How HR & FP&A Teams Build Trust to Improve Decision-Making & Business Performance with Deborah & Cynthia
In this episode of FP&A Unlocked, hosts Paul Barnhurst and Glenn Snyder are joined by HR leaders Cynthia Kenny and Deborah Hill to discuss the important partnership between HR and FP&A. They explore how aligning goals across departments can drive organizational success, share personal stories about career development, and highlight the importance of trust and collaboration.
Cynthia Kenny is a CHRO and C-suite partner with over 30 years of experience in human resources, focusing on change management and organizational transformation. Deborah Hill is an HR leader with over 10 years of experience leading HR teams in tech-focused and tech-enabled companies. She specializes in building culture and driving talent initiatives, and has managed businesses with revenues ranging from $400M to $5B.
Expect to Learn:
How HR and FP&A can partner to drive organizational success
The importance of aligning company, team, and individual goals
Best practices for goal-setting and performance management
Why flexibility is important when managing goals throughout the year
How to build trust and collaboration between HR and FP&A
Here are a few relevant quotes from the episode:
“Great FP&A is about turning financial data into actionable insights for business leaders.” - Deborah Hill
“Real success happens when HR and FP&A work together, understanding each other’s worlds and creating synergy.” - Cynthia Kenny
Cynthia Kenny and Deborah Hill provided valuable insights on the critical partnership between HR and FP&A, emphasizing the importance of aligning goals across departments to drive organizational success. They discussed how clear, actionable goals can lead to better decision-making, stronger collaboration, and improved business outcomes.
Campfire: AI-First ERP:
Campfire is the AI-first ERP that powers next-gen finance and accounting teams. With integrated solutions for the general ledger, revenue automation,
close management, and more, all in one unified platform.
Explore Campfire today: https://campfire.ai/?utm_source=fpaguy_podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=100225_fpaguy
Follow Deborah:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborah-hill-8a24771/
Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-tire-distributors/
Follow Cynthia:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthiakennymaccp/
Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sunland-asphalt/
Follow Glenn:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glenntsnyder
Earn Your CPE Credit
For CPE credit please go to earmarkcpe.com, listen to the episode, download the app, and answer a few questions and earn your CPE certification. To earn education credits for FPAC Certificate, take the quiz on earmark and contact Paul Barnhurst for further details.
In Today’s Episode
[05:44] – What Great FP&A Looks Like
[10:07] – COVID Finance & HR Decisions
[16:55] – Hiring, Headcount & Data Issues
[23:49] – HRIS, ERP & Source of Truth
[27:29] – Aligning Corporate & Individual Goals
[36:07] – Flexible Performance Management
[47:56] – Effective Goal-Setting Practices
[59:17] – Final Takeaways & Career Growth
Full Show Transcript
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:00:00):
The HRS should lead with that data. And we are now in this position too, because I am making a charge for an HRS instead of just an ERP. But when you're putting that data in and you're configuring it, everything that we're doing flows through your gl. It makes sense that we are a lock step with how we configure the data that then serves everybody across the organisation, from finance to operations to safety to it.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:00:28):
Welcome to another episode of FP&AUnlocked, I'm thrilled to have with me today my co-host Glenn Snyder. Glenn, how are you doing?
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:00:37):
Doing great, Paul. How are you doing?
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:00:39):
Doing good. Quick introduction for FP&A Unlocked. Each week, we bring you conversations and practical advice from thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who are reshaping the role of FP&A in today's business world. And today we'll uncover the strategies and experiences to separate good FP&A professionals from great ones helping you elevate your career and drive strategic impact. Speaking of strategic impact, I'm thrilled for today's discussion because we're going to be discussing HR and that coordination between HR and FP&A. But before we get there, we'd just like to take a moment and introduce our title sponsor Campfire. Campfire is the premier sponsor of FP&A unlocked through the ERPs. It's helping modern finance teams close, fast and scale faster. So today we have two guests with us. We have Cynthia Kenny, welcome to the show. Cynthia, thank
Guest 2: Deborah Hill (00:01:31):
You
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:01:31):
Very much. Happy to be here.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:01:32):
Excited to have you. And we have Deborah Hill, welcome to the show. Deb,
Guest 2: Deborah Hill (00:01:35):
Thanks for the invite. Happy to be here as well.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:01:37):
Excited to have you. And I'll turn it over to Glenn for a minute. He knows both these ladies, so I'll let him do a little more formal introduction before we jump into questions.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:01:45):
I would just talk to them beforehand and I told him they could do a better job introducing themselves than I can. So I'm going to turn it right over to you. So Cynthia, why don't we start with you. You'll do a quick introduction.
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:01:55):
Absolutely. Thank you. So my name is Cynthia Kenny. I've been in human resources for about 30 years. Most of my career, I would say probably all of my career has been about change and transformation. I've always thought that one of the most important competitive strategies or competitive resources of a company is always their people. And that's been fascinating for me. The first half of my career has been Fortune 500 for-profit, big company growth oriented organisations, about 13 years have been in private for-profit, primarily private equity, backed high growth. And so that comes with its own opportunities, especially when it's on the talent front to help people along in maturing processes, elevating people, and really refining the partnerships and in an organisation. So that's where I come from. Happy to be here.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:02:50):
Thanks Cynthia. It's great to have you. Deb, how about you?
