Count Me In®

Contact Will: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williampeng/

Full Episode Transcript:
Neha: (00:05)
 Welcome back for another episode of Count Me In. I'm your host Neha Lagoo Ratnakar. And this is IMA's podcast talking about all things that affect the accounting and finance world. Our featured guest for today is the CEO and co-founder at Northstar, Will Peng. Will co-founded Northstar, a financial wellness and benefits platform because of his inspiration by the positive change FinTech can have on people's lives. He set out to solve the inequality of our financial guidance and shares his insights with us as he discusses the inclusive and equitable support employees can receive from FinTech related apps and products. To hear more about how FinTech can improve financial stability, keep listening as we head over to the conversation now. 
 
 Mitch: (01:02)
 So Will, I know your history, right? That kind of led you into this FinTech space and a lot of what you do is about financial guidance. So what I would like to first start off our conversation with is asking you how will emerging FinTech really help solve some of these financial problems that a lot of individuals are facing today? 
 
 Will: (01:23)
 Yeah, this, this is a really interesting question because of my background. I started my career as a product designer. So thinking about the ways that behavioral psychology influences or limits people from making change with their finances, but also my time as a venture capitalist, investing in startups, a lot of FinTech startups seeing the new technology that enables us to solve a lot of these classic problems I've been around for, for a long time. And first and foremost, I think what's most exciting that technology can actually influence personal finances is the idea of financial accessibility. So who has access to financial advisors, financial best practices and for the longest time, financial advice has been mostly limited to people who already have money, people who are wealthy already. And if you look at this from first principles, the underlying reason is that the ways in which we deliver financial advice, and this is pretty broad definition, right? 
 
 Will: (02:29)
 Financial advice can be financial planning. It can be tax advice. It could be investment advice. The ways that we have delivered this advice have primarily been a hundred percent human driven. And when advice is human driven, you're limited kind of by the number of hours in the day, you can do the math pretty simply you have maybe a 40 hour work week. And if you're a financial planner, you have 60 to 90 minute sessions, and pretty quickly you realize that you need to charge a certain floor for your hourly rate. If you're a fee only financial advisor, and then you also see new business models around non fee only advisors who take commissions who referral fees and asset management fees. And that's a set for topic that we can talk about. 
 
 Will: (03:24)
 But I'm generally a proponent of fee only models because it most closely aligns the advisor with the client. But so, so if you think about financial accessibility from that perspective it's really exciting to think about the ways that technology can more scalably deliver advice both in the creation of the plans, as well as the delivery of the plans. And once you do that, you actually lower the floor of what you need to charge in order to stay in business. And so you kind of see this in, for example, the robo advisor world low cost index funds have been around for a while. But the emergence of robo advisors has been a really interesting development because now anybody can connect, get access to low cost index funds with a great user experience and, and invest with, with low minimums and this all came about because of technology. And so that market is relatively mature now I dunno if you saw recently that UBS acquired wealth front so really interesting thing about not only that specific vertical, but across all different verticals, what are the ways in which technology is making personal finances more accessible? 
 
 Mitch: (04:43)
 Yeah, it's really interesting because, you know, as we talk about making things more accessible and, you know, you mentioned a lot of the opportunities presented by technology for private finance and, you know, obviously many of our listeners, more the corporate finance, but still technology enabling a little bit more foresight and, and, you know, more data available, another theme in line with technology and kind of the profession. And also what you're doing here is making some of these resources essentially more inclusive and equitable, right? So you talked a little bit about kind of lowering that floor, but far as employees, you know, specifically in the workforce, how is this you know, equitable and inclusive relate to technology? 
 
 Will: (05:31)
 Yeah. So well, this is I'm glad you asked this question because this is a big part of what we do here at NorthStar. And we have this saying that financial wellness starts at work, and it's this fundamental idea that especially in the US, so much of our not only financial lives, but also our whole lives center around work. And what I mean by that is that work is the primary source of wealth creation for the majority of people. You get your salary, your retirement accounts, but you also get your health insurance plans through work. This whole idea of employer sponsored plans and a whole set of perks. If you work at a tech company, for example, you get equity compensation, and that's oftentimes really difficult to understand. So there's an education gap not only for equity, but just for personal finances in general. 
 
 Will: (06:18)
 And if you look at it from a macro perspective, we've really shifted away from defined benefit pension plans where my father still has a pension plan and so hopefully he can retire soon and he'll get a kind of predefined payout, but we you've moved into a world of defined contribution plans like 401k plans and HSAs and FSAs and the variety of things that you'd get from your employer have increased. Whereas your total compensation package was relatively simple in the past. Now it's really complicated. And our education system around finances and the support systems through to help people make the best decisions, best financial decisions have not caught up. And it's an unreasonable expectation that employees individuals know how to choose the right retirement plan or figure out how much you should put into your retirement plan each month, or how to use an HSA or how what's the best health insurance plan for me. 
 
