“Don't be the advice monster, you need to put the advice monster away”
Will Finance Business Partners ever rule the world?
Well, first, we need to ask: is that what our role should be?
Is it our job? I think no… it's not our job to rule the world.
Our job is to coach and mentor our business partners – even the name Finance Business Partner says that we're there to help, not to be the superstar.
So who should be the superstars?
If we take it on a really simple level, let's say we had sales, production and product development in a company.
Those people are the ones that need to be the superstars to superstar sales development, superstar production art and superstar the innovative and creative new product development.
What is our role?
So it's our role to help those departments make the best financial decisions and create the best value that they can with our assistance.
Although I do wonder, what if, business partners and accountants did rule the world?
If we ruled the world :
Well, here in Australia we probably wouldn't be running a national deficit for 11 years in a row; we probably wouldn't have wasted most of our natural resources.
Thankfully, the government can't sell the sunshine here or they probably would… but anyway, I want to give you one tip for being a better coach and mentor since that's how I see our roles.
Being a better mentor and coach
Last week I got this coaching book - it's called The Coaching Habit.
One thing that really stuck out to me in it was that there was a section on:
“don't be the advice monster, you need to put the advice monster away”.
What the author means by that is don't give too much advice at once; I know sometimes I suffer from it. You see lots of things you want to change but you can really only do so much at once.
It also had some really good questions for when you feel the “advice monster” coming on, questions that you can you ask your business partner.
There was one great question that I love and brings real focus:
“What's the real challenge for you here?”
What I love about that is that it brings whatever issue back to the high level of where you actually want to go…and then you can give some advice on that.
So folks, I'd love to know - do you think Finance Business Partners should rule the world or do you think our role is to mentor and advise our business partners?
