38. Securing the future of finance with better business partnering - with Anders Liu-Lindberg

38. Securing the future of finance with better business partnering - with Anders Liu-Lindberg

Hannah Munro: 0:48 

So, hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of CFO 4.0. I'm very excited to say that we have Anas Elio Lindberg from a partner of the Business Partnering Institute joining us today. And we're going to talk about everything to do with finance business partnering. So, welcome, Anas. It's wonderful to have you on the show. 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 1:07 

Thanks, Hannah. Thanks for inviting me on. I'm excited to talk to you today and just share my thoughts and impressions about what's happening in the market today and where do we see the future of finance going. 

Hannah Munro: 1:18 

Absolutely. So, tell us a little bit about yourself, Anis. How did you end up doing the job that you're doing today? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 1:24 

So, I've been 13 years with global transport and logistics company Maersk in the past. That's also where I started my career as a financial controller, business controller, finance manager, and so, on. And then I ended up in various business partnering roles, either being a business partner myself, doing organizational design for how business partners should work or training business partners in training programs. So, really all about business partnering. And what I found along that journey is that no one was really talking about this. You know, except consulting companies that wanted to sell stuff. So, I thought, you know, why not just share my story and what I do? So, I started to write about it in articles and then blogging on LinkedIn later on. And of course, now this LinkedIn blogging empire has expanded to 500 plus blog posts about business partnering and other things. I think all this just came together in forming the Business Partner Institute where we saw an opportunity to help finance professionals all over the world unlock their own potential through business partnering. And so, we founded that company three years ago and now three years later, I mean, it's a thriving business and we see so, many senior finance leaders out there willing to invest in their finance teams, especially in the people, not just the systems and processes which we're used to seeing. And it's just such an exciting time to be a part of. We just love helping these finance professionals crack it on with business partners. 

Hannah Munro: 2:50 

Yeah, because it's an exciting piece, isn't it? I talk a lot with our customers about, you know, why did you get into finance in the first place? And let's be honest, it wasn't to type numbers into spreadsheets and to, you know, to do the data entry. They were excited about the impact that finance can have. So, what does good finance business partnering look like? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 3:11 

So, good finance business partnering, it's all about creating an impact, changing decision and ensuring we have better execution. Of course, to get to that point, you need to have insights. So, information that your stakeholders don't know about, but can help them make better decisions. And you need to have influence, right? So, buying and acceptance for the messages that you bring along. We have insights and influence. You will have impact, and your company will be making better decisions and hopefully creating more shareholder value creation or whatever value definition that you're looking to. The challenge, of course, has often been that as finance professionals, we have great insights because we master the numbers. We have digged into everything, but we're not able to communicate it and get it out there. So, our insights fall flat, and we don't have the impact that we wanted to. So, I think that's really the key for business partnering. And that's also what we focus so, much on is elevating that influence of finance professionals so, they have impact with all the great insights. 

Hannah Munro: 4:08 

And I love that term influence. So, for our listeners out there, what does influence mean in this context? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 4:15 

Yeah, so, influence sort of has three sub-components. The first is your ability to build relationships with the stakeholders that you work with. and something that, let's say, salespeople, for instance, do really, really well. So, they will build relationships with their potential clients and their clients to help understand what challenges they have and how can they, with their products and services, overcome those challenges. And we need to do the same thing as business partners, understand what the key priorities of our stakeholders are and what can we do to help them. That's how we build solid relationships. Number two, business acumen, our understanding about the business. Do we actually leave that finance cubicle and go out there in the real world and experience how business is done? Can we translate the financial language into business language that they understand the numbers? I think those are some key critical elements. And the last bit is communication. Can you actually communicate the messages clearly? And can you show empathy for the receiver? Because it's very important to understand as a business partner, you're not there to look good yourself. You're there to help others succeed. And that is really, really key when we communicate. Because too often we just come in there and say, you're behind, hit them in the head, come up with a plan to improve, and then we leave again. But that's not good partnering. Good partnering is when you help them come up with that plan and help them follow through to get to the self that they want. 

