FP&A Today, Episode 28, Anders Liu-Lindberg: Start with Why in FP&A

Anders Liu-Lindberg is the co-founder, partner and COO of the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn. He has ten years of experience as a business partner at global transport and logistics company Maersk.

Within the world of FP&A, Anders can lay claim to being the most well known voice in the sector, blazing a trail for its ability to transform businesses. On LinkedIn, he publishes frank and combative insights to an audience of more than 100,000 subscribers throughout the world challenging FP&A to provide more strategic value.

In this podcast Anders discusses:

  • How he moved from “pretty poor numbers” as a LinkedIn creator 10 years ago, to be the leading influencer on FP&A
  • Why more voices on FP&A on LinkedIn and other platforms is propelling change for the profession
  • Why business partners need to better understand key drivers for their business and translates insights into action
  • Why change in FP&A is still not happening on the scale that businesses need to see
  • Analytics vs FP&A? Should they be competing
  • What is really meant by common buzzwords “business partnering” and digital transformation
  • Why he feels that in common with other finance professionals he held himself back for too long to avoid breaking out of his comfort zone.

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 Datarails 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 will provide you with actionable advice about the financial planning and analysis world. This is going to be your go-to resource for everything FP&A. I’m thrilled to welcome today’s guest on the show, Anders Liu-Lindberg . Welcome to the show, Anders.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Thanks a lot, Paul. It’s a pleasure to be here and I’ve been following the launch of this podcast and all the great people you’ve had on it so far. So I’ll feel there’s a lot to live up to and I’ll see if I can deliver.

Paul Barnhurst:

I’m sure you’ll do a great job. Well, why don’t you start for maybe just telling us a little bit about yourself. Let our audience know who you are. I’m guessing most of them already know if they’re on LinkedIn, but why don’t you give us a little rundown about yourself?

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

No, absolutely. I guess there’s a good chance that they do, Paul. So my name is Andrews Liu- Lindberg, as you mentioned. I’m a partner at a company called Business Partnering Institute, and here we help FP&A teams across the world becoming better at influencing business leaders with all the hard work that they have done in the analysis, which can be kind of challenging for a lot of FP&A professionals. So that’s what we do. And of course, I’m also very active on LinkedIn, just like yourself, Paul, and sort of see myself as not just in FP&A leader or someone that’s active on LinkedIn, but really someone that’s trying to let’s say, be a trailblazer for the FP&A community and leading the way in many different ways. And I’ve really been pleased and excited to see how the FP&A community has grown in the past couple of years. So that’s really something that excites me. But I publish two newsletters on LinkedIn. One is called Trends and Finance and Accounting. The other one is called Here’s the Future of FP&A and Business Partnering. And I publish content every day to my more than 100,000 followers on LinkedIn. I also just recently launched my own podcast called the hashtag Finance Master podcast, which is available on all channels as well. So lots of exciting content and news coming to professionals across the world.

Paul Barnhurst:

Okay, no, you definitely have a lot of content. And you mentioned a hundred thousand. I know you recently crossed that milestone. I saw that. So congratulations there. Thank you. Maybe we can start with just telling us a little bit, but how this journey began, right? I mean, you’ve built quite a following, obviously when you started, you weren’t known you were working in corporate America like the rest of us. And so how did you know get started on LinkedIn? What was the impetus to do that? And just take us a little bit through that journey.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Yeah, it’s funny you mentioned the Corporate America Paul, right? Because I, I’m based in Denmark, right? So I’m based in Europe, but actually my LinkedIn journey did start in corporate America because I was working in the US at the time, I was having a stint in Houston, Texas for two and a half years. And while I was sitting over there working as a finance manager it was the first time I had a leader job. First time I had my own office and I just of felt like the work, I could sort of manage that pretty well. But I sort of got very inspired around creating plans and transformations and ways of working. And I thought to myself, Hey, why not try to also do some sort of personal branding writing about what I do and getting engaged with lots of different people that are interested in the same thing.

So already back in 2012, so 10 years ago, I started sharing content on LinkedIn, if you can call it like that back then. Which meant I found different kind of interesting content on sites like cfo.com for instance. And then I would share that in some groups on LinkedIn and see if anyone wanted to engage with that. I was also blocking that on some other sites as well. So I started my content creation journey all the way back in 2012. And it’s funny, I still track my LinkedIn data to this day, but back then I was also tracking my LinkedIn data and it was pretty poor numbers compared to what you would look at today. But then in 2014 in May, LinkedIn opened up its blogging platform. It’s pretty new back then to the general public. And since I’d already started sharing some content and writing a few blocks in other places, I thought, Hmm, I’m going to jump on this train and see where it takes me.