 Will: (07:27)
 I think the what's been really interesting to see the rhetoric around policy has been around the idea of choice where if you remember from the healthcare reform debates there is this idea of choice and it's true that the HSAs are incredibly powerful. They have what's called triple tax savings that most people don't know about. But it requires back to the point I made earlier about behavioral psychology, because it is so complex. Most people don't utilize them. And so even though it's a powerful option, most people don't use it, which means that the choice is a double-edged sword. So you need to, you need to pair choice with education and advice on how to best utilize these new tools. So I think there's a really interesting responsibility that employers have today to not only give people the tools, but also the advice to make those best decisions for themselves. 
 
 Mitch: (08:34)
 And let's, you know, continue on this topic and the conversation...

Connect with Dr. Lewis

Full Transcript:
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Mitch Roshong, and you are listening to episode number 177 of our series. Today's conversation features Dr. Anton Lewis, an associate professor of accounting at Valparaiso University, whose research investigates the experience of black accountants in the profession and promotes equitable racial representation. In his conversation with my co-host Adam, Dr. Lewis talks about DE&I in accounting, common flaws relating to diversity equity and inclusion in the workplace, as well as what can be done and what he is already doing to advance and improve equitable representation across the industry. Keep listening as we head over to the conversation now. 
 
Adam: (00:59)
So Anton, historically conversation about race and the workplace, particularly within accounting simply have not happened. Now, there have been great achievements in DE&I, but there's still much room for improvement in our industry. Why do you think that is? 
 
Anton: (01:16)
Adam, If I had to really give you an answer to that, I actually think it is because we in society and in particular US society have a great deal of problems talking about the subject of race and racial representation. It's almost a taboo subject in many ways. So the problem is we know we have poor representation currently. We know we've historically had poor representation, but nobody really wants to talk about why that is because race and racism are sticky, unpleasant subjects to talk about. And part of what seems to be my life's cause now is a core trying to provoke a conversation around this area, which is not polarizing, which is almost impossible to do by definition. But to my mind, if we can't have a conversation about race, racism, why we have poor black representation in our accounting profession and have had historically, and, you know, if we can't have this conversation and it be at two polar opposite ends to this, but yet still respect each other, each one another's views, we will not actually significantly change the situation. We will not deal with this problem effectively. And to my mind, that has kind of been the status quo for quite some time. 
 
Adam: (02:58)
Yeah, that makes sense. I think I've seen that as well, but as we specifically like focus in on accounting, as you kind of did there at the end, you are often the only person of color in a predominantly white workplace day in and day out, you know, how have you handled that and what have you done to advance the way that is perceived or how you feel about it? 
 
Anton: (03:18)
It's tricky, isn't it? There are those critical theorists, critical race theorists among others who talk about this environmental microaggression that occurs being the only black person in an accounting organization or any other organization that when you step foot in the building of which you work and you are one of the three people out of 500 that work there without anybody saying anything without anybody saying you don't belong, you feel it in the very walls of the institution you're in, and it can be a quite effective way of pushing those of difference out of the doors in terms of how one deals with that. It's difficult. the entire reason why I look at the area of race and racism and where I'm originally from, from Britain as you may hear in my accent when I was a jobing accountant, so to speak, that would happen to me all the time. 
 
Anton: (04:25)
And it's the reason that I began to look at this subject topic, cause I always wanted to know, well, why am I the only one there? And as I was experiencing this, I really wanted to have other people of color, other black people, other black professionals, ironically, to talk about this, to say, I'm not going mad. Am I, are you having this feeling as well? And the truth of the matter if they just weren't there and it becomes a circular problem, right? What am I doing to try to change this? Because I'm an accounting professor. One of the things I try to do is encourage now I'm here in the United States, as many African Americans as many black accountants as I can into profession with more numbers, it kind of gets rid of that feeling of being alone. But unfortunately it's still a very difficult process. 
 
Anton: (05:17)
Another thing that I've tried to do is write more publicly in things like the CPA journal. I've tried to increase my social media presence. I've tried to reach out with my own podcast, Counting Black and White Beans as an idea to be able to be used as a resource to allow those black accountants who feel isolated, who are feeling a little bit lost, let them know that this is not unusual, that this is actually quite common, whether it's in the United Kingdom or the United States, and for them to have a feeling of kinship, of a kindred kind of effect for one of a better word kind of saying you're in, we're in this together. And so I'm afraid to say, Adam, if you're looking for an absolute definite answer as to how does one deal with the isolation often of being one of the few black people within an accounting environment, I can't give you any firm answers to that. I suspect it's as difficult to deal with today. As I found it decades ago, 
 
Adam: (06:27)
I'd imagine it is, it's not easy being underrepresented in any profession. But for the black accountant, there has to be various stereotypes that are there tales. Can you explain how or why these stereotypes exist and what impact that misinformation has? 
 
