“You can throw me in any water. Stormy, cold, or hot and I’ll start swimming.”
And swimming is exactly what Jenny Fuss did.
Jenny Fuss, CFO of Boart Longyear, talks about the challenges of international experience, the importance of having a diverse set of skills in an FP&A team and how to achieve storytelling and influencing in FP&A.
Originally from a small town in Germany, Fuss wanted experience of working and living abroad. When the opportunity to move to become a CFO of a joint venture in China presented itself she took it before relocating again to continue her global career in Houston Texas, and expertise as a finance leader walking the shop floor in manufacturing companies.
This episode covers:
- Jenny’s advice for an international-based career
- The power of FP&A to provide game changing analysis when you have a new customer, need to find a new way to contract or enter new markets
- What CFOs expect from a new breed of FP&A teams
- The challenge of doing less F and P (and more analysis) when facing high pressure cycles such as month end closes and budget planning
- Why she favors a three-year forecast from FP&A
- The #1 priority for a CFO in their first 90 days in a new role
- Owning up to a million dollar mistake
- Jenny’s favorite thing about Excel
- Her top advice for someone starting out in FP&A
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
For AFP FP&A Continuing Education credit please complete the course via the Earmark Ap, must pass the quiz with 80% accuracy and send the completed certificate to pbarnhust@thefpandaguy.com for issuance of 1 hour of credit toward your AFP FP&A Certification.
Full transcript:
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 a 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. I’m thrilled to welcome today’s guest on the show, Jenny Fuss. Jenny, welcome to the show.
Jenny Fuss:
Hi, good morning Paul. Thanks for having me.
Paul Barnhurst:
Really excited to have you here. I’m thrilled to have you on the show. Let me just say a few things about Jenny and then I’ll give her an opportunity to tell us a little bit more about herself. So she comes to us from my hometown of Salt Lake City, so I like that that’s where she’s working these days. She earned a degree in economics and management. She’s currently the CFO of Boart Longyear and she’s also a member and mentor for the CFO Leadership Council. So Jenny, could you start by just giving us a little bit more about yourself and your background?
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m so thrilled that when I figured out that you’re actually in Salt Lake City and I am just moving to Salt Lake City that we connected. So yeah, a little bit more about myself. So Jenny Fuss and you probably pick it already up from my accent, I am German and I grew up there and started also there my career and without knowing where I’m getting myself into, I started adventuring. So I had a journey that brought me all to Asia and now to the United States and also within the United States a little bit around. And I’m very happy now with my, I call it the most intentional moment in my life where I decided what I want to do next and where I want to do do it next. And the rest about me is I’m married, I have two dogs and I’m a cyclist and I really enjoy listening to a lot of podcasts whenever I have time. And that includes my commute time, which is my most protective me time.
Paul Barnhurst:
Oh good. I like that. And two dogs is always fun and appreciate that background. So I know you mentioned you’ve been in Asia, Germany in the US so obviously you’ve had a global career. Can you talk a little bit of what that experience has been like working all over the world?
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah, I think I would always, that also comes from a lot of personality. I think I am more a person who’s definitely more adventurous. So you know, need to envision. Jenny grew up in a small town somewhere in Germany and I really mean somewhere
And so 900 people and I left that little town with 900 people when I was 19 and moved to, in German terms, a big city. And I liked that experience and that’s not always easy because you need to find new people, new people you can trust and find your own new rhythm. But I enjoyed that and I started with a large global company, Siemens, and with that, I think that was great for me without knowing at that point in time that that will open up a lot of career opportunities. But I think one thing is once you say out loud what you are interested in, people around you will pick up and I said, yeah, I think I would like to have the experience of working and living abroad. And so it happened that one of my mentors asked me one day if I would be open to move to China and I said yes.
And I said yes for two reasons. It was one was a personal development perspective I saw in that and the other one obviously the professional one because that came for me as also was a big step up, they asked me actually to become a CFO of a joint venture in China. And I’m like, can it get even more complex? No, but that sounds interesting. I like to stretch myself and challenge myself. And I think because of that I was very open what may come after China and it happened that actually I was interviewing for a job where I thought it brings me back to Germany. And I was totally cool on that because it also worked for my partner. But in the last interview, the person who interviewed me, who actually is still until today, a mentor of mine said like, Jenny, I’m putting you to Texas.