So I started publishing in May 2014 once a week. In the beginning, I didn’t really know what to write about from week to week. A thought would appear in my mind, and I’m just going to write about that. But over a matter of six months, I think I sort of started to get into the swing of things. I also got picked up by a few LinkedIn editors, so they would promote my content a little bit. It did mean I went viral with hundred thousands of views on different stuff by any means. But it was nice to get that kind of recognition. So I continued to publish weekly for a good number of years. It became more and more finance focused, not just writing about everything, but really finance focused. I started to write content in series rather than just standalone blog post, all this stuff. It just basically helped to build my presence and my brand on LinkedIn.

And then in 2017, I sort of broke the algorithm and had several posts go for more than a hundred thousand of views. I think the biggest one was 415,000. And in a matter of six months, I connected with 9,000 people. And then I just continued it from there. So in 2018 I launched my first newsletter which was part of, I was of the pilot there on LinkedIn 2019, I launched the second one. I was the first in Denmark to do a LinkedIn live. So it’s kind of like just grew from there. But the key to the whole thing was the consistency. Starting doing something and then building on top of that. Once you could keep that running, you build on top, keep that running build on top. And today we still have two news that is running now. We just launched a podcast. We’re doing weekly LinkedIn audio shows. So it is just about being consistent and giving value back to the community. And then people want to hear more.

Paul Barnhurst:

Thank you for sharing a little bit about your journey. And I didn’t realize it had quite been 10 years. I knew it was somewhere back in that time. But it’s amazing how quick it goes and it shows, like you said, what can happen when you’re consistent and you provide value. And I know a lot of your content, you provide a lot of great value. So you had mentioned that the FP&A community is growing a lot on LinkedIn, so you’re seeing a lot more content out there. So what do you think that means for the state of FP&A? Why are we seeing that growth in content creators and just that thirst for information . What do you think is driving that?

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

So I think the key thing driving that is that FP&A a team or function, whatever we call it today, needs to do more. It’s been said many, many times for the past, at least five years, maybe 10 years even. And FP&A needs to do more. We need to be better at utilizing technology. We need to have more flexible and agile processes. We need to be better business partners, which of course is what we work with. So we need to deliver more value from the FP&A teams and it’s not happening at the scale that we want. And you can ask yourself who’s going to drive this? You know, can have the big Fours of the world or other consulting companies trying to drive this, but why not practitioners that have tried to do this? When I started sharing content, there was no practitioners, at least not on the LinkedIn space, Maybe they were doing it on sites that I didn’t visit, whatever, but there was no practitioners talking about what have they experienced as professionals, what have they learned, where had they failed?

How did they succeed sharing their experiences with an audience. They just weren’t there or they were very, very difficult to find. So when there’s no one sharing their stories, their experiences, from a practical perspective, it’s very hard for other professionals to learn because we need role models that we can see ourselves in, that we understand what did they do differently and that we can learn from. And I think a lot of professionals such as yourself, Paul, and many others in this community are now seeing that, hey, I don’t need to be a big VP or CFO or something like that to have an impact on a community or to be listened to. I just need to share my own stories, my tips and my ways of doing things. And that’s something people can learn from because most people, they’re more eye to eye with you and me than they are with the CFO or VP. So if a VP shares how they did things 10 years ago is probably not relevant today. If they share how do they run their PFP&A team today, it’s not relevant for the guys in the four like you and me. So they need to hear from people that have done it, tried it, and are in it themselves. That’s why it’s happening now. And that’s the burning platform for why we need to do it.

Paul Barnhurst:

No, that’s a great point. And I agree with your point about delivering more value. There’s been areas where we’ve fallen down and not delivered enough value. And I’d like to come back to that here in a minute. But before they do that, I’d wanna ask you just one more question around the content side. So maybe what are two or three topics that you find people are always interested in? What do you find generally performs best? And I think I have a pretty good idea and at least one or two of those. But yeah, go ahead and share.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

It’s kind of like a piece of software and five letters called

Paul Barnhurst:

The first one I was thinking of

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Called Excel. If you share something with Excel, whether it’s just data analysis and Excel macros or something with power or something, it goes really, really well with that content. And of course it’s just a sign of how much Excel is used by FP&A teams. Whether we think that’s a good thing or bad thing doesn’t really matter. It’s a fact that is being used so much. So Excel content is always doing really, really well. But I think also planning and forecasting content is also something that’s doing well because we are all doing it and we are doing it for so such a big part of our working hours that if we can get any tips of doing it faster or better or more impactful, we’ll take it. So Excel and planning and forecasting is great stuff for the FP&A community.

Paul Barnhurst:

Yeah, I would a hundred percent agree with you on both those. Kind of funny story for me, when I first started on LinkedIn was commenting and one of my first articles was probably 2016, maybe early 2017, somewhere in that timeframe. And I wrote about Excel. Cause I had listened to a podcast by Lance Rubin where they argued whether Excel was dead or not

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

<laugh>.

