Only 6% of Finance Teams Actually Influence Decisions | Soufyan Hamid
In this episode of FP&A Unlocked, Paul Barnhurst speaks with Soufyan Hamid about financial storytelling, finance business partnering, and how finance professionals can move from reporting numbers to influencing business decisions. Soufyan explains why numbers need context, how finance teams can systematize storytelling, and why communication, business acumen, and empathy are essential skills for creating strategic impact.
Soufyan Hamid is a finance professional, corporate trainer, EMBA lecturer, and keynote speaker who specializes in systematizing storytelling for finance teams. He helps finance professionals strengthen their communication and financial storytelling skills.
Expect to Learn:
What the “precision trap” means for FP&A.
Why timely analysis can be more valuable than perfect accuracy.
How to choose the right level of accuracy for a decision.
What questions to ask before starting an analysis.
How finance professionals can become better business partners.
How the DERP framework improves variance analysis.
Here are a few relevant quotes from the episode:
"The first technical skill...that I would love for teams to develop is the driver tree." - Soufyan Hamid
"The numbers will never share a story by themselves." - Soufyan Hamid
Soufyan explains that effective financial storytelling is about more than presenting numbers. Finance professionals need to understand their audience, prioritize what matters, provide context, and help the business make better decisions.
Follow Soufyan:
Website: https://www.thefinancecircle.com/
Disclosure: Portions of this episode (such as the introduction or promotional segments) use AI-generated voice narration produced under human editorial review.
Earn Your CPE CreditFor CPE credit, please go toearmarkcpe.com, listen to the episode, download the app, answer a few questions, and earn your CPE certification. To earn education credits for the FPAC Certificate, take the quiz on earmark and contact Paul Barnhurst for further details.
In Today's Episode:
[00:00] - Trailer
[03:13] - What Great FP&A Looks Like
[05:46] - Why Finance Needs Storytelling
[12:28] - Making Financial Storytelling Useful
[16:02] - Why Numbers Need Context
[19:57] - Systematizing Storytelling & the FP&A Maturity Model
[29:38] - Storytelling, Business Partnering & Influence
[34:21] - Common Finance Presentation Mistakes
[40:13] - Complexity Is a Failure of Empathy
[46:05] - Technical & Human Skills for FP&A
[49:53] - The Mindset Shift: Learning to Prioritize
[56:15] - Building Better Finance Teams & Closing Thoughts
Full Show Transcript:
00:01:10.420 — 00:01:49.180 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Welcome to another episode of Unlocked, where finance meets Strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka The FP&A Guy, and each week we bring you thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who are shaping the way we think about business in today's world. Together, we'll cover the strategies and experiences that separate good professionals from great professionals, helping you elevate your career and drive strategic impact.
This week, I'm thrilled to be joined by my friend and good storyteller, Sufian Ahmed. Sufian. Welcome to the show.
00:01:49.220 — 00:01:51.180 · Speaker 4
Hello, Paul. Thank you for having me.
00:01:51.220 — 00:02:00.330 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Yeah, excited to have you. You know, I thought about reading your background, but nobody wants to listen to me read a boring background. So I'm going to ask you to tell our audience a little bit about yourself.
00:02:00.370 — 00:02:40.890 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
I'm Soufyan. I'm based in Belgium. I have 20 years of experience in finance. I started my career in auditing, then moved to consulting to finally moved to Spanish and finance business partnering for 7 or 8 years. And I'm going to tell you a bit more about that in a second. Until eventually, four years ago, deciding to move and become an entrepreneur and develop my own company, my own business around storytelling and teaching finance professionals, especially FP&A and CFOs, to tell better stories in finance.
00:02:40.930 — 00:02:44.010 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Awesome. So it's been four years now that you've been on your own.
00:02:44.050 — 00:02:47.650 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Yeah, three and a half years. So it goes fast.
00:02:47.690 — 00:02:52.970 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
It does go fast. I was realizing I'm almost four and a half myself too.
00:02:53.010 — 00:02:55.770 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
So we started more or less together.
00:02:55.970 — 00:03:02.630 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Yeah, we were very similar time. I started early in 22 part time, full time summer at 22.
00:03:02.670 — 00:03:03.990 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Yeah. We're similar.
00:03:04.110 — 00:03:13.190 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Well, I like asking everybody this question. If you had to answer this, how would you answer it? What does great fan look like?
00:03:13.190 — 00:04:04.890 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Great for in my opinion, is somehow similar to the definition we have of finance business partner. It's just that when we say finance business partner, we often think of it as a job description. In my head, it's more like the mindset that SBA should have. I've always thought that FNA should bring, and it's a bit like a cliche way to say bring value to the business, but it's only possible by having a finance business partner mindset.
So SBA should really be like the translation into finance of the business reality, but also the business wishes. And to do that well, you have to get relationships business acumen, communication and all these human skills that we do not especially have when we work more in a technical way.
00:04:04.890 — 00:04:34.810 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
That makes a lot of sense. And something I find interesting is you mentioned, you know, the finance business partner mindset. To me, it's kind of what it's always been. You know, if you look at us roles, you almost never see the term finance business partner for a title. Right? It's a sometimes maybe you're a revenue manager.
Go to market finance. Strategic finance. I know business partner is a job title much more in Europe than it is in the US. I found that interesting because, you know, I see a lot of people and they'll they'll separate the two. And for me it's always been there. The same.
00:04:34.850 — 00:05:09.720 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Exactly. And what's funny about that often in the job descriptions you have finance business partners. And when you come to the job, well, it's a controlling job where you close the books and eventually do the reporting. There's not a lot of finance business, partnering culture. And sometimes when you have jobs.
When they talk about controlling and you ask a bit more questions inside the company, well, you are in front of finance business partners. So this is why I really think of it as a mindset, not as a job title.