And I’m like, okay, they sent me to Texas and that’s how I came seven years ago to the United States. And it has been, all of my experience has been really a great experience and I think it goes back to something someone in my first 10 years said about me without knowing that I was in reach and the person said, well with Jenny you can put her in any water. She was start swimming and looking now back of 23 years of my career, that is a very true statement, you can throw me in any water. Stormy cold, hot I will start swimming.
Paul Barnhurst:
That’s great that that’s a great story and I can appreciate that having that ability to adapt, that’s a skill that employers want. So it sounds like it’s served you well in your career and you’ve been to a lot of different places. I mean sometimes I think of Texas as its own country when you came to the US so
Jenny Fuss:
It is, and maybe just to add on that envision you come from China, which is a very different culture and that itself is a wonderful experience. And then when you are once in Asia you get, it’s kind of like you open one door and then suddenly you see like, oh, there’s 10 more doors open up and how different Asia works. And then coming to Houston, Texas and trust me, I am a German and the first time I go to the grocery shop and somebody calls me like honey, I think my first reaction was a bit of a rude one. I’m like, I’m not your honey. But definitely having southern hospitality was a great welcoming to the United States.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, no, southern hospitality is great. I have a lot of family and friends in Texas. I enjoy Texas. Great place. But speaking kind of the international experience, so let’s say we have someone listening today who’s considering working internationally, they’ve always wanted to do that. What would your advice be to them?
Jenny Fuss:
I think it’s really going into such an experience openminded and without any assumptions because if you change and switch cultures and countries all what you think you know, how human interactions, how conversations about business and a personal life are working is not what you will find in another country. So having that ability to approach things which are curiosity and open-minded and absolutely key because if you go to a country where you expect things to go the way you are used to, you will get to a point where you will be very frustrated eventually and won’t like it. And it will make it difficult because at the end it always comes down to connecting with people. And with that you need to play around how you connect with people in different cultures and different countries. And that also goes for personal connections. Same also for professional. When you think about leading a team and leading a team in Germany and leading a team in China was a very, very different experience to me.
And there were things I was clearly not doing right when I started in China because I approached it with my very German way. I figured out if I want that my people be successful in what they do every day I need to find a different approach. And then maybe more on the personal note because I also have seen it sometimes I would always recommend, you probably don’t know that’s for you working and living in a different country until you do it. And when you do it you need to be also very honest to yourself. So for some people that’s not a thing because you will miss family, you will miss your friends and then it’s totally okay. And I have seen that a couple of times around me to say, this doesn’t work for me and then work it out with your employer to come back to your home country and don’t be afraid of those conversations.
If it’s happened, people around you will recognize and will cheer you up for trying and it’s not a failure, it’s an experience. And it comes with the price tag. I mean I moved a lot around, which is maybe a bit of an extreme that just being far away from home, there were a moments when there are family events and let’s talk about the positive family events. Somebody celebrating a big birthday, somebody is getting married and a child is born. All of those will be not always for you possible to just jump on a plane and fly over and be and share that moment. And that can be sometimes really tough.
Paul Barnhurst:
I can imagine that part would be really tough. And I like something you said there, one of just learning different cultures, figuring the different ways to work.
They operate very differently. You can’t just try to, as you said, push all your German ways or in my case American ways or of doing things sometimes you have to be willing to give and slowly make changes and help them realize why. And so it was a really good learning lesson for me. I wasn’t international, but just working with the international culture was great because it taught me some very different perspectives
Jenny Fuss:
And Paul I think you’re making a really great point there. You don’t need to live in a different country to get the international experience. I think we all live in a world where you can get that every day, especially when you work in an international company and so you don’t necessarily have to move to another country. But also those moments, I can tell that people even there would make that recommendation approaches open-minded, ask question, don’t take your assumptions as the base and check in with yourself, why are my colleagues doing that for your perspective? Maybe in a weird way just ask them and you will discover usually a lot of elements which actually I found also very helpful for me to stay always open-minded, learning something new and making work also fun because when you ask questions with people, you get to know them better and then naturally working with those people is usually getting way more fun because you just have maybe next time you’d hop on a call like, Hey, I continued about thinking about that topic and here’s my thought. What do you think about that? It’s a wonderful way to connect.
Paul Barnhurst:
Totally agree. Getting to know him personally, getting to do things. I love that I’ve had the opportunity to talk to people all over the world, especially since I started my business. I mean I’ve talked to companies in Croatia, Hungary, Israel, Singapore, all over the US, different countries in Europe. I mean I’ve probably talked 40 different countries people. And it’s really fun to see the different perspectives and learn what they’re doing. So I totally agree with you. You don’t need to work international, have the experience. Obviously it’ll be different if you go international for sure, but you can work and experience a lot of different cultures today because of technology that you couldn’t have 20, 30 years ago.
