Christian Franz Hansen is a seasoned management consultant and finance thought leader. He’s made it his mission to bridge the gap between strategic decision making and data analysis with a background that includes roles at EY and a finance consultant helping big-names including General Motors, Lego Group, and Maersk. He’s now a member of the Business Partnering Institute, where he’s revolutionizing how finance professionals approach their roles.
In this episode:
- From Excel Wizard as a stepping stone to career growth (“ I still love the beauty of a well designed Excel model”)
- From EY to a change-oriented consulting company at Finance Business Partnering Institute
- Top ways to elevate the finance professional
- Partnering, communication, influencing stakeholders, problem solving and understanding the value drivers
- Working with 500 business professionals at Maersk to turn the finance ship around from bean counters to business partners
- Meeting Anders Liu Lindberg and starting the Business Partnering Institute
- Outcomes vs Outputs in finance
- Allocating finance hours to not drown in tasks
- Resistance against our “soft skills” training and how to overcome it in your finance team
- Top down communication
- One piece of advice to make daily finance easier
- PowerQuery in Excel
Connect with Christian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frantzhansen/
Full transcript
Glenn Hopper:
Welcome to FP&A Today, I’m your host Glenn Hopper, and I’m excited to introduce our guest today, Christian Franz Hansen Christian is a seasoned management consultant and finance thought leader. He’s made it his mission to bridge the gap between strategic decision making and data analysis with a background that includes roles at EY and Implement consulting Group. Christian has worked with an impressive roster of clients, including General Motors, Lego Group, and Maersk. He’s now a member of the Business Partnering Institute, where he’s revolutionizing how finance professionals approach their roles. Christian brings a unique perspective on the importance of soft skills in finance, and he’s currently writing a book on the subject with a dual master’s degrees in finance and strategic management and international business administration, Christian is here to share insights on how finance professionals can elevate their careers beyond just being the Excel wizard. Christian, welcome to FP&A Today. We’re thrilled to have you join us.
Christian Frantz Hansen:
Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Glenn Hopper:
You know, your career is very similar to a lot of ours. I think the way that we get our early street cred is by becoming that Excel wizard, being the one who can build the best models, <laugh> and all that. Can you walk us through your journey from being that Excel wizard at EY to joining the Business Partnering Institute, and what kind of motivated the transition to go from being in the trenches now to to talking about it?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
That’s a really great question, and, uh, it has been kind of my, my journey for the last 10 plus years, if, if you will. So, so as a relatively young finance professional out of school, I, um, I kind of made it my mission to become the, uh, the guy who co who could, let’s call it, build a rocket ship almost in, in, in VBA coding and then, you know, do the most advanced Excel models. And, um, it actually proved to be a really good, uh, stepping stone, at least in the beginning of my career, Ryan. So I actually remember in my, um, in my application to, to Ernst and York Band back then, I had a sentence saying something like, I love the beauty of a well-designed Excel model. And that was in, in my applic in my cover letter. And they actually mentioned that in the interview and I got the job, so I, it must have kind of at least done something, right. So I started out very much focusing on, on that and, and it landed me quite a lot of, of great assignments in, in the beginning of my career. But, but you know, at, at a certain point you reach a point where you kind of need to also break a little bit free from that, you know, role of just being the guy who is good with numbers, but you need to, to become something else that is, uh, is on top of that as well, if you will.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And that mentality really resonates with our audience, because we are, we do love Excel and, and going in and, and doing what, what we do. But you know, there’s, if you’re gonna stay as a financial analyst and that’s your career, and you say, you know what, Mm-Hmm. I don’t wanna manage people. I just want to manage <laugh>, uh, manage the analysis and do all that. That makes sense. But you do have to kind of expand, um, beyond that. And I guess, um, so with Business Partnering Institute, you’re really focusing on kind of the broader range of, of skills that the, that finance professionals need. You,
Christian Frantz Hansen:
You’re, you’re absolutely right. So, so my path took me from, from EY to another consulting firm, and where EY is, you know, one of the classical pick four firms, it’s based on, on accounting and assurance, right? That’s where they come from. Then I moved into a more change oriented consulting company, you know, so suddenly people started talking about, instead of talking about queries and Excel models, we started talking about having real conversations, building trust with our, with our business stakeholders. So it was a little bit of a tough and, and, and strange transition for me, but I learned a lot, you know, in terms of balancing the IQ and the eq, and then not just being technically good in, in, in, in Excel and other tools, but, but also building that emotional aspect to it, you know, in order to, to really bond with people and convince people to actually act on the insights that you bring to the table.