Guest 2: Deborah Hill (00:02:54):
Sure. Thanks Glenn. So my name is Deborah Hill. And Cynthia, I love what you said about people being a competitive advantage. Definitely relate to that sentiment as well. So a little bit about me. I'm an HR leader with about 10 years of experience leading HR teams, primarily in tech focused or tech enabled companies, growth to mid-stage size companies. What I'll share about my background is that my path into HR wasn't really a straight line. So I spent the first half of my career on the business side of professional services organisations. And so by the time I moved into the HR seat, I had a pretty strong point of view just around how decisions actually get made, especially when priorities shift within organisations. And so that background has really heavily influenced how I show up as an HR leader and how I partnered closely with FP&A because I really see goals since we're talking about goals here today as less of an HR exercise and more of a mechanism that sort of turns strategy into execution within the company. And there's a lot of overlap there with FP&A. I personally just wrapped up chapter with a $330 million tech company, and I'm taking some time right now to reflect. And so this conversation really about goals is especially timely for me and happy to be here.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:04:31):
Well, I'm glad you guys are both here. Paul, you want to start with your core question?
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:04:37):
I will. I'll start with the question we ask everybody and then I'll turn it back over to Glen to kind of help guide this conversation today. So we'll throw this one to Deb first. So the question I like to ask everybody, and I'd love to get your perspective from HR because often get a different perspective when we ask people that work in the business versus FP&A. For you, what does great FP&A look like? What does great FP&A in a business?
Guest 2: Deborah Hill (00:04:58):
Yeah, I love this question because it really sort of made me stop and think for a bit, but I think from an HR seat, a good FP&A partner is a business in combination with their HR partner, their business translators. So they're taking the financial data and they're turning it into clear implications for the leaders that they partner with. They're also true partners, they're not gatekeepers. So they help us as whether it's HR or it's another business leader within the organisation. They help us understand why that number matters, not just like you have to hit that number. And I also think they're comfortable with ambiguity. What I have seen in today's business environment is that oftentimes we're all trying to make decisions with imperfect data because as much as we'd like the data to be clean, there's always questions about where's the source of the data? Is that the truth data? And so I need a partner that's comfortable with ambigu, a little bit of ambiguity and making some, helping me make recommendations with imperfect data.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:06:14):
Thank you for that answer. Appreciate it. I like what you said about the ambiguity, the trust not being a gatekeeper, finance translator. I think those are all really important things. Alright, why don't we turn it over to Cynthia and get your thoughts here.
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:06:26):
There's so many things that Deb said that I would underscore especially about the partnership between FP&A and an hr. I think it's incumbent on both parties to come to the table with an element of trust and confidence. I think learning each other's language is important and it makes anybody in an HR role for us to be really effective. We actually, we need to really understand how the business operates, how the business makes money, and lean on those people that can help us with financial acumen. You flip it the same for p and a to come to the table and understand what HR brings to what HR brings to the table. In my mind, a rockstar relationship is where the talent strategy informs the financial strategy and then we navigate that or we co-create that together, which can translate into incredible efficiencies with workforce planning and budgeting and goal processes and an alignment for the organisation. So to Deb's point, that partnership is critical for anybody to be successful. Having each other's back if you know something is coming up, bring them in, let them show up prepared and with the best possible outcome for everybody and just very strategically aligned.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:07:55):
Thank you for that. I really like how you emphasise partnership, but I like the part about bringing the strategic and financial, we're translators, both HR and finance, trying to translate the goals into critical elements so they can be achieved. And so I really appreciate that and I like that emphasis on partnering. And with that, I'll turn it back to Glen to get us started on today's episode.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:08:19):
Thanks Paul. And just to go along the partner theme, that's where I want to start because so often in FP&A, when we talk about business partnering, people in FP&A are thinking, oh, I support the sales group, or I support operations. Those are my business partners. But there are other business partners that FP&A can't do what it does without. And that is accounting, hr, it sometimes even legal because without those partners, we have no data to analyse. We have no information for what's going on or how the data's going to be presented back to the board or whatever. So it's not just about who FP&A supports, but sometimes it's who supports FP&A and partnership really are about going both ways. So I want to kick it off with this and Deb, we, we'll start with you. When you think about great partnership that you've had with FP&A, what's made it great? Can you tell maybe a story or two on just when FP&A partnership with HR was just like, oh my god, this is how it's supposed to work.
Guest 2: Deborah Hill (00:09:29):
So that great partnership with FP&A, again goes back to the trust, I think goes back to being involved early in the conversations, working with HR to ensure that the data that finance is proposing a decision on is the right data. I'll share that during COVID. So if we take ourselves back to 2020 in March when the world sort of shut down and a lot of companies had to make tough decisions, tough financial decisions, tough people decisions, I had a really great finance business partner and a great CFO who we sat down together, we looked at what we needed to do from a business standpoint to ensure continued runway through the end of the year, but also with an eye towards how do we do this in a way that also pays respect to our people, keeps people continue to be engaged. We landed on a pathway with limited cuts to headcount just in specific very strategic areas and then some reductions in salary. But again, looking at it from our higher income earners, we're taking a larger percentage of that burden than necessarily our lower income earners. And ultimately I think that that strategy really paid off in engagement, continued engagement with our workers as we went through 2020.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:11:11):
Sometimes having the hard discussions is critical that having both FP&A and HR at the same table to make sure you are aligned. I've seen many times where FP&A might propose something in hr. Yeah, let's not go that way because we'll be violating something maybe an fp a the person doesn't know about. At the same time, HR people sometimes will also make their proposals and FP&A has come back to, oh yeah, but we don't have the funding for that. And so making sure that before people really go forward with the solution, everybody's sitting down at the table and having that discussion I think is critical. I think it's a great example. Cynthia, how about you? Great example of great partnership with FP&A a.