Paul Barnhurst:

And I didn’t realize that people would just gravitate toward that. And it did really well for a first article and kind of like, oh, this is kind of cool, A lot of people are interested. I got comments. And that part of kinda got me excited to try more and do more. So I can definitely see the value of Excel. And today I get it. I understand, Oh, that’s why I chose the right subject. It wasn’t what I necessarily wrote. It was the subject resonated with people.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

No, but it’s interesting. So not counting my current view counts on articles because now I have, my biggest newsletter has 130,000 subscribers, so you can’t really compare. But my most popular article to date, and that has been more than 600 of them on LinkedIn, is the title Finance Business Partner versus Financial Analysis? It’s that simple, right? Because everyone is knowing what this financial analysis is all about, but what are the skills for business partnering. And all I did in this article was basically looking at job description for each of them and then comparing, and that article was, and articles work differently than Post on the feed. But it was read think more than 40,000 times that article and it keeps being read and it’s ranked very well on Google and whatnot. So there’s a huge thirst with any kind of content that just has sort of an FP&A tune to it. But of course those topics that sort of transcends from FP&A into other disciplines like Excel will always do better than pure FP&A content.

Paul Barnhurst:

Yep. Okay. So last question around the content and then we’ll get to some more things around specifically FP&A. But if there’s somebody out there listening to you and they wanna start posting content on FP&A what’s the top two or three pieces of advice that you would give them?

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

So the first is advice is simply to get started. I mean so many people think about it but they don’t get started. So get started so you can test what resonates with your audience. I mean, if you don’t start, you’re never going to find out. And I think secondly is you all have experiences. Your experience is going to be different from my experience. And anyone out there is going to have their own unique experience. Share those experiences. And people want to listen. I, I’ve followed a lot of creators that have risen on LinkedIn also lately here. And what they’re doing is they’re sharing their thoughts, their perspectives, their stories, and it just resonates. So it’s a great time to just get started on LinkedIn now and just use yourself. That’s the best you can do.

Paul Barnhurst:

Now. I appreciate that. It really does come down to get started and share who you are in your experiences. And I’ll tell people, look, everybody’s experiences are valuable, they’re unique and somebody’s going to want to hear them. It’s just figuring out how to resonate and find your voice. Because every voice is going to be different. So that’s great advice .

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Paul Barnhurst

So, can you maybe talk a little bit to our audience about the difference between how they should think about FP&A versus business partnering? You talked about the article financial analysis. I know a lot of people have different views and some of that depends on where they are in the world and whether the role is, how the roles are defined. But maybe from your perspective, especially having worked for the Business Partnering Institute and being so passionate about that, how do you think of an FP&A role versus business partnering? How are they different? How do they align? Talk a little to that.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Yeah, so the starting point is that FP&A as a team function/department in the finance function. So there could be people doing financial planning analysis, but it’s always a team. It’s a group of people that do financial analysis, that do planning and forecasting and so on. So it’s a group of people, it’s a team there. Business partnering is an activity that anyone, someone in FP&A someone in tax, someone in accounting can do. And everyone should act as if they are business partners to someone. It might not be a business leader, it could be a finance leader, but you’re still doing business partnering with someone. So it’s an activity. The confusion might happen because then there’s also some companies more let’s say in Europe and in the UK worlds sphere if you can call it like that, where it’s a role in a role in a company.

And when it’s a role, what typically happens is then FP&A is a corporate team of, I don’t know, five to 10 people that supports the CFO the CEO and the board with high level company stuff. Whereas then the business partners, they’re sitting out more in the frontline supporting VPs and directors and whatnot with making key decisions in the company. So it’s a more operational slash tactical role. Whereas the FP&A s tactical and strategic. So that’s how you would divide it if you have both roles. So I fully get why there would be confusion, especially because it’s not the same autonomy across the world, it’s all used differently. In the US, there’s no finance business partner roles. In Denmark for instance, FP&A would always just be this corporate team. So there’s no uniform way of doing it across. So just remember FP&A is a group of people, a team. Business partnering is an activity. That you can never go wrong with.

Paul Barnhurst:

I think that’s a great way to look at it. And I like that FP&A is kind of the department or team and business partnering is an activity. It’s also a mindset. It’s something we all need to have no matter what role we’re in because for frankly, at the end of the day we’re supporting the business and that’s what partnering is about. So I think that’s a great way to define that. So along those lines, there’s a lot of confusion around that I think people have had. I’ve also think there’s sometimes a lot of confusion of what belongs in the FP&A department. We all know there’s some core functions, but beyond that, you see a lot of companies think very differently on what all is included in FP&A and what should be included. I think company size plays a role in that as well sometimes. But when you think of FP&A what are those core functions that you always believe should be part of FP&A?

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

So I think if we talk about FP&A what should be part of it? I think let’s start by reminding ourself what’s the purpose of FP&A in general? What is the mission? I spent a lot of time trying to define it also with other good FP&A professionals and it really comes down to driving the right strategic choices in the company. So that’s the starting point. So it starts at the strategic level. So you are part of this strategy process. You are part of outlining what choices can we make. You are part of making the decision to making those choices. So that’s the starting point. From there of course it’s about how do we then translate that strategy into the organization and there, you know, you might have a FP&A teams working with different finance teams down the road or different business teams.

