Chris King, Founder and Finance Transformation Consultant at Transformative CFO, gave this presentation at the FP&A Summit in San Diego in March 2023.

I recently did an informal survey of FP&A professionals. The question I asked them was: ‘How does your job make you feel?’ 

Some of the respondents said they feel like a hamster on a wheel. They’re always scurrying and never make any real progress.

Others said they could barely keep their heads above water. They always feel like they’re about to go under or get hit by the next thing. Some people said they’re not keeping their heads above water, they’re drowning. Every quarter they’re drowning in this work. 

Others have duck syndrome; everything looks calm on the surface, but under the surface, they’re paddling furiously. 

Lots of FP&A teams have a hero culture. It feels like this heroic effort of brute force to get to the finish line and meet deadlines. And then we get, “Thank you, once again, for working through the weekend and all night to allow us to reach our deadline on time.” 

Anytime I see this, I try to find a way to get rid of it. 

And then, of course, you get the firefighting. It's just one fire after another. You put one out and there's another behind you. 

So, how do we move into fire prevention? How do we spend less of our time in that fight, and more of our time preventing the next fire? 

Let’s find out…