Jenny Fuss:
Oh yeah. So I still remember moving to China and I had not one word of Mandarin. I was able to speak nor understand. And then in your personal life, how difficult is when you try to get our water dispenser wasn’t working and then you would try to communicate with that management. Can you send somebody who checks for our water dispatcher? And the person on the phone goes like, yes, yes, I know Nestle you want. And I’m like, no, I want Nestle. But the thing is broken. So just the inability to communicate and going through that motion and not getting frustrated and just going in that moment with the flow and then at some point saying just yes, send somebody and then we will figure it out. Because when I can show, maybe they will understand I don’t need a new bottle of Nestle water, I just need a new dispenser.
Paul Barnhurst:
But yeah, that’d be hard. I could see where that could be a real challenge. Yeah. So switching gears a little bit here from the international experience, I know you’ve been the CFO there at Boart Longyear for a few years you’ve done joint venture and some other kind of CFO and high senior leadership roles. Has it always been your goal to become a CFO or kind of how did that come about?
Jenny Fuss:
No, it has not been kind of my goal in terms of that’s the title I’m chasing. It was always like I want to have a position, a role where I can have impact and influence and that always stand out. But obviously during my career you get this question along where do you see yourself in five years? And some organizations they want you to answer that in a very particular way. And so sometimes you get taught, you better answer like, oh yes, I want to become the CFO and then they will be happy about that. I did not go that way. And I think there was even, I had a few awkward situations because of that, because I was more describing give me a role where I would be challenged and I would be able to help people to develop, succeed and create value. And that is probably for some people just too much of a broad narrative and they can better envision where they can put you from a development perspective if you just say that’s the title I’m after.
But obviously at one moment in time there was a switch from me as well and that was just, I called it recently a year ago when I was thinking about what is my next step? Where do I go to? So in my prior role I was a vice president overseeing a global shared service center for a large corporation and had to an oversight of 1200 people. And I’m like, okay, what’s next for me? And I had a couple of interviews and I would say I definitely did my exploration phase. And I was like, okay, is it now the next thing in a large corporation to a senior VP maybe in finance supply chain? Because that is a hot topic today. And I’m still today I’m fascinated about, I think there’s a lot or you can do as a finance business partner in supply chain.
But then more and more when I talk through I’m like, no, I want to become CFO of a standalone company publicly or private equity actually, which I finally also, I mean it turned out to be private equity, which I’m very happy about because I feel like I get challenged on multiple ways and it’s what gets me up in the morning. So yeah, I would say a year ago it was switching to something like very, no, I want to become a CFO. And when you become a standalone CFO, you have those questions like, okay, but you don’t have already done all the check boxes and you don’t have all experience. And that is a true fact that everyone as a CFO started as a first time CFO and haven’t had done everything before. So anyone who’s thinking about whatever path that is to a CFO, to a controller, to a treasurer, to an FP&A person or role, there is always the journey towards it. And there’s nothing what can stop you from that unless you’re willing to learn, go for it.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great advice. I love that. If you’re willing to learn and just keep challenging yourself. And I like that you mentioned supply chain finance. Interestingly enough, I went to Arizona State and they have one of the best supply chain programs in the country. That’s originally what I was going to study. And then I ended up switching to finance, but I considered doing the supply chain finance route cause they had a combo where you could do supply chain finance as a specialization, but I was doing a dual degree and I’m like, I just can’t fit in this many classes. There’s no way this is all going to work. So I stuck with just the finance, but I started my career in supply chain with the government, so definitely can relate to that. Yeah, kind of area. And some of that I did procurement for a few years before I switched to FP&A. So funny that you mentioned supply chain finance. So next question here, I know you’ve managed a lot of teams obviously you mentioned a shared service center of 1200 people. So you’ve managed some big teams, some smaller teams throughout your career. What would you say is the key to building a successful team, beginning a team to perform at the level they’re capable of?
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah, I think it’s a very simple starting point. It always starts with a clear vision and a goal. If that is not clear, no matter your size or maybe one employee, you can get away without having a goal and a vision that you need to have that. And also there, just to be clear, it’s not about that. Everyone just says yes to the goal and the vision, but having the conversation and the clarity about the direction is absolutely key. The second point, and I would even not say I haven’t yet figured that out in perfection, but it’s very important is the effective communication. And I would say that is that’s nothing what you do once and then you have figured out a thing. It is a journey because also how we communicate is changing. I mean we just have 2020 where suddenly for a lot of people communication change within a day and we all need to learn, okay, how do we now stay in touch with people we don’t see every day maybe coming to the office?