So that translation needs to happen. But then FP&A also needs to establish the feedback loop then from the front line of the company back to senior management and say, is the strategy working? So I think that, and I know that’s in a holistic way of looking at it, but that’s what FP&A needs to do. And of course that then involves business cases, investment cases, planning and forecasting, management reporting, performance reviews and so on, so on. But I think those are some of the key activities that will be done by FP&A. And there’s no black and white in terms of what exactly needs to be in there, but the holistic approach: drives our strategic choices, cascade it down, establish the feedback loop that needs to be there in a day.

Paul Barnhurst:

I like how you summarize that and I think it makes a lot of sense that it’s really about driving those strategic choices, helping in ensure the strategic plan can be met through that feedback loop. And that’s the core activity. And if you’re doing that with that financial lens, you’re doing FP&A. Whether you’re doing an annual budget, whether you’re doing rolling forecasts, whether you’re doing this or that. The real key is helping drive strategic value for the company. And so I think that’s a great way to think of it. I think sometimes we get lost in, well does this belong in FP&A? Should we be doing this? Should we be doing that? And there’s obvious a lot of opinions. I know you’ve talked about some of the things and I think some of the challenges we’re seeing these days or things such as data science, that’s a hot topic.

Does that belong in FP&A? Does that, where does that belong? How do they coordinate? And just data in general data and analytics. I think you just had a series or you’re going through a series on that, that’s what you started with for your podcast. So maybe talk a little bit to that of how you think they’re supposed to play together? How does data and analytics kind of data science FP&A, how does that all fit together and what’s your view of how a company should think about ensuring there’s a coordination and collaboration there to achieve the goals?

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

So it’s all about the data to insight journey. I think we’ve, a lot of people have to have talked about that. We all know the last model of the analytics marathon from Brent Dykes and whatnot. I think what what’s key to understand is that what comes before data or comes before data is a hypothesis around what needs to be true for our strategy to be right or for taking this action to be a good idea and so on so forth. And I think that’s what we often forget both in data analytics but also in FP&A that we don’t have a hypothesis around what needs to be true. So if we don’t have that, we end up just analyzing stuff forever and ever. And I think you’ve mentioned it also earlier and I’ve talked about it yet, we spent up to 70% of our time just working with the data, which obviously is not very, very efficient.

And it’s not no different between FP&A and data analytics teams. I think it’s pretty much the same. So I think we all need the same starting point around, okay we have a business issue. It could be how do we execute a strategy or what choices should we make? We have a business issue, we need to have a hypothesis around what needs to be true and then we analyze that, right? So that’s the goal. And then sometimes the analysis might be very complex because there’s lots of data sources involved or the volume of the data is huge and there you need specialists who can really dig into the numbers and let’s say general FP&A professional is not the right person to do that. But then there’s the whole, we talked about it in the strategy and the feedback room and all that. That’s more, the analysis of it is pretty simple, but running it and interacting the stakeholders, that’s where it gets a bit more difficult.

That’s why you need FP&A That’s not what the data analytics people are good at. So they both have skills that sum up to the same thing, which is the data to inside journey. But right now they’re sort of more competing than they’re collaborating because they’re all sort of looking at lots of data and they’re sort running towards getting to the inside piece first. But I think it’s rather to understand that they have complementary skills where data analytics that can really deep go deep into stuff where FP&A can more lie across. So if we have a business issue, we maybe sit together all of us to discuss with the business leaders how do we address this? Sometimes it’s simple, you just let FP&A run with it, sometimes it’s more complex, you put it into your data analytics team, they will do the deep dive and the FP&A team will be there along with them to understand what’s going on and then they help translate that into business actions at the end of the day and they’ll follow up on if we actually get the decide outcomes from it.

But if you ask the data analytics people to also be that top layer, I feel that we are going to set them up for failure because then they lead to learn a lot of new skills influencing communication and whatnot. And by all means, I see lots of data analytics professionals on LinkedIn talking about that they need to develop this as well. I just don’t think it’s the most efficient way of doing it. And I agree if FP&A a professionals also need to become better at communicating and influencing and all this stuff. But I think if we can have that division of labor to say data analytics, they go deep FP&A, they go across, then I think we are doing the right thing. And in order to do that, my take is that data analytics should also be a team that sits in the overall finance function or in a center of excellence that could then of course also report into the CFO at the end of the day. But it should be housed under the same roof in order to ensure we use the resources in the best possible way and that we don’t compete in a competition that no one wins.