Hannah Munro: 5:42 

And that's a real shift, isn't it, from the traditional finance role? It's not something that necessarily they cover in, you know, in the early stages of your accounting career. So, what sort of challenges can those that are new to a finance business role actually experience? And how do we get them to a point where they can have those great communication skills while still having all of that knowledge? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 6:06 

Yeah, so, I think, you know, most finance people didn't go into finance because they want to be salespeople. And now they somehow need to be salespeople with those relationships. And it's hard. It is hard. I think we have to accept that. Because if we don't accept it, it's hard. We're not going to have serious efforts to actually help these young or even senior professionals become good business partners. So, I think that's step number one. Accept that it's hard. But it's not complex. It's actually quite simple. So, you can start being a business partner by booking a meeting with your stakeholder, a coffee, virtual coffee, whatever you want, whatever is appropriate, and then sit down with them and have them talk about their business. Everyone loves to talk about what they do. They'll tell you about their business. And then you can sort of say, okay, what are the key priorities? Well, it's one, two, three. Okay, what can I do to help? Maybe they won't know, but then at least now you know what their priorities are, and then you can come up with some ways of helping them. That's, in essence, where business partnering starts, and that is not complex at all, right? So, it's about giving them those simple tools or approaches to build their confidence that they can do this. Because we have to be honest as well, when you're a business partner, you're typically partnering one, two, sometimes even three levels up in the organization. And if you're not that experienced, that is definitely a frightening position to be in. So, I would also never recommend someone that is fresh out of school and maybe just qualified that they go and take a business partner role. I think they need to get some more basics covered first before they can build the confidence to be a business partner. 

Hannah Munro: 7:39 

I think that's a really good shout in terms of the experience. And I know that obviously with the current wave of technology that's coming through, there's a lot of talk about what does the future of finance look like? And I guess there's a lot of uncertainty for those currently working in finance as to where they go. So, how as a CFO, as a finance leader, do you know if somebody's right for that business partner and role? What sort of attributes would you say make up an ideal finance business partner? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 8:07 

So, I think the first thing is really just the curiosity to learn more about what's going on in the business. If you have that natural curiosity, I think you can build everything else on top. If you only prefer just to sit there with the numbers and do something in Excel, it's probably never going to translate into the business part. Maybe you want to go down, you know, the analytics, data science kind of route, which is definitely also a valid career path. So, that natural curiosity to understand what's going on and, you know, we'll build the rest of. So, look for those people that are saying, hey, I want to learn what's going on out there in the business. I want to put my, you know, analytical savviness to use out there, not just in here in my finance career world. 

Hannah Munro: 8:51 

Absolutely. And what are the challenges that you see people facing when they know that that's a role that they want to go into, but they're either not sure how to get there? Or, you know, what would you say to somebody that's looking to step into that business partner role? How would you suggest they approach their personal development? Of course, without, you know, speaking to you guys in terms of the business partner. 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 9:16 

No, no, no, no, that's fair. That's all good, right? I think the key thing is first for people to understand and realize what good business partnering is, right? Because it's not just sitting there crunching numbers and doing some monthly reporting, right? It's actually being out there with other people, business stakeholders, senior leaders, helping them make better decisions. So, first ask yourself, is that something you really want? Or is it just because everyone else is saying business partnering is the new black, so, we all need to become business partners? You have to be honest with yourself because I can tell you, for most finance people, it's going to require a lot of energy. It's going to require a lot of stepping outside the comfort zone and learning a lot of new things that you don't get with your qualification. I'll tell you; it took me... 10 years to become a good business partner. I'm hoping I can cut that route short for many people out there. But it took me 10 years because I was not comfortable. I didn't know how to do it. And, you know, I didn't have any role models to look at and so, on and so, forth. So, I had to figure it out for myself. And, you know, many times I could have done things much better if I had just dared to go out there, but I had to ease myself into it. But after 10 years, I got it, and I could be a good business partner in three weeks. So, it takes a lot. I mean, that we have to be realistic about. 