Glenn Hopper:
So tell me a little bit about what Business Partnering Institute does. What is your focus? What are you guys, what groups are you talking to? Um, and and what, what’s the mission there?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
Yeah, that’s exactly the mission for us is effectively to elevate the potential of finance professionals to say it as in a simple way. But, um, what we really do is that we, um, we tend to focus on all the things that you kind of put on top of your finance toolbox. So, um, so all of the things that actually are more related to cross-functional aspects of, of being a good business professional, so partnering with others team, uh, dynamics, communication, how to influence your stakeholders, even aspects like problem solving and, you know, understanding the value drivers in the, in the business. So all of the things that are technically not finance actually, but that allows you to, to become an effective and impactful version of, of a finance professional. So all the things that go on top actually. And that’s what we, um, teach in our finance business, partnering academies with large international clients. And it’s also kind of what we try to live when we go in and spend time with, with clients as management consultants.
Glenn Hopper:
And speaking of those large international clients. I know, so you met Anders Lui-Lindbergh, who I think maybe everybody in finance, <laugh> everybody in the world in finance follows him on, on LinkedIn, I think <laugh>. I think so, yeah. <laugh>. But, uh, you met him during a Finance Pro program at Maersk. And how did that encounter lead to you joining the Business Partner Institute?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
It’s a fun anecdote, at least, uh, because I was a management consultant back then, and for some reason we got selected by Maersk Line, uh, the shipping company to, to run a huge business finance academy. I think the first round was about 300 finance professionals globally, and I think we ended up encountering more than 500 finance professionals across the company globally. But this program was intended to literally, you know, the classical going from bean counter to business partner approach. They had a CFO at that point that really wanted to drive that agenda. So our task was to build a program that was both a way to upskill the finance professionals, but also a way to, to transform the mindset. And, and so it was just as much a cultural transformation as it was a, a training program. And when I went to the first, uh, co to meet with the first cohort, I think it was in Rotterdam or something, I stood up in front of a huge crowd of finance professionals.
And Anders was sitting there in the first row being a participant from Maersk at that point. And then, you know, later on, he, uh, when, when the program lead from, from Maersk went on paternity leave, I, uh, he, he stepped up and took that project lead role. So we ended up actually traveling him on the client side. And me as a consultant, we traveled through Shanghai, Singapore, Panama, Cape Town, yeah. Pretty much all over the world, meeting finance professionals and, and kind of, um, you know, rolling out this framework and this idea about, about finance business partnering across the company. So we got to work together in a client, uh, client consultant relationship. And then that, that whole program turned into the idea of, of, of launching business partnering Institute. Um, so I remained a consultant and, and, and at one point he reached out and said, we’ve started this, do you wanna maybe have a coffee? And, uh, the rest is a little bit history. So now I’m a partner there and, and get to work with Anders every day. So <laugh>,
Glenn Hopper:
I love the mission that you guys have too, because I think, you know, we all, we, we come out in our careers and, and we’ve gotten our, our education and our certifications, and we have that Excel wizard, and we have to start with that foundation of what it is to do our job, that sort of the technical skills around it. But as you’re, as you’re moving up, those soft skills become more important. And I think a million years ago when I started in finance, this whole idea of business partnering, that wasn’t a phrase that we used, you know, we didn’t even use fp and a back then. We were just the finance guy. <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, so, but I think that we are, we’re coming out of the shadows a little bit with business partnering by working so closely with the other groups, and by being, whether you’re embedded with a different group or, or you’re just working with them, this whole idea of business partnering is expanding our value beyond just, you know, kind of the, the number crunchers in the back that are working with the controller and whatever, and doing, you know, just our reports that we’re sending out.
And they’re just, you know, the, the, the value of FP&A professionals used to be just how quickly can you get the reports out? Mm-Hmm. How accurate are they? You give the, you turn them over and somebody else is doing the mm-Hmm. The work with them. But as we’re broadening how we work with the other groups, and I think this is important too, as more and more becomes automated, um, whether it’s, uh, you know, through generative AI or, or whatever new technologies are out there, new software platforms that are out there, a lot of that low hanging fruit is getting easier to do. And now, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you know, the, the copilot updates. And with the Python integration in Excel, I think that that’s gonna lower the barrier because when people can come in and type, uh, just in, you know, natural language, whatever they want excel to do, and they don’t have to write the, the queries or the code themselves, then a lot more people are gonna be able to use it. So our value shifts from that. So with that, I know that was a long rambling way to get to the question, but I think it’s so important what you guys are doing, because you’re talking about these soft skills, kind of the human element. So if we look in an era where there’s increasing automation and the value that we add to the business is gonna come from different areas, what are the most crucial soft skills that finance professionals maybe they overlook in the past, but that they’re essential to, uh, career advancement?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
I think I could mention many here. We’ve, we’ve kind of built our own complete capability model that we believe is, is what, what it takes to become really great on top of your baseline finance, uh, skills. But I think in terms of the real soft skills, I think those people skills related to building trust and created strong partnerships with business stakeholders, that’s something that we really are taught in any way in, in, at least not at university or in in general in school. Some of us might have picked up some stuff along the way in life, right? But at, but in general, we are not really taught how to, to nurture those strong, trustworthy, um, trust-based relationships. So, so I think that part is something where a lot of finance professionals can really benefit from improving their focus and their skills when it comes to how to, to, to interact with the, with the rest of the organization and how to not just be the number cruncher and the provider of, of, of data, but, but somebody they actually trust to be part of the decision making and somebody that they actually, you know, trust to inform them about real business issues, not just the financial side of things.
