Glenn Snyder, builds high performing FP&A teams from scratch.
Now VP of FP&A at Mobileum, a telecom analytics leader, Glenn continues to enhance a reputation for transforming FP&A into an engine for Silicon Valley growth earned over nearly two decades.
Previously he has built finance partnership teams At Charles Schwab, followed by revamping annual budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting at $4B global Real Estate company Digital Realty, restructuring a 15-person FP&A team at Global Growth Holdings, and leveling up the FP&A and Data Analytics teams at online design marketplace Zazzle before his latest FP&A adventure at Mobileum .
In this episode Glenn reveals the secrets to building high performance FP&A teams. Glenn discusses:
- His reason for sticking with FP&A over 18 years (not least the ability to strategically interact with every aspect of a company)
- The power of quarterly forecasts to secure alignment in a business and transform a business direction
- Why building a new FP&A team will see you work 80 hours a week and considerable “mental awareness”
- The power of creating a three-year FP&A Strategy in your first 90 Days which sees 95% of goals hit
- The power of eliminating manual work in FP&A
- How to powerfully speak up in FP&A (even as an introvert)
- How to differentiate a leader’s role in FP&A vs those you manage
- The secrets to hiring someone for an FP&A role and how to find the things that can be taught vs those that can’t
- Why FP&A and data analytics need to work better together
- The real way to approach build a successful finance business partnership that lasts
- His most valuable lessons after achieving several finance software implementations
- The failure that forced Glenn to work on his soft skills and transformed his career
- His secret life as a lifelong baseball fan and published author
Paul Barnhurst:
Hello everyone. Welcome to FP&A Today I am your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A guy. And you are listening to FP&A Today. FP&A Today is brought to you by Data Rail’s the Financial Planning and analysis platform for Excel users. Every week we welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis and discuss some of the biggest stories and challenges in the world of FP&A. We’ll provide you with actionable advice about financial planning and analysis. This is going to be your go-to resource for everything FP&A. As a reminder that you can earn CPE credit for this episode. It’ll be loaded about a week after the episode comes out through Earmark. You can go and if you CPA or I think also your CPM, some of those certifications, you can get CPE credit. And if you enjoy the podcast, we ask you to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. With that being said, I’m thrilled to welcome today’s guest on the show, Glenn Snyder. Glenn, welcome to the show.
Glenn Snyder:
Thanks Paul for having me.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I’m really excited to have you. So just a little bit about Glenn. Glenn comes to us from the Bay Area. He’s currently the VP of FP&A at Mobileum
Glenn Snyder:
Mobileum
Paul Barnhurst:
Mobileum Thank you. He has worked for several different companies and multiple FP&A roles in the Bay Area. He earned his bachelor’s from UCLA as he is sporting his jacket today, having a good football season. Might dad, he did economics and then he earned his MBA from the University of San Francisco. So Glenn, maybe you could start by just telling us a little bit about yourself, your background and how you ended up where you’re at?
Glenn Snyder:
Sure. Well, so really I started my career after, graduated from UCLA as a commercial loan officer. And I quickly realized that I was more of an analyst than the person who brought in business. And so after a couple years I moved over to FP&A and I went to Franklin Templeton, the big asset management company. And that’s where I really got my feet wet with FP&A. I was an international analyst, I really enjoyed it. And then FP&A at Franklin got decentralized and I moved into a business and I was doing both FP&A and corporate strategy. Was there for a while. Then moved on to other companies such as Visa, Charles Schwab Digital Realty, all of which are public companies in the S&P 500. And then I decided to go a little different path. I worked for a private equity firm for about a year and a half and then an online retail company. And now I am over at Mobileum. So really my career has taken me from large companies to small companies, lots of different industries all pretty much within the Bay Area. I love living here. So that worked out well. But now I get to lead FP&A teams and really try and help companies get to a new level.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. Now it sounds like you’ve definitely worked for a lot of different companies helping with FP&A. And I’m curious what part of the Bay Area where, I lived in the Bay Area for a couple years.
Glenn Snyder:
So I’m in a little town called San Carlos. I’m about a 10 minute drive north of Palo Alto about 15 minutes south of the San Francisco airport.
Paul Barnhurst:
It. Yeah, I know right where you’re at. Yeah, I lived all around the bay for a couple years back in the nineties.
Glenn Snyder:
Okay.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. Fun. That’s a great area. Beautiful, beautiful country. Yes. If I will say to our audience, if you haven’t been there, I recommend doing a visit. It’s well worth it to see the ocean and the beauty of the Bay Area.
Glenn Snyder:
Absolutely.
Paul Barnhurst:
So what has kept you working in FP&A all along? You mentioned you did a loan officer realizes you were a little bit more of an analyst type. Yes. But what particularly about FP&A has excited you and kept you going?
Glenn Snyder:
Just a couple things. One is in FP&A, you get to touch every aspect of the company, whether if you’re interested in technology, you could support the IT team. If you like sales, if you like marketing, if you like product management whatever it happens to be, there’s an area that you could go over and support. So in FP&A, not only can you reach out and learn about every different aspect of the company you work for, but you also have a direct line to the people who are making decisions, those executives who are driving the strategy. And when you get to the point where you can influence them and they reach out to you as a thought partner and say, Hey, I’m thinking about maybe taking the business in this direction, what do you think? Now here you are as this FP&A analyst or manager, whatever level you have to be at.
