As a Chartered Accountant by training, I found it amusing that PowerPoint skills became much more important than Excel skills for finance transformation engagements. Excel is a comfort blanket for accountants, but a successful finance transformation professional must build on this with communication, storytelling and persuasion skills.
The 4 P's are:
This blog post looks at the different communication methods and tools used in finance transformation engagements.
PowerPoint
The bane of modern corporate existence but a key communication tool. I've spent hours and hours putting together slide decks for steercos (steering committees, apologies for the lingo). Average PowerPoint skills have gone up - hands up if you remember the noughties clip-art, moving slide transitions and "read out every single word" style of presentation.
Management consultants have the best PowerPoint skills. So do take inspiration from them! Here are some quick tips that I've learnt for a good PowerPoint:
1) If you are doing regular, weekly slide decks for reporting purposes keep a master slide deck template as a reference (say 50 different slides). Then out of that pack, update the key slides on a regular basis. This enables you to answer the question "how is the project doing" very quickly to different audiences.
2) Save a dated copy of particular PowerPoint presentations that were used in particular meetings. That helps with the "who said what and when" questions that can come up months later. And yes, this is a CYA move.
3) SmartArt is your friend for effective slides:
4) Stick to the "rule of three" for any slide. The human brain tends to better comprehend and remember information when it's presented in threes. One of the best presentation tricks I've learnt is the three on-brand colour circles with icons slide from LinkedIn Learning.
The idea for this blog post arose from my surprising observation that PowerPoint had become more important than Excel. That got me thinking about the other important communication methods.
Face-to-Face
The work from home revolution since the pandemic has been great - I don't miss the sardine commutes on the London Underground. But finance transformation projects are high stress situations and I believe projects have suffered with the reduction in face-to-face time.
Workshops
In the context of a project, a workshop is a meeting of key stakeholders designed to generate ideas, solve problems and make key decisions. A workshop goes beyond an ordinary meeting with an emphasis on collaboration and structured discussions to drive towards project completion. An effective workshop requires a good facilitator who guides the workshop activities and discussion. I particularly like post-it note exercises because everyone gets involved and it is highly visual.
Come to think of it, emails are the real bane of corporate existence. Although I've enjoyed watching reply-all death spirals. Emails are unavoidable but there is evidence showing that Generation Z are using emails less intensely than millennials. Can they save us?
WhatsApp / Slack / Instant Messaging
Gradually, email communication is being replaced by instant communication. I don't like it because it is hard to flag an important message to come back to later. However, if this is the modern trend then I shall go along with it.
Excel
Excel is unbeatable for any form financial modelling or budgeting. But it is also highly useful for different kinds of project tracker, like a RAID (risk, actions, issues, decisions) log. However, the smarter among you will go for:
Modern Project Management Tools
There are lots of examples of these (see below). They all feature smart to-do lists, timelines, boards and workflow management. The free-versions are very usable and the paid-versions are reasonably priced. Just pick one and run with it!
Asana
Monday.com
Trello
ClickUp
And many others - just google "project management tool"!
There Are Too Many Tools and my Brain Will Melt
I've learning how to use different tools across different clients. But whatever tool you use, the fundamentals of communicating well remain the same. I believe the modern cloud-based project management tools will make good organisation tools accessible to more organisations. Whatever you choose, a tool's effectiveness is only as good as the adoption level among all stakeholders and the process around it. This is finance transformation success in a nutshell!
コメント