So I think that that aspect of, of trust building is, is, is really essential. And then maybe secondly to that structured communication, and it, it might be something that it seems obvious, but when I ask finance professionals and I get to do that a lot, they always tell me that structured communication is to really core to what they do. But they had close to none actual education or in performing structure communication. So, so they were never taught to do it, but it’s super important to their role. And I think there is a gap to be bridged there because, you know, being able to effectively communicate your insights is what really allows you to influence your stakeholders to act on the insights. You know, like your insight, your Excel sheet, your, your report, it’s worth close to nothing if nobody acts on it. If you’re not able to communicate it effectively convincing somebody to do something different based on your insights, then you’re not really creating any actual business impact, right? So, um, so maybe those two, partnering and trust building and structured communication would be <laugh> be my top picks if I were to choose.
Glenn Hopper:
When you mention those two, those feel like very human elements, and that feels like the moat, that’s the protective moat. They can automate so much of what we do, and we can streamline it and make it easier, and we’re spending less time building the models. But those, the communication mm-hmm, <affirmative> and working with the other teams, that’s what’s gonna drive value, and that’s what’s gonna be, I, you know, that’s something that is a long time down the road before it could be replaced by a AI or whatever, <laugh>.
Christian Frantz Hansen:
I fully agree. I, I think that’s really important, right? So it’s much harder to automate those soft skills than the actual analysis, um, that’s at least, uh, <laugh> in terms of where the AI and, and other technologies is at this moment in time. <laugh>, that’s, that’s at least the case, right? But then maybe also on top on top of that, being able to actually synthesize and bring in different perspectives, not just looking at the numbers, but, you know, being able to view the value chain of the company in a more holistic way, and then bringing in these different perspectives across the value chain. Finance kind of has that, um, beneficial pl place in the organization where we get, uh, the privilege to actually look across the value chain where others might be more siloed in commercial or operations or whatnot. And leveraging that is also something that I think is, is, uh, is difficult for anybody to automate. Uh, you know, being able to, to, to bring in those different perspectives and having a more holistic view of things. So I think trying to, to get closer to the business and, and take that bird’s eye perspective of operations and the organization might also be also be something worth really honing a skill worth honing as a finance professional also.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, and you, you really hit on something that to me, that I’ve always, I’ve, you know, I started my career a million years ago in, in marketing, which was, uh, fine, it was a little bit more of a, uh, a gray area than the, the certitude in black and white of finance. But the idea that we are sort of these Socratic observers who are not, we’re not gonna, you know, try to defend any one group over another. We are the arbiters of truth in that and, and sort of the having that, uh, view across the organization. And it was harder to do that in an area before business partnering, because, uh, then people would see you as adversarial. But when you’re really in there and embedded with them and working together, then I, I just, it, it’s been fascinating to see how, uh, the, the field of, of finance has changed over the years and how much more value we’re able to add because of that.
Christian Frantz Hansen:
I fully agree, and I think that resonates with a lot of people, right? That you’re no longer just the person who, who provides, um, a monthly report or a, uh, you know, a final budget or a financial statement or something. And you’re not just the ones dropping by when, when you have to do cost coding or something like that, you’re actually a part of the business. And, um, and, and you’re not just there to drop off a report. You’re there to maybe also do that on top of that, also provide real recommendations on what are the changes that you need to make to improve the numbers, or what are the initiatives that we could take to, to, to, to move ahead and, and, you know, get closer to, to realizing the strategy of the organization. So, so we play a different role, a much more business oriented role than, than just the classical, um, report report provider or output provider as we, um, as we did maybe in the earlier days.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And I thought you said this so well, when we were talking before this, the show, you said it’s important to focus on outcomes rather than outputs. So I think that that, I mean, that’s exactly, I, I think what you were just talking about, but can you elaborate a little more and, and provide some examples of how that would apply in finance?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
Yes. That’s something that I honestly really believe in, and just, it, it also kind of changes your mindset a little bit. If, if you start thinking about outcomes instead of, of output, right? ’cause it’s inherently easier just to measure your output in terms of the, uh, the rep, the report you create or the dashboard you build or whatever, um, the analysis that you do. But in the end, all of those things, they don’t really matter if they don’t drive a, an actual business outcome. Somebody needs to look at that report or that, uh, shiny dashboard and actually change their decision making process and do something differently, actually act on it in order for us to create a real business outcome, right? So honestly, I still see a lot of finance professionals measuring their success in terms of, uh, the output they produce. You know, we did the monthly variance report, that’s our output, right?
