Thomas: G’day. Welcome to episode three of season two of the Presentation Boss podcast. If you’ve been listening since, like, forever, you know that we do our rotating formats. We are continuing on with that, and this is going to be one of our guest expert interviews, where we get an expert from the communication technical world to come on in, we have a chat, we learn some cool stuff, we make some jokes, and generally have a good time, and sincerely hope that you enjoy listening. Kate, tell us about today’s guest

Kate: Hey, today’s guest is Andrew Jepson, and when we started talking about kicking the podcast off again, he was very high on the list of people that we absolutely wanted to have on. I said, “I really wanna have a chat to Jepo.” Um, there’s a few reasons why. He’s very finance-focused, talks about finance finance and, um, he’s very blunt, very intelligent, just really great with, um, some interesting perspectives about communication and, you know, especially technical communication.

Um, just a really cool guy to talk to. Um, he’s a man after my own heart. Loves a good spreadsheet. Um, I think we have a chat about pivot tables in there. Um,

Thomas: Yeah. Yep.

Kate: I know, can’t help ourselves. Um, and yeah, so I really enjoyed talking to him, and he is our guest today

Thomas: Yeah, for sure. All right, let me, let me give you the bio. Let me, me tell you all about Andrew Jepson. He is a chartered accountant with more than 25 years of commercial experience across senior finance and operational leadership roles. During his career, he held finance executive positions and also worked outside the finance function in general management roles. This exposed him to both perspectives inside an organization, how finance views the business and how the business views finance. Through these roles, he observed a consistent issue. Finance teams were technically capable and produced high-quality reporting, yet their input was not always used when decisions were made. gap he found was communication, working relationships, and understanding operational priorities, priorities rather than technical knowledge. In 2016, Andrew established the FBP team to focus specifically on this area. He now works exclusively in finance business partnering development and has delivered training and modules to finance professionals across a range of industries and organizations. He’s also the author of Compliance to Commercial: The Quiet Approach to Finance Business Partnering, one of the only published books on the topic of finance business partnering. The book outlines a practical framework for how finance professionals can engage with the business more productively. Let’s have a listen now to our chat with Andrew Jepson.

Welcome to the podcast, Andrew H- how are you going? How is it?

Andrew: I’m very well. I’m very well. I was just talking before. I’ve moved into a new house, so relaxed, I’m happy. Ready to talk to you guys

Thomas: Nice, nice. Look, we’ve, um, we’ve just heard your official bio. can you tell us about Andrew Jepson when you’re not at work?

Andrew: Well, that’s wide. That’s wide, but I, uh, I am a chartered accountant so, you know, numbers or anything to do with numbers is, is, is pretty much my life. But I, I’m a Victorian, uh, by nature. Well, I don’t know what you say. I grew up as a Victorian, so I lived in Melbourne for the first part of my life. Um, spent time in London.

So I moved over to London for about four years. This is about 20 years ago, I met my wife there. She was from Sydney, so she, she brought me back kicking and screaming back to Sydney and, yeah, this is where I lived. I lived in the same house for 20 years until about a month ago. So new house now. Um, what am I into?

I don’t take myself very seriously. I take what I do very seriously though. Um, anything sport related, talk to me about that and I’ll, I’ll talk to you forever. Um, AFL’s my passion. As I said, I’m a Victorian, so know, whenever I go to Melbourne and you get like eight to 10 pages of in the newspaper at breakfast, that’s, that’s just heaven for me.

So I’ve gotta get up half an hour early to read that, um, when I go to Melbourne. But I won’t talk about my team ’cause they’re pretty crap at the moment. Um, and anything to make you laugh. So I’m a, I’m a big Seinfeld fan. I grew up with Seinfeld, so any, any sorta dimwitted comedy, I’m, I’m, I’m very much into.

And you’ll see, you’ll see today I’m, I’m pretty dry. So yeah, that’s me.

Kate: Oh, you have mi-, uh, you have picked rather possibly the two worst people on this planet to talk sports with. So, um, unfortunately there will be no AFL talk today. I’m sorry, sorry.

Andrew: With the numbers. Stick to numbers

Kate: Yeah

Thomas: Yeah, I love that. The, uh, um, don’t take yourself seriously, but take the work seriously. And look, on that, tell us about your work now. Who do you help? How did you get involved in it?

Andrew: Yeah. So, um, it came out of my career. So as I said, I’m a chartered accountant, so I spent, you know, a big part of twenty years. Uh, I was an auditor for a bit, but then mainly working in companies. Started off doing financial accounting, but then I– um, after about ten years, I moved into a world where I was spending more time with non-finance than I was with finance, and worked out pretty quickly, or maybe after a year or two, that I just spent most of my time pretty much pissing people off and, and frustrating them.

So I had to go on a bit of a journey to get, get exec coaching and training into how to operate well with non-finance people. And my career took off after that, uh, to a point where I was also doing stuff with, with the CA, so Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, um, training people who are looking to do their CA, and you do workshops and mock exams and stuff.