Hannah Munro: 10:37 

Yeah, there's nothing like a bit of experience to help you develop the skills that you need. So, let's talk about the core competencies of a good business partner. What do those sort of pillars look like? in terms? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 10:52 

of development? Yeah, so, we have four pillars in general if you look at our competence model. And of course, that competence model builds on top of the professional toolbox that you get from university and your qualifications and so, on. So, it's something in addition, right? I think that's the starting point. Then you have analytical skills, analytics, problem solving, lean, or other continuous improvement frameworks. That's one, right? That's simply where we have our base and where we are kind of good. But still, problem solving is not just, oh, hey, someone throws a problem at you, and you have the solution. No, it's actually spending a lot of time understanding the problem and having a structured approach to how do you actually solve it. But that's one. Number two is business skills. Do you understand the business model, business strategy, and do you have commercial acumen to the point you understand how is money made in this company? Because if you don't, you cannot speak the language of your business stakeholders, and you will continuously just be put down into this finance bucket, which you want to break out of. So, business skills is number two. Number three is people skills, where we talk about communication, influencing, and relationship building. So, all that you need to do to actually influence that stakeholder synergy. Typically, difficult for finance people to just do it. So, they need training, they need to learn, and they need to have role models that they can see how it's done. And the last bit is leadership skills. Not just for the leaders, also for yourself, because it's a change journey. So, we're leading change, and it can be a two, three, in my case, 10 years journey to become a good business partner. And it needs a lot of self-management as well, right? Because how do you manage your time? How do you become personal effective so, that you have time for business partnering? One of the key causes, excuses, call it what you want, that we hear about why we're not doing more or better business partnering, they say, we don't have time. Okay, we have to work with that. And it's part of the core competence set to create time for yourself. And the last bit, of course, is leading business partners. Because leading business partners is different from leading an accountant. Not to say anything bad about accountants, but their work, you can typically look at a checklist or a system or see, you know, is it green or is it yellow or is it red? And if it's green, probably they have done a good job. A business partner is so, different. It's relationships, right? So, you have to go out there and watch them in action together with the stakeholders How do they lead the meeting? How do they interact? What's the relationship with the stakeholder? And so, on and so, on. Only then can you give good feedback and be a great coach to your business partners. So, it's a comprehensive competence model that we have built on top of that. But we also feel you need all that to be a great business partner. 

Hannah Munro: 13:37 

And it's so, true because there is this, you know, this want and this feeling within a business to shift to this new model of business planning. But very often they don't have the basics that you need in place to be able to shift to it. So, good analytics, you know, good data, good processes so, that your team can actually shift. And it's quite interesting, obviously, doing what I do in the technology side is actually spending a lot of time with them saying, look, this is the dream. This is where you could go, but you need to have like the core in place and a bit like what you were saying around you can't be a good finance business partner without the core of finance itself. If you don't have that knowledge, then that's sort of a given. So, what are the other things within the organization or within the team can hamper good finance business partnering? What do CFOs need to make sure their team have in order to be good at their role? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 14:31 

So, I think the very key thing or change to make is changing from being finance centric and talking about what's important for finance to be customer centric and discussing what's important for our customers I.e. you know for finance your business stakeholders what's important for sales marketing and so, on right because you know when we ask business partners that we train we do that early on we ask okay so, are you finance centric are you customer century most of them I think 75 say they are finance century and as long as we're finance centric we will never be carrying and working with the most important priorities of the business and the people that we're supposed to help. So, I think this is the key shift to make. And if we take even a further step back, there's this whole mindset change. So, I ran a poll not so, long ago and I asked, to create the future of finance, what is holding us back the most? Is it mindset, people, systems or processes? And, you know, I would have expected sort of like an even split or something like that a bit all over the place. But you know what? 60%, and I think you had like 1,500 rows, 60% said mindset. So, if the mindset is what's holding us back, I mean, don't even talk to me about the future. You have to fix this mindset issue first because I can give, you know, you can give me new technology. I wouldn't know how to use it. I can train you. You wouldn't be comfortable going out and do it. I gave you a process, but you wouldn't understand how things work. It starts with the mindset. 