00:05:09.760 — 00:05:46.160 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
You make a great point because, you know, roles can be so different from company to company. The titles can be different. I mean, I've had roles where I'm doing very different stuff from other roles. Yes, there's some basic stuff that apply to business partnering that applied across the board, and you're probably doing a little bit of that every company.
But I've always thought mindset first kind of role secondary. So, you know, you've built your business around storytelling and helping people become great at, you know, data finance, storytelling. Was it about storytelling?
00:05:46.160 — 00:06:49.780 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
There's a thing about storytelling in my career that brought me to this. It's basically that I used to be bad at this. Not especially at the public speaking part, because I've done theater when I was younger. Speaking in public was not really a problem for me, but the main weakness many finance people have.
I had it, I didn't really realize it when I was in consulting or in auditing, because most of the time my external clients or the people I had to communicate to were also finance people. So it was easy to talk in jargon, go with the details, and go with the mindset that many people have in this job in Vienna. Meaning loving to have all the exceptions, a thorough analysis, etc. etc. but when I arrived as a finance business partner in a well, I realized that now my internal customers were not really finance people and.
00:06:51.690 — 00:08:55.370 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
after some months, well, I did a great job at automating everything. I created reports, dashboards. I even introduced Power Pivot and Power Query inside the company. So I had a lot of applause from my colleagues in finance, but I was not really invited to the meetings, and I was only notified in the last minute when there was a business case to approve, etc., etc. so I thought that it was a bit cultural and that maybe I had to change company.
But eventually the CFO who I had to present every month the results of the business unit that was responsible of, well, every month. It was a struggle. We had a lot of questions. I thought he was exaggerating. And then I arrived with even more details, even more exceptions. Until one month he told me that, um, that I was a typical technical guy who brought a lot of jargon, a lot of expertise, but the people in front of him were not experts.
They were not finance people. They did not know what an accrual was. They did not know what ratio was used to create the forecasts, but they did know their business. So bring them the business story behind. And well, at that moment, that was the first time I heard about story and finance at the same time. Let's be honest, I was a bit skeptical because I thought, what does that have to do?
Story storytelling. It's for marketeers and salespeople. But I wanted to prove him wrong. And so I followed many courses about storytelling and public speaking and so on. They were great, and maybe we are going to tackle that a bit later, but they did not really respond to the reality of finance. Uh, it's not like when you present during an ember.
It's not like you are going to talk like a Ted talk or an inspirational talk.
00:08:55.410 — 00:08:57.810 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
You don't give a Ted talk on your month close.
00:08:58.050 — 00:09:02.490 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Yeah, no I didn't. I tried, I tried, and and this is basically.
00:09:02.530 — 00:09:06.410 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
How did that go? How did how did the Ted talk go for a month? Close.
00:09:06.450 — 00:09:08.530 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Well, it was not great. Um,
00:09:09.650 — 00:11:48.240 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
let me tell you about that story because it improved compared to what I was doing. But it was a the presentation of our five year plan, actually, the five year plan of the business unit I was responsible of. And yeah, it was a first for me. I was in front of the CEO and the CFO. So it was really a closed meeting. And I started with a story, and I started with a bit more tension rising and so on and so on.
And every 32nd or every minute, the CEO was, okay, where are you going? To show me the numbers. What are we going to to do in the five next years? Uh, what's the PNL? And I will say, yeah, it's coming, it's coming. But eventually I realized that these are really interesting when we are in an inspirational talk.
But when you are in business meeting, well, it does not really work. And this is why. Well, after this experience, I started to say, okay, Ireland, lots of good stuff, but I need to apply it to my reality and see how people react when you do one type of presentations and another. And eventually, little by little, I started to improve my own presentations, my own stories, my own structures, and my own presentations started to be well accepted.
So when I saw that my presentations were often compared to marketing presentations, I felt, okay. I'm going to apply that to my team. And so I started to teach them how to structure their thoughts, how to structure their own presentations. And it started to go well. So I thought, yeah, it worked on me. It worked on my team.
So why not trying to make it work on the whole finance community in the world? Because if we had that problem, most probably other people had that problem. And so this is how I started to develop first content about storytelling on LinkedIn. And I saw that there was an appetite for that. So I thought, yeah, my methodology that I developed needs to be shared.
And this is how I developed the Finance Circle, my own company. And since four years now, I deliver that storytelling financial storytelling training to a lot of companies. So that's that's a need that we have in our community that wasn't filled until then because it was not really specific to finance people and spending in general.
00:11:48.480 — 00:12:28.760 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Yeah. So you mentioned, you know, that you felt there was a need out there. One of the reasons. But what is it that you love about financial storytelling? Obviously you spend a good part of your career gathering the technical skills, doing audits. Power query. You mentioned Power Pivot. You are a very detailed person.
Did you kind of develop a love about storytelling as you started to do it? Or was it your way of helping others and you just saw a need or kind of how did that transition? Because obviously you recognized it, you made the changes, you saw the impact. But did you also find yourself enjoying it or did you just kind of figure, well, I'm good at it.
I'll go ahead and do more of it. Like kind of that journey.
00:12:28.800 — 00:12:30.400 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
It's a bit of both, actually.
00:12:30.400 — 00:12:34.080 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Uh, I figured as much. It usually is, if we're honest. Right.
00:12:34.120 — 00:13:44.730 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
I mean, you have to to to like what you do, and people need it. Um, there were There is a Japanese concept called ikigai. I don't know if you heard of it. It's basically when you have to find the the sweet spot between what people need, what people are ready to pay for and what you are good at and what people can obtain from that.
So basically I thought it's necessary. I like doing it. I like to teach especially to to to teach in trainings. I love being with teams, learning from them. And well, there is a need that I saw that there was a clear need that I saw about that, because lots of CFOs are frustrated by how their teams just communicate up, because most of the time there are the responsible to go to the board, to the Exco and to explain every stories that there are in the company.