And it sounds really boring, but I actually, I actually found I enjoyed it. So I enjoyed facilitating and you don’t realize the wisdom that you’ve collected over the years and, you know, when you share it. I, I, I really enjoyed that. So, armed with those two things, about ten years ago, I started training finance people to be better finance business partners, which is code for, okay, you’re very technically good at what you do, and you know the numbers back to front, and that’s all wonderful. But unless you can communicate to non-finance people, um, influence them, present well, craft good narrative, um, all that, solve problems, help them out. Unless you’re able to do that, literally all the work you do is, um, is sort of useless. No, no, no one leverages it. So, um, those softer skills I, I focused on and, and yeah, last ten years I, uh, now train finance people to be less finance-y and, and ideally more, more effective with what they do.

Take those technical skills and just dial them up a, a notch. Um, and you know, the people that I work with, their careers take off and the teams that I work with, um, finance sort of gets more of a seat in the room w- w– in their organization and, and you see it in the financial results of, of those organizations.

So it’s really cool. I’m very lucky. Um, COVID was good to me, which no doubt you guys had the same experience. I was doing most of my stuff in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and then you knew it, COVID came in and everything went online and, you know, now I can talk to people in Singapore, Dubai, London, if I want to stay up all night, um, which I, I don’t have a problem doing.

And yeah, it’s, uh, I couldn’t be happier and couldn’t be luckier, I guess. So it’s, it’s, it’s good fun.

Kate: Yeah, cool. Um, so one of the reasons that you kind of clicked with me, um, ’cause we’ve known each other for a couple of years now, um, and I’ve always really resonated with what you do because I used to work in finance business partnering for a couple of years, um, fairly early in my career when I was in finance.

And I worked with this guy, his name was Christian, and he was so good at, you know, what we did. Um, he was, like, senior to me, and I didn’t really understand why. I just knew that Christian was good. Um, and oh God, how long did I work with him? Maybe a year. And then on the last, the v- his very last day, he went off to get another job.

His very last day, he took me out to coffee and he was like, “Right, your spreadsheets are great, but what you’re missing is, like, the whole, this people side.” And I had this, like, 40-minute crash course from him, and I was so, not upset, but so irritated because I was like, “Why have you not said any of this for the past year that I’ve been working with you?”

Like, I was really, um, really frustrated at that. And so I felt like I got, like, a 40-minute taste of what I could have had coaching in for years. Um, so then I hear you talking about this stuff and I’m like, “Ah, it’s what Christian used to say,” um, and I’ve just really latched onto it. Um, you know, he said, you know, ’cause I said, you know, “Why haven’t you said any of this?”

And he was like, “Look, it’s not my place. I’m not your manager.” I’m like, “No, but you’re my senior.” So, um, I love that there is someone who is actually providing that service kind of wider to people

Andrew: Yeah. It’s a, um… I’d love to meet Christian. He sounds like a nice guy. Um,

Kate: Of course I do, yeah

Andrew: sounds like he knows what he’s doing as well. Um, my experience having worked with, like, thousands of finance people and, and even me personally, um, I was like you. You have this blind spot where all you hear in your industry is you’ve gotta know your accounting standards back to front.

You gotta know tax. If you don’t know Excel and, and, and don’t know how to t- you know, even do macros and Power BI, and if you’re not building agents in A- in AI, you learn all the… You get… Well, you get told all this stuff as you’re coming through because that, that early part of your career, they’re the tools that you use to make a job, job easier. you learn all those skills. What you don’t see is your leaders and your managers and everyone above you is taking the work that you do, and they’re going into forums, whether they’re boardrooms, exec meetings, um, you know, pitches, all that sort of stuff. They’re taking all of that information, and they’re, and they’re distilling it, and they’re communicating it to that audience in a slightly different way. You don’t see it, though. All you see is your boss come out and go, “Fantastic job. That work was really, really good.” Um, then when you get to that stage, like, isn’t working for me. I’m, I’m doing more of the same stuff, but it’s not, it’s not happening.” ‘Cause there’s a different skill set that’s required to sort of make that, that leap.

It’s like a canyon that you’ve gotta jump over. You don’t just… You know, it’s not linear. There’s a big step between doing the work and actually communicating it, um, especially when you’re working with non-finance people. They, they think differently. They expect different things. Um, so that, that transition’s quite hard, and it happens around the 10 or 15-year mark of most people’s careers.

Some people are just naturally good at it. Others have no idea. They do another Excel course, and they do, you know, another AI course, and they do… don’t do our courses, but they… ‘Cause if they did, they’d be brilliant. But, um, they, they do all these technical co- “Oh, I’ve gotta know that accounting standard back to front.”

Well, no, you don’t. You need to know the, the, the concepts at a, at a base level, and you need to know how to communicate that to the people that you’re dealing with. They don’t want to hear about subsection six, paragraph, or paragraph six, subsection C. They wanna know, what does that mean for me?

Kate: So on that, what does it mean then to be influential rather than just explaining numbers? Um, ’cause what I have always ex- well, what I used to expect is that, like, if I tell people the right numbers, then they should get it, right? Like, they should understand the implications

Andrew: No. Um, yeah, well, that’s the biggest mistake most of us make. If I give you all of the information and all of the data, and it’s all there, it’s complete, I’ve done a fantastic job. I’ve been working on it for three or four days. There can’t be any possible holes in it. So if I give that to you,

Kate: Yeah

Andrew: be no questions.