And how do you make sure that everyone at the same basically same time gets the information they need When you think about around the globe, but also now you’re not naturally walking into meeting room and by that you are already giving maybe an update on a specific project and it reaches 20 people when you have remote work and what we now also have blended a time, you need to find different ways on how you get updates out. It’s the personal, but you also have to go maybe through email, through teams, zoom chats, whatever it is what you define and also how you measure message. It is super important. And then I think another very, I think that’s really important in greeting is the diversity of the skill sets you have in your team because that will set your team apart. And when we think about FP&A, I mean ideally you have a person who is your data ideally, right? That’s mean that not every FP&A analyst needs to be really good with data and setting up dashboards, no, but if you have a good blend of different skill sets in your team, you can rock a lot for the company.
Paul Barnhurst:
A hundred percent agree. So I like that. If I was to summarize it, I think there were three points there. One, you got to have a vision, where are you going? What’s that shared goal that purpose two is communicate and figure out the right way to communicate and it’s going to be different for each organization. And three is that diversity of talent. You got to have the different skill sets and that all makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve definitely seen some of that in my career, so I really appreciate that. I think that’s great advice. And so speaking of building teams, what do you look for from your FP&A teams? You mentioned data wanting having a data person, but when you’re looking for an an FP&A team building one out or looking to get one to be high performing, what are those things you look for?
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah, I always talk my, I’m now new to my company. They now know Jenny for three and a half month and they already know that what’s my favorite topic and my favorite topic is talking about finance business partnering because that’s where I want to see my FP&A team developing to. And that goes, I call it above and beyond providing good data, which is number one is important and having performed good analyticals to then provide recommendations and to actually start a conversation. And for me that is always meet your business partner and that can be a personal operations and sales and manufacturing in engineering where they are because we speak a different language than they speak. And when you are able to tell a story about the numbers, I think for me when you have the best start to create that business partnering because it’s not about FP&A, it’s not about being, sometimes we have to be a little bit the police that comes with when you think about accounting and internal control, however, then it’s about more establishing that people will come to us and say, we have maybe this new customer and we need to find a different way of how we contract or we are actually entering into a new country.
And you want to be part of that to prevent later on, I call it leakage, right? Because you may run into establishing suddenly something in a country where you now pay twice tax. If you would’ve done an ask maybe finance and tax from accounting, they could have your advice on doing it differently and preventing, most of the time it’s tax leaks because yes, we need to pay tax, but there are different ways of maybe setting up certain businesses and countries so you are not being double dipped on certain tax payments. And that’s where I think you can measure also if the partnership works. If people come to the FP&A team and say, I have an issue a problem, I have a new business here, can we sit down and figure out what are all the questions we need to ask ourself to be successful either in resolving the promen or issue or setting up a new business?
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you. I appreciated that answer there. One thing I really like was you mentioned don’t just do the analysis, be that business partner and provide recommendations. I just actually finished a digital course this last week and I said driving value through smart analysis and we spend some time talking about the importance of the recommendation and aligning and influencing. So often in finance we spend all our time on the analysis and that we forget you can do brilliant analysis, but if you don’t present and come up with the recommendations, usually it doesn’t go anywhere. And I’ve had that more than a few times because it took me a long time to realize, oh, there’s a storytelling, there’s an influencing. Just because I did a good analysis doesn’t mean it’s going to get used.
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Jenny Fuss:
Yes, and that’s so true. Yes. And that’s when I think about that when I also helping my team on develop that as a skillset that storytelling and most important is that influencing, and maybe we didn’t talk about that but I will add it on here because I feel like FP&A and finance is a great place for women because if you are in the business, everyone’s is eager to hear about the numbers. By that you get already a voice and at the end the voice has no gender. just because of that role, a lot of people are really eager to listen to you and want to hear what you have to say. So if you build that skill, be it the storytelling, but also understanding where the other side is coming from, what do they need? I mean for me, if somebody would ask me and if I would think about my younger me and I will now say, no, Jenny, go into the finance space. You will enjoy that there. There’s a lot where you will be learning a lot of challenges and you will be able to connect with people. And that’s what I enjoy, telling the stories, connecting with people and then having together successes created and celebrated.
