’s always best to just approach it upfront, uh, and maybe you head it off by saying, we’re gonna take a follow up and ask for action on this, as opposed to lengthening that meeting and potentially embarrassing yourself in front of the audience because you don’t have the answer. It’s okay. You’re not gonna have all the answers all the time. <laugh>.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, I, my pro tip would be, and I don’t know how many boards I’ve talked to in my career, but there’s always the one guy, and I don’t have any paper in here. There’s always the one guy in the board meeting who the whole time you’re talking, you know, he’s just staring at the spreadsheet or whatever and he is not even making eye contact and um, you know, they, they’re gonna be the one that asks the, the tough question just outta the blue and nowhere. So my, my approach to that always was whatever I’m presenting to the audience, and I’m, I’m thinking of, of boards in particular here, that’s gonna be one level. I’m gonna be prepared <laugh> for two levels of questions below that because there’s, you know, you just need to like, don’t, don’t show all your cards right outta the gates because then you don’t have anything else to answer the question to. Yeah. So a way to sort of backstop it is, okay, if I’m giving them cost of goods sold, went up this month, you know, and this is why I think it is, then I need to know who the vendor is that, you know, whatever, whatever other level of of questions there, just being ready for that. And I, um, and we are, we are really, we’re right up at the end here now, and there’s, there’s, oh yeah, go ahead
Matthew Herbert:
Glen. Really quick to that. Yeah, going back earlier on, early in the FP&A career and how can you build the skillset? I feel like as you deliberately take those opportunities to build relationships across different stakeholders, you’re learning the types of questions that they’re asking and that gives you gunpowder in the scenario that you just described. Oh, I know marketing’s gonna show up in this meeting. What are the things I need to be prepared for that they might ask? And then you can put yourself in the, on the offense, so to speak, as opposed to potentially being on the defense. They may never ask the question, but then you know that you’re prepared for that.
Glenn Hopper:
And we, um, and we have, uh, a bunch of questions we didn’t get to. We are right up against time. I think if you guys are open to it, I’d love to, um, if you guys could share, um, how, and I, I think we’re gonna get it here with yeah, connecting on LinkedIn, uh, how people can, um, get in touch with you, uh, for follow up questions and that, that’s open for, for me as well. Um, you know, there’s a, a few things we didn’t get to today, but I just, I wanna say this is, we could talk about this all day. Um, you guys have been great to our audience, thank you for your active participation and engagement. Um, and we hope this session’s inspired you to embrace the power of storytelling in your fp and a roles. And, uh, hope you got some, some tools from it. And, uh, you know, mastering fp and a storytelling, it’s, it’s a journey. We we’re all constantly learning and finding new ways to do it. So keep learning, practicing and refining your skills. And once again, a big thank you to Soufyan and, and Matthew and, and to all of you for being part of this exciting conversation.