There’ll be no questions because it’s all there. It’s brilliant. What, what, what’s wrong with you? Why don’t you understand it? There’s a step between those two things, uh, and it’s called refining your message and distilling it down in a way that the other person understands. ‘Cause all the other person cares about when you’re just going blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and talking about all the wonderful work you did, which is honorable, all they’re sitting there thinking is, “What does it mean for me?” Like, “What does it mean for me? What do you want me to do? What, what options have I got here? What, what, what, what are the consequences of me understanding this?” And, and a lot of finance people don’t go to that level. They just go, “Here’s what’s happened, um, here’s sort of why it’s happened, and, um, you know, you know what to do, won’t you?” Um, and they leave it at that. So that’s good. You can get a career going by that, but you’ll tap out. You’ll, you’ll hit a ceiling. It’s… The next part of your career is navigating that space with non-finance people who actually execute the work, be it sales, marketing, operations, whatever. It’s being able to navigate that conversation with them around, “Oh, we could do this, we could do that.

What do, what do you think?” Um, you know, if we, if we… You know, the old moth or butterfly flaps its wings in Colombia, creates a tornado in Texas. that’s what a good finance person can do. They can connect things, and the functional guys don’t normally see it. You gotta be good at navigating that space.

Thomas: Hmm

Andrew: and if you get good at it, your career takes off

Thomas: And is that the sort of most important habit you would say that improves credibility or perhaps value or influence in the organization?

Andrew: In terms of a habit, uh, like the, the biggest habit to get away from and shift to is get off your screen and the spreadsheets and the, um, dashboards and the, and the data and go and talk to people, not even necessarily about that, just talk to people about what’s going on. And if you, if you’re connecting those up, that puts you in a good spot.

But a lot of people don’t even bother leaving their desk. They just, I’ve got to find an answer to this. I’ll just dig down to row 28,000. Now I’ll go to row 40,000, and I’ll just keep digging, digging, digging, and then come back up and dig down and come back up and dig down.” Before you know it, they’ve got 38 things that they want to talk to you about. As opposed to go and have a conversation with someone, and they’ll quickly highlight the one or two things that are, are really important. Then you can go back to your spreadsheet and go, “Oh, yeah, I can see that there and I can see that there. Oh, this is, this is- they didn’t say that. Maybe that I’ll go back and talk to them about it.” So that, that’s, that’s the biggest change I see is get away from your… Like as, as simple as it s-sounds, get away from your desk. Um, you’re gonna have skills and confidence and the ability to be able to do that. Um, but just digging further, locking yourself in a dark room and digging further isn’t gonna help you.

There’s a, there’s a, what do you, what do you call it? Diminishing returns, um, if you’re doing that

Kate: Again, I’m having flashbacks to Christian, um, constantly saying like, “You need to go. Like, get out of your desk, go up to level four, go and talk to your team that you’re meant to be supporting.” Um, uh, and I’m, I’m again just, yeah, realizing how, um, much I used to not do that at the time of, of being in finance.

Andrew: Hmm.

Kate: it’s both lovely and-

Andrew: talent out there though. There’s so many good people out there are just really good at what they do, but they,

Kate: Yeah

Andrew: they don’t brand themselves or market themsel- like what you want, like a good finance business partner, what you want is the people outside of when they’re thinking of doing something or they’ve got an initiative or a business case or a problem that they want to solve, you’re front of mind and they’ll come to you and get you involved.

That- that’s the, that’s the ideal, ideal space. Most of them don’t even know what finance are capable of. They don’t even know that there’s these people sitting there who, intelligent, pretty highly intelligent, pretty gifted, might struggle with how they get that point across that they could go and tap into because they don’t come out and talk to people.

They, they stay in their caves. Um, and it’s really disappointing as a function ’cause, know, I, I will, I will, um, stand pretty loud for finance. We’ve got some good stuff that can help people. Um, we’ve just got to work on the way we do it

Thomas: So w- like, what does it matter is kind of my thinking here. What does it matter to be better branded or to be more valuable? And, and like I know you’ve worked with thousands of data, of finance I should say, professionals. Like what does it… If I’m

Andrew: Yeah, yeah

Thomas: of value and delivering information, what’s the difference for me of doing it that way or putting in the extra work and communicating with people and finding those insights and answering those so what questions?

What, why? Why would I do that?

Andrew: Um, for yourself it’ll be your career. So open up, open up opportunities to work in more senior roles or roles across the business. For your organization, percentage points of margin is what it’s about. So, um, finance will find, you know, little tweaks that might make 0.2%, might make 0.5%, might make 3%. dollars to the bottom line. That’s financial performance of your organization. Now, the difference between bad business partnering and good business partnering, bad business partnering, those ideas stay on people’s desks and never get executed because, um, non-finance doesn’t know about them or they just pick them apart and won’t do them. Good business partnering, they, they help get them executed. That turns into dollars and cents on your bottom line, which is, you know, the language that finance talks. And, you know, I don’t, I, I don’t really know any businesses out there that don’t want to increase their EPS or increase their EBITDA or have more cash in the bank.