And then our job is done. And to me, that’s a poor way at looking at it. You’re not done just because you, you provided an output. It’s your responsibility to make sure that that output leads to an actual outcome. So you need to actually get in there, explain the output, explain the report, and make sure that somebody on the other side of the table actually understands, buys into the ideas. And you also need to lean out and actually give some recommendations leading that person on the other side of the table to do something different leading to an actual business outcome, right? So, um, I think there is a lot of change in behavior associated with switching from output to outcome, if you will, since it, since it, it changes the focus from the external model to the, uh, to the behavioral change in the organization that you actually want to drive, if that makes sense, <laugh>.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And again, that’s where we’re gonna add value. That’s that human value that we’re adding.
Christian Frantz Hansen:
Exactly.
Glenn Hopper:
Um, gosh, and speaking of, of human value, it’s funny because we, I think in, you know, finance and accounting folks we’re so, we’re like engineers in a way, and that it’s just, it’s everything. Like I said earlier, everything’s black and white, and we’re, it’s, we do talk about the output a lot and, but now, you know, sort of transitioning into outcome, but one thing, and then you don’t get this in an MBA or a finance program or any of the technical skills we’re learning. And I think it’s something that was probably just blanket ignored for years across the board, but one of the things that you teach is time and energy management to finance professionals. Um, and I think that we, we forget that there <laugh>, that we are not just robots that are just outputting all this stuff, that there is the human element to it. So I think that’s important to understand and for us to think about and remember. And I think it’s easy to forget that especially we’re in budget season now, you know, everybody. Yeah.
Christian Frantz Hansen:
Very,
Glenn Hopper:
Very busy. And it’s just, it’s kind of like, you know, tax season for accountants, it’s, um, it, it’s hard to think, keep that, but now’s the time that it’s very important to be thinking about time and energy management. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So what are some, how do, how do you approach this when you’re teaching it? And what are some key strategies that you recommend
Christian Frantz Hansen:
If we break it into two and start with the classic, the more classical version, like the, the time management aspect of things, right? Um, obviously we are just human beings and we only have a certain amount of hours that we can allocate to work every day, right? So we need to spend those, those hours in the most effective way, and don’t get to the point where we drown in ineffective meetings or, you know, rapid switching between emails and tasks. And, and, and so there is a lot of things in, in terms of the way we work that we can improve to get more out, uh, output and potential outcome out of our time, right? Kind of back to some of the classical things presented in Kobe’s Seven habits of Highly Effective People, as an example, where, where he talks about urgency and importance, and we kind of tend to kind of mistakenly think of, of everything that is urgent as also being important, right?
Because somebody sends you an email and this is urgent, give me the data, do something, blah, blah, blah. Then you, then you expect it also to be important. And sometimes just stopping, taking a step back and looking at it differently is saying, is this really important to the overall objectives of, of the business and, and relative to other things? Um, and we default to just thinking that everything is important. Um, so, so just creating some, some reflection, maybe even using the Eisenhower Matrix urgency importance, trying to, to do a classical consultant two by two and, and figuring out where do my activities fall helps you kind of get an overview of, of what’s on my plate and what should I prioritize. To me, it’s, it’s all about creating slack. There is a great book on that as well. But the whole idea is that if you don’t have any slack, it’s a little bit like the domino bricks, right?
That there’s, if one drops, everything drops. If, if you don’t have a little bit of spacing in between some, some, some slack in your calendar. So you need to create that slack. We teach all of those classical, um, strategies as well that do decide, um, delegate delete, uh, things, right? And the thing, the delete part is really important because very often when I do this with finance professionals, they realize that they can just say no to a lot of things, honestly. Like they can say no, and it doesn’t really affect their ability to create an impact. It actually might even increase it because they spend more time on the most value adding things, right? So learn to say no is, is, is, is a super critical thing there. I have a, a fun anecdote here because I, I usually do an exercise with finance professionals where we talk about this, and then we introduce these strategies to how, how can we actually, uh, you know, get rid of some, some stuff.
So offload some stuff from our plate, and what I then do is I give them 10 minutes to find what amounts to a full-time, FTE or an FTE within the next month. So they look through their calendar and they need to find assignments or tasks or meetings that they can either delegate to somebody else or delete, or maybe even redesign to shorten it and, and spend less time on it. And nine out of 10 times, this group of finance professionals will come up with enough things to offload to actually save a full FTE or an FTE within, within just a month. And this is something they can do in less than 10 minutes just by sitting down and actively prioritizing what to do within the coming weeks, right? So, so it’s, it’s, it is actually sometimes a little bit counterintuitive, but taking the time to prioritize saves you time down the line. It might feel annoying that you have to spend that time now, but it is well invested because it saves you time down the line <laugh>. So, so, so that’s one approach, at least to, to time the time management aspect of things, you
Glenn Hopper:
Know, as you were, as you were telling that story, as I was picturing myself at sort of my peak, uh, you know, early days of, of, of being an analyst, and I was thinking about if I were in the middle of, of doing something and I had the way that I worked, and I had the stuff that I, I I wanted to get done, and management told me, Hey, we’ve got this group coming in. We’re gonna do corporate training, they’re gonna teach you soft skills. I think I would’ve been irate <laugh> because I’m like, let me do, let me just program, let me do my, my job. Yeah. Um, but I wonder, as you’re going in now, when you, when you come into a company, do you encounter, do you ever encounter resistance from people who just don’t want the training, but maybe after they sit through some of the training that you, you, you have these moments where you see a light go off and they think, oh, wait a minute, this is actually helpful,
Christian Frantz Hansen:
<laugh>. Yeah. No def no, definitely. Uh, we struggle with, uh, resistance. Um, every time we start a new program in a new company, I, I think that’s natural, right? We even ch but then again, we also teach to change management of, as part of these programs to finance professionals. So, so we ought to know what to do about it. And I think we actually at this point have a pretty, uh, solid way of, of, of dealing with it, because it seems that we relatively quickly get to convince people, and then they start to lean in, and then you suddenly, that’s actually what makes it really fun for me to go to work with. That’s when you see that little light bulb kind of go turn on above as a person said, like suddenly they start seeing their role as a finance professional in a different light.