Hannah Munro: 16:07 

Absolutely. And mindset, I guess, is not just about the individual as well, isn't it? It's the mindset of the organization about the value of finance and also the CFOs themselves, how they perceive the value of finance business partnering. So, what do we do to change that mindset? How do we get ourselves to a point where it's where it needs to be? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 16:26 

I mean, it's a journey, right? And I know you probably use this journey word quite a lot of times. It is truly a journey. And, you know, there's many change frameworks and so, on. We really just have a, you know, we have three steps that we think we need to do. And that, you know, goes both for business partnering very specifically, but I think also broadly for any change that you want to create in the finance function. And the first is to establish this foundation, right? Why are we changing, aligning the leadership team, having a strong ambition. And then if you need to, sometimes you need to strengthen the operating model as well. It could be you're strengthening the tech platform or something like that. But you have to have that foundation. Otherwise, we're going nowhere. Second bit is to engage your people to drive the change. Actually, you launch the ambition. And, you know, it's not just, okay, now we went back to the offside. Now we're launching it to the organization. It's, of course, a continuous change communication that you need to do every week, every month, or basically weave into everything that you say. And then we empower people to action. That can be through training or giving them the new tools or whatever it might be. But it's our people that needs to do something different. At the end of any change, you want to make, whether it's technology or process or whatever, there's a person doing something different. So, they need to be empowered to do the right thing. And then hopefully they do the right thing, and we create some short-term wins. So, maybe we create some efficiency gains, or we solve some complex business issues. So, we create some mechanical value, or we create these short-term wins to build momentum for the change that we want to do. And then it becomes like a viral change. So, maybe it starts in one place in the organization and spread out or one team in finance and spreads to the rest. But it has to keep spreading in the organization. And then, you know, to sustain the change, you have to make it stick, right? It's not a one-time initiative. It's a journey, multi-year effort to get this right. And I think it goes both for business partnering, technology, across improvements, right? It doesn't just happen in the summer. So, it's beautiful. 

Hannah Munro: 18:27 

No, and I think that's a really great point. So, for anyone that is familiar with Cotter's theory of change, they've actually revised their theory in terms of it rather than being linear, which is how we used to think about transformation, that circular model, in that it's an ever expanding circle, which I think really illustrates the process that finance business partnering goes through, that shift in that, you know, you move the needle in one area, and that creates this space to then shift. So, that's a really great way to describe it. 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 19:00 

Yeah, and I think talking about that viral change also for business partners, I think it's key to see it as, okay, the first chance I get to help is probably something very operational or day-to-day. But then I work on that, I help, and I do some good work. Then I get part of maybe their annual planning, their tactical initiatives, and so, on, and you do well on that. And then you get part of the five-year strategy planning and so, on. So, you have to work yourself a bit from the ground up. No one comes in as a new business partner and say, hey, I'm going to set the five-year direction for your area. It doesn't happen like that. So, you have to work yourself through the motion and prove yourself every step of the way. 

Hannah Munro: 20:09 

No, I really love that concept because there's this dream, isn't there, of a finance person as partner. People come in and think that they're going to end up, like you say, starting with the five-year strategy plan. But yeah, your sales team might have something to say about that, to be very fair. So, what are the common mistakes that you see? You know, when you're seeing sort of people either new into role or perhaps aren't being that successful in their business partner role, what are the common themes that you see around that? I 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 20:40 

think the most common mistakes we make, and I've made this mistake many times, is that we don't follow through. We do the analysis and then we send the email. We don't follow up on what happened. Or we were in the meeting discussing something and maybe an action was taken, but we don't follow up on the action. So, we don't follow through. And that's a shame, right? Because we've probably done some good work, but we're not following it through. Maybe you think, okay, now I've done my work, so, I'll let the business take care of the business. Or, yeah, maybe it's just not my place to see where this all goes, right? But we have to follow through. Business partnering is an end-to-end activity. It doesn't stop with sending the email or making the recommendation. But you have to follow through on the actions that we take to see, do we get the results, the outcomes that we want? Yes. Great. You can push for more. And if no, you have to figure out why so, we can do something different. So, I think that's the number one mistake we make. We don't follow through. And there could be many reasons for that, but we just don't follow through. 