Paul Barnhurst:
I like that. Thank you for sharing that. Great points there. So speaking of FP&A, I’ve talked a little bit about business partnering, but one thing I’ve noticed and I’ve had other people on the show comment is historically it seems like there’s been a lot of focus on the budgeting, the planning and the reporting is, I like to say as someone put a fat, F and a P and a skinny A is the way they put it. Why do you think that is? Do you think there’s kind of been a challenge to really make sure that analysis is getting to the business and it’s being done at the level it needs to?
Jenny Fuss:
I think that is actually the big question in the room. Why is that a skinny A? I think and it probably needs the perspective of both sides, right? Because I ask business leaders also, what do you need from FP&A? And sometimes they’re just happy with having the report they have gotten for the last 15 years and nobody is looking for what is the things I’m not seeing or what are the ask questions I’m not asking because we all have that. We are human beings. If certain things are routine and working as they’re working perfectly, why changing? So I think there is also that our, I call it internal partners or customers don’t have a higher challenging ask to FP&A. And then on the FP&A side, I think it is a unique skillset if you really got to the analytical part because it also requires how to handle whatever it is Power BI and whatever data visualization tool it is, handle that but more or also develop that mindset to think in terms of data.
And you can see that a lot of times people are struggling with that because they are not challenged on that. Can you approach that differently or sometimes I would wish everyone in the business world would get one lesson. Everything what you do in terms of transaction is a data point and that data point has a value. So what are we doing from the very first moment and data point enters a company that we make sure that we are creating value. And the first data point is maybe just the order entry, but how can we make sure that that value is not decreasing and keeps increasing? It has a lot to do. So with data management accuracy, knowing and understanding where the data flow is coming from and going to, and that would be for me, the perfect world would be that everyone has the appreciation of the value each and every data point has. We are not there yet, right? Because there’s a lot of somebody screwed it up in the other entry, we know at the very end there will be, most of the time it’s the collection team and they will fix it.
And having that as at a higher level seen and appreciative will help. But now coming back the two perspectives, so not being also challenged and FP&A team by themselves, who we want to be and how we want to have impact and influence. And I think there is a very practical reason. There’s every month, a month end closing. There’s every month of reporting, there is every quarter probably a new forecast. There’s once a year a budgeting process and all of that, even though I think it gets better with new technology, it’s very demanding, but it doesn’t get the time to really explore new ways of working. And until we get holistically to that and allow us our FP&A community to have that playground, we may get stuck into it.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great point there. I think I have a friend one time that kind of referred, he referenced FP&A and said it’s a little bit like investment banking, but in the corporate world in the sense of a lot of long hours there can be burnout. He’s like, yeah, and you don’t see a lot of people at their end of their career in FP&A. Most people go up beyond to something else. And I thought it was a really interesting perspective and I think some of those things you mentioned, you see studies that say FP&A professionals sometimes spend more than 50% of their time on non-value act activities and it’s mostly cleansing data. And how do you continue to reduce that? How do you reduce the demand on the budget and the forecast? I think technology plays a big role. I think upskilling plays a big role, but also there’s mindset changes in finding ways to help people realize the real value comes in the partnering and those value added recommendations and being with the business. But it’s hard, especially when you’re in the middle of month end going, well I just got to get this out. Especially if you’re a public company and someone’s breathing down your back because it has to be done in five minutes. How do you balance that as an organization? Any thoughts there?
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah, it is a challenging path and it has a lot of dependencies. I can just, what my situation is here we have an outdated ERP system and with that, that comes a lot of pain and I would just wish I could just, and we all know ERP implementation even so today it’s the cloud implementation. They’re not a three four year project anymore. But still it’s like you need resources for that, you need to have the financing in place for that and all of that. So obviously a lot and a big enabler I would say is technology. And I think if I look back when I started where we are today, the technology is there so we can get there, but then also people need to get trained on the different skillset they need. Plus also I think the mindset, right?
I mean we are publicly traded even though it’s only 1% is traded, so we are more heavy on the private equity part, but it doesn’t change a lot. I still need to do monthly reporting and the quarter reporting because that is really for the public. And sometimes I have people who I need to help them to prioritize and balance them. This is a normal month end close and we do what we need to do and that would be fine. But what I also warn you is thinking and working on the future. And I think that’s a big mindset shift to ask people why does this matter in three month in one year and in five years? And some people who are maybe listening to the podcast and will say, she’s not saying that, but I won’t say that with our forecast we are now putting together for this year in three years matter.
