How do we embed your finance business partnering training into our team after you have finished the program, Andrew?
It’s probably the most common question I get from the CFOs I work with who have allowed me the honour of training their team. Even more so from their L&D partners.
We spend anywhere between 2 and 6 months training them in the behavioural skills, tools and techniques to help them work better with non finance.
I am then gone and they have decided to fend for themselves. As if I have sprinkled some fairy dust over the team and they are magically transformed.
Unfortunately getting better and world class at something doesn’t work like that.
Attendance doesn’t equal pass
And attendance definitely doesn’t equal world class performance.
To fix this there are two ways to embed the training we suggest.
The first one relies on you doing it yourself once we have finished training. It costs nothing and doesn’t need my help.
It’s what we call an outcome approach. If you measure the outcome, the team will find a way to work out the inputs needed to reach it.
You can do this by “tracking” the value your finance team brings to the organisation as they business partner more effectively
What processes have they improved, what initiatives have they been involved in that increased revenue or saved costs, what business cases did they tweak, etc
Quantify the value finance brought to these. Then track it and report/discuss it on a regular basis. At the end of your weekly meeting ask:
“Have we got anything to add to the tracker?”
This will ensure your finance team is laser focused on doing things that actually “provide value” to the organisation instead of just more reports and information and things that don’t
It will keep it front of mind that they need to do more than just run processes and numbers. Their job is to improve the organisation and if you measure it and quantify it, it’s likely to get attention.
A bit of the “what gets measured gets done” approach.
If I know I am being tracked and its a regular focus and those who do well are rewarded, then funnily enough before too long people start to pay more attention to it.
If you do this process alone you will be very surprised how quickly this adds up and you realise the value your finance team brings.
Which in turn creates more momentum, energy and encouragement to keep going.
We do this with our clients and see conservatively 1% of revenue “value” coming through these trackers – which by the way means the ROI on the training is going to be huge for very little cost
The second approach is the more favourable one in terms of returns. But also costs a little bit more.
And that’s the ongoing development for a team that’s just been trained
Nobody gets trained in something and voila they are instantly better and don’t need practice applying.
There is a process of learning, application, feedback, reflection that goes on with anything you are trying to improve. We provide the first two in our sessions. But unless you support the last two it rarely sticks.
We provide 100% guarantee, to 100% of the people who do 100% of the work 100% of the time. We can’t guarantee they will do it though.
This is where The Leaders Lab comes in. Without sounding salesy, put your best 2-3 staff into that program post the corporate training and you will have on going development to keep this stuff on track – for a fraction of the cost.
As I said I don’t want it to sound salesy – but it’s as simple as that
Track the outcomes of the training post the training – this will give the team focus
Provide additional support to the top talent so they can drill it into the others and keep them on track.
I am yet to see the world’s best not do either. They measure, track, refine and they practice. And they have a coach to monitor it.
And we expect finance teams to be top performers without the same setup. Seems crazy to me?