Paul Barnhurst:

And you answered where I was gonna go next around the conflict. I can tell part of your solution to that is how it’s structured and who owns it. Your view is data analytics center of excellence but really should roll into the CFO. And we’re definitely seeing a lot more of that today. I mean I’m sure you’ve seen some of the numbers. I believe this last year, 33% of CFOs were first time CFOs. People that are promoted more than ever. They’ve came from an FP&A and a data background. They need to be data savvy. We have all heard the term and sometimes I cringe when I hear it, I’m sure I know you’ve written about it, I’ve written about it is digital transformation. It feels like we’ve heard that for a decade now. And so maybe just talk a little bit of your view about digital transformation. Why do you think companies struggle so much so with that and what do you really think the key is around successfully making those transformations and really becoming data digital smart organizations?

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Yeah, it’s funny you mentioned this Paul right? Because my take on digital transformation and why it goes wrong is because most companies, they treat it like a strategy. Our strategy is to become digital but that doesn’t say anything. So they still have a whole transformation around we need to become digital. Okay. But what is it digital is supposed to enable and which it is supposed to enable. That is what should be your strategy. Being digital is just a means to an end. But if you see digital transformation as your strategy, and I know of course no one just has digital transformation as one strategy, but it could be one point out of four in a strategy. We need to be digital That’s, that’s just wrong because it’s not a strategy, it’s something you do to enable something else. And if you’re not clear about what that something else is, of course you’re going to fail.

But if you are clear about what digital is going to enable, that’s when you can become hugely successful as a company. But I just feel like the digital transformation has become another one of those buzzwords that CEOs, not just CFOs but CEOs are sitting there and saying, well we need to have a digital transformation strategy as well because all the others are having it. And if we don’t have it, we are probably going to fail as a company. Well yes, I mean most companies probably need to do something in the digital space, but that’s not what you know should sit there and decide in a strategy room. You should decide what choices are we making that’s going to make us win in the market And that’s to maybe interact differently with our customers and to interact differently we need to be digital. Fair enough. But if you don’t know what digital is enabling you, you’re going to fail. So that’s my take on it

Paul Barnhurst

Now. And that makes a lot of sense. And that aligns with, we had Francesca Valli on the podcast and she’s a digital transformation specialist and she studied a course around that at the I think it was London School of Economics. She read some data around them and they listed two key things they found that are needed for successful digital transformation. And then she added her own third, which were her three pillars. And the first one was strategy. It’s like you talked about so many people look at technology as the solution. Technology is an enabler, it’s never the solution. And if you think of it as the solution, you’ve pretty much failed out the gate because it’s just not the right way to think about it. How does it enable you? And so she talked about that strategy and then second she talked about change management, which I always like to sum up as communicate, communicate and then communicate some more because you can’t over communicate.

And then the third she talked about, which I think is a real challenge and I think your data analytics and making sure that’s set up kind of speaks a little bit to that is getting your house in order, cleaning up your data. Cause if you don’t fix the data at least enough that you can make good decisions, the transformation isn’t going to do a lot of good. You can transform your processes and your system, your systems, but if you don’t fix the data, what good is it? If what’s coming out at the end doesn’t add value.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

But I mean there’s just so many issues with the points you’re mentioning here, right? We talk about the strategy bit already but it’s just change management for instance. Have you ever heard about a function in a company that’s great at change management? Maybe the change management team, but they’re never called upon in the right way to actually make a difference. We always underinvest in change management. And that’s why we fail with so many initiatives because it takes a lot to succeed with change management. And at BPI we also work a lot with that. And we can always see that when companies don’t invest enough and for instance a learning journey that we have we’ve set up with them, they’re not going to get any benefits out of it. So it sort of dies there because we don’t invest enough in the change management. So it’s just issues all over the place with the points you mentioned there Paul.

And I get it, it’s not easy. So I’m not just sitting here and saying everyone is stupid because they don’t get it, right. It is because it’s difficult. But the challenge is whenever something is difficult, we tend to overcomplicate it and then we never succeed. So we need to make it simple. Okay, what is it we are trying to achieve with being digital? All that’s to change the conversation with our customers. Let’s build a digital interface that can help us do that. Simple. We don’t need 20 different work streams to do that. We just need a fast working agile team that can build a minimum viable product. And then we go, let’s see how it works.

Paul Barnhurst:

Yeah, no, I think that’s a great point about making things overly complex. It’s easy to do. I know I’ve been guilty of it and especially in finance, we’ve all seen those models that you open them up and you’re like, where do I start? Even if they’re well designed, sometimes they’re so complex that you’re just like, all right, I got 500 drivers, which one actually matters? I see you rolling your eyes because you’ve seen a few of those <laugh>. Well

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

I don’t know if I’ve seen it so much myself, but I know they’re out there and I’m like, you can can’t run your business on 500 drivers. I mean it’s like the key in KPI always gets lost, right? I mean it should be PIs because you have performance indicators, you don’t have key. And I see again because I’ve started following so many data analytics creators on LinkedIn, I’ve seen a lot of them posting dashboards and they look really, really nice. Many of the dashboards that they make and I couldn’t make such a nice looking dashboard. But they always have seven or eight different things that they’re tracking in one page. And my advice to them is always, what are the two, three most important things that you wanna track? Put those in your dashboard and then you can have some double click functionality and you can look at all the details. But if you can’t choose the two to three key performance indicators, forget about it. No one is going to get value from the dashboard. And it goes with so many other things in finance and FP&A that we just cannot simplify and zoom in and say these are the three most important things for our business. Let’s drive those hard until we’ve succeeded and we’d pick the next one that’s going to be important.