They start maybe rethinking, uh, some of their old habits as well. So, so I really like that. But it often helps that we have often we start a longer learning journey with the module on the mindset of a business partner, where we basically talk about this whole idea of, of going from number cruncher to business partner, but business partner. But specifically we focus on the need to also change your mindset to succeed with, with this transition. That it’s not just a matter of learning new skills, it’s, it’s just, it’s not just about the skillset, it’s also about the mindset, right? And if you mindset people right in the beginning like that and get people to be convinced about the need to think differently about things, then introducing other somewhat strange concepts, at least to, to the, in terms of, of the, the normal finance crowd becomes easier when you have the right mindset from the beginning, right?
Glenn Hopper:
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Another thing that we were talking about on the soft skills is problem solving. And this is an interesting one to me, because you think is problem solving an inherent skill something that we’re born with and some people are naturally better at than others? Or is it something that can be taught? Are there, are there paradigms or, or processes that we can use for that problem solving? And it’s, I think if you want to move beyond the guy who just does the guy or gal who just does the numbers, then you’ve gotta learn this problem solving. So solving, so how do you teach problem solving? And are there people who are naturally better at it, or even for people who maybe have more experience, can they improve their problem solving if you give them a matrix or something to follow?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
I think definitely. I think everybody has, um, has the, has the, the option to, to work with problem solving and become better. I think it’s a matter of kind of knowing a structured process mainly. And, and like everything else practice a lot, right? But what we do is that we, um, we kind of have two a little bit different approaches to it, because sometimes people request the more classical McKinsey style problem solving, the hypothesis driven problem solving process, which is definitely a, a great way of approaching problem solving if you have very big and complex problems. So, so, so, so that’s something we teach. And then we teach a, uh, a seven step, uh, process to bulletproof, uh, problem solving based on a great book by the same name. I think it’s called Bulletproof Problem Solving. So, so that’s kind of the inspiration there. But sometimes I also realize that when it comes to the, the, the standard, the the average finance person working in a corporate setting, you don’t, you know, solve big, complex issues like market should be entered, not you.
That’s, that might actually be something you do, but you might not go in and, and like, uh, redo a, a corporate strategy or completely transform the business. You, it, it’s often smaller, more incremental, uh, changes. So, so problems that are, uh, slightly smaller but create an immense impact if, if solved. So it’s, it’s a little bit more about continuous improvement than it’s about big transformations often. And then using the, the more hyper hypothesis driven approach can sometimes be a little bit too elaborate in my opinion, when it comes to such problems. So we try to embed ideas about design thinking and fast prototyping and, and some of those ideas to, to kind of, uh, approach problem solving from a little bit of a, a more dynamic way than the classical process of following a CA certain set of, of steps as a, as a consultant, right? So we have different approaches to it. I definitely think that everybody can improve and adjust, learning something simple as five times why, and maybe the, the fishbone diagram or whatever it is to work with root cause analysis is a great starting point. And, and that’s something that everybody maybe already know but might forget to actually do when it comes to, you know, analyzing financial issues.
Glenn Hopper:
I love that you addressed, you know, maybe, you know, the decisions you’re making may not be as large, they may not be at the company level, but the better you get at problem solving as you progress up in your career, you’re more prepared to make those big decisions. And it’s all, it just builds on itself. So you move from the, uh, the outputs to the outcomes. Yeah. You’re problem solving. You’re still, you’re telling the story, you’re working with the other groups, you’re influencing and moving up. I mean, this is like natural career progression, the skills that you’d want to have as you’re, um, as you’re going up.