But now you get influence on the direction of the company you’re working at. And that’s a pretty cool thing. I think when you think about finance and kind of back office functions, oftentimes you’re really behind the scenes, but FP&A allows you to be behind the scenes and help driving the direction of the company at the same time. So with that, I’ve always kind of enjoyed that corporate strategy side of things. In my career, I’ve spent eight years of my career at doing corporate strategy as well as 20 years in FP&A. But it’s that blend of the two that’s really excited me and I found that I could bring that finance discipline that I have to corporate strategy and helping companies really drive their direction. And that the balance of the two, it seems to really add a lot of value.
Paul Barnhurst:
I could totally see how that does. I once wrote an article calling strategy is the Overlooked FP&A skill. Cause I think there’s a lock that can be done when how to speak the strategy to help with the influencing, especially like you mentioned with the numbers. So I could see how that would serve you really well. That combination.
Glenn Snyder:
In fact, really when you think about corporate strategy, a lot of times when people are doing it, they’re out there and you get this optimistic view of things. But in finance, we’re always a little more grounded. We have a sense of where that reality line is. And when you can bring that to the optimistic side, you really land in a good place that is achievable, but it is still that aspirational goal.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. Yes. They bring the grounded of the financials and looking at the economics and being able to say, yes, that’s a great idea, but 200% growth next year isn’t realistic. Or whatever the number is exactly that we see sometimes.
Glenn Snyder:
That’s right. That’s right.
Paul Barnhurst:
Exactly. Sometimes you look at it and go, that’s mathematically not possible. Do you realize this is what it would take? It’s like, oh, you got a good point. Let’s rethink the numbers behind the idea.
Glenn Snyder:
Right. Well and this, it’s really important and I think everybody in FP&A who does budgets and goal setting and those types of things, you wanna make sure that your goal is achievable. If you have zero chance of achieving your goal, what’s the point of the goal? You’re not really doing anything that’s going to mean or have any value. Plus you’re only going to be disappointed. So set a goal that might take some work, it might be a little ambitious, but it still has that you’re still grounding reality that you know, say 60% chance I could go and hit that 40% chance you don’t, but you’re still there. It’s not the 0% chance that you’re, you’re never going to make it
Paul Barnhurst:
Exactly. You wanna stretch goal, you want it to be difficult and push the team, but you don’t want it to be demoralizing. Like we’re never, whoever set that up is crazy. This is not possible because then people feel defeated before they start and you, you’ve lost the battle when that happens.
Glenn Snyder:
Exactly. And really if you have that happen over and over and over again, it becomes a very difficult environment to work in. Because you feel like as an employee, no matter what you’re doing, you’re not going to hit those goals. And if your bonus or something like that is based on those goals, that could be a very difficult thing. And that’s where you can start seeing employee turnover and those types of things. So you wanna make sure that you could achieve your goals. It doesn’t mean that you sandbag them, but you know, want ’em out there where you could make a difference. You could grow the business, you could grow the company’s top line, you could grow the company’s bottom line, those types of things. But, and you might have to work hard for them too, but at the end that it is possible. It is achievable.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, no, I agree. And so I imagine you’re probably around budget season, a lot of companies are. Yes. We’re going through that. I know you mentioned some board meetings, so I’m curious, there’s been a lot of debate. What’s your approach to approach to forecasting? Do you like seeing monthly, quarterly? Do you like to just do a static budget, a rolling forecast? How do you think about that? Do you have a favorite approach that you have found works well?
Glenn Snyder:
Yeah, I do. And mean. Granted, every company is different and you gotta take into account all the things that are moving around. If you’re in a very small startup company, monthly forecast will probably make a lot more sense because things are changing so much. But really once you get to that little bit more established level, I’m a big fan of the quarterly forecast because if you do it on a monthly basis, you’re spending probably one week a month just doing a forecast, which means that 25% of your time, you’re not helping to drive the business forward. You’re not trying to make what you do in FP&A better, more efficient or making an impact on the company. You’re doing a forecast. And so for me, I’m a bigger fan of doing that quarterly forecast where you could take about two to three weeks in that middle of the quarter month where it’s usually a little bit quieter and really do a deeper dive to get the business aligned.
If you’re doing a monthly forecast, it’s very difficult to get inputs from all your different business units and get them all to buy into and have it all meshed together so it makes sense. Oftentimes finance will just do it from a top down perspective, but then you’re missing really what’s going on in the business. That quarterly forecast allows you to go a little deeper to make sure you’re connecting with the business and everybody’s moving in the same direction and everybody buys into that forecast. Otherwise you have finance saying, Hey, we’re going to grow at 12% this quarter. And you get the business coming back saying, no, we think we’re going to grow at 22. When someone else said no, we’re grow at seven and it’s all over the place. So I really like that alignment that you get with a quarterly forecast.
Paul Barnhurst:
Got it. And I could see where that quarterly forecast does allow for greater alignment. I know in my career, when you’re doing a monthly and you’re trying to get it done, you can’t get ahold of someone, the business is busy and you’re all right. Well, we’re just going to make assumptions based on what we’re seeing. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ve all been there.
[Datarails ad]
So next question for you is just around teams. I know you’ve managed a lot of teams, you’ve built multiple teams over your career. Can maybe talk about how you think about building a team and what advice you would offer to someone who’s in that situation right now where they’re trying to build out an FP&A team and an FP&A function.
