Experienced interim managers can no doubt teach finance professionals a thing or two about how to partner with business managers. This is partly because unlike an incumbent finance director you’re not a monopoly supplier and need to be able to sell yourself and your services. While ICAEW’s Finance business partnering: a guide should still be of value, this article aims to help with some of the specific business partnering challenges for interim managers.
Finance business partnering is a term which some love and some loathe. For us it’s useful shorthand for finance staff that want to work more closely with line managers on commercial decision making, strategy development, and improving business performance.
Understanding the business is fundamental
If there is one thing that financial directors tell us, it’s that to be successful you need to understand the business. Interim managers face a particular challenge in getting up to speed quickly. Although a reasonable amount can be done as part of the due diligence before accepting an appointment it’s only once you are on the ground that you can fully get to grips with the organisation. There is no substitute for getting out and talking to as many people as possible, and observing the business in action. In the early days of an assignment you have license to ask lots of questions, including the ones that others may fear to ask. With a fixed-term assignment you may also be less encumbered by organisational politics.
Assessing the finance department
Getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of the finance team is also an early challenge. Who can you trust? Where can you just provide a little direction and let others get on with it and where do you need to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in? As you have built up an understanding of the business you will no doubt have picked up some feedback on the performance of the finance team. However, it is not always appropriate to take this at face value. Business managers may be critical of finance to hide their own short comings.
The quality of finance’s outputs in terms of timeliness, accuracy, user-friendliness and analytical relevance, will give a good indication of how good the team is. We also like the idea of ‘deep dives’ as popularised by Jack Welch. This involves working with members of the finance team on a specific area of their responsibilities and testing out their understanding of the issues, and what they are trying to do to resolve them. If they have one area under control the chances are you can also trust them on their other responsibilities.
Having the right tools for the job
Frameworks, models, checklists, templates and so on are not the panacea to all organisational problems. However, they do serve to organise our thinking and ensure that we have all bases covered. For example, if the interim role involves developing a new strategy Porter’s five forces model, the strategy diamond, SWOT analysis, strategy maps and so on, can all prove useful. An incumbent finance business partner may be given some leeway to learn the necessary tools for a project, but clearly as an interim the expectation is that you already have what’s required. Is it enough to be one page ahead in the manual?
Making change stick after you have gone
We are all aware of business partnering programmes which are initially successful but which wither when the main driver of change, such as an interim, leaves the organisation. Much depends on selecting and coaching a successor who you are confident will continue to act as a business partner and drive continuous improvement. In addition, embedding change in policies, processes and systems is essential. For example processes that have been documented and signed off are much more likely to last than those dependent on individuals. This might include the requirement for finance business partners to attend decision-making meetings and sign off on important business decisions.
Your own approach
Approaches to business partnering need to be tailored to circumstances but we can learn a lot from others experiences.
Rick Payne, Finance Direction Programme, ICAEW Finance and Management Faculty
Interim Management Group, June 2015