But generally, how it goes is that you have all the people of the business units, the regions and so on.
00:13:45.770 — 00:15:21.800 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
They do their own clothing. They do their own presentations. And eventually we gather everything in a big old pack that we are going to give to the CFO. And eventually he comes with, I don't know, 80 or 100 slides and he has no story behind that. So that's why I think that it's very important to respond to that need of the CFO, because the CFO cannot really take the time to go inside every single presentation and be the sort of bottleneck of making sense, making sense of all these closing reporting and so on.
So this is why it's very important for them to be able to count on their teams, to already do the job of making sense of their numbers. And that's what I really love about storytelling. It's that every part of finance makes their work useful. And I really love that word useful because if you don't make it usable and useful, your work is basically something behind the curtain and it stays behind the curtain and it becomes compliance work.
We have to do the closing. We have to do the report, we have to do the commentaries. And next month it's going to be the same. But if you, thanks to storytelling, make it useful. People are going to work thanks to your own job. And that's a sort of feeling you don't have when you just decide that your job is making the report and that's it.
00:15:21.800 — 00:16:02.940 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
So I'll add something to this when you talk about the storytelling and I, you know, I've shared these before, but a lot of it's the whole idea of the last mile of analytics that Brant Dikes talks about with his, you know, data storytelling, which, you know, is so often we're great at the analysis. We can give a report.
Report isn't a data story or a finance story. It's just. All right. You're you're you're sharing some numbers with them, which sometimes that's fine. But often you need more than that to kind of get a message across. So I want to ask you a question. You know, you talked about that importance. What do you say to the people?
We all hear this. The numbers speak for themselves. They don't need a story. What's your response to that?
00:16:02.980 — 00:16:32.140 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
The thing is that I often make the the parallel with politicians when they use numbers, and the same number can tell to two different stories. The numbers will never share a story by themselves. You have to add context. You have to add also information that's not in in the form of number. How many times? I mean, I'm sure you've had that in your in a career as well.
00:16:33.300 — 00:17:05.600 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
You have the numbers but like 80% of the information self is not in the form of data. It's not even in text. Uh, I remember that project we had. I was in a B2B business environment, and we wanted to clearly link our reports to Salesforce to, to to make our analysis easier and to make sense. Well, the conclusion was clear.
00:17:06.680 — 00:17:56.350 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Salesforce was not filled the way people had in their mind. And so it was very usable because yes, you have to make sure that the number part was okay. But the contextual part, the one that's in the brain of the salespeople, were not formalized. If it's not formalized, if it's in the head of the salesman, the reps, and so on, well, you have to talk to them.
You have to get to extract that information, that insight from them. And so that's why numbers themselves cannot really say a lot. I had many times in my career I thought I had a conclusion and eventually by talking to other people, well, it was the other way around, simply because I didn't have that context that people had.
00:17:56.550 — 00:18:43.690 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
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00:18:53.330 — 00:19:57.350 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Yeah, I mean numbers without context. It's like, I don't know if you know you you know who Nick Deborah is, right? You know that name? Yeah. Wrote the book Practical Charts. And he says a lot of people are like, well, the chart speaks for itself. No it doesn't. No matter what chart we use, we're interpreting the numbers behind it.
And it's the same thing with the data story. There's interpretation that has to go into it. Like I said, politicians could take two numbers and tell two completely different stories with them or make two totally different arguments with the same number. And so, you know, it's our job to help give that appropriate context.
I think that's a good way to look at it. And, you know, question for you is something you've said on LinkedIn. I'd love a little bit more about this. You've talked about how you're trying to systematize storytelling, you know, and you have some people that have this idea that storytellers are born, not something I've ever believed.
Can some people be naturally better at it? Yes. But I think everybody can learn kind of storytelling. So walk a little bit through how you've systemized it and what that means, especially for finance people, because as you said earlier, it's different, right? We're not giving those TEDx talk.
00:19:57.390 — 00:20:18.110 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Yeah, exactly. Well, um, why do I use systematize? It's because the first thing I learned when I started to teach storytelling is that people need a methodology. People need to first know where they are and where they go, and a systematic way to do so.
00:20:19.150 — 00:20:45.739 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
That's why it's very important for me to make sure that any people in any team could do the same job. And this is why system systematize is very important, because you don't want, as a CFO that in a team of ten want people. We do our presentation in a way to others in another way, three others in another way, etc., etc. so this is why
00:20:47.380 — 00:21:23.259 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
the systematic approach can bring a lot of values to the fan, to to the finance function and to the company itself. Because by doing so you create a company story. And so if every business unit or every analyst has a way to create a story that will produce the same result, eventually you can merge everything into a big story for the CFO during the earnings.
That's very, very important. But also for companies that are not on the stock exchange. So that's why it's really important. And
00:21:24.460 — 00:21:39.800 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
the way to do so for me is first to determine where people are in the maturity model. I created a maturity model to make sure that people could see whether they are still reporting, which is the level one,
00:21:41.000 — 00:22:22.920 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
explaining which is the level two, or influencing which is the level three that people should aim at. And I realized that in the last years when I had that maturity model active, and I gave them to to my clients, 50% are still in reporting mode. So that means that we have the majority of people still reporting.
That means they just drag the numbers out of the system. They eventually put it in form so that you can recognize them. And eventually the commentaries just state what you have in the table. Maybe a bit more details, but they don't go so far
00:22:24.560 — 00:24:38.550 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
the the way to to improve is already to provide the root causes. So that's the level two explaining. And that requires a lot of effort. That's not nothing. You you have to get up, uh, go to the business, talk with them and eventually get the contextual information you don't have in the data. So that's why I say that the level three is already great.