Like, not-for-profits maybe, but, um, the other way of looking at it is can you squeeze more from the lemon? Like, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to do that. Like, why wouldn’t you? Like, if someone said to me in my business, “Andrew, we’re gonna give you some ideas. You’ll have a million dollars more in your b- in your bank account.” thanks. Not for me. Like, n- uh, uh, no one would say that. So, um, there’s the value right there that finance brings, but there’s a difference between identifying it and getting it executed. That’s, that’s effectively what good business partnering does

Thomas: Yeah. And I, I, that makes sense selfishly. Like, if I can provide value to the business, if I can provide those options and be, let’s be honest, irreplaceable, like I’m not gonna be

Andrew: Yeah

Thomas: by, you know, ChatGPT or, uh, whichever AI, that makes, yeah,

Andrew: Yeah.

Thomas: sense

Andrew: But with your career as well, like for me, I got good at this stuff. I got coached at it, and I, I got into a role where I went from finance– I, I got put into a GM role where I was leading sales, marketing, all, all the functions. And like I wasn’t a salesperson or a marketing person, but because my skills were, were good enough to, to be able to lead those people and navigate through an area where they knew more about it than me, but I’m, I’m, I’m sort of guiding the ship for them. That is a skill set that is, that is hard to learn. But once you do, your, your opportunities, um, significantly from an individual perspective It’s not for everyone, though. Some people like the cave. Like, I like the cave. It’s good fun in there. N- nothing can go wrong. Um, but, you know, it’s pretty exciting outside the cave with the saber-toothed tigers chasing you

Kate: Uh, I will admit my absolute comfort zone is in front of a spreadsheet just by myself. Yeah. I’m a social person, but

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, work-wise

Andrew: Love it. I can cut, I can cut and paste everything. I’ve got two lives. I’ve got two lives. I tell people I’ve got two lives: the day before I discovered pivot tables, and the day after I discovered pivot tables. And, and they’re two fundamentally different lives. And, and, and I, and I’ll sit in a pivot table forever slicing and dicing everything.

Love it. Love it. But unless I go and talk to people about what I’m seeing and, and, and have a plan in my head around what are the consequences of what I’m seeing and

Kate: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: what’s the foresight around it, unless I develop that, you know, who cares how big the spreadsheet is?

Kate: Okay, so on that, so we, you and I, we love our spreadsheets, we love our pivot tables. Um, I’m, I’m a bit like you, I could happily pivot table all day. Um, so we, we love our detail, right? Like, we love getting into the weeds, but how do you know when is it too much for someone else? Like, how do you make that distinction between what is detail that still just belongs to me and what should belong to someone else?

Andrew: Yeah. Um, I try to tell people, think of the tree, right? The tre- the tree trunk with the branches. Okay, so you’re doing a piece of work. You gotta have clarity on what the tree trunk is, and the tree trunk is: What am I trying to achieve? What’s the objective? What’s the problem? Um, what’s the problem statement?

W- why am I doing this work? I’m doing it for a reason. That’s a tree trunk. you’ll go off and you’ll do some work, and you’ll… Like, if you just saw a tree in the middle of nowhere, it’s just a tree trunk. You’d just think that looks a, looks a little bit weird. You’ve gotta add some branches to it. So you go off and do some work and add some, add some branches to it and it, and it looks nice and neat, and you’re start- starting to understand, yeah, I’m sorting out that tree trunk now.

I’m adding some stuff to it. I’m developing context, and I’m working out. There’s a point where the tree develops a few too many branches and gets some shrubs around the bottom, and all of a sudden the tree trunk’s covered up and you’ve just got this mess of bush and branches. The best example I can give is ask my mother to tell a story.

She’ll tell a story and then she’ll go off and she’ll branch off somewhere else, start telling another story. 20 minutes later, she’s got about seven stories on the go and hasn’t dealt with the original one she started on. what a bushy tree looks like, and that’s what most finance people struggle with, is coming back to I’ve gotta come back to that trunk.

What am I solving for? What’s the problem? What’s the analysis trying to do? You gotta anchor back to that tru- trunk. And sure, I’ll have some shrubs there for a while, but you’ve gotta clip ’em back if you’re gonna go and talk to people. You’ve gotta clip it back so that the tree nice. It has a few branches, but it doesn’t cover up the trunk. Um, that’s the sort of metaphor or analogy I like to give people. Clarity on what is it you’re trying to do. Why are you doing this work? Why am I sending you into a spreadsheet that’s 100,000 lines long or getting you to drill into a dashboard or, don’t know, getting, uh, getting you to do, you know, some statistical sort of thing.

W- w- what? What, what’s the thing I’m do- That’s a trunk. Add some branches. Once a branch… Once you can’t see the trunk anymore, cut it back

Kate: I really like that metaphor. I think that’s a really nice, it’s a really neat, um, visual analogy. So how do you actually do that? How do you work out, like, what is the trunk? Um, and, and, you know, like, what if your stakeholders just don’t get it? Like, how do you, how do you determine what that trunk is?

Andrew: Yeah. Well, this is where the getting away from your desk is a subtlety. So

Kate: Hmm.

Andrew: like I can, I can make a great tree truck with just a ton of bushes all over it to sit in my, as I said before, sit in my cave and analyze it to death. The commun- the, sorry, the conversations with people as you’re going along will help you know where to trim and where not to dig and where, where to go.