Glenn Snyder:
It is very challenging because when you start off and you might be the first employee of a group or you’re coming in and it’s a very small team and you gotta build and grow, you have to take care of the business. You have to recognize that you in finance, you are not interacting with the customers. You are not driving the revenue and making sure customers are happy and creating new products and so on. You’re there to support the people who do. So. You gotta make sure that they are supported to the business could keep moving forward. At the same time, you need to build out your FP&A practices and you need to go over, make sure you have the right kind of models and templates and everything else set up so that you can do your job in a very efficient way. And so effectively when you’re building out a team, you’re doing the job with two people at least.
And many of the times when I’ve started a new role, I’ve told my wife for the first six months, I’m probably going to be working 80 hours a week because I’m going to have to do the job that needs to be done as well as the job that they’re not doing to get the company and the group into the right spot. So that’s one of the things, just have that mental awareness. You’re probably going to be working a little more at the beginning just to go over and get out in front of things. But the other thing that’s really important is to really understand where the biggest pain points are. Have conversations when you first come into that role go out and meet with all the key leaders in the company and talk to them about what do you need from FP&A, how can we help?
Are we doing things for you that you don’t need? What are we not doing that you do need? Is it a reporting thing? Is it a advice thing that you know just need to be more engaged? Is it something you could solve with a system or is it something that you’re going to need people for? And really get a sense of what the true needs are. And then what I always try and do is in your first 90 days, put together a three year strategy and you start with, here’s where we are, here’s what we do well. And evaluate your people, your processes, your data, your systems, all of that. And recognize how much it’s automated, how much is manual. And then figure out what does three years look like If you do it right what will that be working? And then work backwards. And you come back with in year one, we should be accomplishing A, B, and C in year two, D, E and F and so on. You go out and you basically lay that out and then you share that with everybody so that everybody knows where you are and where you’re trying to go. So you could go in the same direction.
Paul Barnhurst:
I like how you laid that out first, the importance of going to the team and understanding their needs. Right. Often in FP&A, we can come in and look at it and see the mess and say, oh yeah, I know what needs to be done, but we’re really focusing on our needs when that’s the case and that may not be what the business needs. So I like that. And then three year plan, I hadn’t heard it put that way. It makes a lot of sense. And work backwards and figure it out and share it with everybody so you’re aligned and you have a vision for where you wanna go.
Glenn Snyder:
Exactly. That’s that strategy side of me that I think is so important. But I’ve done that in probably my last five or six roles. And when I go over and put that three year plan out, oftentimes when I hit that three year mark and I look back, 95% of the goals that we laid out we hit. Now sometimes things happen and you learn and you change. Now, okay, that happens. Sure, you don’t have a crystal ball, you can’t predict the future exactly. But if you have that planning, the direction, you know what to focus on and what not to focus on where you need to put certain needs or personnel, you need what you need out of your system and you have that better sense of where you are going. So you can solve the problems in a much better way. Plus when you communicate with other people, especially some of your key partners like HR and accounting who are providing you with information, you can make sure that they’re aligned with where you’re trying to go too. And then you can bring them all together so that it really makes for a much more efficient and effective organization.
Paul Barnhurst:
Got it. That makes a lot of sense to me. And definitely that is a much more efficient approach. Kind of along those lines when you’re starting to build out an FP&A organization, things are going way well how do you evolve the group from kind of production group. We all have reports we’re delivering on all our reports to really being the value creator. That strategic analytic group that so many businesses need FP&A to be today. How do you make that bridge?
Glenn Snyder:
Well it starts with eliminating the manual work. If you’re moving data from point A to point B, you’re not really adding a lot of value. Systems can do that for you. Figure out how to automate and try and make investments into systems. And even if you don’t have a big budget, there are still some systems, some approaches that you could go over, make some very small investments or even just build out better models or in Excel, use Microsoft Access, use some of these more platforms that you probably have access to today to build greater automation. So you could stop moving data from point A to point B and you could focus on the analysis and the value add. The second thing you need to do is make sure that you are really partnering with your business. Really go out there, make sure on a monthly basis you should be in front of every business leader.
If they manage a budget, they should have a monthly meeting with your FP&A team. Someone on your team needs to go over and make sure that they’re being taken care of there. So when you do that, you are now learning from the business what their needs are, where are they going? And now you need to start being proactive. That’s the last piece of this is to really make sure that you’re saying to the business, how can I help you? Oh, I understand you’re going in this direction. I have some data. I might be able to help you out with that. What if we enhance one of your reports? Let me try and put something together for you and run it by you and see if this will be helpful. Those types of things. And now when you can start adding value to the business when they’re not even asking for it, that business leader is going to turn around and say, wow, you’re thinking about how to make me successful. I’m going to engage with you in a much more proactive way as well telling you what’s coming on. Cause I want that engagement back. And that’s now where you get yourself out of the, I’m just producing a budget variance report or I’m just updating a model to, I’m having a conversation with the business about where they’re going and driving a solution for them.
Paul Barnhurst:
As I heard you there, it sounded like there were three things. The first is you gotta free up time by eliminating manual processes. You gotta figure out where you can automate or illuminate processes. But being more efficient in the automation side. The second is really spending time with the business, getting to know them, making sure they know who you are and that they know you’re a partner. And third is being proactive. As you start learning about things, don’t be afraid to, you ask ’em, Hey, I did some work on this. You had mentioned this and here’s some thoughts and giving ideas and helping them achieve their goals. And I can totally see if you do those three things, I’ve seen it in my career, it makes a huge difference. All of a sudden they want you in the room, they want you to making decision. I wanna know what Glenn thinks about this or I wanna know what Paul thinks. Instead of, hey, here’s where we’re going. Can you just build a model to justify it?