It's it's not the best, but it's already great because there it requires already a finance business partnering mindset. The only thing is that 4,042% according to my last service, are still in that explaining mode and only 6% are in influencing mode. And that's how you get your explanations to become something useful by helping people understand what matters, what not by prioritizing what matters, what doesn't, and also by helping people making decisions in an easier way, not by making the decision yourself.
You're not the one supposed to do so, but by preventing them. Options quantification is a way forward. All these kind of things are ways for you or your team to start influencing decisions. And this is the stature, this financial storytelling maturity model that is the base of the system. Because when you know where you are in that scale, well, you know on which part you are supposed to to, to to put a bit more emphasis, is it on the fact that you do not prioritize?
Well, your information? Is it on the fact that you do not find a way to map all the findings in an easy way for people to grasp? Or is it simply that you are not structured in the way you talk, or that your slides are overwhelming, or simply that you are not engaging when you present because you are too afraid of taking a position?
All these kind of things are
00:24:39.670 — 00:24:43.310 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
ways for your teams to improve storytelling.
00:24:43.350 — 00:25:45.460 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Make sense? So I really want to dig in a little bit to something you said. So if I heard you right, 94% are in phase 1 or 2. They're either just giving the data. You know, we've all seen the emails. Here's the numbers you wanted or maybe a little more. Here's the numbers you wanted for the month. We were 500,000 off.
Let me know if you have questions. Right. A senior leader now has to open it up and figure it out. Yeah. Did you provide the report? But nothing beyond that. Then you have the ones where. Okay, they have some decent explanations, but there's no recommendations. There's no hey, we should do this. We should do that.
So you're saying you think it's about 1 in 20 6% are actually influencing. So. I mean, that tells me and I want to get your thought to be great at a don't you have to be influencing the business? Isn't that saying the vast majority hasn't reached a level the business needs? We're failing at business partnering as a whole, and I'm not saying any individual, but as a whole, as a profession, we're well short of where we need to be.
Is that a fair assessment?
00:25:45.460 — 00:25:51.180 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
That's a fair assumption. Uh, what what I would love to say is that
00:25:52.300 — 00:25:57.740 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
it's an average. Sure. This is why it's important to to say that number here.
00:25:57.740 — 00:25:59.420 · Speaker 5
Comes the statistical.
00:25:59.540 — 00:25:59.780 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Part.
00:26:00.180 — 00:27:28.940 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Because the thing is, this number is, um, companies that I had contact with, not especially ones who who took my training. And I realized that when I'm requested to provide a training in a company, that's often means that people are already aware of the last mile that they have to provide. They just need the system for this.
And so I realize that when I compare the groups in the companies I go to and provide the training and the average, the all population, we already have a better status. Like, I don't recall the numbers exactly because it was individual to every client, but here we already have an improvement. So that's one of the things that I wanted to say.
If you take the whole population, that means that you have different levels of maturity in the span models, and you have teams that have an FP and a team, but only with the name, and you have really developed strong teams. And when I go to these? Ta ta ta. These companies. It's mostly going from mid to high level FBA teams who really want to provide the extra value that they lack.
00:27:28.980 — 00:29:38.310 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
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It was well done. I'm kidding. No, in all seriousness, you know I joke a little bit. It's clearly an area that is a profession we need to improve on. There's no question. You know, your your stats show that obviously we can extrapolate that and say that applies to everybody. There's going to be different groups that are going to be lower than that.
Better than that. Different departments, different levels. But what's clear, and I've heard it again and again, is as a profession as a whole, we don't do a good enough job influencing? And is data storytelling the only way we can influence know? But if you're not a good communicator and you don't have at least an ability to do some of that necessary storytelling, you're limited in how much you can influence the business.
I think that's a fair statement when you agree, without being able to be good at storytelling, you're limited in how much you can influence the business.
00:29:38.350 — 00:29:42.470 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
That's a very strong statement. That's also very true.
00:29:42.470 — 00:29:43.790 · Speaker 5
And yeah.
00:29:43.990 — 00:29:45.150 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
This is meant to be strong.
00:29:45.190 — 00:29:46.350 · Speaker 5
I you know.
00:29:46.470 — 00:29:49.590 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Sometimes we got to be a little controversial on the show, right?
00:29:49.630 — 00:29:58.350 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
No, but that reminds me of a conversation I had with, um, with a CFO in a company I worked with last year.
00:29:59.630 — 00:30:14.730 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
He told me basically that I shouldn't name what I teach storytelling course, because it was basically an espionage course. Not not the technical side, because I don't teach anything about budgets or forecasts or something like that.
00:30:14.730 — 00:30:15.130 · Speaker 5
But.
00:30:15.130 — 00:30:16.090 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Smart man.
00:30:16.130 — 00:31:10.410 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Because. Exactly. Because when I teach storytelling in the different states, you're kind of obliged to. Develop your business acumen. You're kind of obliged to develop your negotiation skills. You're kind of obliged to somehow have an impact on the people by knowing who you talk to. So this is why I really talked about the finance business partnering part, because all these human skills elements, negotiation, communication, uh, business acumen and so on are part of what does a good team, a great team.
And this is why, yeah, sometimes I thought maybe I'm going to rename and start talking about FBA rather than storytelling. But I mean, storytelling is a sexy name, right?
00:31:10.450 — 00:31:11.450 · Speaker 5
Yeah. I mean.
00:31:11.490 — 00:31:12.920 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
If someone tells me,
00:31:14.000 — 00:31:15.479 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
hey, come take my course and be good at
00:31:16.600 — 00:32:44.700 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
or be good at storytelling, right? If you say good f a in general, and then I come to the course and all you do is storytelling. I'm probably going to be like, well, that's not what I signed up for. Even if I feel like I came away with benefit. I think the storytelling makes sense because I guess what I'm saying.
