We covered how you should deal with other executives, but how should your team deal with other team leads? And then, how should you judge their performance?
Story. I was three months in. The marketing team wasn’t hitting targets. I asked my finance team member assigned to marketing to give me an overview before I walked into a forecast update: How things were going and what needed to be improved. The response I got was slightly chaotic (type data-can’t-be-summarized analyst), but she had identified the CAC issue based on a couple of non-performing channels.
Then, I walked into the update meeting with the management team. The marketing lead presented their priorities and forecasts. But, none of the numbers matched what I had just been told. After the meeting, I took the head of marketing to the side and asked what was up. The answer I received:
He didn’t know which numbers were right as all were slightly different
He told me that the marketing analyst didn’t know the budget; his analysts didn’t agree with the data team’s numbers; and the RevOps lead was focused on sales and was of no help.
He had no idea where to go for numbers and the dashboards were all over the place
It was a shitshow. It cost the company way too much money. We reconfigured the teams to get a stable footing, but it was an expensive lesson learned.
FP&A is a business partner team. We provide insights for the CEO, the board, the team leads. Everyone should benefit from having one great business partner. Their own personal CFO. And now, more than ever they should be using AI to deliver vastly better results.
Note: This assumes (because it’s vastly better) you have consolidated your RevOps, data, and finance teams into one.
The Bullets
|
Let's get to work:
1. Define what ‘Great performance’ means
What is a great business partner? In the next section, we’ll get into how to treat them as the CFO of a business unit. But first, what should you be aiming for? You need to set the expectation that a business partner delivers:
Better outcomes from the team. At the end of the day, they should be driving better outcomes by enabling quicker, better decisions.
Amazing data quality. In this day and age, there’s little excuse for data quality issues. Business partners should ensure the numbers are nearly perfect, by building with AI.
System bottlenecks crushed. If systems are impeding the team, the business partner should fix them, whether by working across the finance team to implement better tools or by simply designing a better process.
An informed team. The team should be continuously informed of both their numbers and their implications. Everyone must understand the numbers so they can act on them; otherwise, people are just plugging things into spreadsheets without context.
This is what being a good business partner means: better results, not more “stakeholder management.” They need to be a mini-strategic CFO.
Tip: Make sure this is enforced in the job description and hire appropriately.
2. Treat them as the CFO of departments they support
You need to give ownership to the business partner for them to contribute real results. Your business partners should be your front line, making decisions and acting independently under your guidance. Set the expectations so that they:
Own the numbers. Not just that the numbers are correct, but what they mean. Where are they headed? What are the levers that move them?
Are responsible for strategy. This means budgeting, scenario analysis, and tying it all back to the overall direction of the company.
Complete the board decks. Why hide board decks from the teams that have to implement the strategies? Having your team prep the board materials for their sections ensures they are fully clued into the strategy.
Own the communications. You shouldn’t be having conversations with a team lead without the business partner there (unless it’s about the partner’s own performance). Keeping them out of the loop strips away their initiative and leads to discouragement.
Who wouldn’t want their own CFO who answers to them? (We’ll talk more about how to set this up in the next section.)
Tip: In the monthly management reviews, have each business unit write the analyses for their relevant teams.
3. Set up a clear job structure with the department lead
All of this only works if the business partner is given the chance. That comes from the team manager. You need to work with each team lead to ensure your team is set up to succeed. To do so:
Align business functions to the customer journey. Business partners should cover multiple departments. This helps them identify gaps between teams and break down silos in strategy. It also gives them a bigger portfolio and improves visibility across functions. Examples: Sales + Marketing, CS + Product, People + Leadership.
Assign clear within-team expectations. Business partners should take on responsibilities that make the life of the department lead easier, just like you do for the CFO. That means leading number presentations, following up on next steps, and driving initiatives under the guidance of both the CFO and the team manager.
Publicly share their project list. Their work should be highly transparent. Like managing any strong contributor, they should focus on a few key projects that build something, not just churn through day-to-day requests. These priorities should be agreed upon with their teams.
Dotted-line, single-line structure. They report to both you and the team lead. It’s their job to manage the prioritization between those two sets of needs.
Without strong empowerment from the team manager, they’ll never fully deliver on the promise of “making better decisions.” And you’ll find yourself pulled back into work they should be owning.
Tip: The biggest value of setting up a transparent project pipeline is the business partner’s ability to push back on tasks that aren’t important for the business.
4. Give tools and training
Of course, they have to earn this trust. So it’s your role to give them the tools and information they need to be effective. This can take many forms, but the keys are:
Weekly internal team updates. We touched on this earlier, but weekly updates keep everyone aligned on firm-wide performance and key priorities. It allows your team to inform others directly without a game of telephone.
Standard reporting guidelines. Provide high-quality, standardized templates. Review their first few presentations to ensure they’re hitting the right tone, insights, and expectations for the teams they support.
Nail the onboarding projects. Not to beat the “know and deliver” docs into the ground, but a few quick wins go a long way. Assign onboarding projects that let them prove their value early with tangible outcomes.
Peer presentations. Make sure they’re learning from fellow finance teammates. Pair them up, especially on AI-related improvements, so they build cross-functional knowledge and pick up proven, practical tactics.
By equipping them with the right tools, you’ll see better business outcomes and your own workload will shrink as you shift into more of a reviewer role.
Tip: Leave space for “free” projects so they can explore non-traditional ways to support the team.
5. Measure success
What you measure gets improved. This can be softer than traditional metrics, because a lot of it relies on soft skills, but in general these are the buckets:
Impact on decisions. Are the decisions more informed? Are they quicker? Are they leading to better results? Review the key decisions made by the team for the quarter to analyze. (qualitative feedback + outcomes)
Accuracy and insight. The team should know where it will end up short term. Evaluate the projections given by the business partner and the actual results to evaluate their performance. (forecast quality, variance analysis depth)
Collaboration effectiveness. You need to ask their peers and the department leads how they are performing. Question them deeply to avoid the dreaded ‘fine.’
By measuring their success, you will enable them to succeed. Be transparent, share it with the team lead to make sure it aligns across both you and the team lead.
Tip: Include 360 reviews twice a year.
In conclusion
Your finance business partners are strategic operators, mini-CFOs if you will. When structured well, empowered fully, and held to high expectations, they become the implementers of data and decision-making.
Set the bar high, give them the tools, and measure what matters. Done right, your business partners will quietly become one of the most powerful levers for performance in the company.