Glenn Snyder:
Exactly. It takes you from a support role to a partner role. And one of the things that it does require, and sometimes most finance people, you’re more on the introverted side than the extroverted side. One of the things that you really need to do is have a little courage. Have courage to propose a new idea. And I’m not saying stand up in an all hands meeting and throw out some ideas, but one-on-one with that business leader. Say, Hey, you know what, in that last meeting we just had, you were talking about this. Have you thought about these types of things? And you might get more no’s than yeses, meaning that they’re going to tell you, no, we can’t do that. Or No, that doesn’t work. But then you’re learning from them about why and you’re now becoming more valuable. But if one out of every five of your ideas is actually really good, you’re going to now help change that business. And if you don’t have the courage to speak up and try, you will never get those one out of five. So it’s one of those things that you just have to courage, but you gotta be proactive and you gotta try it. Cause if you don’t speak your mind, what value would you really think you’re going to add?
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I a hundred percent agree with that. What advice I got from a VP that I had, he goes, one of the best things you could do is speak up in a meeting and start talking and let people know what you’re thinking. And as you do that people will look to you and they’ll see that you know what you’re talking about, that you can make a difference. He’s like, don’t feel like you can’t make a difference and you can’t add value. Yes, all your ideas may not be successful. In fact, odds are most of them wont and that’s okay. But if it’s one or five you, you’re going to add value. Whereas if you say nothing and just listen to everybody else, you just become a back office support person if you’re not willing to speak up and try to add value.
Glenn Snyder:
That’s right. And I actually, I’ve had an executive say to me, if someone’s in a room, if they’re in a meeting and they don’t say anything during the entire meeting, why are they even there? Don’t invite them anymore. Because if you’re showing up to a meeting, you’re there for a reason. If you just want to go over and get a readout of what happened, fine. You can listen in on the phone. If you’re going to be there in person, you’re sitting in a conference room, especially if you have to travel to a meeting, you need to be engaged. You need to make sure that you’re sharing your ideas, but you’re talking with people and make sure your presence is felt otherwise they’re not going to invite you back.
Paul Barnhurst:
A hundred percent agree that great advice, especially if you’re traveling, right? You just spend a couple thousand dollars, the company’s time to travel. You’re also sitting in a room with people that in many cases are senior leaders and they brought you in for advice. They didn’t bring you in so you could just sit in a room and not say anything.
Glenn Snyder:
Yes.
Paul Barnhurst:
And so you need to make sure you’re delivering on that.
Glenn Snyder
Yeah, absolutely. But the one thing is just be careful mean, especially if you’re newer or you’re a little more junior, don’t go crazy. Don’t call people out, keep it professional. But sometimes if you’re a little shy about something, when you take a break, walk up to one of those leaders and say, Hey, I loved what you said here. Did you think about this? Or I was thinking, could something like this help you out? And just have that one-on-one conversation and then there’s a good chance when you come back from that break, that leader says, Hey, you know what, Paul just had this really great idea, Paul, why don’t you share that with the team? And that will give you a much greater exposure. So you don’t have to always speak up in front of the group, but make your presence known.
Paul Barnhurst:
Totally agree. And that’s a great advice there. I remember someone who’s a senior leader now, he was an early meetings in his career and he’d called a lot of people out and was challenging him all the time. And he’d been doing it in a lot of meetings. And one of the sales VPs pulled him aside. He goes, I know what you’re doing, but this isn’t helping. And taught him the idea of the emotional bank account. Basically you’re pulling a bunch of withdrawals and you’re not putting deposits in. That show you’ve added value. So here’s a different way you could look at that. He said that was kind of a turning point for him in his career cuz he was doing some of those things. You mentioned kind of being junior and calling people out and saying, Hey, these numbers aren’t right and you need to be doing this instead of offering advice when it made sense, pulling people aside when it made sense and being there as a support. By no means should we be there dominating the meeting.
Glenn Snyder:
Exactly. Exactly.
Paul Barnhurst:
So next question here for you, as a leader of a team, how do you differentiate yourself and your team?
Glenn Snyder:
Well, it’s a great question. One of the things that I really try and do is make my team a model for everyone else. What I mean by that is, first of all, failure is a great way to learn. And you will always, you’ll fail a lot and that’s okay. But keep that within the team. And as a leader, I wanna make sure that I am working with my team members to set them up for success, to make sure that we are looking over each other’s work, that we are bouncing ideas off each other. If someone’s going to be making a presentation in a larger group or something to practice through it. Let’s go through, well, how are you going to answer this question? How are you going to present this information to make sure that your team members are as successful as they can be.
And so really what I try and do is make sure that anyone outside of my immediate team only sees successes from everybody on my team. And if there’s a failure, we make a mistake the end of the day that’s on me because I run the team. So I raise my hand and say, Hey, that’s my fault. I’ll go and fix it. Never point a finger at anyone on your team. But when they come back and say, oh this was really great. And they try and give you credit, give the credit to your team members. At the end of the day, if you lead a successful team, you’ll be recognized for it. You don’t need to be taking the credit for it. So that’s one thing is I wanna make sure that the members of my team are looked at in a very positive way showing that they could do a great job because I am helping them to set them up for success.
That’s one thing. The second thing is to do it the right way. Don’t go over and try and make another group look bad. Don’t go and try and take credit for things that you didn’t do. Show up each day, be professional really kind of make sure that you are going to help other people succeed as well. And when you do that, other groups start noticing. And really for me, what I wanna do is I want people to look at my team and say, I like the way they’re doing that. Or I wanna be a part of that team. And when you could get there, now you are that kind of beacon of light, if you will, for others on how to go about doing things. And that’s what I really strive for.