Like I’ve, I’ve, I’ve done this bit of work. I’m seeing this. What do you think? how would this play out if you understood this? And regular stakeholder management and conversations with them helps you not dig down into a hole that you don’t need to go. So, um, this is why communication’s really, really important, is you just, you just get distracted on the detail and dig, dig, dig in ’cause we love the spreadsheets. Talking to people and s- and them saying, “Don’t worry about that. We, we know about that. We did that work about six months ago,” or, um, you know, “John’s looking after that. Don’t worry.” That, that’s good to know, and you get it through constantly talking to people, and you only get that by leaving your desk and knowing who to talk to about what

Kate: Yep, yep, yep. Um, again, it comes back to that, that same thing of getting away from your desk and going to talk to people. It’s the same thing over and over, isn’t it?

Andrew: It saves you a lot of time. It feels like it takes you more, but it saves you a lot of time. I’ve, I’ve just, like, I use a whiteboard more than spreadsheets these days. You get to a point in your career where spreadsheets, that afterwards, but you do most of the stuff on the whiteboard, and you’re doing it with other people, and you sort of get a feel for the numbers. And then you go away, and you do the spreadsheet for two days, and you build a model, and oh, funnily enough, it spits out nearly the exact same number. It’s not exactly the same, but directionally it’s gonna be, gonna be o-okay. When you start to understand that, so you know your business well enough and you know, you know how things are all connected and you can do it on whiteboards and texters, that’s wh- that’s when you’re in a good spot.

That’s when you’re in a good spot. And the spreadsheets become less important. Well, they become less effective. They’re nearly like a confirmation of what you’ve done. The problem is, once you’ve done it on the whiteboard and everyone else walks off, they’re like, “Oh, we’ve nailed that.” And you’ve got two more days of work to, just to be sure, just to be sure.

And sees that work or cares for it, but you’ve still gotta do it because if you missed something. Like that’s, that’s, that’s our role, to make sure you didn’t miss something. So, yeah

Kate: So we’re not discounting accuracy here at all. But yeah, just need to make that clear

Andrew: No, one number’s wrong, they’re all wrong. So you, you gotta, you gotta under- understand that. We’re conditioned on that. Um,

Kate: Yeah

Andrew: the hardest thing is, um, if one number’s wrong, they’re all wrong, and completeness is a thing in the world of finance. Um, directionally right’s also a thing, and that’s, that’s a more effective place to be, especially when you’re talking about the future and solving problems and things you don’t know about or haven’t seen before or… They’re, they’re murky. They’re murky and messy

Thomas: And that, that being directionally… I mean, we’re big advocates of whip out a whiteboard or a, you know, blank sheet of paper and draw some stuff. Um, that being directionally correct seems to do really well. ‘Cause, like every organization we work with, I imagine it’s gonna be the same with you, there’s always the issue that we have incomplete data. We couldn’t possibly draw a forecast or a conclusion ’cause we’re missing, 1, 5, 10% of the data.

Andrew: Right

Thomas: that being… Having direction is, like super important, right? Like that is very helpful and then, you know, we can work on accuracy over time, right?

Andrew: Yeah. Well, um, this is where when you’re working with other people, ’cause, ’cause it’s not just you doing the work, you’re working with other people, and if you’re sitting in a room with four or five, you’ve got some data, they’ve got some different data, and they’re trying to work it out and mesh it together, and it, feels like this.

Does it feel like that to you? Yeah, it feels like that. W- w- what, what would you think if we, if we went down this path? Would, would, would that, would that w- And it’s, it’s, it’s gray. It’s gray, and as I said before, it’s messy and murky. Um, just uncomfortable for most finance people because we’re conditioned, here’s the facts, here’s the answer. A leads to B. Um, you know, black and white, all that sort of stuff. Um, so this messy, murky, oh, it’s okay to be wrong. It’s okay to risk mitigate. It’s okay to, you know, okay, we haven’t got everything, so how about we do a little bit, and if it works, do more of it, and if it doesn’t, do less of it. That, that’s a real head, head smash for most finance people. So, um, yeah, as you get more senior, you learn, you learn that it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay to be wrong, and then you gotta craft the, craft the political crap that goes along with explaining why you were wrong at a certain point in time. Um, you know, that’s, that’s a whole another lesson for another day.

Thomas: Makes a lot of sense though, being very black and white with the data, like it’s it’s a one or a zero, it’s a yes or a no, it’s up or it’s down. Um, and you know, I g- uh, we know we can get really focused in any kind of data to have the right answer, have the correct answer, rather than asking those right questions.

I, I’m curious, like does that, does that make sense? And then what makes a good business question? Like if we’re sort of maybe thinking about moving from being an informer to an influencer, what’s some good questions to ask of stakeholders?

Andrew: Oh, good one. I’d say, um, I always say you don’t need to know the answers, you just need to know the questions. Right? You don’t even need to know the questions, you just need to know the types of questions. So I can go into a room knowing nothing. Like a lot of finance people, and probably the people you work with, they have this confidence problem.