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:11:53):
I had a situation once we were multi-state. I was working for an organisation that we provided durable medical equipment for hospice and we had certain key markets that we had really large census just based on the geography. And one of those markets was Florida. And we had a situation where one of our contracts was up, was coming up and a consultant had come in and was trying to take the business away from us. And this was a stronghold for us. But if this consultant was successful, we knew that in that market several other organisations would follow. So we were faced with this situation like this is coming in, it's already upon us. Decisions have been made and we needed to transition that contract or it was coming to an end, we needed to transition it over to the consultant and if he did it well, we had the chance of losing more.
(00:12:55):
So we came to the table and working with our financial partner, put together a plan. And our plan was how do we retain the people that we have in this market right now so that as we exit, we're doing it with our heads held high, our service is still good, we haven't lost equipment, we're still hitting metrics, but we are not going to lose business in the rest of the market. And our analysis, our analysts came up with, here's what we could do with a price increase. They did all the analysis and they kind of gave us a figure that we had to work with. Then in hr we took that figure and we started to design retention plans for key individuals and we put together goals and metrics for our boots on the ground so that they would stay in place, they would continue to work on the switch outs.
(00:13:55):
We weren't losing money on lost equipment, we were still coming in hitting our quality metrics and we kept the people there as long as they could stay through that retention period. The other thing that this consultant was trying to do was to take our people on with the figures that we had, we increased and gave retention bonuses so that if he was going to take on our people, he was going to have to take them on at a much higher rate and it was going to erode his margins. So we all got really strategic about how to do this with their analysis, our design, and in the end, and we put it in play in the end, we were able to retain the key people through the end of the contract. This person really didn't take on our people because at that point they cost too much.
(00:14:50):
We already had other places for them to go in the company, so he had to go out and get his own people, which put him behind as well. And he didn't show up able to affect the changes that he had promised to that hospice organisation. And as a result, because everybody's very close knit in that market, as a result, we didn't lose additional clients. So we were able to maintain our quality metrics, which was part of our competitive advantage and we did right by our people. We never would have gotten there if we didn't have all of that financial analysis in the background helping us navigate and showing us here's the triggers you can pull and here's how much you have. So it was phenomenal arrangement between the two and it synergistically, it was good for the company, good for our employees.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:15:43):
Great, great story. I mean it's really shows that it's not about one group coming up with a solution, it's about everyone in the company kind of working together with the same goals to try and execute on something that really makes an impact. Paul, what do you think? I mean I'm sure in your career you've worked with many people in hr.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:16:02):
I have. So I think one of probably my two favourite HR partner relationships were both people that worked with me for hiring. There are plenty of other areas, but I had two really good partners I worked with that they always had my back. They were watching out, they were taking a lot of the heavy load in the hiring, but also it wasn't just, well, you got to make this decision. Here's why I think you may have concerns with this employee. Here's why I think this may work with this person. They would give me a lot of feedback and say, this person would be really good to interview a so-and-so on your next round. You weren't sure who they were going to interview and here's why. And I always appreciate that. I felt like a partnership, I could tell it wanted to make sure I got the right person.
(00:16:45):
It wasn't just a matter of, alright, well hey, give me the job rec, I'll post it, tell me who you want and I'll line up the interviews, which I've seen that as well. It was really how can I help ensure you get the right people. So those were some of my best partnership with fp a is when they really got involved with hr, when they really got involved and helped make sure I got the people on my team that were going to make a difference versus the times I've seen where it's just going through the motions, if that makes sense. Obviously I had other great relationships. COVID comes to mind as one other mentioned, I remember lots of conversations with the businesses, HR of how are we going to achieve this as we work to do the big cost reductions we were given with impacting as few people as possible. Those are a couple for me. What about you Glenn?
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:17:34):
The funny thing is when I think about, because throughout my entire career I've worked so closely with people in HR and sometimes it was phenomenal and sometimes it was like pulling teeth the times that was phenomenal. The common thread was we recognised we were on the same team. We were trying to do what was right for the company, to put the company in the best position possible, put our business partners in the best position possible to achieve their goals. And the times that has been more like pulling teeth was when it was more of, Nope, this is my area, that's yours. You stay over there. This data's mine. I'm only going to give it to you if I absolutely have to. Where the best partnerships that I could think of were the data was flowing freely and it wasn't about, well yeah, compensation data is con no question.
(00:18:27):
But we in FP&A, we see compensation data all the time. We see confidential data. That's what we do is how we put together hiring plans for business partners with hr. This is how we go over and we do our budgets and forecast. We have a tonne of confidential data. And so it's when you have that trust and you really work together and say, look, you know what, we're both on the same team. We're just coming at the problem from two different angles and when we work together, we're going to come up with a better solution. To me that's really been the best partnership. And I'm going to give you a real funny example of a time that it was both a great partnership and a bad partnership. I went into a company and the company had about 2,500 global employees, and I quickly found that one third of all the employees were in the wrong cost centres.
(00:19:16):
So I'm sitting there as an F and a person thinking, how do I hold people accountable to their budgets if their biggest expense is comp and they don't even have the right people there, so this just doesn't work. So I'm like, oh my God, I got to go and clean this up. So I immediately go to the VPs in HR and they're like, that's not our problem. That's your problem. We don't care about cost centres. And I'm like, wait, wait, this is in your system. I'm pulling the data out of your HRIS system. Don't you want it to be correct? They're like, yeah, we don't really pay attention to cost centres. We don't really care about that. And I'm just like, oh my God. I'm like, okay, fine. I'm going to solve this on my own. And I walk out of the room and one of the directors under one of those VPs comes up to me and says, that wasn't right.