So I agree with you. That's that's the right name. But I also agree great F and A involves great storytelling. There was a slide I saw about 6 or 7 years ago. There was a study done, I want to say it was Harvard or Wharton, and I have it somewhere in all my content I've created. And they shared this graph. It was a graph that showed, uh, communication skills on one axis and technical skills on the other, and the farthest one up on both.
There were a couple others that were just as high, but they were like tied for the highest of any profession was finance. And you don't think about that. Most people don't realize that, right? I don't think I had a finance course focused on communication in college. Right. Does anyone get an accounting course of how to tell the story yet?
For advancing your career, influencing, having impact. It's just as important as that Excel function, if not more so, just as important as Power Query. Yes, you have to have the technical base, but I always say if you really want to advance and influence the business, you got to be a great business partner and you got to be great at storytelling, which ultimately both help you be better at influencing, which is where we make a difference.
00:32:44.740 — 00:32:58.579 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
That's really right. And that's often a conclusion that I have. It's that we leave it for the time we have. If we have time, we are going to work on our communication skills. And that's something I saw
00:32:59.980 — 00:33:33.080 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
more in 23, 24 when there was the big rush on AI. So at that time we thought, Okay. Communication. It's good to have. It's something that we are going to develop when we have the time. And now our budgets are on AI trainings and so on. But now it's 26 and many finance teams are coming back to what matters the most, because we realize that AI is only a tool.
We realize that Excel is only a tool and so.
00:33:33.080 — 00:33:33.320 · Speaker 5
On.
00:33:33.320 — 00:33:34.160 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
And.
00:33:34.520 — 00:33:35.240 · Speaker 5
That.
00:33:35.280 — 00:33:48.640 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Whatever the tool is, if our mind and our brain is not wired to make our work useful, well, eventually that creates the same problems as it did before.
00:33:48.680 — 00:33:49.280 · Speaker 5
Yeah.
00:33:49.320 — 00:34:21.710 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Great point. All right. So now where I want to dig in a little bit, we've definitely talked a lot about how important it is in influencing. We've talked a little bit about systematizing it. But first I want to ask you've seen a lot of finance decks. You've reviewed them in some of your training. Obviously you've built a lot.
If you were to list the top maybe 2 to 3 mistakes you see, and then how do people correct those mistakes? Or what should they be doing? What would they be? So let's start with deck versus actually maybe the presentation part. But let's take decks for example.
00:34:21.710 — 00:35:34.849 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
It's a whole concept. So it's not really like one mistake. Or I can develop one if you want. But like the most important mistake I see is that most FBA teams don't make the difference between a working deck and a deck that's supposed to be presented. I often talk about the exploratory charts and graphs and decks and explanatory.
The exploratory is supposed to be a reference where you have all the information available to make sure that people can see their own departments, their own teams, their own customer portfolio, etc. so it's supposed to be informative and people are going to see something and ask questions about that.
So it's the concept of exploring data. You can add some comments and so on. But here you just explain everything. You give everything. The only thing that when I use decks to present so explanatory, that means that you have to sort of
00:35:36.170 — 00:35:58.650 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
taking it, making a decision yourself on what to prioritize, what will matter in meeting that we are having today, in the presentations I'm giving today, and that's where most people have this difficulty, is that since we see a lot of data, it's called the curse of knowledge, since we see a lot of data.
00:35:58.690 — 00:36:00.770 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
I know I deal with it a lot. I'm so smart.
00:36:01.090 — 00:36:01.610 · Speaker 5
Yeah.
00:36:02.450 — 00:36:29.919 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
But, Well, we have to share it. Otherwise we feel we hide something. Yeah, it's not the case here. You take the accountability to decide yourself. Okay. I'm only going to show you these three points, because I think that these three points are the most important and that we have to do something about that.
This is where the most problem comes. So it's not even a PowerPoint issue here. When we
00:36:31.200 — 00:37:09.660 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
use exploratory decks for our presentations, it's simply because we did not take the ownership of deciding what to show and what not. So that's the biggest issue I see. It's simply the whole structure of the slides that we present, because we send the slides before. So they have to be read and we present the same slide during our presentation.
But because they were read well, they are known. And if they are, they were not read. People are going to read them during the presentations. They are not going to feel that you prepared enough to facilitate the discussion.
00:37:09.700 — 00:38:22.600 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
It's funny, as I listen to your talk, I kind of think back to my own career and, you know, one of the biggest problems I had and it nearly stopped me from getting promoted, is I was too detail oriented. You know, you want to tell everything. And so sometimes you want to put all that exploratory stuff and, you know, more and more further along.
I've gotten my career the more I've realized that, no, they want to be able to trust you. You need to give enough detail. They can trust you, but you need to just give them what they need to make a decision at the end. They're looking for you to help make a decision. You don't need to relitigate the analysis you did.
You don't need all the exploratory. And so I think that's a struggle a lot of people have. I had, you know, a boss that would DM me every time I got to a into the weeds, they'd, like, bring it back up. That was kind of the agreement he had. He helped me. And so I'd get these slack messages. I think it was a price Skype at the time, but whatever it was, and he'd be like, all right, you're losing everybody.
Bring it back up. And it was really helpful because it's not something we're taught. It can be a it takes time to learn what's important. Any thoughts on that? I mean, you mentioned exploratory, but it really feels like it's a matter of spending the time to decide what's important and what the people you're presenting to need to hear.
00:38:22.640 — 00:38:36.880 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
It's all a balance between knowing who your audience is and yourself knowing how the business works. Um, and I have a metrics to help you prioritize, and it's all a matter of.
00:38:36.920 — 00:38:37.840 · Speaker 5
First.