Anton: (06:42)
Yeah. And again, these stereotypes exist in our profession and other professions as well. Because we, in my opinion, and many others live in a racialized environment, you know, we, our racialized views of those who are different from ourselves, don't stop at the doors of the organizations that we work in. Some of the traditional stereotypes that black accountants often have to deal with that I've found in my research and many other's is one would be of being angry. If you are a black male accountant, and I should be clear here, there are different stereotypes often for black women accountants and black male accountants. So for black male accountants, anger is often an issue. So, you know, if one is out on an audit and you find something has come up and you're in the middle of a meeting with your team to try to address this issue and tempers become a little bit frayed. 
 
Anton: (07:54)
If you are the black accountant, you understand clearly that you cannot be passionate like your white colleagues, because that is seen as being angry and unprofessional and unbecoming, that latitude is not afforded to you. And of course it makes it difficult in terms of impression management. Once we come around and look at performance evaluations and it may come up that you are unprofessional, angry, you scare inverted clients. On the polar opposite, perhaps would be the experience that many black women professionals have of being seen as the Sapphire, this steely hard unemotional unempathetic professional that is cold sometimes also can be angry in that negative way. But the idea here is that she is not a team player. She is overbearing she's quintessentially, anti feminine or unfeminine, if you like in this setting and be it with just these two examples of stereotypes that you mentioned that are often prevalent to the black accounting or black professional experience, whether it's being too angry, if you are a black male accountant or being positioned as Sapphire as a black woman accountant, both positionalities for wont of bette...

Contact Paul Ruppert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulruppertintl/

Full Transcript:
Adam: (00:05)
Hey everyone. Thank you for coming back to listen to another episode of Count Me In, I am your host Adam Larson, and this is episode 176 of our series. As we hold conversations about various topics impacting the accounting and finance world, one of the underlying themes across most is strategy. In this episode, you'll hear from Paul Ruppert, an ambidextrous executive with deep experience in startups, as well as global fortune 100 enterprises who shares as knowledge and expertise on strategic partnerships. Keep listening to hear more about how the finance team can best support large strategic initiatives for the organization.
 
Mitch: (00:50)
So as we get through today's conversation, we're gonna look at some concepts around strategy, strategic partnerships, but I think it's first important to kick off what are some of the biggest considerations or are challenges that many are facing in today's business landscape?
 
Paul: (01:06)
I think, you know, many people get into business thinking that there's some linearity from a plus B plus C equals D equation, but in reality, it's all about adaptability and change. And change is not only the change that you experience when you start facing various types of problems and challenges and friction points, but also your ability to manifest change, create that change and live through that change. I've been involved in businesses on a global basis and how I approach the business in the US was very different than I was approaching the business when I was in Hong Kong or in Europe. And that adaptability, that agility as it's often described, you know, in technology is really the the watch word more than anything else, in my view. You know, there's, as I mentioned earlier, earlier before our call, I don't believe in a silver bullet solution.
 
Mitch: (02:13)
And as we talk about adaptability, agility, you know, the bottom line is we are looking to advance the business, right, advance the function and adapt to modern advancements. And I think you just kind of mentioned briefly technology here, but without having a crystal ball and being able to see into the future perfectly, what does the future of business really look like? And, you know, as we continue to adapt and be agile, what are we really preparing for? What is the future of the business landscape look like?
 
Paul: (02:45)
Well, you know, that's a big, big question in the context of where is everything going. If you just look at our immediate past in past history, you know, three years ago, I'm involved in the text messaging business and it's been around, it's how, you know, enterprises communicate and connect with end consumers. And we live through it on a day to day basis. When you get tested for what's called a one time password, you know, you just proving that you are who you are. And the business let's say three plus years ago was moving steadily along. And let's say let's call grocery store rates, meaning about three to 5% growth rate. This is a fairly established industry. You know, it's roughly about $200 billion of business globally. It's quite large, but people don't really experience on a day to day basis relative to cost and effect if you will, but they still utilize it.
 