(00:19:55):
We need to make sure this is fixed. I'll tell you what you go over. If you could tell me who needs to move where, I'll make sure all the changes go into the system. And that director and I for the next three months worked multiple iterations cleaning everything up, and we got to where we needed to be at the end of the day. And that was the whole thing. It was great that the director recognised, hold on, we're all in this together. We should be working together to put the right information in the systems. And so it was just kind of a funny thing that the higher level people didn't get it, but the guy who was the lowest person in the room came back and is like, no, no, no, no, no, we need to be doing this. And that was a really great partnership that we ended up having. It was kind of funny on both sides there.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:20:40):
And I'm not surprised you mentioned headcount because I don't think I've worked at a company yet where I come in and everybody's in the rice call centre and it's all perfect and all the titles. It's a constant battle of, wait, why do we have salary here? But no headcount in this call centre. Something doesn't align. And I see both of you kind smile. I'm sure you've dealt with that some. It's amazing to me sometimes how difficult it can be to get, get it all right.
Guest 2: Deborah Hill (00:21:03):
I think you have to get to an understanding across the business that the HIS system has to be the sole source of truth for most or the, I mean that is the source of truth for HR data. And once you can get to that, then I think that you can ensure that the HR leader is vested in, okay, if this is the sole source of truth, then the data has to be correct.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:21:35):
By the way, one of the challenges along those lines was they said it was finance that owned the cost centre data. And as long as it was who the people, if they got the reporting relationship correct in HRS, they were fine. And that's where it was like, you know what, yes, I could see where you would draw that line, but my argument was why are you drawing a line? Why aren't we just going over and saying, let's break down the barriers rather than put 'em up. And I think that's why, and the funny thing is, this isn't just a finance HR thing. This goes across any type of business partnership. Yes, you got to make sure that you have the right people have access to data that they're supposed to see and all that kind of stuff. A hundred percent you got to have certain walls up around that.
(00:22:21):
But when you're talking to people who should be able to be allowed to see everything and they typically do see everything, why put up walls? Why make it that much harder? And that's where I always like the partnerships where they say, look, you know what? I'm going to trust and respect that you're going to treat the data as it's supposed to be treated because otherwise, well, you should probably be fired if you're not. But to say, let's go over and do this so that we could go over and deliver something as quickly as possible and as meaningful as possible for the business.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:22:50):
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Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:23:49):
I'm going to expand on that. I agree with everything that you've said. And I am in a situation that I've been at my current employer about a year now, and when I walked in, my vice president of finance asked me if I could get a headcount report that just showed on a monthly basis that showed exits and showed ads. And I was like, look, I'm sure I can do that if I can. I'm some kind of Oahu. What I didn't realise was how bad the systems were. They were counting, they were counting employees by the number of paychecks we did each week.
(00:24:29):
And it has to do with going through an ERP that they had over customised to the point where they broke it. And so this was the only source of truth is how many paychecks did we cut this week? And that's the number of employees we had. And getting into it, it makes sense. Absolutely. Glenn, to your point, it makes sense to clean it up and get people in the right positions and create a source of truth. To Deb's point, the HRS should lead with that data. But when you're putting that, and we are now in this position too because I am making a charge for an HRS instead of just an ERP, but when you're putting that data in and you're configuring it, everything that we're doing flows through your gl. It makes sense that we are a lock step with how are we configuring the data that then serves everybody across the organisation from finance to operations to safety to it.
(00:25:30):
It's so, so critical to be thoughtful about this. And I think it's a big miss for some organisations and some HR organisations when you're putting in systems and you just try and push through the implementation without bringing in all of your stakeholders to say, what do you need and how will this, if I put this position code here and this position code drives all of these other attributes, what do you need? How does that impact your world? What can I do to make your world easier? That to me is that's a success story when you take the time to bring everybody to the table and vet out what those deliverables will do so that you can elevate together.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:26:13):
I love that. I mean, Paul and I, we talk all the time about what makes systems successful and one of the big keys is it's not just about the one team that's going to be driving if it's an fp a system, it's not about the fp a team. It's bringing in all those other partners to make sure that you're creating a system works for everybody, not just that one group.
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:26:34):
A hundred percent agreed. Yes.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:26:37):
So I want to go over, I want to shift gears a little bit, and Deb alluded to this in her introduction because here we are, we're still at the beginning of 2026, and a lot of people are starting to think about the goals that they need to put together. And there's all these different types of goals that could be out there. You could have corporate goals, you could have executive goals, you could have team goals, and you can have individual goals. And early in my career when I was in FP&A and my boss would give me, here are the five goals we want you to hit. And basically it was like a task list. And I would go through and I was so goal oriented that I was focused on those goals. And by mid-February I'm like, done got 'em all. Whoa, okay, what do I do the rest of the year? Because it wasn't goals that challenged me. It was do this, do that kind of thing. But that's not really the best way to leverage goals and to use goals. Here we are, we got two experts on goal setting and would love to hear from you guys talk about what you see as best practises and how individual employees can use goals to help drive their own career ambitions as well.
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:27:52):
Sure. I think when it comes to goals, and you said it earlier, Glenn, there's so many different kinds of goals, right? There's corporate goals and executive goals and team goals and personal goals and professional goals. I think if to take a big step back and boil the ocean, when an organisation is looking at goals from the top down, that's when you have the greatest impact. I worked at an organisation and I led HR there for about 10 years. And when we started talking about our executive goals or our company goals, we broke it down into what does this mean by department? And then for each department, so we had a quality goal, a financial goal, we had a retention employee goal, which was around retention. And then we had something that would be more specific to whatever was going on in the market at that time.
(00:28:53):
But taking that and breaking it down and cascading to each division, each, not necessarily division, but each functional area, whether if you are the CFO or the CHRO or the CIO or the COO, how do we align our goals with the organisation goals? And then taking that a step further, so you create the strategies and the goals around that and then push it down another level to maybe the director level where they're taking a strategy and they're creating the operational plan to execute and putting attaching goals to that. Driving all of those down creates line of sight. And at every individual level, an employee wants to know, what do I do to help move the needle up here? And when you can take those goals and cascade 'em down and show this is your role, these are your specific goals, and this is how you impact the organisation, it makes, its a very powerful statement.