00:38:38.080 — 00:38:44.799 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Impact. So whether it's a high, low impact, the concept of materiality I don't have to teach you, I guess that
00:38:46.560 — 00:39:45.550 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
people are generally good at it. But the other axis is whether you control whether you have a decision power on this. And most of the times we are going to talk about elements that will not bring any discussion. What are you going to do about wars? What are you going to do about inflation? Well, those elements itself are not controllable.
The action on them can be controllable. And so again this forces you to think, okay, I do not have enough elements to bring to the table because with what I'm bringing nothing is important in amount in impact. And nothing is important in terms of control. So if I don't have anything, it means either that I don't need to come and present, or that I need to complete my way of presenting so that people have something to discuss about.
00:39:45.590 — 00:40:13.290 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Makes a lot of sense. So I want to shift gears just a little bit. So you recently shared on LinkedIn what you called 20 years of finance lessons in 60s. And there's one. The way you phrased it, I thought was really interesting. So I'd love for you to elaborate because I'd never thought of it this way. You said complexity is a failure of empathy.
Elaborate on that. What do you mean by that?
00:40:13.330 — 00:40:15.530 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Yeah, I was inspired when I got this, but.
00:40:16.730 — 00:40:17.330 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Well.
00:40:17.730 — 00:40:20.450 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
You're always inspired, Sufian. That's why you're on the show.
00:40:21.010 — 00:40:21.850 · Speaker 5
Thank you.
00:40:22.010 — 00:40:38.889 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Well, no, it's. The concept is simple. It's putting yourself in the other's shoes. So you're really thinking that because all world in finance is supposed to be a complex area or, or our job is supposed to be complex. And
00:40:40.130 — 00:41:57.100 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
the thing is, I often think of finance and accounting as a translation of the reality in a specific language that we master, and this language is complex as such, if you fail to communicate correctly with the other people. That means that you do not have the empathy to say they do not speak that language.
You just picture this. You are going to speak. You speak a language that's spoken by maybe 1% of the world population. And then you appear on TV and you speak that that language. Most people will not understand you. That's the complexity I was referring to because you do not think, what are the people at the other side of the screen going to think, going to analyze, going to simply grasp in what I'm saying.
And so here that's the thought. And so many times you hear people talking in jargon. Yes, our actuals are so and we think of deferrals that way. And then as so many times I saw in an XCO meeting people talk about different IFRS.
00:41:57.140 — 00:41:57.780 · Speaker 5
Rules.
00:41:57.780 — 00:42:22.380 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
And that's not the goal. That's the complexity I'm referring to. You should not think that this is needed by the people. You should not think that it's even digestible by those people. That's why you need to put yourself in their shoes first before thinking, this is what I'm going to communicate, and this is how I'm going to communicate.
00:42:22.420 — 00:42:55.840 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Interesting. I get what you're saying, and I could see that as you're making it overly complex because you're not putting your self in the other person's shoes, you're not really understanding where they're coming from, thinking the language they speak versus the language we speak. I like it that one really made me think for a little while.
I often talk about empathy, but not quite in that way. You know, when I talk about complexity, I often say complex is easy. Simple as hard. It's often easier to be complex, which kind of gets into your failure of empathy. The complexity is there because you're taking the easy route instead of really understanding.
00:42:55.880 — 00:42:57.560 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
There's a say that
00:42:58.880 — 00:43:04.120 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
a famous French writer, I don't remember which one said.
00:43:04.760 — 00:43:05.200 · Speaker 5
I.
00:43:05.480 — 00:43:10.600 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Didn't. I wrote you a long letter because I didn't have the time to write you a short man.
00:43:10.640 — 00:43:19.000 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, I know you're talking. I can't remember who it is, but I know exactly what you're talking about. I wrote you, yeah, like a two page letter. Because I didn't have the time to write you a paragraph or whatever.
00:43:19.120 — 00:43:19.720 · Speaker 5
Type of thing.
00:43:19.720 — 00:43:54.270 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
And I've heard that idea before, and it's it's really true. I remember grad school, our first class, we had our, our, um, strategy class. You know, we had to do these assignments that we felt like should be five, ten pages long. We always had to figure out how to get them into one page, and it would take forever because you just have to keep cutting and cutting and cutting, and by the time you're done, you have left what's important.
That's not easy, because the first time you write something, you you do something, you present something you're almost always going to be longer than it needs to be.
00:43:54.310 — 00:44:31.150 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
I often say when when I have my training participants, when they do have to present. In the end, I often say get to the point when you are not at ease with a with a topic, or even when you are not concentrated enough, you tend to over explain and then you explain once, and then you will re explain in another way until the people start nodding, etc. but sometimes say the word, say the sentence and let people just ingest what you said.
00:44:31.190 — 00:44:40.230 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
I love how you said in jest. One of the things we often talk about in in our training when we get into storytelling is don't be afraid of the pause.
00:44:41.590 — 00:44:48.470 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Don't be afraid of just taking a breath. Waiting a minute. Let people absorb things
00:44:49.750 — 00:44:57.290 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
right. And that's kind of what you're talking about a little bit there. Sometimes we just need to share it and then be quiet.
00:44:57.330 — 00:45:12.690 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Exactly. The post does really incredible things because yeah, just like you said, it gives time to people to, well, digest what you've just said. And it creates a sort of tension for what's coming. So you have a double effect.
00:45:12.730 — 00:45:13.290 · Speaker 5
There.
00:45:13.410 — 00:45:15.210 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
But you'd better be good in what's following.
00:45:15.250 — 00:45:15.850 · Speaker 5
Then.
00:45:16.130 — 00:45:31.010 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Yeah, exactly. If you give a pause, especially for dramatic effect, you better make sure you follow it up with something good. Otherwise it would be like, okay, that that bond, which unfortunately is usually what happens when I tell jokes, but that's another story.