Paul Barnhurst:
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I really love the point of take ownership for the team’s mistakes in the sense that you’re the leader, you own the process, but give credit where credit is due. As you mentioned, people worry about, well I need the credit, I gotta get promoted, I need the next role. If your team’s doing well, you will be successful. Because I tell people, if you meet the intent of the business instead of focusing on yourself and you do good work and your team good does good work, the rest will take care of itself. People recognize when you’re providing value and when your team’s providing value, you don’t need to get caught up in the political games. It doesn’t benefit anyone.
Glenn Snyder:
Exactly. And a lot of times you’ll have, oh Fred, Fred on your team is doing a great job. Or Wilma’s just really great or whatever. At the end of the day, they also recognize it’s you who’s leading the team. And so especially if you’re coming in and you’re in a tough spot because your team is underperforming, give your people credit, show them how to make that success. And what’s going to happen is a year from now or whatever, everyone’s going to say, hey, wow, Paul came in and that this team is operating so differently. Paul really was a great leader. He’s led a fantastic team. You may not have gotten credit for anything throughout the year, but there you’ll be recognized for leading the people who are doing a great job.
Paul Barnhurst:
That’s really good advice. I like how you said that there and as a leader, obviously from time to time we have to hire people. Yes, we have to either grow the team or replace someone, whatever the situation might be. What are some of the characteristics you look for? I mean, how do you go about hiring somebody for your team?
Glenn Snyder:
So I usually get people laughing quite a bit in my interviews and afterwards they’ll tell me it was the strangest interview they’ve ever had in their life. And that makes me happy when I hear that. Part of it is because by the time you’re interviewing with me, I’ve read your resume, I get a sense of your skillset. I’m not going to ask you about, tell me a time you’ve done this or give me an example of that because that stuff that’s all teachable. I wanna understand, do you have the characteristics and the things that I can’t teach? Are you creative? You are a fast learner, do you have integrity? Are you responsible? Those are the types of things I can’t teach that to somebody. I can teach someone how to build a model or how to do a budget or be a good business partner, but I can’t teach them to communicate effectively.
So I’m looking for those characteristics that I can’t teach because if you have that makeup, you’re going to be successful. It’s easy to pick up, hey, you know, here’s how we build this Excel model or here’s our new system, this is what you’re going to have to go and learn. Great, okay fine. Those are all things that you could go and learn. But to be a fast learner, how do you teach that? How do you teach someone to learn more quickly? So that’s what I’m really looking for. And I have found that if you have somebody with the right skillset, not the, I could go over and build a model skillset, but the right internal makeup, that’s where your superstars will really lie. Whether they have 10 years of experience in FP&A or only two, it doesn’t really matter. It matters to whether or not they can pick things up quickly. Whether or not they communicate well. Are they a good team player? Do they have integrity in what they do? Are they accountable for their own actions? Those are the things that you want someone to show up with. Whether or not they’ve had five years of experience doing budget variance analysis. Really that’s easy enough to learn.
Paul Barnhurst:
It’s a good point. At the end of the day, the characteristics, the ability to think, the critical learning, you wanna make sure they have all those things. And yes, most of the other can be taught in an ideal world, you want both. Sure, yeah, we’re all going to want both. But if you have to pick, you always want the person that can learn quickly that has integrity, that is a critical thinker, curious, those things that will allow them to be successful. That’s always in my mind, I’ve always thought that’s first. Because yeah, I’ve hired some people that have very little or no finance experience that have been great hires and I’ve hired other people that have experience that haven’t been as great. And I think that’s a really good point, what you mentioned there.
Glenn Snyder:
Yeah, exactly. One of the best hires I had in the last five years was a woman who never really worked in FP&A before. She had a good skillset. She worked at private equity firm, she had an accounting background but she had never really been in a corporate FP&A environment. But what I saw in her was someone who brought a lot of energy, she was very intelligent, she was engaging, she wanted to learn, she had a passion for the business. And I was like, you know what? With those skillsets, you’re going to be able to pick up the stuff on what we do FP&A is not that complicated. It’s about how you go about doing things more than what you do that makes a difference. And she was absolutely phenomenal. So it’s really not about the experience and how long your butt was in a chair doing something, it it’s more about whether or not you can make the impact in the group that you’re going into.
Paul Barnhurst:
A agree. So next question here. I know during your career you’ve been involved in data analytics a fair amount as well as FP&A. From what I’ve seen, you’ve owned both functions at times. How do you coordinate and manage the two teams and what have you and found works to ensure that data analytics and FP&A are working together versus almost having two versions of the truth and not being on the same page?
Glenn Snyder:
Well, so let’s start with a very simple fact. Finance numbers don’t move by themselves. Your revenue doesn’t grow on its own. Your expenses aren’t moving on their own. It’s because of underlying drivers. Those drivers are metrics. Those metrics are data. And you do analytics on the data. So if you are not looking at as an FP&A person at the analytics that are driving the business, you are completely missing the story because you could go over and you could say revenue went up 12% from last year, or expenses are down. Great. That’s what you know, refer to as elevator analysis, you’re going up, you’re going down. It doesn’t tell you why. The why in the underlying metrics. So whether you have a data analytics team or not, FP&A should be involved in the metrics and the data and the analytics of the business regardless.