So I think there was also to a conversation with business, we have a forecast for very good reasons, but to which degree we need to be over accurate and trying to be perfect rather than saying, okay, in the bigger scheme, where do we need to get to? And rather, because some people still when I say like, oh, I would like to have a three year forecast people, what are you crazy? And I’m like, I would rather have a three year forecast than a forecast would gives me a little bit of an update over the next nine months when I think about this year. And I think it has a lot to do, what needs to happen with people in the business with CFOs, people in FP&A to have that conversation and challenging why do we really need to have that or it’s not something else what we need even more. And again, a three year forecast is not on each and every account. I need to have an accurate number, right? No.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, no. I seen a company that they wanted it us to do it on every cost center and account three years out. And I was just like, okay, not my approach, but I did what I was told.
Jenny Fuss:
But I think the big changes there from FP&A, going each cost center each account to knowing what are the key value driver, what are your key cost drivers, understanding that. And I don’t think that we are there yet. I know some companies are more advanced and have established that already more, but I think we are still on that journey and once we find that out, I think FP&A will have much more impact and influence in helping businesses to better do cash allocations, to have put my money into the inventory because I will sell it crazy with big margin or do I put it into technology and capital expenders because I will need that to produce my products, which will be sold high margin. And I don’t think that that is already broadly established because sometimes when you walk into FP&A, they are doing the traditional, I’m taking the past and then I’m trying to predict the future type of work.
Paul Barnhurst:
I agree. I think there’s a lot of opportunity and I think we’re get, we’re seeing more value driver based approaches and understanding the business, but there’s still a lot of companies that look at it traditional. I think a lot’s changing with the need for agility fast, the way we budget, the way we think about things. And a lot of that hinges on better business partnering, better technology skills and just thinking differently, a different mindset that’s really centered on the business and how we help drive things forward. So I think there’s a lot you said there that gives a lot of good advice. So next question here is kind of changing gears a little bit, but I know you’ve joined a few different organizations over the year just recently did it, as you mentioned, I think three and a half, four months into being CFO. What advice would you offer to somebody or how do you think about first integrating into an organization? How do you go about that?
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah, I think you need to understand a little bit homework before you start trying to figure out what the culture around it is and then just coming in the first days and ask questions and spend time actually with people. I have say I did not do that always, especially not in my earlier career because I was very resilient orientated. I came in like, okay, my boss told me he wants to see this and that done. And I immediately prioritized that. Basically the task over building the relationships and the relationships can be with your own team, with your boss, with your peers, with other operational leaders, which are important to actually maybe bring you benefit about the FP&A space to do your job. And really approaching it more on getting to know the people and ask question and also ask for feedback because that will help you to adopt.
And I’m not saying that you always today, I’m not saying that today, I’m saying that was full confident. I wouldn’t have said that probably 20 years ago. It’s not necessarily about that. You need to fit in a hundred percent, but you need to adapt yourself so it becomes a good successful collaboration. And so you can do your job, the people around can do their job and together there will be and at end we are doing all of that to be successful. So you don’t want to come in and miss out on establishing the right relationships because for the relationships you will be able to better understand where people are coming from. Why are they maybe after certain KPIs or why they maybe have a bit of a blood pressure when you challenge them on certain topics, lean in and ask the question, tell me more about that. Why is that important to you? And that will help you to better understand the business but also establish those important relationships with every stakeholder around you. And that is sometimes what people when say that’s table stakes, that stakeholder management is the number one what you have to do in your first 90 days. You need to understand your stakeholders and to establish your own path on how you maneuver with all those stakeholders.
Paul Barnhurst:
That makes sense. And I like that as stakeholder management and how you’re going to maneuver with them. I appreciate these said you don’t have to change yourself, but there may be some adapting that you need to do to adjust to the culture. Yeah, I mean you still got to be true to who you are, but learning to adjust and work with different type of people in different ways is also important and it’s a balance. But I like how you said that. I think that was really good advice there. So we’re wrapping up here toward the end of the interview. We’re getting into the questions we ask everybody, and this is one we like to ask everyone. We’re big believers here that failure is just a learning experience. So can you describe a time you’ve experienced a failure at work and what did you learn from the experience?