(00:29:59):
My background is hr, but my depth is truly in compensation. And I will say, we don't think about compensation like a communication, but when you say, I'm putting money on this goal and this is what I'm going to pay you, our screaming to them what's important. So Glenn, when you were saying, I got to hit every single goal, that's what you were focused on. And it's a way to really motivate and orchestrate all of the effort in an organisation so that you are rowing in the same line. You're working, HR and FP&A are working together on the budgets, especially with those bonus plans. You're creating the most efficiency that you can and then you're rewarding for it. And that's what I've seen has been when you get there, you're a finely oiled machine. Well done everybody. It takes an army.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:30:52):
It absolutely does. Deb, anything you want to add to that?
Guest 2: Deborah Hill (00:30:55):
Yeah, no, a couple of things. So I love Cynthia, what you said about the top downs that really makes the greatest impact in the organisation cascading to each functional area. I look at goals and kind of divide them into two buckets. So there's the goals that Cynthia just talked about, which are really, they're the organisational goals there. As an individual employee, what do I need to do this month, this quarter, this year, to move the needle on the overall corporate goals, which sort of would indicate that we're successful as a company, if we hit X, Y, and Z, we are successful. How do the individual and employee contribute to that? So that's like one bucket of goals. And then there's another bucket of goals, which are your developmental goals. So as an individual employee, am I entry level, do I need more experience in this area of the business?
(00:32:03):
Do I want to grow my career and become a manager? What are the things that I need to do as an employee this year to develop myself? I think that I'm a big believer in employees owning their own career development. You own it in partnership, hopefully with the company that you're working in, hopefully the company that you're working at invest in career development. But you have to sort of take charge and say, here are some of the things that I want to do this year to develop myself so that next year I'm at this level. So those are the two buckets that I put goals into. Going back for a second to the corporate goals, I think what's important, so I've operated under a couple of different systems when it comes to corporate goals, but really two of them, which is I worked for A CEO who was a big believer in mission, vision, values.
(00:33:09):
So mission, vision values comes from Patrick Lencioni. It's really about emotionally setting, what's the vision, what are we doing, what's our mission, what are our values, and then what are some key areas that we're focusing on for this year? And granted this was in a smaller company, but gosh, every time the CEO got on, he talked about mission, vision, values, and everyone in the company knew he was going to talk about mission, vision, values. It was the same darn slide, like over and over and over. But you knew here's what we're trying to do as a company, here's what we need to get to. And I think that piece sometimes is missing when a company maybe just only focus on okr. So your objectives, key results, which is very tactical about how are we going to execute, but you also need the strategic piece to drive those OKRs on how we're going to execute.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:34:15):
Yeah, a hundred percent agree. And the thing is that I don't want to say there's no right or wrong because I think there is a way to do goals in a wrong way, but there are a lot of these different approaches that really work. And Paul, I think you've probably been, just like I have on both sides, where you're working in finance, you have goals that are given to you and that you have to go and manage and maybe cascade down to your team, but you as an individual also are setting goals. Talk about your experience and what you think works best.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:34:47):
So I think one of the most important things, and it took me a while to realise this is flexibility. I remember one year, and I'll explain what I mean. In the business, we lost half the team. So I was literally doing four people's jobs and working 80 plus hours a week and it got to the end of the year, you need to get your goals done. And I'm looking at it going, I didn't do any of these goals. I was so busy trying to keep the business afloat that I couldn't, these weren't priorities. And so I graded myself pretty harshly, I won't lie. As far as the goals went, I went very strict off the goals, but yet that was the year I got the best rating in my career and I probably learned the most. And it was because I learned how to manage things despite all the challenges.
(00:35:27):
And we hit our targets that year, even though our team had half the people they needed, I was covering the US and Europe and South America for a while and Asia, so basically was the end of the whole world. And there's usually three of us and one other person had left. And it reminded me the importance of having those conversations with your manager and being flexible goals. You got to think what's the purpose of the goal, not what the goal is. There's usually a purpose behind it. And that was a really good learning for me when it came to goals. That's probably the memory for myself that stuck out the most was that year. I still remember grading myself really harsh and then getting feedback from the business that was completely opposite of that.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:36:07):
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, you kind of made me think my philosophy in setting goals is to be directional and it's to say where are you trying to go as a company, as a team, as a department, as an individual. And so there are always, as Cynthia described, you get goals that cascade down from the top and that's the company saying, Hey, look, we are trying to grow revenue by X or trying move into a new market or whatever it is. Okay, you have those corporate goals, then you're going to have your team goals that are going to be what dev started to described, which is also going to be a little more execution on certain things to go over and deliver those corporate goals. But for me, I always like to have my teams not only have those types of goals, but also have an individual goal that says, what do you want to do yourself?
(00:37:01):
Where do you want to go? How do you want to get better? So I always like the idea of keeping goals number more than five or six because after that gets a little crazy and you add your corporate goal, but always leave one goal that says, you know what? This year I want to get better at public speaking or I want to learn more about this area of the company. And by putting that goal in there, you as an individual are signalling to your manager where you want to develop and when you get your manager to buy into your goals, now it's also on that manager to help you achieve your goals and to open up those doors and give you those opportunities. And so for me, in that directional aspect, and the way I always like to manage this is to say, look, I'm going to give you a goal, but you're never going to be able to achieve it.