So you have to have that connection. If you have those two areas in your company and you are not working together, there is a lot of opportunities being missed there because the data analytics team will be able to go in and show you insights into what’s going on that will not only help explain what has happened but help you predict what’s going to happen. And if you can get that now all of a sudden your budgets, your forecasts are a lot more accurate, are a lot more meaningful. And at the end of the day, what it’s really about is storytelling. What’s going on in the business? How do you tell that story? Whenever I go out and I speak at a conferences, my favorite question I always like to ask people is tell me, what if you were to bake one piece of a pie?
What kind of bake pie would you bake? And people would say, oh, chocolate cream pie or cherry pie or apple pie. I would usually get a smart ass who would come up and say pizza pie, something like that. Now all those pies by themselves, fantastic. But what happens when you take each one of those pieces and put it together to form a whole pie? The middle of that pie is absolutely disgusting. But a business leader is dealing with that. They get a pie. Their pies license are data, product data, customer data, revenues, expenses, headcount, external market, sales channel, whatever it happens to be. They’re getting data from all these different places, but the data oftentimes doesn’t connect. So how do they tell the more complete story that says one piece of information leads to another, that leads to another, that leads to your conclusion of here’s how revenue’s going up. And you do that by connecting the data and the analytics with the financials to tell that complete story. So to me that’s where the two teams are naturally married together.
Paul Barnhurst:
I like the pie analogy, I might have to steal that one. That’s a really good one. I like the way you described that. I hadn’t heard it that way, but it makes a lot of sense and I totally agree with you. You know, can’t tell the story without the metrics. So you need to have the analytics and if they’re separate teams, you need to be working closely together. There needs to be that alignment.
Glenn Snyder:
Yes, absolutely.
Paul Barnhurst:
So, you know, talked a little bit about this earlier, but what are the key things that you think FP&A needs to do to be viewed more as a strategic business partner? We hear that term a lot today and I think sometimes people are not sure what that means or how they go about being that strategic business partner. So maybe elaborate a little bit more on that.
Glenn Snyder:
Yeah, so let’s start with the last part of what you said is strategic partners about being a partner. And a partner doesn’t mean that it goes one way, it has to go both ways. So first of all, if you’re going into a meeting with your business partners and it’s all about you and what you want to accomplish, you’re missing the point. If you have a 30 minute meeting with a business partner and you know need to get certain pieces of information out of them, okay, focus on that. But make sure you’re leaving 10, 15 minutes in that meeting to say, what else can I be doing for you? What do you have going on? Is there another way that I can help you? If you want them to help you, you have to be willing to help them. And if you want a true strategic partnership with your businesses, it has to be a two-way street.
So that’s the fundamental of it. Now the first part is the strategic side. You are only going to get there by listening and basically what I like to say, playing sponge, absorbing what’s around you. And you have to do that by working with your business partner to understand what their needs are, what are their issues, and again, having a little courage to share some ideas and ask questions. And once you do that, do what you do naturally. Because we in FP&A, we are problem solvers. That’s why we’re not accountants and not to take anything wrong away from accountants. I love accountants, they certainly are a valuable part of the organization. But the difference between finance and accounting is a finance is you are out there in a much more ambiguous setting trying to solve a problem that doesn’t, maybe no one’s ever solved before.
And if that’s what you do and that’s what you like doing, carry that into your partnerships with your business, talk to them about what their needs are, bounce some ideas around, get in front of a whiteboard, draw some things up, be proactive. Because again, the more you show your business partner that you can add value to their business and you wanna help them succeed, the more they’re going to engage with you In the same way, they’ll invite you to those strategic leadership meetings. They’ll make you a part of their senior leadership teams and now you’re going to be involved in those conversations and making the relationships that you need to be that true strategic partner.
Paul Barnhurst:
Got it. That makes sense to me. And like I said, starting with the partner, right? Partnership goes both ways. It’s not a one-way street or it’s not a partnership. And then the strategy part, bringing that in. So next question here. I know you’ve been involved in several finance software implementations. What advice would you offer to someone considering implementing a new finance tool or going through a digital transformation?
Glenn Snyder:
The first thing that you have to do is before you even come up with what the solution is, organize your data. If your data is not organized, it doesn’t matter. You could build, install the best system in the world. We’ve all heard the term garbage in, garbage out. So you gotta make sure your data is clean, it is organized, you have the right hierarchies in place, you have the right source systems. Everybody, when you go over and say, oh AT&T is a customer, it’s not at amperand sign T or AT and the word written T or at and t.Inc, right? We’ve all been through that and the data doesn’t line up. If you have a customer ID number in one system, use it in all your other systems, connect that data. The more your data is defined properly and connected and you have that good data governance, the smoother your transition or your data transition’s going to be.
So it all starts with the fundamental data of your foundation, if you will. You got to have clean data. The next thing you gotta be aware of is what are you really trying to do? If your biggest issue is you’re trying to close the books faster, well you don’t need necessarily an analytical tool that will help you build a whole bunch of models that’s not going to get you to where you wanna go. So make sure you’re going to be looking at systems that has the features that you want, but don’t just solve for today, solve for three years, five years from now. Put those strategic thoughts into your head to say, okay, once we get the system, but what’s the next step? Because if you go and you solve only for what your needs are for today, you might get a system that works great today and in six months you’re going to say, oh, but it can’t do this.