Christian Frantz Hansen:
Yeah, I, I fully, I fully agree. So, so start practicing early is, is great advice here, right? And it doesn’t have to be big problems. You can apply problem solving to something as simple as, you know, you see a deviation in the numbers in your, uh, monthly or quarterly report. You, you ask yourself, why, why do we see this deviation? Right? Then applying a structured approach to that might entail, you know, like trying to define the problem in terms of a little bit scope the problem, but then just start asking why de aggregate the issue and saying, why do we see this deviation? It might be due to increased, uh, COGs why do we see increased COGs? That’s because we’ve spent more on whatever it is. And then you can start to sort of, to do that structured why five times why analysis and breakdown the, the root causes of that deviation you see in the numbers. And by getting to the root cause it becomes easier for you to, to engage in solution design afterwards and come up with relevant recommendations for, for management to actually solve this issue or do something to mitigate the deviation you are seeing in the numbers. So just your monthly management reporting practices as an example, could be an opportunity to apply a structured problem solving approach if you’ll, and that’s actually also a little bit the, the book we are writing at the moment. That’s, that’s also part of that.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And I, I wanna dive into the book a little more in, in a minute, but I, another one that I wanted to get to that I think is, um, uh, an important part of what you’re teaching is the idea of top-down communication. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, can you explain how, what, what you mean by top-down communication and how as a finance person you think you need to think about moving from that bottom up to the top-down communication style?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
Definitely. I think that’s, uh, probably also one of the easiest ways to improve your impact as a finance professional is to start, you know, focusing on, on top down communication rather than bottom up. Because we tend to focus too much on our analytical process. So we spend a lot of time in the Excel sheet, and when we get to present to management, we take them through the entire process, the entire Excel sheet. And, and then if we are lucky after a long chat about all the analysis and calculations we did, we might end at a, at a conclusion or point by the end and, and, and maybe sometimes we also end up with a recommendation by the end of the presentation, right? And that’s thought way of, of approaching executive presentations in, in my opinion, you need to flip it around and always start with the, with the answer first, start with the recommendation to work with the, the symbol SCR, the situation complication resolution, logic, that you need to be able to do that super quick elevator speeds that the situation is it causes this complication and these consequences for the business.
We propose to do this about it. Then, then you, you here’s my resolution. Then you can build your argumentation afterwards and say, this is a good solution because, and then you build maybe three arguments. That’s often what resonates with people, right? But so then you form this pyramid structure that’s, it’s basically the mento pyramid principle in play here. That’s top down communication instead of bottom up. And it works much better in pretty much all business situations. You might have certain cases where, you know, storytelling, data storytelling works better. You can probably ask somebody like Brent Dykes or some, some of the, uh, the gurus on in that field about that. But, but in general, to me, that top down communication, start with the recommendation and then build your argumentation afterwards. A much better way of presenting. And it really works in both reports, verbal presentations, even emails.
I sometimes in my email subject, write the recommendation in the subject, and then the email contains kind of the <laugh> is, is the details, right? Instead of having to, yeah, instead of management having to go through a lot of unnecessary data in order to reach the conclusion, by the end, people don’t spend that much time and you drown them in, in data. You, you get that information overload and, and you are much, and you’re unlikely to get a, um, a yes to any decision if, if you present bottom up in, in most cases. So, so it’s actually something I believe strongly in, if you will. <laugh>.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And that makes so much sense, because if you’re making, like you said, if you’re making someone wade through all this data before they even know what their call to action is or what you’re even telling them, it’s, I, it’s what is this, this long rambling narrative you’re taking me down? I, you know, it’s, uh, so being able to just hit out of the gates, this is what I’m saying, and whether they agree or disagree with you when they first see that, like you said, you’ve, you’ve put you’ve made your case below it, but they know clearly at the top what you’re stating. So that actually, that makes a lot of sense. I
Christian Frantz Hansen:
Like to kind of think of it as you need to present a really quick overview of the financial situation, and then you need to focus on the, so what part? So you have to ask yourself, so what, what, what is, why is this, why is this relevant to, to the audience? Why is this relevant to management? What’s the key points that I need to highlight? And then focus on them instead of, of, of the massive data set. And when I’ve outlined the, so what, then I have to go on to also explain the then what, because okay, so, so this is important because I see deviation, but then what we do, do we do about it? And that’s where your recommendation comes in. So you need to ask those two really important questions when, when presenting and communicating to executives ask, so what and then what. So explain to them why this matters, explain to them what they can do about it, and then focus on that instead of all the details of the current situation.
Glenn Hopper:
Great, great points. Again, to me, I’m just, I keep hearing just this, this is how you get to me, it feels like a roadmap, not just to be better at your job, but to move up in your career. Yeah. Because the more, the better you are at partnering, the better you are at commencing, the better you are at storytelling that moves you into more of this management and strategic role. So this is all great.
Christian Frantz Hansen:
You’re absolutely right. It it, it kind of speaks to that classical saying that, that your iq your intellect gets you the job, but your EQ gets you promoted, right? So, so yes, you need the, the IQ and, but, but nobody in, in a senior finance position to is there without having a baseline iq. What really gets you promoted is that that ability to, to, to work on those emotional aspects and those human skills as well on top of your intellectual <laugh> capacity, if you will.