Paul Barnhurst:

Now that’s a great point and it really is, it’s the key in key performance indicators. I published the other day a cartoon, you’ve probably seen it, it’s by a Marketoonist I think. And it shows the big huge dashboard and there’s one down at the bottom and they ask, Well what’s this explaining. Like well that’s the one that explains how well anyone understands this thing and it’s just an arrow going down because they’ve just added so much stuff that it’s like where do I start? And some of them even end up conflicting sometimes. Well, if I focus on this, it’s going to impact this one over here in a negative way. So where do I focus? So yeah, you’re that’s a great point of really focusing on those few key things, those that really move the needle. And that’s where sometimes the difficult conversation has to have happen because different people are going to have different opinions on what those key things are.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

And that’s okay.

Paul Barnhurst:

And what should really matter.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Okay, those are the thoughtful discussions that we should drive as FP&A professionals, right? I mean we talk about the strategy and it’s about making choices. And I really buy into the McKinsey way of thinking here to say that there are probably five key things that you can do as a business and if you want to move in terms of relative value created versus competitors for sure, but against all companies in the world, you need to do two of these. They call it big moves. And to make a big move, you have to really pull very, very hard on the steering wheel or really go hard on the throttle to get somewhere. And most CEOs with their executive teams, they’re not having those discussions. I mean the strategy guru Roger Martin, he basically said in a comment on one of my articles that only 10 o 15% of CEOs have a real strategy because they haven’t made choices. They’re just doing stuff. They haven’t made choices about why do we do this versus the other. And they’re not pulling the wheel hard enough. And that’s why FP&A professionals have such a great opportunity to get in there, get in the mix, and actually change things. And it’s part of what I call the trillion dollar opportunity which is potential for value creation. If FP&A and associated teams can just get it right, It’s massive. Really massive.

Paul Barnhurst:

No, I agree. There’s massive opportunity. When you said many companies don’t have a strategy, I had to laugh because I had a situation where we got a new CEO at a company I worked with. He had been there about two, three months and was very, very open with everybody and we had a town hall and he said, I still haven’t found the company strategy. If anyone’s seen it laying around anywhere, if you could let me know, I’d appreciate it. Because he came in and said, There’s no strategy here. I don’t know what we’re doing. And that was his first thing is trying to figure out what should be the strategy. Yes, we’re making choices and yes, we would do a lot of tactical decisions, but we don’t have a cohesive strategic plan here. And that’s so important. It really starts with that. And FP&A needs to make sure they understand that and that they can drive toward that. And if it’s not clearly defined, that’s not that FP&A should bring that up. It’s not FP&A’s fault, that’s a leadership thing. But FP&A needs to be a part of helping solve that and that’s where opportunity gets unlocked.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Well I agree Paul that it’s not FP&A’s fault, but I’d put it on FP&A if they don’t. So that’s, that’s my challenge back, right? Because what FP&A needs to do to make the CFO and the other CXOs happy with the return on investment that they’re making on FP&A. That’s when a CEO would sit and say, Well I’m not going to invest in 10 more sales rep next year. We need three more of those FP&A folks because they know how to drive the right conversations and the right choices. And that is effing value creation in our company. But we are not there today and maybe we won’t be there for the next five or 10 years, maybe we’ll never be there. But if we can realize what we call people potential of FP&A teams, we can’t get there. But it’s not easy. It takes a lot of effort.

Paul Barnhurst:

Yeah, no, and I agree with you. It’s something that FP&A should be doing if it’s not there. They need to be raising their hand and saying, Look, this is what we need to do. We’re missing this. So that it’s a great point. I can remember having some of those strategic discussions with the business and the value that can come from those. I know we’re getting close to enter time and have a couple just kind of standard questions we ask everybody but just wanna ask one more question cause I know this is an area that I’ve seen some very passionate opinions from you about and that’s just around FP&A and learning. Whether it’s programming, SQL, some of those hard technical skills beyond Excel. I’ve seen when mentioning finance people should learn BASIC, you should learn SQL, your responsibility, no, that’s not where they should focus. So maybe just talk a little bit about your thinking and that delineation there. Cause I know that’s an area you have some pretty strong opinions on.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Yeah, I think the first point to understand is the context in which you operate. So if you’re a small FP&A team in a mid-sized company that you’re the only ones basically doing data analysis in your company and you don’t have a big IT function that can help you automate stuff and so on, it makes sense. It makes to learn SQL or something like that because no one else is going to do it for you. Now where I come from is that that’s big corporates where I have worked. So of course things are different there and if I’m an FP&A professional in a big Fortune 500 blue chip company, then absolutely not because you have data analytics teams for instance that are really good at this. You as an FP&A professional, you need to be the good at communicating, influencing, driving the right discussions, driving the right choices, all this stuff.