Hannah Munro: 21:44 

Yeah, and there's a great piece, I guess, alongside that follow through. Like you say, it's understanding what stopped that change from happening, I guess, and communicating that back up the rank. Because as consultants, we do it a lot, is you have to subtly influence change, even if you aren't able to lead it within that team. 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 22:05 

Exactly, exactly. And business partnering is, by all means, influencing without authority, right? But a good business partner is also a great consultant, is also a great salesperson. It's a great lot of things, right? You know, for me, for instance, now, you know, I was a business partner for 10 years. At the end, I was a good one. And then I went to the entrepreneurial array, and I said to myself, hmm, you know, the selling bit, how am I going to do that? Because, you know, I've never sold a thing, right? And I found that it's, you know, it's all about building relationships, right? just like business partnering. So, in that sense, it's kind of easy. If you can build great relationships, then people will buy from you whenever they need you. It's pretty simple. And if you can do that in business and as a business partner, they will come to you when they have important decisions and consult you. 

Hannah Munro: 22:51 

And I guess that's the point, isn't it? You know you're doing well as a business partner when you're actually being asked to be involved in decisions and conversations. If you're not, there's probably something not quite working as it should. 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 23:02 

Absolutely. I mean, as a benchmark for yourself, you can ask yourself two questions. One question, how many decisions were a part of in the past month, maybe week, depending on the business cycle. If you can name them and tally them and talk about what you did to be a part of it and so, on, you're probably well on your way. Then ask the second question and say, how many important decisions were made without me being there in the past month, right? Until the balance tips towards you being a part of it, let's say 80% to 90% of the time, yes, a lot of operational decisions get made all the time. You don't need to be in anything. Then you still have some way to go. So, I think these two key questions are still a great indicator of are you doing a good business problem today, but you still have some way to go. 

Hannah Munro: 23:48 

And I love that as a way of sort of self-assessment of your skills as being a partner, because that must be a critical element of being a good business partner, is being able to self-reflect and understand sort of where you could improve as well. 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 24:05 

No, absolutely. And of course, I've done this a lot, but I also have to say, and it's not just promote to promote training or business partner as such, but I didn't get any specific training in business partnering until... six, seven years after I took off my first business partner-like role. And getting that training, it helped me shape a completely different picture of what it means to do to be a business partner. And then I just had to go and keep reinforcing those things to myself, reflect on how I can be better. And then when I got another chance to really be a business partner, it just worked. So, we can do a lot of reflections ourselves, and we should. It's part of that self-leadership. But we also need some outside input to actually get these simple tools and models to actually help us improve the confidence. 

Hannah Munro: 24:50 

Absolutely. So, let's flip onto that side then. So, how does a CFO assess the impact of their business partnering team? Because obviously, like you said, it's not like general accounting. It's not just that the numbers match or the reports are right. There's so, many subtleties into it. So, how can a CFO understand on an individual basis which business partners are doing well? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 25:12 

So, if we talk about measuring good business partners, we have sort of three points to look at. The first is, is the business area that the business partners support meeting or being their targets? Are they delivering the results that we want? That's number one. Because at the end of the day, you know, we cannot be successful on our own. The business needs to be successful for us to have any chance of saying business partner is successful. That's number one. Number two is customer feedback. Do we actually ask our customers or business stakeholders if they're happy with the support they're getting from us? If yes, if they're willing to strongly recommend us to all the business stakeholders, it's very likely that we have been part of creating those results. Number three, though, is it's possible that they carry great results and they have with our service, but all we do is just deliver reports and numbers. We're not doing real business partner. So, we have to do the third element where we call it like building a value log, but really what it is that we can describe and articulate what is it that you did in certain key initiatives to help create this value. Were you the secretary at the back that took the notes or were you the facilitator standing up there in front of the screen and trying to get everyone to work together and brainstorm and get the ideas and all this stuff, right? Because it's two completely different roles. One is a business partner, one is not. And we need to ensure we can describe that business partner and what it is that we do. And you have all those three things. You can, of course, add it up as well. You probably get a very thick and dense value log of millions of pounds of impact. But that's what a CFO should be looking at. Do we create business results? Do we have business stakeholders? And can my team articulate what they're doing to be good business partners? 