Oh crap, now we gotta go get another system to go do this other thing. So be thoughtful, don’t rush into this because if you’re going trying to go too fast, just because you say we need to get a system in there. It’s the same thing with hiring. You go over and you just hire someone just to fill a chair and you hire that wrong person . Down the road, you’ve created a whole big mess of problems for yourself that could have been solved if you just slowed down, taken another week or two to make sure you’re hiring the right person. The same thing with the system. Make sure you’re getting the system that works for you. There are a lot of great systems out there, and I’ve used a whole bunch of different systems, some have been better than others, but really what it comes down to is were the systems installed in the right way that allowed the company to create scale on the back office functions. And if the answer is yes, then you’re going to have a really good system. If the answer is no, because you have to pull data out of the system, do a bunch of stuff in Excel, and you’re still doing much manual work, you didn’t do your install correctly and you didn’t really solve for the right problem. So to me, that’s what it comes down to. It’s really making sure you have your data organized and you know exactly what it is you’re solving for.
Paul Barnhurst:
I couldn’t agree more. Having come from a data background, having been involved in implementations as one person put it, we had on the show Francisca Valli, she’s like, she called to put your house in order, right? Clean up your data. One thing she listed was strategy, which you mentioned, right? Know your strategy, you understand what you’re doing. And then she’s like, change management, communicate, communicate, communicate. And so many companies don’t do those three things. It’s not rocket science here. You really need to think about it. So many companies look at it and hey, technology is going to solve my problems. No, technology is enabler. You’re going to solve your problems. You need to pick a technology and implement it in such a way that it’ll allow you to scale and make, automate things, not look to it to be your problem solver and to make everything easier.
Glenn Snyder:
That’s right. It’s a tool after all. And the other thing I would say is, and you talked about it when you said communicate. Bring other people into the conversation. If installing an EPM solution for FP&A, make sure that accounting and treasury and tax have views into that because they might wanna leverage that system too. Make sure you’re working with your IT group that can maybe help build some of those automated data feeds for you. Those types of things. Don’t just go out and say we’re finance, we’re just going to do this as a finance tool. You know what, maybe sales operations might wanna leverage some of that stuff too in their planning and their analytics. So invite others into your tent, if you will, to make sure you’re going to develop the best solution for your company, not just for you.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great advice to make sure you involve the company and think broader than just finances, you’re implementing a tool. Really good advice. So next question, this is a question we’d like to ask everybody. We’ve all had failures, we’ve all had those times, things haven’t gone as we wanted. And I always like to say a failure is a learning experience. Could you maybe describe a time you’ve had a failure, I use that word loosely, and what you learned from that, how it helped you in your career?
Glenn Snyder:
Oh, I’ve had lots of failures in my career. I don’t mean honestly, it’s one of the best ways to learn. I could tell you a time I was working at Franklin Templeton and I was reporting directly into the CFO, and he put me on a project that I had no business being on. I was in the portfolio management and trading side of the business and I had a good reputation there. He asked me to go over and work with the IT group to determine the total cost of ownership of each of the applications and how each of the different areas of the company was contributing to how much expense they effectively owned of that system. I knew nothing about this and I was just like, oh, ok, you want me to go and do this? So I go over and I figure out who the right people are to talk to and I go out and I talk to them, I interview them, what system, where’s this coming from?
And I’m gathering the data from the vendor management group about what the costs are for all these things. Then I go out and talk about who the users are and I put everything together and I put this model together and I go back and I’m presenting this back to the CFO and the chief information officer and I present my solution and my boss says to me, oh my God, you have solved more than we thought. This is 90% of what we were trying to get. You have solved in this one model. This is absolutely amazing and you failed miserably. And I’m looking around like, wait, what are you talking about? And he said, you went out and you built this model. You gathered the data, you put it all together. At what point did you bring other people along and get buy-in from the business, the people who are in IT who have to effectively own this model?
And I’m just looking at, I’m like and I kinda want crawl under the table. And after the meeting, he and I were walking across the street over to Starbucks and he said to me, if you don’t learn how to bring others along and to make sure that they have input and they feel like they have a stake in what you’re doing, you will never succeed in this role. And he was 100% correct. So I had to really, it was one of those moments that was just such a glaring hole in what I was doing. But from that moment on, I really focused on the value of two things. One, being a partner, but really being that partner, it’s being a partner with empathy. Empathy all of a sudden became a much bigger trait that I recognized I had to get better at. It wasn’t something I did naturally, but once I started training myself on how to try and see things through other people’s eyes, if I was in their position, how would I feel? Making sure I’m engaging with them in that way. My career started to really take off. And so that moment, that big failure, which was a big failure, it really taught me a valuable lesson on how to be better at engaging with people and being that better leader. And it really all came down to empathy.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you for sharing that. That is a perfect example. I can imagine how painful it was at the moment where you mentioned wanting to crawl on their table. This is a great model, but you totally screwed up, right? Like, wait a second, I thought I did great. Why did you all of a sudden tell me I did a terrible job?
Glenn Snyder:
Right? It wasn’t the technical skills that I had, it was the soft skills that I was lacking. And up to that point I was all about, hey, look at what I’m delivering. Look at all the stuff that I’m giving out there. Look how great the data look, how great the models are. But that could only get you so far after that. It’s about bringing people together and leading people to a better place. And it wasn’t until that moment that I recognized that gap in my skillset.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. Now that is a great lesson and I’ve had some similar where I’ve learned that importance that you have to work with the people and bring them along. Doesn’t matter how good of an idea you have, if you can’t sell it, you’re going to have a hard time being successful.
Glenn Snyder:
Yep, absolutely.
Paul Barnhurst:
So this is a question we like to ask everybody. It’s one of our kind of fun questions to get to know our guests a little bit more. What is something unique about you that you could share with our audience? Something they wouldn’t find online, something people wouldn’t normally know?