I’m gonna go into a room, what if I don’t know stuff as well as everyone else? And, you know, what if I unravel? And, you know, the old imposter syndrome and that sort of stuff. Everyone has it. I can walk into a room and know nothing about what those people are talking about, and I can still navigate that room, be influential, find out stuff, and push the conversation in the direction that I want.

And it’s all through the types of questions that you ask. So not specific questions, but the two best, what and how. Start questions with what and how, and you’ll be amazed how little you need to know about something, but you can find out from other people, ’cause they’ll fill in the gaps. A really broad what question is gonna give you information from which you can ask another what or how question, from which you can ask another one, and you just let them do the talking It’s amazing how much information and, knowledge you don’t find when you’re talking But when others talk, oh, it’s just, just keep giving it to me. But

Kate: All right,

Andrew: hard. That’s hard because most technical experts want to go into a room and tell people what’s going on. “This is what’s going on. Here’s my recommendation. This is what we must, need, and should do.” And everyone else sits in the room and goes, “Thanks for that, Andrew. You, um, y- I know you told us that we must, need, and should, but you must, need, and should just go back to finance for a little bit while we think about this.” Um, as opposed to going into a, going into a room and showing people what’s happening and asking some good questions about and exploring things and have them talk and navigate it while you’re just orchestrating it. that’s completely different. But that, that’s, it’s easily done and it’s way more, um, influential, um, impactful, all those sorts of things

Kate: It’s so interesting, isn’t it, that, um, communication skills are so much about listening almost more than, than communicating than speaking, hey?

Andrew: Yeah.

Kate: Mm.

Andrew: Um, yeah, the, if you can talk less, you’re in a good spot. That’s a

Kate: Hmm. Yeah. Yep, yep.

Thomas: My,

Kate: let’s

Thomas: my dad used to always say, this is years ago, he’d say, “You can’t, you can’t learn a thing while your mouth’s open.” And

Andrew: Yeah. Yep. It’s like when, um, when your screen was lagging before, Kate, and me and Thomas are sitting here waiting for you to say something, and ’cause you’re not saying anything, what do we feel like we need to do? We feel like we need to say something. Um, so you don’t need to … If you don’t say anything, guess what the other people will do? They’ll talk,

Kate: Yeah

Andrew: with sales and marketing. You won’t shut them up. They’ll just keep, just keep talking. And it’s gold. Just keep giving me the info, guys. Thanks

Kate: So true. Okay, I wanna move forward toward the future. Um, again, Andrew, one of the reasons we really wanted to have you on

is ’cause you have one of the best business taglines ever, which is, “Once the robots arrive, the only thing left will be business partnering.” I love it. Um, and you’ve had this for years. You’ve had this way before AI was, like, a big topic. Um, so with that in mind, what skills should pe-pe- should people be focusing on, um, other than those, you know, straight technical ones?

What skills should especially finance people be focusing on in the future, in the next few years?

Andrew: alwa- I’m always fascinated by… ‘Cause that’s quite a provocative tagline. So I worked with some people before, and in 2023 I went, went out on my own and I said, “I need a strapline.” So I went with that. I thought, “That’ll poke the bear a bit.” Um, I get a lot of feedback on it, um, that people… Like, it just sums up exactly what you do.

Now, don’t get me wrong, AI massively important. I use AI all the time. Um, you know, without it I’d be… Would I be smarter or dumber? I don’t know what I’d be. I’d effective, I know that. So I love AI, but the skills to be good at AI and the skills to, um, you know, where AI’s got to now, where people are now building agents and getting it to do repetitive tasks for you. The skills to build all that’s all wonderful. What happens once it’s in? Because one of two things are gonna happen in the fi- if I talk to the finance world, one of two things is gonna happen. A finance leader is then going to downsize their team ’cause they don’t need people anymore. They’ve got agents doing, know, 80% of the work.

So they’ll downsize their team and a very efficient finance function that’s just doing all the compliance, reporting, regulatory stuff, really quick, really accurately. Beautiful. Or they’ll redeploy that resource. So these people who are doing that stuff are now, you know, need to… You got agents and AI doing it. What are we gonna do with those people now? Well, they need to go out and add value in finance now. That’s a different skill set. Being able to do that is very, very… The skills required to do that and, maneuver your way through other functions and execute ideas and all that sort of…

Very different to setting up process, writing a script, getting an AI bot to do it, and all that sort of stuff. So that’s why we say once the robots arrive, the only thing left will be business partnering, ’cause you either won’t have a job or you’re gonna have to learn these skills and the, and the, and the longer it takes you to do it, the better.

The, the, the, um… What’s the word? The paradox or the paradigm to it is, um, people coming through their career. So the junior level roles, the entry level roles and the early stage, you know, four or five years experience, um, how do you get to 10 years experience if you, if you’re gonna be doing these things that AI are doing now?

So who, who… Where do you get experience from? If, if AI is doing the stuff that people who, with four or five years experience used to do, how do you get four or five years experience if the robots are doing it? That, that’s the weird little paradigm that I’ll be interested to see how it plays out

Thomas: There, there’s your next challenge to solve in the business, man, is, uh,

Andrew: Yeah. We’ll just take him away for three years and train him for three years on it,

Thomas: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: and then bring him back. We’ll make, we’ll make a fortune if we train him for three years.