Paul: (03:47)
And since the pandemic, because of the dynamics of how we behave as human beings and being working from home environments and the fact that we are now utilizing zoom and video, et cetera, the reality is that the messaging business has grown to about 30% CAGR for the next three years is what the expectation is. And I am of the belief that once human beings experience something much more convenient for them, they usually don't turn backwards and want to do something less convenient. Okay. So in all of that context, that's kind of the dynamics of where we are going, what it looks like and the over the horizon perspective, the crystal ball, as you characterized it is that your expectations often may be unexpected. Things may not go as you think they are going. And there's lots of converging factors, you know, digitalization prior to COVID, the growth of it, the speed of it, the means in which many business were able to quickly and with great agility pivot to new types of initiatives, you know, I can talk about call centers that were stripped down from being on premise in the course of four to five days and redistributed to the the call center rep's homes, because everybody shifted, you know, we couldn't be in large groups any longer, it was just too unsafe.
 
Mitch: (05:22)
Now a lot of our listeners are in, you know, the business of opportunity recognition. And I know it's very difficult and maybe unexpected as some of these you know, evolutions arise. You know, we first spoke, I know you mentioned something along the lines of you know, the business landscape reaching 6G. So with some of this uncertainty but so much opportunity, what can our listeners really take away you know, from the idea or what should they be doing really to maybe open their eyes a little bit and see what this opportunity means for their individual businesses,
 
Paul: (06:03)
Right. Yeah. You know, we all watch well, many of us watch professional football, the NFL on weekends, and, you know, the number of mobile phone companies like principally T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon all talking about 5G. And then if you were to turn to your spouse or friend that you're watching the game with and ask the question, so why is 5G better than 4G outside of the reach? You know the reality there is that what we're doing right now is probably gonna be the, one of the big manifestations of 5G value, which is video and speed and processing. And so as we then move to 6G, then it becomes much more engaged on such things as what's called sentiment and intent. So you might be reaching out to, you know, let's say your mobile phone provider, because you've got an issue with your iPhone or something along those lines and that inbound call or inbound message or whatever it might be that platform that you're utilizing to connect with your provider, they already have a sense of what your intent is.
 
Paul: (07:17)
Why are you calling, you know, and that's, you know, consumer data products and platforms that are looking at combining your personal behavior, as well as the fact that you might have an iPhone eight. And, you know, the lifespan of that iPhone eight is probably five years past it's optimal performance. And so soon as they start talking to you, whether or human being, or not, whether it's a chatbot that may come into the dialogue as to, would you like to upgrade your phone? We see that it's six, seven years old, something along those lines, that's the kind of stuff that'll be playing out, which is a little spooky.
 
Mitch: (07:59)
It is, it definitely is, but everybody's looking for the answers as fast as possible. Right. So if that means getting them to the solution sooner, I think we're just going to adapt and take that luxury eventually. So with that in mind, you know, I think, like I said, going back to opportunity recognition, this is an opportunity for individuals to really expand their horizon, right. And it's an opportunity to possibly, you know, take their business or their function and look to build some strategic partnerships with others who are able to bring those opportunities to us. So when it comes to strategic partnerships, what are some of the things that individuals should really pursue or make sure that they have you know, for both sides, I suppose to make sure that this endeavor is worthwhile, you know, with technology, there i...

Contact Greg Hoggard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-hoggard-cma-9a201b9/

Counting Eggs With AI: https://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/february-2022-counting-eggs-with-ai/

Full Transcript:
Adam: (00:04)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Kicking things off for you again is your host Adam Larson and I'm excited to introduce our featured guest for today's episode, Greg Hoggard. Greg is CFO and VP of finance and IT at Rembrandt Foods where he is responsible for all aspects of finance and accounting, IT, and grain purchasing. Greg co-authored an article in Strategic Finance to show how computerized vision and AI adoption can create significant value for an organization. In this episode, he discusses the value of aligning IT and OT and getting everyone in the company speaking the same language. Keep listening to hear how the intersection of AI and technology with finance leads to improved strategic performance. 
 
Mitch: (00:57)
So Greg, in your opinion, what is the value of, or really maybe even the need for information technology or IT and operational technology or OT to report into the same group. 
 
Greg: (01:11)
So for those that may not work in manufacturing, operational technology, so operations and technology, which are usually called a controls group, for those who work in manufacturing, they're the ones who deal with the hardware that collects the data. They have a little bit of a different talent than the IT group. They're data. They're not data miners necessarily, but they they're the ones who collect the data from the machines. They're a little bit of electrician, a little bit of, I hate saying maintenance. They're not maintenance, but they understand all those things. They understand how the operation is supposed to work and where the data's coming from. Think of those screens that you see in those old buttons and the really big, old manufacturing steel mill or just old manufacturing. When you see it on a television show, something, all of those buttons, all those controls, that's all done by operational technology groups. 
 