00:45:31.730 — 00:45:32.130 · Speaker 5
Oh.
00:45:32.570 — 00:45:34.290 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
That's another story indeed.
00:45:34.770 — 00:45:35.370 · Speaker 5
Ouch.
00:45:35.410 — 00:45:35.850 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
I'm hurt.
00:45:35.890 — 00:45:36.970 · Speaker 5
No, um.
00:45:37.010 — 00:45:38.970 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
I love your Excel jokes, Paul.
00:45:39.210 — 00:45:42.090 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Everybody does. What can I say? No.
00:45:43.490 — 00:46:05.630 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
You got to have fun. All right, so I want to move into what we call our FPN section. These are some standard questions or similar questions I ask every guest. Sometimes I modify them a little bit, but if I was to ask you what is the number one technical skill for a professional should master, what would you say it is.
00:46:05.670 — 00:46:05.830 · Speaker 5
The.
00:46:05.830 — 00:46:06.390 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Technical.
00:46:06.390 — 00:46:07.030 · Speaker 5
Skill.
00:46:08.070 — 00:46:15.469 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Well, I would say the driver tree. Why? It's because it seems weird when we are
00:46:17.270 — 00:46:25.190 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
in after a long run in FP and A and that we had a long career. But many people, when modernizing their.
00:46:25.350 — 00:46:26.070 · Speaker 5
Their.
00:46:26.070 — 00:46:31.990 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Financial model, their forecasts, their budgets or even any other models inside their companies,
00:46:33.030 — 00:46:44.550 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
I saw so many parts that are often I wouldn't say hardcoded, but that do not depend on operational drivers.
00:46:44.750 — 00:46:45.630 · Speaker 5
And.
00:46:45.990 — 00:48:13.760 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Those operational drivers. Sometimes we use what I call results instead of root causes. Um, like when I was working in a in a SaaS company, for example, our poo was used as a root driver. Like average revenue per user. The thing is that this depended on the tier that people talk to about the subscription, and also about out of bundle consumption.
So there were so many things behind that, that just using our pool as the basic driver was already misleading you. You were not able to make any decision based on that. You were not able to. How can I say, just think about the strategy that you are going to develop next year to reach the targets. What am I going to do?
Just do a bit more marketing on the height here. Just going to increase the prices on the out of bundle, all these kind of things. That was so frustrating. So that's why I would say that the first technical skill or the top technical skill that I would love for teams to develop is the driver tree, because thanks to that, you go until the the driver.
That makes the most sense in the process.
00:48:13.800 — 00:48:36.200 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned the driver tree because. So I'm getting ready to release my first LinkedIn learning course. It's on business acumen. And we spend, I want to say three videos talking about the value driver tree and walking through examples 3 or 4 videos. So first person I've ever had who has said driver trees.
So I love it. The first.
00:48:36.200 — 00:48:37.440 · Speaker 5
I'm not that.
00:48:37.520 — 00:48:39.360 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Different. So thank you for sharing.
00:48:39.640 — 00:48:43.080 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Yeah and I didn't know you were developing that so great.
00:48:43.120 — 00:48:43.880 · Speaker 5
Yeah. Come should.
00:48:43.880 — 00:48:49.900 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Come out. Hopefully in a actually it should come out before this episode is released. If all goes well, we'll see. It's in production.
00:48:49.940 — 00:48:50.660 · Speaker 5
Excellent.
00:48:51.580 — 00:48:56.020 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
All right. What about the number one? Soft or human skill?
00:48:56.980 — 00:48:57.580 · Speaker 5
Well.
00:48:58.860 — 00:49:00.980 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Um, where could you go with this one? I'm really.
00:49:00.980 — 00:49:02.900 · Speaker 5
Curious. Well, I'm sort of compelled.
00:49:02.940 — 00:49:04.060 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
To say storytelling.
00:49:04.060 — 00:49:05.940 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Then I would have never guessed.
00:49:05.980 — 00:49:34.300 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
No, but I mean, of course, especially because the way I conceive storytelling is a mix of every human skill that are supposed to bring. You cannot bring any good story to people if you don't put yourself in their shoes. Know the business, uh, know how to negotiate, know how to handle conflicts. All these elements go together in a good story.
So yeah. Storytelling.
00:49:34.340 — 00:49:38.900 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
All right, well, you didn't surprise me there, so. Well, not.
00:49:39.180 — 00:49:39.660 · Speaker 5
At least the.
00:49:39.660 — 00:49:43.130 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Development of my response surprised you, right?
00:49:43.170 — 00:49:53.690 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
All right. So to build on storytelling, what's the most important skill mindset change. What's the one thing people need to do to be great at storytelling?
00:49:53.690 — 00:50:41.550 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
One of the things is that they have to develop a sort of let go attitude. They need to be able to understand that what they see is not necessarily what they need to show to to show. They simply have to prioritize. And that's why this let go attitude. It's also developing a sort of accountability on the finance team because as such, you have to decide.
I don't say that you have to make decisions at the business level, but you have to decide what to bring to the table. And basically you become a chef that creates the menu. I you do not have all the ingredients on the table. You do three dishes and maybe three.
00:50:41.550 — 00:50:42.190 · Speaker 5
Entries.
00:50:42.190 — 00:50:47.350 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Three main dishes, etc. you become a chef. And that's this
00:50:48.470 — 00:51:01.950 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
mindset change that a lot of people have a hard time to develop it. Most of the trainings that I have, I often have people. Yeah, but what about this? We saw that in our data set or what? What happens with.
00:51:01.950 — 00:51:02.590 · Speaker 5
That?
00:51:02.630 — 00:51:09.710 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Well it's analyzed. It's good. You made sure that there was no issue that needed to be brought to the table.