Thomas: I mean, the point here is like AI is gonna do the grunt work, but it’s not gonna get rid of people. Like, it’ll be good luck getting the output of the robot to

Andrew: Yeah

Thomas: get people to pay attention to the report or what have you, right? There’s still humans required for human-to-human communication, yeah?

Andrew: Yeah. Um, AI will do the cave work. So it’ll do the stuff that you can sit in your cave, your dark room, never have to talk to people. It’ll do all that. Um, so what are you gonna do if AI is doing that? You’re going to have to go and talk to people or there’s nothing for you here. You’ll probably have to go and find something else to do.

Thomas: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: If you get good at it though, you’re very valuable. As I said, if other people in the business, you’re front of mind when they’ve got a problem or an issue or something that they need to solve for, positions you as, as a really valuable tool. Very busy, but you know, don’t let busy be a, um, a barrier to your success

Kate: Um, it almost reminds me of like, I mean, not that I was there, but in the ’80s, um, maybe, maybe you were there, Andrew,

Andrew: Oh, yeah, that was it

Kate: when computers, um, really became a big thing in the workplace, and it was like, “Oh, email’s gonna replace people. Um, it’s gonna make us, you know, less busy and, and be so efficient.” Um,

Andrew: Don’t know if I

Kate: oh. Yeah,

Andrew: don’t know if I was around that early. I mean,

Kate: okay

Andrew: have been, that might have been when electricity was invented. But, um, like spreadsheets. Spreadsheets were gonna replace everything.

Kate: That’s it

Andrew: the AI is gonna replace a lot more, but it, but, you know, the Industrial Revolution’s the same.

W- we’ll, we will evolve. We will evolve, and the natural evolution is all of the data and information is gonna be there at the click of your fingers. Now what are you gonna do with it? Like, w- what are you gonna… Instead of a life where you spent building it and cleaning it and running reports and writing commentary, and, “Oh, now I’ve got two days before the next month end,” um, now you’ve got 20 days before the next month end.

So what are you gonna do with that? L- like, that’s, that’s the, that’s the question mark that’s gonna be over every finance team, I think

Thomas: Must, must have saved a lot of time from going from… I wasn’t around in the ’80s or, like, pre-computers. Must have saved a lot of time. We went from, like, ledgers where you had to sit there with a calculator and hand write. Like,

Andrew: Kalamazoo.

Thomas: just mapped it

Andrew: Kalamazoo, yeah. They,

Thomas: Yeah

Andrew: I– The first ever audit I did, they gave me, it was a, um, it was a body corporate, and they gave me a Kalamazoo. It was this big thick thing with all the numbers in. And the amount of time I spent checking the ads. So you, you like a depreciation schedule, and you just gotta check the ads in case they did it on Excel and added in some lines and did it manually.

That was an audit procedure: check the ads. I, I couldn’t imagine any auditor doing that ever

Kate: I, oh, I’ve never

Andrew: that add up? Yeah, it adds up

Thomas: Yeah

Kate: that’s crazy. I’ve never been in, um, a world without, in a workplace without Excel. That’s, um, yeah, just not something I’ve ever experienced

Andrew: Imagine that. Imagine how painful that would be. Yeah. You just have a whiteboard and a pen, Kate. Imagine the damage you can do

Kate: Yeah

Thomas: Pretty colors and pictures. Look, um, I’m curious, Andrew, what’s… If you could ban, like, one phrase, one thing, one trope from corporate presentations tomorrow, would it be? What really grinds your gears?

Andrew: That’s the way we’ve always done it.

Thomas: Got it.

Andrew: No, just out. Like, get out, don’t come back. Grab your jacket, don’t come back. That’s the way we’ve always done it. That just, that just does my head in. I, I, that’s like I know, I know that’s the way we’ve always done it. That’s the problem. Um, I wanna see how we can change it.

Um, so yeah, that one. And it just, there’s a whole lot of mindset attached to it that’s just, just is really frustrating for, for someone like me who wants to change, change the world one spreadsheet at a time

Thomas: Change the world one spreadsheet at a time

Andrew: what

Kate: tagline, yeah

Andrew: else do I get frustrated with? That, that used to, that used to really grind my gears a lot, just, “Oh, no, that’s, that’s the way I’ve always done it.” Oh, yeah

Thomas: Yeah, it hurts my feelings just like hearing you say that, so yeah

Andrew: Yeah. I, I, don’t get me started on, um, uh, “I’m really offended.” Th- that, that’s a, that’s a p- podcast for a whole nother time. Like, I, I, um… great. I, like, I, I get you’re offended, but, but it’s not gonna help us solve this issue. So, um, yeah. I don’t know whether you wanna keep that in the podcast, but I just…

I, I hate, I hate, I hate it when people use, “Uh, I’m really offended,” to, to, just to take the conversation to a, to a, just an unproductive place as opposed to trying to solve something.

Kate: No, fair enough.

Andrew: Mm.

Kate: So in your time, Andrew, then, um, is there a book or a resource or something, what started you on this? H- what influenced you in how you communicate?