Hannah Munro: 27:01 

And I love that because that's that sense, isn't it? A finance almost being a business within a business. So, providing, like you say, value and, you know, do the customers, have you got return customers? Have you got customer retention? You know, great customer service, all those things. And have you helped your customers achieve their ROI and deliver on their projects? So, that's a great concept, I guess, to think about it. So, how do you measure this? What kind of targets would you suggest if you speak into a CFO How would you suggest that they target, incentivize, and measure that performance? What sort of numbers and figures could you put around it? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 27:41 

So, if I look at my previous role, I had at least the first and the second of the three I just mentioned. So, I had 40% of my targets were based on the business results delivered. So, I was tied directly into the success of my stakeholders at 40%. Another 40%. It's customer feedback. So, we sent out a customer satisfaction survey twice a year, and we asked for a net promoter score, right? One to 10 would recommend me as a business partner to someone else, right? And that feedback, you know, you get an upper there, right? Minus 100 to a plus 100. And that was 40%, that customer feedback. And then the last 20%, you can put that into the value log, or you can put it into a personal project. So, the need was to train business partners, but you can have that value log and say, But we know a Danish pharma company, they had a value log target where they said, as a global finance team, we need to have a value log of 1 billion kroner. So, that's like 130 million pounds or something like that. 1 billion kroner. And having that value target on your back, that pushes the right behaviour as nothing else. Because everyone was talking about this. Every one-to-one, people were talking about this. Some even had like a million kroner on their back. So, you, a million kroner, right? That pushes behaviour. And people have, you know, I think they beat that target with 50% or more, right? So, maybe that's something that we'll see a first to do. 

Hannah Munro: 29:10 

Yeah, I love that. It's putting a number on what you're doing, isn't it? Because that's the hardest thing is that some of this business partner is so, subtle and it's so, influential rather than target and actually being able to go out and say, that is the value that I brought. That must be incredibly rewarding as well on the other side. No, 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 29:28 

it is. It is. And to be honest, I mean, I had... Many days where, you know, I was always happy to go to work, so, nothing around that. But I had many days where I actually went home from work even more energized than when I came to work because I had so, many great dialogues and interactions and helping my stakeholders, you know, with meeting their priorities that it's just a sense of accomplishment when you get business partners right. And I just want, you know, thousands of, you know, hundreds of thousands more professionals to feel this as well. 

Hannah Munro: 29:56 

And I love, I have to say, Anis, I love your enthusiasm and your passion for the role of business partnering. So, on this podcast, we obviously have CFOs and finance directors. And I know this because obviously I thank you all to those that are listening for messaging me and all your comments and ideas for comments, for feedback and topics. I love it all. But I've also had messages from those that are in slightly lower roles that are looking to step up. And so, if you had to sort of describe why people should do finance business partnering and why they should do it. How would you, having done it for 10 years, what is the buzz that you get out of finance business partnering? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 30:34 

The buzz comes from the impact, right? Seeing that the numbers that you have worked on for years, finally, they are getting meaning. Finally, they're having relevance. Finally, they're impacting decisions. And they're telling you, wow, can finance also do that? I mean, I'm getting the chills just sitting here talking about this. It's just an amazing feeling when you have these business stakeholders who maybe you have known them for years just in other roles and you saw them as, okay, these are really tough people and they really know their stuff and how can I ever help this person? And then suddenly they're reading back to you and say, wow, that's really great. The finance can do this. Let's have some more of this, right? And then you get involved in more and more things and maybe you get to that five-year strategic plan level. But it's just an amazing feeling when you get that positive feedback vibe and boss back from the business because we've not been used to that right and many have maybe never experienced it before so, it's a really great feeling when you succeed with it. 

Hannah Munro: 31:29 

I know. And one of the conversations I love having with customers is, once we put this technology in, what does that mean for you? Where do you want to go? And that sign of that shift of finance, rather than being a blocker or a barrier, actually being an enabler and driving things forward. For me, that's the exciting bit of finance. That's the bit that, like you say, can be so, impactful within an organization. Yeah. 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 31:55 

Yeah, I think it is really important that we create excitement about these, you know, roles of the future, you know, whether it's then, you know, business partnering or data science or something like that. We have to create that excitement, right? Because there's so, much, you know, so, many tools and technology coming in that, you know, and the development is going quite fast. You know, I saw this Accenture CFO Now report that they published where they said, you know, from 2018 to 2020 or 2021, they said, you know, transactional finance processes have increased in automation rate from 38% to 60%. That's amazing. That's a huge shift, right? Because we've been working on this for 10, 15 years, 20 years maybe even, and suddenly in a few years, a massive shift. So, it must be happening now. And I'm sure, Hannah, you can probably attest to this even more than me, but it must be happening now, right? So, we must create excitement about what comes on the other side of that technology enablement that we're seeing these years. So, people are saying, well, you know, okay, I can see my old job going away, but I'm really excited about it because now I get to do business partnering or, you know, really deep dive analytics. And we should be excited about this because otherwise, you know, the alternative is not so, interesting, of course. 

