It’s so simple a kid can understand it!
This is what came up in a conversation off air during a podcast interview we had recently.
In this bite-sized episode we share with you this bit of advice and how it can help you as you set yourself up to do more of the right things more often in Finance.
#FinanceMentor
#SITN
#GettingYourHouseInOrder
Full Transcript
[00:00:00] Andrew: hi everyone. And welcome to this. Week’s Monday memo and hope you had a fantastic weekend looking forward to the week ahead and I thought I’d like to share with you this week is actually part of an off-air conversation I had with one of our podcasts.
[00:00:14] And the related to an idea that was so simple, even a kid could understand it.
[00:00:18] So once we were talking about the topic of how do we digitalize the finances.
[00:00:22] We got onto the topic of this children’s book called a squash in a squeeze by Julia Donaldson. Now, some of you who are parents, aunts, uncles, out there, might’ve read this story to some of your nieces, nephews, and children. And actually, when I was sharing this with someone else, he said it might’ve even been.
[00:00:41] An old proverb or our story, but for those of you who haven’t heard it before, a quick recap
[00:00:48] honestly, is that there’s this old woman who feels that our house is just not quite big enough for her. So she goes and meets up with it old wise, man, I guess that’s how it watched the new old days.
[00:01:00] Who tells her to bring the animals into her home one by one. So he says taking your head, which he does and let a bit of a curious plan. But anyway, she does it and still feels that the house isn’t big enough. So he says, bring in your coat. Does it same feeling taking your pigs, taking your cows takes in your, and taking your horse?
[00:01:21] and after each animal comes into the house at the situation, it becomes more and more variable
[00:01:26] So at our wit’s end, she goes back to the old man. And the next thing he says is take all the animals out one by one. Now she begins to take the animals out one by one. She gets more and more grateful of the space you had in the first place that, that the house felt massive compared to watch what had happened.
[00:01:45] I think essentially it’s teaching her and the kids, listening to it. Also, maybe the readers as well, teachers are, it’s a bit more about appreciation
[00:01:52] what we have for.
[00:01:53] Yeah, maybe taking some opportunity to get her own house before she seeks to have a bigger space or having a bigger house. The one that is actually big enough for her.
[00:02:03] And for a lot of us in finance and accounting, I actually feel we’re probably really been under that pressure to do more. There’s that Gartner study and I know I’ve said it before, but 65% of our stakeholders see finances ineffective. You’ve got two thirds of finance leaders saying that their teams don’t have the necessary skills.
[00:02:22] To do well in a digital flight on tape or make the right contributions as we become more digital and finance. I like, I sorta thinking, hang on a sec, that if we lost the run of ourselves a bit here, why don’t we maybe try and follow some advice from this kid’s store and get her own house in order first and focus more on our fundamentals and strengths again, before our weaknesses.
[00:02:45] I’m build from there. Right? So in finance, regardless if it’s digital or more traditional on our approaches, the fundamentals haven’t changed our strengths, our assets haven’t changed.
[00:02:55] Last I checked a lot of finance teams and accounting teams is still recording transactions, which means we’ve got great amounts of financial information. At our H at our hands, some of us are collecting more nonfinancial data. We’ve got this training to put them together and make sense of it all.
[00:03:11] In fact, actually we still have this great strength or access because of our position in our organizations. We have access to decision-makers. And the great thing about access to the decision makers is we can ask them what their challenges are, what it is that they have versus what it is they want. We can then use that data to see if we can go solve a problem immediately before.
[00:03:31] And if their problem is because perhaps their organization or they feel their work is a bit siloed and people aren’t coming together well, again, another great thing is that we’ve got this quality of independence. We’re there to represent the shareholders and make sure that the decisions are in the best interest of the business, not one particular function or area. So we have the ability to bring people together and talk it out. We can also see across numbers of different functions if we choose to be.
[00:04:01] And again, to the language of business typically revolves around the numbers. So we’ve got this great trading to go. And how do you say evaluate or turn it into something that is of value? And let’s say we do get our houses in order even let’s take a simple process. Something that happens in accounts payable or expenses, right.
[00:04:20] Let’s try and make that process is something simple like that. Make it as simple as possible. Standardize it, come over some policies that are clear, help, smooth up the flows of how expenses get paid. So our people in our business can focus on their. And then, yeah, let, maybe let’s be bringing some digital stuff and automate some bits with some off the shelf software and then that, and maybe we do it from one small area and then we can scale across outcomes, but maybe we need to get our own house in order first, you don’t do the simple things, get things a bit more simple, get things, a bit more standardized, which is what we do very well.
[00:04:57] And then maybe we can start taking the advantage of the digital agenda that’s out there and seeking. Maybe have greater houses or greater space to think, or our roles with bigger impacts or maybe bigger impacts in our careers. But if we don’t get our own house in order first, we’ll never be satisfied or feel like we’re constantly on the pressures we’re trying to grow and make a bigger impact out there.
[00:05:22] So look as we approach the holidays, maybe. We the thought for this week or whatever is just maybe practice a bit of appreciation with what we have. How can we focus on what we already have in front of us, our assets and get that in order for us before we decide to build forward from there, or start chasing these shiny objects.
[00:05:42] That is digital fine.
[00:05:43] so I’ll leave it there for this week. And on behalf of the team here at SITC N one, I wish you an excellent, safe, fun. Enter the calendar year, all the best for the year ahead. And until next time, take care of yourself, stay safe and let’s keep on building our strength and the numbers.
[00:05:59]