Andrew: Yeah. Uh, this is another one I hate. Yeah, good question. Good question. I hate it when people say that c- especially when they say it to every question you ask. But, um, so my journey started when I, when I got exec coached, and that’s when I started to really go into this self- self-help space and, um, try and improve myself and realize, you know, there’s a thousand ways you can skin a cat and there’s, you know, it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it that’s, that’s important.

So there’s some classics out there that are, that are really, really obvious. Um, I did the seven, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Um,

Kate: Yeah

Andrew: a four-day course on that where they gave you the book. So you literally did the course, and you got the book with the course. That fundamentally changed the way I, the way I operate.

I used to walk through the airport and see that book and think, “Oh, that looks a bit, mm-mm. I don’t know. Don’t know if I’d read that.” But the course fundamentally changed how I approach things and, and, and that sort of stuff.

Kate: Wow

Andrew: Stephen, Stephen Covey, if you don’t know that one. The other one I

Kate: Yeah.

Andrew: I always start with in my workshops is, um, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by a guy called Marshall Goldsmith. Um, um… That- that’s a good one to say got you here won’t get you there. So the skills that you got rewarded for, um, and all the things you were really good at, you’re in this role, you need some different skills, and more of them isn’t going to help you. You have to develop some, you know, communication, influencing, all that sort of stuff.

So that’s a really good entry-level book the behaviors around that. Um, so they’re the

Kate: one that I haven’t heard of. I have heard of, I mean, Stephen Covey, of course, um, and Seven Habits, that’s another classic, but, um, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There is a new one for me.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s

Kate: got you-

Andrew: good one. I got– I, I moved into my house, I’ve taken my bookcase out ’cause I gotta paint it and lighten up the room a bit. But I, I was over here and I was putting all the books on going, “Oh, I’ve gotta read that one again.” It was, it was quite geeky and I was nerding out in my corner of my office.

But, um, you don’t realize how many books that you, that you go through. And I, and I’m open to, I’m open to, to all sorts of ones

Thomas: Then you, you forget which ones you have written and what the excellent bits were. look, all right, Andrew, um, where, where can people find you? If they love the sound of your voice and the look of your head, where can they find, where can they find more of it?

Andrew: I don’t know, I don’t know if I’ve ever had someone say, “Look, I love the dulcet tones of Andrew Jepson’s late night FM voice. I could just listen to that all day long.” I’ve never really had that, and I, and I have got a good ear for radio. So, um, if they wanna see more of them we’ll, we’ll have to, might have to do some psychometric testing.

But, uh, my website www.financebusinesspartnering.com. You can’t really screw that one up. I’m not gonna, not gonna spell that out for you. Um, that talks about all the programs and everything that we do. We, we do a lot with a lot of corporates. About to 90% of my, my work is with corporate teams in, in companies. Um, we do an individual program as well for those who are in small teams or individuals who just wanna, wanna get ahead. But yeah, the website financebusinesspartnering.com is the best place. LinkedIn, uh, if you go on linkedin.com/financebusinesspartnering, you’ll see my little profile pop up. So you can, you can, um, you can join me there and, and have a chat and yeah. Um, we offer like a free call for people who, who, um, who might be struggling in this space or need help. And, and the purpose of that is just to see if and how we can help them. And ideally we can in 20 minutes. So, yeah, they’re the two best places to find me. I won’t give you my mobile number, that, that’s a bit weird

Thomas: We’ll, uh, yeah, look, I’ll drop a link, both the website and LinkedIn in the description. Um, you said you’re based in Sydney. You work all around the world. You do everything

Andrew: Yeah.

Thomas: right?

Andrew: Yeah, about, about 80% of what I do is online. So, um, yeah, if you’re anywhere in the world, I can, I can work with your team. Um, a, a lot of finance teams these days are geographically dispersed, so, um, it works well for me. But, um, physically in Sydney I do, I do, I do a lot of stuff face-to-face Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Auckland funnily, funnily enough.

So, or New Zealand, um, anywhere in New Zealand. So I do do, do do face-to-face. Costs the same so, you know, I just leave it up to the client, um, for what their preference is. So, yeah.

Thomas: Brilliant. Oh, look, next time you’re in Brisbane, we need to catch up for a coffee or dinner or whatever it is we need to do. But, uh,

Andrew: Get a spreadsheet out. Get a spreadsheet out and smash out a spreadsheet and a pivot table. That’d be good

Kate: Yeah.

Thomas: let’s do a recreational spreadsheet again. That was good, good times.

Andrew: Reconcile your bank account, it’d be unreal.

Thomas: Oh, you know it. Oh, there’s so many charts. Look, thank you so much, Andrew, for spending time with us. Great to catch up again. Uh, you know, we’ve known each other for, for years, but, uh, thanks for your time. Thanks for sharing, uh, on the, on the, on the podcast

Andrew: a problem, and keep up the good work, guys. You’re doing some good stuff in this space. Um, yeah, keep it up

Kate: Thank you for being with us today. Head to presentationboss.com.au/podcast where you’ll find all of the resources and links from the show

Thomas: If you can think of somebody who you think would be really good on this show, or maybe you have something of value to share as well, email us, podcast@presentationboss.com.au

Kate: And of course, we do rely on you to share the information in this podcast. If you found value in today’s show, please recommend us to a friend

Thomas: That’s it. Have a great week