Greg: (02:14)
Whereas on the IT side, they really are the ones that control the data and the servers and the data bases, they make that data consumable for end users, and govern that data so that it's trustworthy and reliable. I think what we're seeing, these days in the last few years, especially, is that this whole internet of things push where everything is communicating with everything, those lines are starting to cross much more often than they used to, between like the operational technology groups and the information technology groups and what I've seen especially here at Rembrandt is that when those two teams work together, it becomes an unstoppable force. when those two teams are working separately and disparately, it can become a little confusing and unmanageable. So the need to have them report together, I think really it just drives change a lot faster and it gets you to the right answer much quicker. 
 
Mitch: (03:26)
So it sounds like, I would assume you mentioned this, you know, really being in manufacturing, but majority of businesses, they most likely require some additional change, right? Some new alignment to really implement this kind of strategy. So as far as change management goes, what are some of the key considerations for making this shift with the technology that we're talking about? The reporting. And really, I think it comes down to getting everybody from maybe two different sides to speak the same language. So, you know, what kind of steps would you recommend for that? 
 
Greg: (04:01)
So on the change management side, it's crucial that everybody understands their KPIs and their OKRs. So objectives, key results, and key performance indicators, really the goals that they're operating under, or goal posts, I guess you could say, I like to be a little more open-ended sometimes, but I think if you don't have that, then good luck with change. You gotta have that good starting point where everybody's working towards the same goal. I think that clear communication cross-functionally and just within the singular departments is necessary. And then I think that once you establish those clear metrics, you have, well at first you have to have something that, that can be measured, right? I mean, you can't have a metric that's not measurable. So having something that's accurate and objective to measure that goal is needed. And then really, I think these data visualizations, are much better tools to report feedback and then to measure against these goals than traditional scorecards and numbers. 
 
Greg: (05:19)
Most people don't like to look at numbers, I don't know if I should quote a book here, but I'm actually reading a book right now called Making Numbers Count, which, is a really good book by Chip Heath. And he's talking a lot about how most people really aren't wired to speak the numbers language. And I think as a accountants, we are wired to speak that way. At least we've learned that language and we wanna share the numbers down to the 10th decimal point to show that, to prove that we did the work and to prove that this is a real number, but other people get lost. so these visualizations that we're showing now with these tools like Tableau and power BI, those speak so much louder than the numbers that we wanna share. So I think this leads to accountability and acceptance of change. I don't think you can have change without that accountability and that doesn't come without that clear feedback. And then the objective measurements of clear objectives and key results and KPIs, 
 
Mitch: (06:25)
You know, with these metrics and, you know, the communication, everything you just mentioned with change management. I think, you know, the underlying theme here for both sides, you know, both languages, if you will, is the technology itself. I think that's causing the need for change and where people need to potentially, you know, learn a bit more or improve a bit more in their, you know, speaking capabilities, I guess you could say. So if we could just kind of shift from the human side of things and focus on the technological side of things and those resources for a moment, when adapting or implementing technology and, you know, increasing the need for this change management, what should our listeners really be most aware of when it comes to technology implementation? 
 
Greg: (07:14)
So I'm reminded of an experience during this, that I've been on with the company Rembrandt that I work for now and the team that we're working with. We, so I'll take a little bit dive into the story that was published as well at this point, but we have these analog counters. It's just an example. And these analog counters are just old technology. I mean, analog counting has been around since what the probably thirties, forties, maybe even before that, but anytime anything passes under this analog counter, it's counted as an egg in our case. So we have these counters on every single row of every single column of every single barn in our facility. And these counters, like I said, count anything that passes under that, their measure, their scope there and what we found, at the very beginning of this journey, we wanted to know if the measurement was accurate. 
 
Greg: (08:18)
So we performed an audit of the counters and we lined a hundred eggs up behind each of these counters before the start of the day. And then we turned them on and then afte...

Contact Pedro Barros: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedromonteirobarros/

Remote: https://remote.com/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Adam: (00:04)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Adam Larson and today you are listening to episode 174 of our series. In this episode, you'll hear from Pedro Barros, VP of Finance at Remote. At Remote, Pedro was responsible for analyzing financial performance for budgeting and forecasting, managing all accounting operations and providing strategic guidance to accelerate business expansion. Over the last five years, he has been focusing on high growth tech companies and was previously Head of Finance at Codacy. He joined Count Me In to share his knowledge on building, scaling, and managing a successful global finance team. So keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.
 
Mitch: (00:57)
So I understand Remote, your company is growing very rapidly. And, I'm just curious to kind of kick off our conversation here. How are you thinking about structuring the finance team during this growth phase and what are some of the key positions or key areas within the finance team you're really focusing on?
 