(00:37:46):
Let's say a goal might be you need to learn more about the overall business and how the company works. Can you ever achieve that? No, you can't. But what I want to do is then at the end of the year when you're doing your self-assessment, give me the bullet points you did against that. And my job as your manager is to say, yeah, you know what? You did a really good job. I like what you did. Or you know what? You didn't really spend as much time over here as you needed to. You got two bullets here, but I was kind of hoping for more. And that's now the conversation you could have in their annual review. So my own personal take is I like those reviews, those goal setting approaches where it's you're trying to move forward. And I think, Paul, you touched on it a little bit where it's like you got to keep the lights on, you got to keep the business going, you got to be able to deliver actual results for the firm, but don't give me a goal of checklists. Give me a goal that says, Hey, just because I achieved, I got through something in February, I'm not done. I got to keep going and getting better. So that's sort of my philosophy. I don't know anybody. You guys feel free to shoot that down.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:38:50):
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Guest 2: Deborah Hill (00:40:13):
I love it. Glenn. And I was going to piggyback on something that Paul said about the flexibility piece. So it sounds like Paul, you had set these goals at the beginning of the year, but then everything sort of broke loose. You lost all these people and you were like, okay, these goals are out the window because I have other things that I have to do to make sure that we hit these top level goals. And I think that's an important piece that sometimes in HR we can sort of forget because we have this rigid system of we do a performance review every year and we do goal planning and we only do it at the beginning of the year versus continuously. So that's one thing that I try to bring into a company is actually moving away from that sort of annual process and more into an agile, at least quarterly process. Quarterly is a little bit more manageable. It's like, okay, what's changed over the quarter that's going to affect my goals for next quarter? And I just think that doing goal planning, and maybe it's just one goal, but keeping it closer to the business cycle, I think results in better ultimately results in better results for the business.
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:41:36):
I think we are talking a lot and the common themes that keep coming up are agility and directional. We keep talking about goals and goals are very important, but what we're really talking about is performance management. And I am a big believer with performance management that it's about providing clarity ahead of time and setting expectations and then continuous discussions towards that. And the goals are a big piece of that performance management process. And I think in hr and Deb, you might remember the pendulum swings back and forth the review process and don't be a hater. You got to have your annual review with all your goals and did you meet your goals and your objectives? And that feels really black and white, sometimes very rigid. And then it went the other way where it was no more reviews and it kind of blew everything out of the water.
(00:42:35):
And then people were like, what are we supposed to do? There's a balance between those and if you're going to boil the ocean, it's about setting those clear expectations with your goals in your objectives and then having continuous touch points to assess How are you doing? Glenn, you mentioned earlier in your review process doing self-evaluations, so I am such a big fan of that, such a big fan to make people and Deb talked about own your career path. Hopefully your organisation helps, but own it. Speak up, where do you want to go when you grow up? And in these conversations, everybody should play a role, but there really should be thoughtful contribution to here's what I want to do. To Deb's point earlier, here's what the department is charged with doing, and you've got to meet certain goals that help this department as you push it up towards the mission of the organisation.
(00:43:36):
And then there's personal goals, how do you want to grow as well? And personal goals are still business goals because as you increase your ability, we're elevating talent and at the end of the day, talent is what drives the organisation. So I think the common themes that we keep talking about, directional agility, to your point Paul, give people grace, when the business blows up and you're one person managing three different roles, you still made an impact. And in your situation, you said probably one of your best performances was that year. I'm sure you were pretty tired after that year was done too. It's a holistic, it needs to be thought of as a holistic process that entails everybody, not just hr, not just leaders, finance. Everybody comes in to really, I almost see a conductor to orchestrate the whole process so that we are aligned making the most impact in the most efficient way together.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:44:40):
I like the conductor analogy. I think there's a lot there. And I think the important thing is keeping in mind what goals are about, right? As you mentioned the pendulum, oh, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. It's like usually the answer is almost always somewhere in the middle, but we tend to often swing and I think people need to remember the whole idea behind goals is to develop and improve. Company goals are there to help us develop and improve the team goals, the individual goals. So sometimes it's stepping back and asking, okay, what do I really need to be focusing on to improve? And keeping that in mind. I don't want to say regardless of the goals, but along with the goals, you got to keep in mind that real purpose
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:45:20):
I think.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:45:20):
And any thoughts on that?
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:45:22):
I'm on. I see both sides of it where yes, you have to be flexible because I've been in situations I'm sure we all have where you have goals that are set at the beginning of the year, but by midyear the companies shift and the goals don't make any sense anymore. So you got to have that flexibility to be able to swing. At the same time. I think there are some goals that transcend sometimes what is going on that year at the company. And some of that is development goals or just how you're making an impact mean actually. And by the way, one of the things that popped into my head, one of the things that I always really like to do is just have a word document or a spreadsheet and you keep at the beginning of the year and every time you go through and you've made an impact or you had a success, make a little note, remind yourself of it.
(00:46:10):
Because at the end of the day, since you brought again the self-assessment, right at the end of the year, you're doing your self-assessment, you're think, what did I accomplish? Well, everything that's going to be top of mind, it's what you did probably the last few months. And thinking back to if you're in December, thinking back to wait, what did I do in January, February? And sometimes you forget about that. And so I always like to just go over and have a little hit list, if you will, of hey, here are all the things that I did that made an impact. Because I promise you when you get to the end of the year, you review that and you be like, oh my God, I totally forgot I did that. And now you're going to go over and fill out that self-assessment in a little better way.