Hannah Munro: 33:07 

No, absolutely. And weirdly enough, I actually had the Accenture guys come on the podcast to talk about the report. And what was so, exciting was the pace of change is accelerating. And actually, what's really interesting is COVID has made it grow faster. So, that shift is, you know, where people are saying in the next three years, we're going to do this, actually, it's happening now. And there, you know, if it's about getting ahead of the curve, I think for a lot of finance people is actually realizing that that stuff that you thought was cyphers, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. it's people getting, like you say, that heads around that shift and getting excited because it is a shift and it is scary, I guess, for those, you know, coming into it with the lack of experience. But it's also, it can be so, much more rewarding than typing, you know, invoices into a purchase system. There's got to be a better time, you know, better things to spend your time on than that. 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 34:21 

Exactly. And I think, you know, we've been talking about how is it possible for many years, right? But we have to shift and say, you know, anything is possible. So, how are you just going to do it? That's really the simple concept, right? Because the tech is there. It's just about you actually making use of it in your business. 

Hannah Munro: 34:37 

Absolutely. And clearing the space and clearing the clutter so, that you can spend time on the important things and adding value, like business partnering. So, for those that are going through that shift at the moment and are starting to make that shift into building out that finance business partner model, what are your top tips for going away and getting started? 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 35:00 

So, I think, of course, depending on where you are on the journey, if you're in the beginning stages, start small and build those short-term wins, right? Because if you want to start big, it's going to take years and the organization is going to hear about it that in three years something is coming and they're going to hear about it next year and next year again that in two years something is coming because probably it gets delayed and whatnot. And it doesn't excite anyone. Actually, it scares maybe more than it helps. And it frustrates them, right? Because they need the help now. So, start small with something where you can prove the effectiveness right away. And then build from there, right? And then get people involved in it. Don't just be like an initiative on the side where someone in the project team together with IT is going to enable something. No, make everyone a part of it, right? Because there are so, many simple tools that you can basically just download a tool off the internet, and then you can have that do your forecasting in six months' time, and it is doing it better than the 200 people around the world would do it, right? It's possible to get people involved, get them excited, and say, well, it's not just a big tech initiative. It's you and me doing these small improvements so, that we can free up the time to actually do business with our network. 

Hannah Munro: 36:16 

I love that so, um so, well thank you and I literally think we could sit here and talk business partnering for a good couple of hours but um as much as I think our listeners would love us to I want to say a massive thank you for you know for coming on the show and talking about it and are there you know are there any final thoughts you'd like to share with the team and how if anyone wants to learn more about the business partner institute how do they find you what's the best way to speak to you 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 36:44 

Yeah, so, I mean, I'm of course always available on LinkedIn, right? That's where I do most of my work and they can subscribe to my two newsletters. which I think 130,000 people has done so, by now, right? So, it's the momentum is building the future of finance. It's exciting. It's not scary. It's exciting. And I really want people to feel that. And you said yourself, you can also see and hear and feel that for me, that I'm excited about this and I want everyone else to be excited about it. And I'll do what I can to help you get there. And if you want to know more about the business problem, please, you know, prove it to me anytime. 

Hannah Munro: 37:18 

Absolutely. And for anyone that's listening, please do. I'm a massive Anas fan. I've been following him for a while now. So, I will pop links to his LinkedIn and the Business Partnering Institute into the show notes. So, please do check it out. Some great content coming out there. So, thank you so, much, Anas. It's been lovely to have you on the show. And yeah, thank you for all your tips and advice. 

Anders Liu-Lindberg: 37:39 

Thanks for having me, Hannah. It was a pleasure.