“IThings that we've stored in our heads. Out of nowhere, we seem to join the dots and then have the idea!”
What's the next big thing in finance business partnering? Well, it's being creative. I want to give you one tip on how you can be a creative finance business partner.
The lingering myth
Before I give you a tip, let's just dispel the myth that accountants and finance people can't be creative.
Whoever says that, obviously, hasn't seen a finance manager hide things from an auditor!
Or they obviously haven't seen CFOs make a company hit their year-end results when they really didn't.
Finance people canbe creative.
Don't believe me?
There’s also a great book on this:
Creative at a Moment's Notice: the Accidental Creative.
In it, it talks about, in order to be creative at a moment's notice, you need to be alert to things.
In order to join the dots… you need to be able to findthe dots first.
Finding the dots...
What do I mean by that?
Well, you need to set aside time to actually be across things in the industry.
If you want to have better ideas about making financial decisions… you should probably be reading about how to make better financial decisions.
You should probably be reading topics about the things you're making financial decisions about.
Say you're Business Partner of Sales people, then you should probably be across the products, be across sales.
Is it absolutely necessary?
If you don't set aside the time to do it, when are you going to get across it?
To join the dots you need to be across the information, and you need to open your head.
To be creative at a moment's notice, you need to have all the things in there.
That's kind of where ideas come from a lot of the time.
Things that we've stored in our heads. Out of no where, we seem to join the dots and then have the idea!
So, if you want to be more creative and be a better finance business partner, set the time aside.
I'd love to know, what skills do you use to be creative in finance business partnering, and do you think it's a necessary skill?