(00:46:52):
It's one of those reasons why for those people who've done cost allocations, you never go over and ask people how they spend their time. It's always focused on what they're working on now, not how they actually spend their time over the year. And I think goals are very similar. So I think that's my other little kind of connection is to say, think about everything you're doing because your review and the idea of goals are yes, where the company trying to go and get to, but it's also then an evaluation at the end of the year to say, how did we do? How did we compare against what we said we would do? And when you do that, make sure you're not losing sight of some of the things that you did early on just because they might not be top of mind.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:47:30):
I have a question I'd love to ask, just kind of get some thoughts. What are best practises for creating goals that you've seen over your career? We have a lot of FP&A people that are listening. We'd love just some advice what you would give them to think about that to improve, where we start as an individual, we could talk to you a minute, but as an individual, what advice would you offer for them to improve the goal setting? Just managing the goals throughout the year. If you could give a piece or two of advice, maybe we'll start with you, Cynthia, on this one.
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:48:00):
Best practises we talked about top down. And it's making sure that whatever goal you put out there, that it's moving the needle, that it's moving the needle in a way that it's going to impact the organisation as well. It needs to be relevant. I've worked with an organisation where we have an IT department and they got all of these goals out there and everybody, and they keep hitting all of these goals. It's not what the business needs though. And so relevancy it is really important and everybody would be their biggest fan if they had put out projects that helped the business move better. So I think that that's one. Another is model, especially for some of us that are high analytics. And I think in FP&A, we want to crunch every number and especially when we get really specific, here's our target and it is X percent of blah, blah, blah.
(00:48:54):
I had a CEO once, give me a goal to decrease turnover. Deb, you're going to love this one. I think he wanted me to decrease turnover by 10% from the previous year in six months, but the previous year was already 10% higher. So effectively I had to decrease turnover within 20% in five to six months. And I talked to him, I understand what you want me to do, but is this even? Have we talked about realistic? And it was such a joke. It was such a joke. Yeah, I didn't stay at that organisation very long, but one of the questions I said, did you model this? There's no way that anybody could have met that goal. And he said to me, well, no, we should have just left it there. Anyway, we parted ways later. But what I will say about that is how defeating for somebody that you are trying to develop and bring along, and especially for some of your key people, you lose so much motivation if you can't be thoughtful and put realistic goals in place.
(00:50:09):
So thinking through that, do we have the systems to measure? What are we going to measure? What is our goal? Is it realistic? And do we have the systems to measure? And I think that's one of those things where I've seen, I've been in organisations where we've stumbled several times because we set out these beautiful goals and we never realised we didn't have the systems in place to actually capture the data, to measure our performance. And it was a bit of a, there was effort maybe directionally we could claim that. But yeah, it was a bit of a fail. We lost momentum. So I think I would offer those two. I'm sure Deb's got some more to build upon that.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:50:52):
Real quick before you go, Deb, you reminded me of something just to speak when you talked about reduce it 20% in six months, I worked for business where you want the goals to be realistic. We were expected to grow 10% every year. That was just the CEO's expectation. Every individual business, if you didn't achieve that, you basically didn't, couldn't earn your full bonus as an individual, as a team, as anything. And one year they approved a plan of less than 10%. It just wasn't realistic. They put it in at, I don't remember, it was three and a half or 5% growth. So they immediately, because we had admitted we couldn't hit 10%, they were only accruing 30% of the bonus. We knew that in finance, the business didn't know that. So even if we hit our goals, we were going to get nowhere close to full bonus. I just remember thinking, what is this company doing? It was, there's a
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:51:40):
Connection there.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:51:41):
And so just reminded me what you talked about, about the importance of connection, incentive and having people on the same page because more demotivating than basically to find out before you even started, there's zero chance of achieving what you expect,
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:51:56):
Which is, and I think that we've talked about this, I know Deb hit this before and Glenn hit it with being present when your goal, sitting with your manager, but be intentional about what you think is you can accomplish and don't sandbag. That's not cool. And I keep seeing that. I've seen that in several different organisations where you sandbagging as people that might be helping to design that, design those goals. We need to do a good job of trying to make sure that we're not motivating poor behaviours. But there's something to be said about incrementally, how can we get better? And if there's a point where maybe you can't get better, instead of trying to say incremental improvement, can we maintain with this level of excellence? And I worked for an organisation in the waste management industry. It was Republic Services, and I managed over 75 desperate bonus plans.
(00:52:59):
And I remember one of our goals for our landfill divisions was to reduce violations. And it was really moving the needle because they had these targets. But then they get to this certain point that you can no longer reduce any more. You're at optimal level to try and take it below what was reasonable would be exactly what you said, Paul, very demotivating. And why would you do that to some of your top managers? So realistic, intentional, thoughtful, and make sure that you're able to measure what you can do and it's really where you need to be.
Guest 2: Deborah Hill (00:53:37):
Yeah, and I'll jump in. I think I would say yes, agree with everything, Cynthia, that you said. I think an additional point I would make, Glenn, I think I heard you say earlier, no more than five or six goals is I actually would challenge that and say maybe no more than three to four goals. I think anything more than that you, so maybe if you're thinking about as an individual, you have three sort of corporate goals, goals that tie into company goals and objectives, and then you have one developmental goal. Now you hit all those three goals before the end of the year, then you can go and create more goals. But I am a strong believer in the mind can only handle so much and you really want to be able to focus. What are the three primary things that you want to focus on for this quarter, this year, whatever Agree with making sure that the goals are measurable, that they're achievable.
(00:54:52):
I am a proponent of the big, hairy audacious goal. And so that's something that you're striving for, but maybe that it's good to call that out if you want to set that sort of goal for yourself. Make sure your manager knows this is a stretch goal that I'm setting for myself. I don't know if I'll be able to achieve it this year, but I want to put it out there because I don't know, I'm an FP&A analyst and I want to become CFO one day. Like, okay, you're not going to get there next year. But that's a stretch goal for me. And so I think those goals, those aspirational goals, our directionally important for employees as well.