Glenn Snyder:
Well, so I’m going to give two things. One, you could kind of find it online, but it is, I think, unique to me. I’ve actually written a novel, it’s available on Amazon it’s called One Moment in Time. It was one of those things that I’ve always wanted to do. And so after I graduated from MBA school because I did my MBA at night while I was working, I was like, Hey, you know what? I got all this energy. I’m working work. I’m used to working all these extra hours. So I went through and I wrote a novel and it got published in 2011. So I, I’m very proud of that. The other thing I would say is I am just a diehard baseball fan. In fact, I’ve been a season ticket holder of the Oakland A’s since 1997. Well, partial season of course you can’t go to all 81 games, but there aren’t many of us Oakland A’s fans out there if anyone’s a baseball fan. Exactly what I’m talking about. I kind of think of us, the Marines we are the few and the proud. There aren’t many of us at the stadiums, but we try and make a lot of noise and it’s something that I truly enjoy.
Paul Barnhurst:
I figured you were going to say something about baseball as I looked behind you there and I can see couple hundred, it looks like a couple hundred baseballs, some autograph pictures, a big bat, all those type of things. So yeah, the A’s is a fun one. I once met Dennis Eckersley’s parents and I was living in the Bay Area, so that was kind of fun talking to ’em a little bit about baseball and their son and some things. I’m not a huge baseball fan, but I’ve always enjoyed the Dodgers.
Glenn Snyder:
I grew up as a Yankee Dodger fan. The A’s won me over when I started going to a lot of games. I’m a fan still like the Dodgers though. This year was a little tough. 111 wins and couldn’t get to the World Series.
Paul Barnhurst:
You had to remind me of that part. Didn’t. So next question to get to know a little bit about you is do you have a favorite quote or a saying that you like?
Glenn Snyder:
So I have two. One is from this Austrian guy with weird hair named Albert Einstein. He said “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. And I a hundred percent believe in that because if you can’t imagine where you’re going, it doesn’t matter what you know because what is already taking place, the imagination is the future side of things. The other one that I like is actually from the CEO of Charles Schwab when I was working there Walt Bettinger. And he said, leadership isn’t about who you can tell what to do or who you directly manage. It’s about who follows you when they don’t have to. And I love that because I think about the times in my career that I’ve had to lead people who didn’t report to me, they’re in part of other groups or whatever. Or when I was leaving a company and going somewhere else. And people would say, if you have an opportunity on your team for me to come over, I would love to come and work for you. Even if they never worked for me before. That is just some of the best compliments I’ve ever had. And so I really think that’s true if you don’t, just because you manage people doesn’t make you a leader. A leader is somebody who gets people to follow them and especially when they don’t have to. That to me is a fantastic quote.
Paul Barnhurst:
Both of those are great. Thank you for sharing. I really like those. So this is another question we ask everybody. If our sponsor is Datarails and their big fans of Excel have an FP&A platform built around Excel. So we like to ask everyone what their favorite Excel formula could be, a function, a feature, but what’s your favorite thing in Excel?
Speaker 3:
Probably SUMIFs. I probably use some ifs more than I ever thought I would in modeling. It gives you all that flexibility. I mean, certainly you got VLookups and stuff, but V look ups is kind of a limited sum if you weigh in a way because you’re looking at something very specific. But yeah, I’d probably say SUMIF would be my favorite formula
Speaker 2:
That works. And that, that’s definitely the one we all use a lot in modeling. I’m a big fan of SUMIFs, and I’ve used it many a time. So I know we’re coming up on the end of our time here and really enjoyed chatting with you. So I have one last question here for you. What advice would you offer to someone starting their career today? Who wants to work in FP&A?
Glenn Snyder:
So two things. I would say, number one, be flexible. Be open to different ideas and really understand the value of where ideas can come from and how to put them together to really develop a solution. And then the second one is be engaging/ Something people tell me all the time that they say, I show up with a lot of energy. I don’t know if I do or not. It’s just me. Okay. But it is something that I notice when I’m talking with somebody, whether or not they’re engaged and how they’re engaged, do they have that excitement in their voice? And when they do, that excitement becomes contagious. So try and be that person who just makes that positive impact on all the people around you. And you’re going to have a lot of people who are going to want to work with you.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great advice. I mean, being engaging and being positive makes a huge difference. Just having a smile on your face, being happy, staying away from the negative people will be drawn to you just by that alone. It’s amazing how much people wanna be around, positive people that put off energy instead of take energy. We’ve all been around the ones where you’re like, all right, I don’t wanna be around this person. I’m going to get away.
Glenn Snyder:
Exactly.
Paul Barnhurst:
And that’s never fun. So great advice. So if people wanna follow you or learn more about you, is there a place where you do any kind of blogging or anything where people maybe LinkedIn connect with you or anything like that?
Glenn Snyder:
LinkedIn probably the best thing. And what I would say is if you just go over, if I don’t know you and you just say, I want to connect with you, I’m probably not going to accept you. Be engaging say I heard you on the F N A today podcast. Love what you said. I would like to follow you. Whatever that is, I will usually accept those types of requests. But if you just don’t say anything, what value are you bringing? So that’s typically probably the best way to engage with me.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. And that’s great advice around actually leaving a message that is personal instead of just the automated, Hey, connect with me. Exactly. So on that note, we’ll go ahead and let you go. I know you have a meeting here, but we really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for carving out some time for us. Glenn, it was an honor to have you on the show.
Glenn Snyder:
Thank you, Paul. It’s my pleasure. I really enjoyed it.