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah, I would first of all say failure is important to grow and develop as a person and to be also successful. And I would even say sometimes you need to be also and it, it’s sometimes difficult to say, but you need to be proud of a mistake you’ve made. But only that comes my very German way but only when you also go back and look at that, what can I learn from that? And that is always for me, the important point. What can I learn from that? And I would say it goes really back to my early days when I was in a business controlling department and we were establishing and cracking our hands around building a forecast model in an Excel spreadsheet and we were building that from scratch and I dunno long hours, long late hours. And so it happened, I was in charge and I made a very significant mistake and I felt like I’m going to get fired about this.
Obviously I got the feedback that I was not getting fired, I got, and I think it had a lot to do how I handled it. So I went to that division’s CFO, and I asked this, there was times where you make an appointment to see the boss boss. So I had that. I made clear it’s important, I need to talk to him. And I went in and I said I obviously I notified my bosses, but I also went straight to the division’s CFO. And I said, I made a mistake and here is how it happened. This is the impact and here’s what I’m going to do that it’s a not happening again. But I also know that it would be difficult for you to explain now a million dollar mistake. And I was 24 at that point in time. So that’s where I need a little help and how to tell that story. And I think that got me a lot of credibility that I was not just like it happened. I mean my excuse could have been like, well I worked more than 10 hours that day and I was just tired and it just happened. No, that was not my approach. I mean it had impacted that, but I think it was having that conversation and explaining why it happened, but more to focus on and now what are we going to do forward here?
Paul Barnhurst:
I love the now what? Cause I think there’s a framework and analysis, the what now. And it applies in so many areas, even in failures, really good, right? You here’s what happened. Okay, so now we have a million dollar miss, but that now what are we going to do? How do we fix it? That’s kind of that recommendation stage. And I think that’s a great way to look at it, look at it as a learning experience and going, okay, messed up. I have to own it. Doesn’t matter why it happened, here’s what happened, what do we do now? What’s that next step?
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah.
Paul Barnhurst:
Because yeah, it’s really easy to come up with excu. I’ve done it of why we messed something up, but it really doesn’t matter at the end of the day it’s happened.
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah.
Paul Barnhurst:
So thank you for that. Next one here. This is a personal question we like to ask people. What is something unique about you that you can share with our audience? Something we wouldn’t find online that makes you unique?
Jenny Fuss:
Oh, not online.
Paul Barnhurst:
If it’s online you can share it. But generally we, it’s not something people wouldn’t generally know.
Jenny Fuss:
So I don’t know if it’s super unique, but I’m a scuba diver and not only a scuba diver. I really also there there’s a little bit of parallel to my career. I took it one step to the next step to the next level. And I really just enjoy that because, so meanwhile, I’m a trimix technical diver. That means I can go really deep. So now people ask me, but why? Well it’s not because you see more fish down there and actually it gets pretty dark down there. And third is also that is a sport which has a higher risk level. But me, it’s more like being really focused of what I’m doing and challenging myself. And I really enjoy that because people around me who know me, I always high energize and it’s almost a little bit challenging for me in a day-to-day to calm down and slow my pace. But when I do a deep dive that is a necessary, I need to slow myself down and I found deep in the water, I’m mastering it and it helps me also adapt the waterline. I’m not yet mastering it, but it helps me a lot.
Paul Barnhurst:
That makes a lot of sense. I could definitely see that would help. And that discipline, cause there’s a lot of discipline that goes into that and training and it’s not an easy thing, especially the deeper you go, I would imagine the harder it can become, the more challenging it is.
Jenny Fuss:
That’s a lot to do also with continuous learning because you go with different gases with the water and you’re handling way more equipment. And I have to say, as part of that, I had to do also rescue diver certification and that was the most challenging. And I was so exhausted it went on for a week. And I was actually saying, why on earth am I doing that? But it was also so rewarding. And sometimes it’s important maybe when you ask people what’s unique that people will start thinking about what they do maybe in their personal life and how much positive impact and why further that can have to a professional life. And I think that that’s for me where, yeah, that uniqueness that I go deep to 210 feet, people usually probably would not see that when they first time meet in the professional world.
Paul Barnhurst:
Sure. Yeah. I wouldn’t have thought that the first time I met you. So that, that’s cool. That’s fun. So this is another one of our favorite questions we ask everybody. So big fans of Excel here, Datarails is an FP&A platform integrated with Excel who’s our sponsors. And so what’s your favorite Excel feature or formula? Favorite thing about Excel?