And that doesn’t require SQL. I can guarantee you that. Just revamping your management reporting is actually something you’ll get a lot more value out of because what I see mostly is just really not that good to be honest. So there’s a lot of other things that you can focus on that’s gonna be much more value adding for you. So we have to remember the context. So I mostly reply from a big company context, whereas other creators might be looking at it from a medium size to even small sized company context. And it is different. But I think if you look at the archetypical FP&A professional, does SQL and coding languages belong in there? I don’t think so.

Paul Barnhurst:

Yeah, no. And I understand what you’re talking about between the big and small company. Although I will say I learned SQL in a Fortune 500 company, but as a general rule, I agree with you, that’s not the norm. My situation was a little unique of how that came about, but I found a ton of value in it in FP&A and having that skill. But I understand what you’re saying and company size and how it’s structured makes a difference. If you’re never going to be the one pulling the data, then I get it. Focus your time elsewhere. So there’s definitely a context element to that is there is to almost any discussion.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

And the thing for me is also, let’s say you have one in a team that can do it and they’ll build some solutions. Then hat person leaves and then no one really knows how to do it. I always make the analogy of all the Microsoft Access where you can also build some pretty amazing databases, but there was always just this one person that knew how it worked and when that person left because people always leave for different reasons, then it wasn’t useful anymore. So I know SQL for instance, is probably a bit more flexible to work with than Access, but I just don’t want FP&A teams to end up in that situation where someone has built something but no one else knows how to operate it. They know how to operate Excel. So they can probably fix a financial model in Excel, but if they can’t fix the database because there are some errors in it and then all the work is wasted.

So I just don’t think it’s, we are suited for that kind of work. If you really wanna do that, go towards the data teams, they work with that and they’re specialist and they’re really good at that and those are the ones we should be getting this help from. And if you’re not because you don’t have the team or because they’re too busy, maybe like what you experienced Paul back in your unique situation, then by all means you will be getting some value out of it. It’s just not what’s going to make you successful in your FP&A career. I can guarantee you that.

Paul Barnhurst:

Sure. It’s not going to be the most valuable thing. I’m a fan of everybody at least learning the basics because I think it helps. But I understand where you’re coming from and I can appreciate that. I know there’s some thought behind that and I get the rationale.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Just the last part in it, Paul, I agree with you in the sense that you need to know what’s possible with these tools and coding languages because if you don’t know whether it’s possible, then how are you ever going to be able to get the right help from the teams that actually know how to do it. So you need to be what I call a tech know right? So you need to be know what’s possible with technology. It doesn’t mean you can do it yourself, but you know who to turn to and what’s the potential benefit for the team and the company.

Paul Barnhurst:

And I agree every FP&A professional needs to at least speak the technical language. Obviously my background, I did a master of science and information management, I started doing report writing. So I came from a more technical background and it’s been invaluable for me and that’s why I encourage people to go down that. But I agree obviously the more you get promoted, the more you move up, the less you’re going to be doing technical things. And at the end of the day, even if you have great technical skills, if you can’t partner, if you can’t drive the strategic decisions, you’re hurt, you’re hurting and limiting the business. So it’s finding where to spend your limited resources. I can totally get where you’re coming from on that discussion. And I always think it’s fun to see because everybody has a little different view and a lot of it’s shaped by our backgrounds. That’s just reality and what companies we worked for and what we prioritize. And so that discussion will go on forever I’m sure. Yeah, we’ll be having it in 10 years from now on LinkedIn. Yeah. So here’s a question for you. As you look over your career, what would you classify as maybe your biggest achievement? If you’re in a job interview and someone asks for your kind of biggest finance achievement, what would be your answer?

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

I guess my answer is that I finally succeeded with business partnering I learned about it in a late April day in 2010 I think is probably the first time I heard about it. And when I finally succeeded with it for real, I mean looking at it in hindsight, it’s like early 2019. So it took me 10 years and I’m proud of the fact that I cracked the code and I was able to do it at the end and now I can help others doing it. But trying something for 10 years before you really become good at it, maybe that’s just how life is, right? Because it takes time to really become an expert in something. But that was a great sense of achievement and once I cracked the code, I could do something in three weeks that maybe would’ve taken me three years just a few years earlier. So that’s definitely something I’m proud of. I never made it high up in the corporate ladder or anything like that, but I cracked that code and I feel if I can help thousands of other finance professionals across the world crack that code too, that’s pretty darn good.