Pedro: (01:13)
Thanks Mitchell. I joined the team as the first finance hire around two years ago, and it's a team of over 50 people today. I started the team top down, so we really went for, expertise and individuals with, subject matter expertise. But, it was a hard combination because we also wanted folks that could settle in, in well, in a very fast and growing, entity company. And, we found them like I've hired, two or three directors that really accelerated all the finance functions, a Group Controller and a Treasurer. And, a bit later than that, Director of Tax and all of these individuals really, really accelerated how the finance function was structured, how we were delivering to the business and how the finance was partnering across the organization.
 
Mitch: (02:17)
And now I know we will talk a little bit, you know, as far as, scaling everything and how all this ultimately plays out, you know, for the finance function, but as far as the individuals go and as you're going through this hiring process, you know, for our listeners who maybe are looking to jump into new finance roles and things that are evolving across the profession in various industries, what are some of the qualities that you're really looking for in a finance hire and, you know, as everything is growing so rapidly, you know, a fast growing company like Remote, what are some of the skills that you're really, you know, targeting?
 
Pedro: (02:50)
I touched, on my previous question around the deep subject matter expertise, it's folks, that can have a lot of ownership in their role. So someone that can compliment what I'm doing and, not necessarily build redundancy. So having folks that have done it in the past and can come very quickly, has done and have a high impact is critical. Someone that can nurture teams, because we knew at the place that we were going, that we would have to grow, teams very rapidly. And at the same time, we had to hire individuals that were very, tech savvy on the aspect of automation and how to make systems work for them and not just grow the team to address the growing pains and the growing needs of the organization as we're scaling very, very fast.
 
Mitch: (03:50)
And you, you kind of just alluded to it a little bit. but you know, we were talking about individuals, the finance team, how does that really fit into the overall organization? Right? So what we're really trying to figure out here is, you know, how does Remote manage the company culture and make sure that everybody, you know, plays their part and, fits in, in a cohesive team?
 
Pedro: (04:11)
Yeah. On your first point, the finance team at Remote is a bit different from many other organizations, as we are core to a lot of the product development that we do, a lot of the services that we provide. So we tend to, it's a subject like global employment is a subject is very close historically with, finance teams. And we have a lot of expertise in the team to help enable the overall company in terms of how Remote culture is managed in terms of fast growing and how we can sustain it. It was something that was designed even before the company was created, which were our values. Both the Auburn, Marcel, our founders, are very committed to the culture of the company through values alignment. We have a lot of cultural diversity, as you can imagine, by having folks in 60 plus countries across the globe working for us. So our expectation is we'll have a lot of cultural diversity, but an ambition is that folks will always work, at Remote with deep values alignment. And this goes with excellence ownership, kindness. It's one of the, I think it's the glue of the company. It is the value of kindness and something I have to in terms of automation and the scalability of the business.
 
Mitch: (05:41)
That's great. I know you, oftentimes historically I think accounting, finance teams, at least the perception is they've kind of been siloed, right. Kind of the smaller group, you know, very focused on the numbers and getting the job done, but, you know, that has evolved so much. And, companies like yours, the finance function is really more or less the backbone for everything. And kind of, you know, what I've seen through various conversations here, you know, the team that's really driving those core values and just the cross-functional collaboration, the finance team, and those are the individuals who can really, you know, portray those values and gain support, and really partner to bring the business forward. So, I think, you know, aligning core values like that is certainly key. With that sentiment, you know, the idea that, global diversity and following these values, what else is it that your company is doing, that we can share with our listeners that would help other accounting, finance functions, finance teams, you know, grow and manage successfully like you are, you know, on this global basis, getting back to the topic here, how can we help other accounting and finance teams scale globally?
 
Pedro: (06:58)
I think there are some fundamental things that the Remote is doing well, and it's working well, for us, in term one is, the working asynchronously. Means that you do your job and you work whenever it fits you, it fits your schedule. It fits your motivation when you are stronger. And it's not from not from nine to five, or maybe it is, it's not, it's independent from that. It's much more focused on objectives and not on the achievements more than on activity per se. And, if you are on, certain hours, and, the way we are doing it, based a lot on, documentation has managed Remote to grow very, very fast. Our finance team has grown massively and, very successfully continues supporting the business and delivering to our objectives. And I have folks from Korea to San Francisco, and, we are very much independent, from where, anyone is because they, they do their thing.
 
Pedro: (08:06)
They understand what they need to do. Their individual has a very clear objectives and drive for excellence. They take ownership on their projects and, the work they need to do. And all these documented when someone is asleep, there's a document for me to act upon. And next day, that person is live at whatever time and they can pick up on that. So there's always this sense of follow continuous work. What Remote has also enabled in terms of, global distributes companies is, hiring the best individuals anyw...