Glenn Hopper:
You actually took that exactly where I was going, um, with, with the next question. So, uh, we don’t have a whole lot of time left, and I really want to talk about the book because as a, as a fellow author, I know it’s, it’s interesting when you are a finance person, but you’re compelled to, uh, to tell this story, to, to teach something through a book. So the decision to write it, walk me through when you decided, hey, this is, I’ve got enough here that I have a, a compelling enough story and, and resources to share that I need, I need to put them in a book. And then tell me like, who is the, I mean, I, I can guess, but <laugh> the target audience for the book, like who’s, who’s reading it and what the overall mission of this particular book is, uh, the, the goal and, and vision that you have with it.
Christian Frantz Hansen:
If I just take you back to how it came to be, um, we’ve been approached both, uh, Anders, Mike, uh, Anders Lindberg, my, my, my partner and, and I, we’ve been approached by several, several companies asking us to potentially write something with them. And, and we’ve considered a lot of different options. So we ended up sending in two proposals to Wiley on, uh, when, when they reached out on, and I wanted to kind of do everything, and Anders was a little bit more focused, and he won. So, because I, what I wanted to do was to do a kind of a, a full business partnering toolbox of all the great, uh, tools and technique condensed, kind of in a practical, uh, toolbox format that is applicable to, to, and easy to use as fin for finance professionals. So all of these tools that we teach in our programs kind of get them in out there in a, in a book format.
But, uh, I can also see that that’s a lot of content. So Anders was a bit more focused and said that, let’s focus on really getting finance professionals to become better at presenting financials to executives. So let’s focus on this top down communication. Let’s focus on the process of, of going from data to insights and from insights to impact and guide finance professionals and data analysts in people working with data and, and doing analysis. Help them actually get across to that senior audience and get their ideas out there and, and then go from just being ideas and insights that a paper to, to something that actually sparks action and drives impact in the organization. So that, that was the idea of the burden, and that is what we are trying to do here. So really focusing on trying to enable finance professionals to, you know, take that, take that leap and, and lean out and not just submit their monthly report, but actually step up to the plate, present their insights, convince people, get management to decide on, on things they wouldn’t have decided on if they were not there, and drive action in the organization that actually changes things.
So, so the ambition is as we, as with the company to elevate the potential of finance professionals, if you will. But, uh, at this point, it’s, it’s, it’s very much focused on how we, we get across to executives when pre when presenting. So
Glenn Hopper:
How is the process of co-writing going? I, I imagine you guys do a lot of, uh, planning and, and strategizing with what you’re gonna talk about together, and then maybe you each go off and write a section and then workshop it and go together. How, how is it, how’s all that going?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
It’s progressing nicely. I be, I, I think we are still very good friends, so, so nobody is, uh, <laugh> is bad at each other, so, no. But, um, but Anderson and I we’re very different people. I’m very, uh, visual also. Like I, uh, I did spend, um, quite a time going from, from being the Excel nerd and then forced myself to become, uh, more visual and creative. I even spent my first paternity leave writing and drawing an entire children’s book in PowerPoint just to hone my creative skills a little bit. I like to conceptualize everything and visualize it. And Anders is a little bit more verbal, so, so he, he might write a lot, but I kind of sometimes need to conceptualize it and put it into a visual or a process. And so, so I think we, um, we play to each other’s strenghts there and, and, and, and support each other because we have different approaches. I think that the result is, is something that appeals to more people as well. So at least that’s my, my general experience working with, with, with Anders at this point.
Glenn Hopper:
That’s great. And what do you, I mean, what’s the timeline? What are you thinking for? Do you have a idea of publication or,
Christian Frantz Hansen:
I’ve, I’ve, yeah, I’ve seen the first, uh, drafts of, of what the, uh, what the book will look like from the graphics department. And, uh, I think we are supposed to, as far as I recall, we have to submit, uh, by 1st of November, so, so not not too far into the future. We, we will have to have something done. Um, but I’m fairly sure we’ll get there. I I, I hit in my basement today and, uh, got to write it, got to write a lot, so, uh, it’s, it’s good.
Glenn Hopper:
That’s great. Well, I’m, I’m really excited. Uh, and do you have, do, does the book have a name yet, or can you say or wait and see
Christian Frantz Hansen:
The, let, let’s wait and see, but it’s slightly boring, uh, preliminary title list, presenting financials to executives, so, uh, I think we’ll come up with something better, but, uh, let’s see.
Glenn Hopper:
Great, great. So, uh, well, I wanna, before we go into a a a, a, the kind of the, the canned questions that we ask everyone, I’d like to give our listeners a, a a concrete sort of tangible thing that they can take away from the episode. So I want to kind of bring this back to, um, a way to summarize it and, and make practical advice out of a, a lot of the stuff we talked about today. But how do you advise finance folks to balance their, you know, we talked, uh, before the call about, you know, you have your daily tasks and your, your weekly and monthly tasks, stuff you do all the time. You have all these ad hoc requests coming in, and you also have these long-term strategic projects. What, as someone’s balancing all this, like how do, how would you advise them to keep sane? And, and, and we talked about it a little before with, uh, with, with the Matrix, but if, if you could just tell them one thing that’s gonna make their daily <laugh> daily life easier, how would you advise them to, to go through and balance all this?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
I think I’ll get back to active prioritization, that be aware of what, what you spend your time on. You can’t please everybody. So learn to say no and focus on doing certain things really well, and don’t try to please everyone because that’s not possible. You’ll have enough work for several full-time employees, so you will never be able to get rid of all of the emails in your inbox and all the requests coming in. So you need to learn to prioritize, learn to say no, and learn to focus on on what really matters, um, and what creates most value.