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:55:39):
Deb, you made a comment earlier and I want to piggyback on that. Just overlay, you talked about goals and you kind of challenge the thought process of five or six. And I think it's we can fatigue ourselves with all of these goals, corporate goals and department goals and personal goals and everything. And if you're, I would tell you just from to underscore what you said, if we are looking at bonus design and we're placing money on certain goals, I always recommend that we place no more than 15% on any one goal. Because when you start to, especially with people, you can get goal fatigue and what should I go chase? And it doesn't matter here, I've got 5% here and 5% there. And then it's like, what is the easiest? Pick your battles. Where do you want to put your money? And then we talked about compensation before. Seeing this is what, if you put money on it, it means this is important. I want you to focus here, pick your battles and really identify the goals that will move the needle. And then if you were going to allocate a bonus to it, no more than 15% and that would be the bare minimum I would put on any one goal.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:56:50):
Let just say one thing and then we'll just kind of get last thoughts on this. But one other thing, Paul, your original question was how do you go over and keep this up throughout the year? And one of the things that I would highly recommend is goals are not about beginning of the year. You set 'em, end of the year you review 'em and say how you did against them. This is a conversation that should be happening every time you have a one-on-one with your boss talking. And it doesn't have to be, Hey, we're going to spend half of our one-on-one talking about where I'm at against my goals. And that's a little ridiculous. But go over and if there are goals that you're working on a little bit more have those conversations and just maybe a different goal every time you have that one-on-one.
(00:57:33):
Or you could just talk about, Hey, where do you think I am overall asking for midyear reviews, those types of things. So you have a better sense as an employee where you are standing and where you to get better in order to get to where you want to be at the end of the year. But also to inform your boss on some of the things that you've been doing. And so to me, the idea of goals, it's not about one point in time and you're measuring it. It's not the point of financial terms. Goals aren't about a balance sheet, it's about an income statement and it's about how you're doing throughout the year. And you need to constantly go over and be looking at the goals and understanding where you are and how you're doing against them to really make sure that not only is your manager managing you in the best way, but you're managing yourself and your time. So I would throw that out there, but I know we're right around the hour mark here, and I want to give everybody a chance to leave their final thoughts. So Deb, why don't we start with you? What would you like to leave our audience with?
Guest 2: Deborah Hill (00:58:34):
For me, when I think about goals, I think, here's my final thought for the audience. So when your goals are clear and aligned, right, they're clear, they're aligned to corporate goals across the organisation, I think people make better decisions. It makes it easier to say no to things that aren't going to move the needle, and it makes it easier. Even then nobody's watching, and that ultimately will turn into financial impact. So that's what I want to leave the audience with. That's
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (00:59:10):
Great. One, I like that Cynthia,
Guest 1: Cynthia Kenny (00:59:12):
Coming from a seat of the partnership between FP&A and hr. I think if there was thoughts that I would want to leave, it's that we've talked about this consistently throughout our time together, but it's developing the trust, the partnership, and the confidence so that everybody can be their best. I think it makes sense learning each other's language and there can be barriers because we can have our HR speak and of course Deb and I each, we can just ramble, blah, blah, blah, and nobody really understands what we're talking about. We're talking about compa ratios and FP&A. You guys can get really technical on us. It's on us. It's to come together and learn a little bit about each other's worlds and learn the common language so that we can really create this synergy. Because anytime we have, that's when we move further together to benefit the organisation. So I think co-creation a choice and it's powerful. A
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (01:00:13):
Hundred percent agree. Paul, your final thoughts on this?
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:00:16):
I mean, I think the final advice I give people when it comes to goal setting, remember you're in control of your career. It's more than just a company project or task or thing you have to do. If that's what you're looking at it as, you're really looking at it wrong. Or if you're looking at it of how do I manipulate it to maximise my profit finance type of thing to do, how can I get the highest bonus possible? Great to get a high bonus, but if you're really focused on developing yourself, it will all work out in the end. So the biggest advice I give is really think throughout the year, how am I developing, how am I helping the company develop and grow? And if you have that kind of mindset throughout the process and you check in regularly with your manager, things will work out okay. It doesn't mean every year we'll go exactly as you want. They never do. Some do, some don't. But you'll have developed and improved. And that's really the goal here is to help the company improve and help yourself improve. So I think kind of bring it back to first principles as often as you can.
Co-Host: Glenn Snyder (01:01:18):
Yep. I love that. I guess my final thought is bring it back to the partnership, is that the partnership that you have with people in hr, in accounting, they are going to significantly improve your overall productivity, the impact that you have, the exposure you get. And it is a two-way street. And so to me, the most successful people in, whether they're HR business partners, finance, business partners, whatever, it's working together as a team and recognising that you don't have to do everything yourself, but you do have people throughout the organisation. But when you come together, you can actually create a better solution. You can deliver something faster, more complete, more impactful, and developing that partnership to me is just critical to success. So that's my final thought, Paul. I will turn it back over to you after one last thing just to say, Deb, Cynthia, thank you guys both so much. Always great talking with you. Really appreciate you guys spending the time here today.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:02:18):
I just want to echo what Glen said. Thank you Deb and Cynthia for joining us. Had a great conversation. Want to thank the audience for listening, and we appreciate you joining us. And thanks again, Deb and Cynthia.
Guest 2: Deborah Hill (01:02:29):
Thank you. Likewise. Thank you.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:02:31):
That's it for today's episode of FP&A Unlocked. If you enjoy FP&A unlocked, please take a moment to leave a five-star rating and review. It's the best way to support the FP&A guy and help more FP&A professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpe.com. Downloading the app and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education credits for the FPAC certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A guy, and I'll see you next time.