Mardi McBrien, Managing Director of the IFRS Foundation, and Brigitte de Graaff, CMA, CSCA, Chair of IMA’s Sustainable Business Management Global Task Force and PhD candidate at the department of Accounting of the Vrije Universiteit Amstedam, join Count Me In to talk about the role of women in sustainability. IMA's Manager of Brand Content and Storytelling, Margaret Michaels, hosts this mini-panel discussion in celebration of International Women's Day. International Women's Day is a global holiday celebrated annually on March 8th to commemorate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women. The special guests for this panel were specifically chosen for their work in the area of sustainability and to talk about the pipeline of future female finance leaders as well as their own thoughts on what unique impacts women are making in the work of sustainability. In this commemorative mini-panel conversation, Margaret leads the discussion by addressing various pieces of research to substantiate the value of women in sustainability. Download and listen now!

Contact Mardi McBrien: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mardimcbrien/
Contact Brigitte de Graaff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brigitte-de-graaff-134b408/
Contact Margaret Michaels: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-michaels/

IMA's Website: https://www.imanet.org/
Sustainability CFO: The CFO of the Future?: https://www.imanet.org/insights-and-trends/external-reporting-and-disclosure-management/sustainability-cfo-the-cfo-of-the-future

Research cited:

• 2021 Weinreb Group Study 
• McKinsey’s 2021 “Women in the Workplace” 
• https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10997-021-09604-7
• Deloitte: Understanding Generation Z in the workplace

Full Episode Transcript:
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Today, we have a special conversation for you as we hosted a mini panel of speakers in honor, of International Women's Day. International Women's Day is a global holiday celebrated annually on March 8th to commemorate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women for IMA and our management, accounting listeners, Margaret Michaels, IMA's Manager of Brand Content and Storytelling speaks with two women about their work in the area of sustainability. Marty McBrien and, and Bridget Degraph join Margaret here on, Count Me In to talk about the unique role women are playing in sustainability and the pipeline of future female finance leaders in this space. To celebrate this important day and valuable topic, keep listening as we head over to the panel conversation now

Margaret: (01:05)
It is such an honor to be facilitating this discussion today. I have a strong interest in sustainability, and I know other Count Me In listeners do as well. I want to structure this discussion around proof points about women in sustainability, which have been substantiated by research. And I want to hear each of your reactions to the statements and their implications for women's work in sustainability. So the first proof point women are playing an outsized role in sustainability work. According to a 2021 wine group study, women went from holding 28% of chief sustainability officer positions in 2011 to 54% in 2021, which is a 94% increase. So let's start with you, Marty, in your role, you've connected with so many professionals in this space. Would you share your observations on working with women leaders in this area? Does it surprise you that women are playing this outsized role and what might be responsible for the dramatic increase in their participation and in the work of sustainability?

Marty: (02:26)
Thanks Margaret. And, thank you, IMA it's a real pleasure to be here on what is, you know, such an important day to celebrate, you know, the, really amazing community of women that have played such important roles in leadership both now and in the future and sustainability across the world. You know, I'm really, privileged to be , part of such an amazing space. And, and I guess if it doesn't surprise me the statistics that you have, I've, been lucky enough actually, to emulate the success of a series of amazing female leaders before me. I always say I'm so privileged that I've just had really fabulous female boss, female leader, female mentor in this space across my 20 plus year career, that I've just been able to, you know, grow and thrive and build off them. And so, you know, I'm going to be forever grateful for that.

Marty: (03:15)
but also if you think more broadly beyond me, you have, you know, sustainability women are the ones out there that are taking active steps to educate them themselves on issues linked to sustainability, whether that be within the home, in their broader community, in their lifestyles. And so as they learn more and more, they're actually looking for roles that reflect their, and I think that's what we're starting to see today. I is women taking on roles and wanting to jump into roles that you are increasing. You know, there's never been a bigger demand for roles in sustainability ever, and, and women more and more aligning their values. We can cut onto more of that later and stepping into that space. And if we think about my voluntary career, so not my professional career, but what would I do in my free time.

Marty: (04:05)
And, I do a lot of work with, you know, small charities that focus on livelihoods and empowerment work for women. And, and it's those women in these developing countries that are being affected by climate and sustainability issues the most. And they're the ones that are then taking action and wanting to do more. And so, you know, that's the space, I think, where we can all do a bit more maybe to help, help give those, those ladies that are really trying to take action, which will have, you know, significant impacts on our future. You know, I think there's, various different ways to take these statistics, but I think, you know, it's all encouraging and it's all the right to action of travel.

Margaret: (04:39)
Bridget, do you have any thoughts on, women's outside role in sustainability?

Bridget: (04:47)
Well, I think I mostly agree with what Marty just said and, it's, it's quite funny. I hadn't heard about these numbers before, but, when I started thinking now about the research I've done within companies on sustainability and integrated, and also about the taskers actually, a sustainable business management task forces. And if I'm thinking about that, I think we are really very much, I think either about 50, 50% male female, or even with the leaders, the sustainability officers and the leaders I spoke within those companies. I think we, a majority were us indeed female, andI never really realized that actually until now. And I start thinking about it. and I, agree that there's probably not ne...