Jenny Fuss:
I would say the favorite is Excel itself. To be honest, I still remember in my early days, one of my divisional CFO said like, oh, I want to have one day where we don’t need Excel spreadsheets anymore. And here we are 20 plus years later and
still working with it that there has been a lot of evolution. There are features that I think when they, I mean for some people, I mean most FP&A people know Pivot, right? Great. I can categorize data and they can make meaning out of that. But when they also added the slicer of function, it was like, oh my God, now I get faster. And then it depends a little bit on the situation I just had recently where I’m like, okay, I haven’t used the Goal Seek function for a while, but I needed it. And I enjoyed how easy it is to support when you think through different scenarios to just play with that and not now. I don’t know, you copy a certain line as a formula and then 10 times, I mean it works that way as well. But what I then also is all those little features Excel has, which are just efficiency. And that makes me always, I love to Google stuff. I sometimes need to do that. I’m not every day in the deep deepest weeds but I know I can go there. A few things you will find very intuitive and then otherwise there is where you ask a question and you watch a YouTube video and you figure it out. And for me that is, that’s part of that journey to it’s, it makes fun to work actually a lot with this
Paul Barnhurst:
I love when I figure something new out and it works, right? Oh, when you get done with that formula versus you do it and you’re just dry racking your brain of why is this not working? This is definitely not the number I was expecting.
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah. And I mean there has been different times. I mean I still know how much joy I had when I discovered how VLook Up works, right? I mean tables. But the first time, oh my god, that was life changing.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. I have heard so many people say that that’s often a favorite we get is V Lookup because it’s almost a gateway to be become, it’s kind of like a gateway formula to becoming more advanced in Excel. All of a sudden it just opens up a whole new world versus doing manual lookups.
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah, I mean today nobody can impress me was V Lookups anymore. But I still remember the day that I’m discovering it. I’m like, oh my god, this opens a complete new a door to a complete new world.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, no, I hear you. I agree with you. So last question here. What advice would you offer to someone starting their career in FP&A today?
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah, I would say find out if FP&A is for you. And that has lot to do with, I would describe FP&A people curious by nature and they enjoy that. They enjoy asking question, turning one number around and then go to the next number, turning that around. And along with that the advice I will give is spend time with your business, whatever that is. I grew up in a manufacturing world and I remember I was sitting in front of my monitor looking at Excel spreadsheets and I’m like, I don’t know what I’m doing here.
I don’t know why this doesn’t make sense. And I literally went to the shop floor manager, Thomas, and I said, I want to understand this better. Can I get. In Germany, they have the blue suit when they work in the shop floor and maybe just spend a few hours when they start the shift at 6:00 AM and maybe work until nine with them and just follow them and then go back to the office behind my Excel spreadsheets. And obviously he got never approached before by any finance person doing that. So I did that and I had a couple of one month I did that going in and really having first three hours of the day just being on drilling machine and running with the maintenance guy and always the planner sitting next to him. And then basically I would say based on that returning to my Excel spreadsheets, the numbers were suddenly making sense and what was the real fun is.
I could go now down and say, yeah, the scrap number is up and I know exactly where it’s happening and I know that I can go, let’s call him Ralph and talk with Ralph what we are going to do about that. By then A, it is the people connection part, but it’s also seeing yourself how you become part of creating value because reducing scrap, well most of those people have an incentive in reducing scrap. So you make them happy and you make the P&L of a company better. And I don’t think there’s anything else what can be better as an experience when you work in the FP&A space when you have that experience.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I agree. When you make both the company and the people happy, you become a business partner. They start loving you, right? They look at it, they don’t look at you as the finance person. They look at you as someone that’s helping them be successful.
Jenny Fuss:
Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Barnhurst:
So great, great advice there. So if someone wants to get ahold of you to learn more about you, maybe connect with you, what’s the best way to do that?
Jenny Fuss:
So absolute best way is over at LinkedIn, Jenny Fuss. It’s German, it means foot. So it’s not a lot of fuss just to say that. Easy to find their connect and always open to make new connections. And I love also getting to know people. I what we also did Paul, right? Basically a digital coffee. And other than that, I’m trying with the new job, it’s a little bit hard on me right now, but be also active in my networks. But also there you can find me.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. Well thank you so much for being on the show today. Jenny really enjoyed chatting with you and learning a little bit about your experience. Good luck as you continue to figure out how to grow and advance as you’re there at BT long year and in your career and really appreciate the time. So thank you.
Jenny Fuss:
Thank you Paul, and big shout out for what you are doing and offering to the community. I love your podcast and I also love when you are offering and helping us as people who like FP&A to amplify the A.
Paul Barnhurst:
Well. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Jenny Fuss:
Thanks Paul. Thanks.