Paul Barnhurst:

No, I mean that’s something to be proud of and that’s great. I know you’re helping people crack that code and you found something you’re passionate about. So that’s what matters. Not necessarily climbing the corporate ladder as we like to say. So we’ve talked about greatest achievement, but as you look at your career, what’s maybe one of the biggest mistakes or challenges that you’ve learned from? We all have them, and I like to say failure leads to success or failure is an opportunity to learn. So maybe kind of a mistake or if you wanna call it a failure that you’ve learned from.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Yeah, it’s probably not a mistake per se, but I mean the biggest failure in my career has pretty much been to stay within my comfort zone for too long and for too many times. But there’s been so many. That’s also part of the reason why it took me so long to see the business partnering because business partnering for most finance and if opinion professionals is outside their comfort zone. It’s certainly, it’s actually pretty odd that I was going to go down this route because for me it was pretty far outside my comfort zone. But there, there’s, just looking back at my career, there’s just so many examples where I said I should have gone to that meeting but I didn’t. I should have engaged more with these insights. But I didn’t. I should have done this, I should have done that, but I chose not to because then I don’t have to put myself out there. And I think this is not unique for me. I think it’s goes from many different professionals out there and now I try to make it my mantra to step out my comfort zone every day. If I get a chance to do it, maybe I don’t succeed every day because that opportunity is not there. But everyone step outside your comfort zones. That’s where life begins.

Paul Barnhurst:

Now. That’s a great advice and you’re not the first one who said that on the podcast. We’ve had others talk about the importance of stepping outside your comfort zone. And I can say having done that and starting my own business, it’s been a great experience. It definitely has helped me grow. So I would echo what you’ve said there. So now we’ll get to the question we ask everybody and there’s two of them, we’ll start with the first one here. What is something that people don’t know about you? Something they wouldn’t find online, something unique about Anders?

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

I think there’s probably many things, but there, there’s a fun fact popping up. I think it was like two weeks ago. So one of our other partners at BPI, he goes to one of our clients and they’re doing a training program out there. And then he sends me a message on TEAMs with the rest of the management team also and say, Anders, when were you on this dating show? And I’m like, who knows about me being on a dating show? Because that you cannot find anywhere online But the backside to the story is that I once auditioned to a dating show. I never made it in there but obviously some former Mercer colleagues who now worked in another company, I had probably told them at one point and then they were sort of telling this story. So you can’t find it out there that I auditioned for a dating show once.

Paul Barnhurst:

Great. Well, can we find the audition? Can we see that?

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

No, I hope it’s been destroyed. At least it would be against GDPR rules to keep it here in Europe.

Paul Barnhurst:

<laugh> true. Maybe it’s somewhere here in the US We can hope. No. Yeah. All right, well I know we’re at our top of our hour, so we’ll end with this question. What is your favorite Excel function and why?

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Yes, I’ve been anxiously watching many of the episodes here to see what kind of functions people come up with. I don’t know if it’s, it’s been taken yet and maybe my reasoning for picking that one is pretty simple compared to what others would say. But my favorite Excel function, at least right now is X look up which obviously has replaced the VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP for many professionals. There’s not available to everyone still. And that’s why they’re debate on which approach you should use but why HLOOKUP? And the simple reason is that it was so simple to start using. Again, 10 years ago I tried to start using Index Match, which is a better technical solution compared to VLOOKUP for instance. And I did manage to get it to work, but I didn’t manage to get into my routines with X look up.

All I did one day was just to type X instead of V. And I didn’t have to think about it, I could just work with it. And I think that’s why it’s my favorite Excel function, at least right now. Because it’s rare that you come across Excel functions you can just plug and play like that into your work. And I need to lose, use a lot of look up functions. We don’t lose a lot of data analysis in our company obviously. So we don’t need to be build big databases, everything. So it’s simple lookups and XLOOKUP p is just much, much easier to use than V look up. So that’s why I switched that and it was just so easy to get into

Paul Barnhurst:

Now. Thank you, I appreciate that. And yeah, I’m a big fan of XLOOKUP and I’ll teach you at my training in corporate training when I’m doing Excel and you can see some of the light bulbs go on when they realize how easy it is and the benefits it has where it doesn’t break in certain ways without coming up with a complex solution. You’re like, well you could solve it this way. It’s like, yes, but the average user isn’t gonna think of, oh, here’s how I make a backward compatible and here’s how I do this and that. And it’s like, no, you wanna keep it simple. So I agree with you on that. So what, as we wrap up here, just any last parting advice you’d give our audience or anything you’d like to say, maybe where they can find you or just any last thoughts?

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

I’m pretty sure the know where to find me, which was just on LinkedIn. But great podcast, Paul, great show that you’re doing here. Lots of great work you’re doing for the FP&A profession and I really just love that we have so many more people like yourself that are now getting into this. So I think my parting advice would go follow Paul and go follow all the other creators out there because they have great stuff to share too. So don’t cheat yourself out of that.

Paul Barnhurst:

Well thank you Anders, I appreciate that. And we’ll go ahead and end on that note. But thank you again for making time for us and I’m excited for our audience to listen to this podcast.

Anders Liu-Lindberg:

Thanks for having me, Paul. You’re so welcome.