Glenn Hopper:
Let’s get to the canned question section. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna kick off with, um, what’s something that, uh, not many people know about you? Maybe something we, we couldn’t find out? Uh, well, I think we just learned one is that you just read <laugh> a children’s book during paternity leave.
Christian Frantz Hansen:
<laugh>. Yeah, that’s actually a, that’s actually a, an a slightly unknown fact, but, uh, it’s a, it’s a full book. I have a lot of, you know, drawings of animals. Uh, it’s, it’s about my dog Rufus, who is a 45 kilo, uh, doberman mix who travels around Europe meeting a lot of animals. So it’s, uh, it’s, it was a delight, uh, drawing all those animals. Um, back when I, when I actually had time, this was, uh, when I had my first kid, I now have three, a 1-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a 5-year-old. So, uh, also writing a book. I, uh, I have enough, uh, on my plate, um, <laugh> with, with, uh, with work and, and, and having, uh, three small kids. But, um, so, so I think that that’s at least a, a fun fact about me that I, uh, that I actually at this point moved into being a little bit of a, a PowerPoint expert on top of being originally being the Excel guy. Now I, now I actually excel more in PowerPoint, if you can say that. So
Glenn Hopper:
That’s great. And did you, with that children’s book, was it something you published or is it just something you did for yourself and your family?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
I actually did. I, I did publish it, but only a small amount here in local language. So I, I, I, I unfortunately don’t think that most listeners here will benefit from it at this point, <laugh>, but I, but I, I don’t mind sharing it, so if you wanna see it, reach out and I’ll send you a copy in PDF file. Or I actually think I have an English copy somewhere, so don’t <laugh>.
Glenn Hopper:
That’s great. I, I would love to see one, honestly. Sure. You that’s great. Yeah. <laugh>. Okay. So we’ve spent the whole show talking about soft skills, but I know that you started your career as the Excel expert, so I’m really looking forward to asking you this question that we ask everyone. What is your favorite Excel function and why?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
I actually thought about this and I, I had a lot of, uh, you know, ideas about, you know, the, the everlasting discussion about, uh, whether it’s index match or, or lookup or whatever, but, uh, but I actually came to the conclusion that I would much rather, um, do something else and promote Power Query in Excel a little bit more than, than the function, because that’s really where I see a lot of my young consultants and my, my, my, my, um, my employees benefiting a lot is not necessarily from learning 10 new functions, but, but learning to really work with Power Query and Excel to, you know, clean and, and work with data in, in, in, in, in a bit of a more database format is, is really something that, that allows you to make much better financial models that are easier also for others to, to adopt later on.
Glenn Hopper:
Well, I’ll tell you, power Query has been a pretty common answer lately. I think people, even, a lot of people maybe were late to it, but they’re starting to understand it now. And I think as, you know, as we move into Python and Excel and the expanded copilot and everything, people are, you know, <laugh> that, that was a joke years ago about you’re using it, you’re trying to use Excel as a database. That’s terrible. Yeah. But when you get move into the Power Query mode, it opens up a lot of possibilities. And now with Python and, and more automation integrated, I, so it’s actually been, power Query has been a pretty common answer lately. I need to go back and, and, uh, tally up and see, yeah, see who’s winning. I think Index Match was, was in the lead for a long time and well, you know, v look up and X lookup and, and all that. But Index Match I think was a, a long time.
Christian Frantz Hansen:
I’ll vote for Index Match if I need to. Then, then, yeah, I’m, I’m in consulting, so, so yeah, index Match is, uh, I think it’s, uh, it was at back at ey. I think it was a Sin if I used anything else but <laugh>. So
Glenn Hopper:
<laugh>. <laugh>, yeah. Yep. Well, this has been this, it’s been great talking to you and getting your insights and I love all the, the soft skills and, and the stuff that, that you’re teaching and that is going on at Business Partnering Institute. For our listeners, if they want to reach out to you, if they wanna learn more about you and, and your upcoming book and what Business Partnering Institute is doing, um, what’s the best way that people can, can get in contact with you?
Christian Frantz Hansen:
I would visit our website@bpidk.org, um, or reach me on LinkedIn. I am pleased to link up with, with people and I post stuff about finance and trends and accounting on a daily basis. So please, uh, please link up and then follow. Then, uh, then hopefully I can inspire you with some of, uh, my, my daily posts.
Glenn Hopper:
Alright, Christian, thank you so much for coming on. Really enjoyed the show. It
Christian Frantz Hansen:
Was a pleasure being here.