00:51:10.070 — 00:51:10.870 · Speaker 5
That's good.
00:51:10.910 — 00:51:17.230 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
You just live with that? Yeah, but don't we hide something? No you don't. You decide. And that's.
00:51:17.230 — 00:51:17.430 · Speaker 5
It.
00:51:17.430 — 00:51:47.850 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
I love that last part. You decide and that's it. It's just remembering. It's. You're bringing what you think is important. Will you get it right every time? No you won't. You'll make mistakes. We could both share examples, I'm sure. But that's part of your job and that's part of the learning. And you do the best you can.
All right. These are the get to know you section. So we're moving past FNA to get to know you a little bit Personally, if you could keep only one app on your phone for the next year. Which app would you keep?
00:51:48.010 — 00:51:50.010 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Yes, but it's going to be Spotify.
00:51:50.810 — 00:51:56.370 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Haha. I think someone else said WhatsApp, so no. Why? Why Spotify?
00:51:56.410 — 00:52:58.680 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Yeah, because I mean WhatsApp. I could just go back to the simple text messages and I'm going to to be able to live with that. But like Spotify, music is an important part of my life. I don't play any, any music instrument that I really love to listen to music, I love to listen to podcasts. And so this is the go to app that I just use when I'm home, when I'm in my car, because I, I really like music and old style music.
It's really difficult for me to admit that I became old and I start to criticize young people music. But yeah, no, it's the, the application that I would use all the time because it simply gives me a sort of break during the day to listen to old albums, to, uh, a good playlist that I made myself or that other made.
And that gives me some fresh air to my, to to my mind.
00:52:58.800 — 00:53:10.120 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
All right, so we got Spotify. If you had to give a Ted talk tomorrow on a topic outside your area of expertise, what would you give a talk on?
00:53:10.160 — 00:53:15.000 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Yeah, outside of my area of expertise is a bit difficult because I,
00:53:16.040 — 00:53:43.740 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
I gave a sort of Ted talk in my in a company when I was younger some years ago, and it was about how I think that AI is not going to take our jobs, that, uh, it's somehow related to what I'm doing today. But no, a Ted talk would be about how I think that we lost our ability to debate today. It's frightening how
00:53:45.380 — 00:54:37.130 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
I see the world going in the communication part, in how people are ready to accept other people's idea. You do not have to follow them, but you just have to accept that they exist. And the world became so extreme that it frustrates me. It's really hard to have a conversation without having people that are open minded and are simply able to think, okay, I'm thinking something else than you, but I'm happy that you share your thoughts about a specific topic.
And so conversations today are either black or white, but they are never gray anymore. And that frustrates me a lot. So I would develop that talk about that, about the need to go back to that, because this is how we developed our civilization today.
00:54:37.130 — 00:54:46.050 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
I will listen to that talk, so let me know when you give it. I fully applaud that one. I'm with you 100%. All right. So what are you going to change about a. You've had a minute to think about it.
00:54:46.090 — 00:54:47.770 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Yeah I didn't think about that.
00:54:47.770 — 00:54:51.330 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
But yeah I asked the two other questions. I'll give you a text.
00:54:51.450 — 00:54:56.250 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Let me just think because it's a big responsibility. But yeah. No. Okay. Good. Yes.
00:54:56.450 — 00:54:57.370 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
It came to you.
00:54:57.410 — 00:56:15.190 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Yeah. Now, what I would change about Anna is what I observed most of the time there is a sort of pyramid of communication. What I call pyramid of communication is when you are an analyst, you are going to present to your manager, and the manager is going to present to the director. What I would change is to give all people, from all the hierarchical structure, the possibility for them to present in front of a business partner in front of any type of audience, because there are always people who are ready to listen to anyone.
It's just that culturally we are limited to the management committees, the exco, the board. While there are staff meetings all week, there are all hands that are developed for the whole company, the whole department, the whole building and so on. And so just give the opportunity to anyone to come and present one of their topics.
Not only will there that give them more opportunities to practice, but also more visibility, and that's a way for them to develop their own career, their own knowledge of the company, and to become even more useful.
00:56:15.310 — 00:56:34.850 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Alrighty, I like it. All right. So as we wrap up here, we're at the end of our time. Just tell our audience a little bit about how they can follow you if they're interested in training, how they can reach out to you. This is your opportunity to give everybody a 32nd sales pitch or whatever you want. But as we wrap up here, I'll give you the last word.
00:56:34.890 — 00:57:26.650 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Excellent. Thank you for that. Well, I'm Soufyan, and you can find me on LinkedIn. Sufian. Hamid. And there I am all day sharing information, insights, thoughts about storytelling and finance, business, partnering in general for Anna. And you can also find me on the Finance circle.com. So I specifically train FB and teens on how to develop and systematize their storytelling approach.
Thanks to full day trainings, workshops and also events that are created for offsite. So if you have needs for full day training, or simply if you think of organizing an offsite for your FBA team and finance teams, just contact me and you will see how we can develop and systematize the communication part of your teams.
00:57:26.690 — 00:57:39.800 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
All right. Well perfect. So thank you so much for joining me. I enjoyed the conversation, as always, Soufyan, and I'm sure the audience will enjoy it. Keep sharing the message you're sharing about the importance of storytelling, and thanks for coming on the show.
00:57:39.840 — 00:57:41.960 · Guest: Soufyan Hamid
Thanks for having me. It was fun. Paul.
00:57:42.400 — 00:58:04.520 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
That's it for today's episode of Fan Unlocked. If you enjoy unlocked, please take a moment to leave a five star rating and review. It's the best way to support the guy and help more professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmark CPE,
00:58:06.000 — 00:58:22.720 · Host: Paul Barnhurst
Downloading the app, and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education credits for the FP certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhart, CFP and a guy, and I'll see you next time.