Contact Dan Toma: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dantoma/

Outcome: https://weareoutcome.co/

Dan's other podcasts:

1. https://theinnovationshow.io/episode/ep-230-the-corporate-startup-how-established-companies-can-create-successful-innovation-ecosystems-with-dan-toma/
2. https://thinkers50.com/blog/thinkers-50-podcast-dan-toma-and-innovation/
3. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2HeJjCHvNvCrD6vydCPsG4?si=u3kBTT3yR4W1D1Z_ie3Fxg&dl_branch=1

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Mitch Roshong, and I'm here to introduce our featured guest for episode 172 of our series. This conversation features Dan Toma, an innovation thought leader and the co-author of the award-winning book, The Corporate Startup and Innovation Accounting. He joined Count Me In to talk about elements of the book, specifically the importance of the people in the organization and further defining innovation, accounting, Dan shares practical examples from his own experience as a product owner, entrepreneur, corporate transformation leader. So keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.
 
Adam: (00:55)
So Dan, as you know, some something that companies have always done is look at their employees as assets and many times when there's a financial crisis, the first step is let's cut half the staff and move forward. But with the ever changing times of business and acceptability, that's not acceptable anymore. And so as businesses grow, they're encouraged to grow the value of their assets and the same approach probably should be taken toward people. What benefit do you see that in the workplace?
 
Dan: (01:22)
Right. What should I say? I mean, you know, you walk in those corporate buildings, you work into various offices and you see slogans on the wall. Employees are our biggest asset on all that stuff. Right. But when you go and look in the financial records, you actually end up seeing the fact that employees are listed as cost as liability because they have obviously a salary attached to them. Right. So, yes, it would be great to have more companies, think of their employees as real assets, beyond the slogan, beyond the mottos, if you want, and start investing in them, if they will start treating people as assets, they will obviously start investing and nurturing their skills, care about their mental wellbeing. Do all these things that you would normally do to an asset.
 
Dan: (02:19)
Like if you have a truck you are going to wash it and, you know, change your oil and put the best parts in it. But if you have a UX designer where if you have, a great HR person, how do you make sure that you actually treat that, that particular individual as an asset? But there are actually companies that do that. And, these companies are, you know, football clubs and in general sports franchises, they have their players list as assets. I'm not saying now that we should go in that direction and trade my accounting person from my bank, with your accounting person, from the whatever automotive company. But it would be fun, right? So yeah, in general, the, the benefits will, obviously go towards the employees themselves. Like they will have the most to benefit from. And obviously by them being treated as assets, the company will, obviously benefit. But I think, short term, the benefit will be with the employees later, the benefit will come to the company as a result of the employees being, regarded as assets, however, financial accounting considers them as liabilities. Hmm.
 
Adam: (03:32)
That makes sense. So I want to kind of bring the conversation, back to your book. My co-host mentioned has mentioned your book in our intro and in your book, you cover nine myths, about measuring innovation. And I found them very fascinating. And I was wondering if you could walk us through a couple of those on how they relate to accounting.
 
Dan: (03:51)
Yeah. So, we've uncovered those myths as we were working with our clients and, we decided to put them in the book because we fought and we, know there is a lot of people out there that still unfortunately live by those myth. So one of the first ones, and we actually wrote about this in the first book in the corporate startup as well, is that people tend to view R&D expenditure as a synonym for innovation prowess. And, this is very far from the reality, if you go, and, I encourage you actually, the audience to go and research two tops. one top is the BCG most innovative companies, of this year, I think is 50 companies they put in the top and the other one is the, top that comes from the European commission, if I'm not mistaken.
 
Dan: (04:46)
And it tracks the biggest R&D spenders off that year. And if you put the top side by side, you're going to realize that the company that is number one R&D spender of the year is probably where near the top three or five is, in the innovation top. Take, for example, pharma industry. In the pharma industry, they're about three to four companies on the most innovative company list. And then there's probably 12 or 15 of them on the, on the R&D spenders, same for automotive and other industries aerospace. Again, it's a good example. So this is one of the biggest myths that we uncovered, while working with, while working with the companies. The other one was that innovation can't be measured because innovation is about creativity and creativity can't be measured.
 
Dan: (05:42)
Anybody that worked in innovation, either being, employed in a large organization, part of the innovation department, or, had their own startup know that, creativity is probably 1% of, what it means to be successful in the innovation world, the rest 99%. And again, don't quote me on the percentages here, are, the 99% refers to discipline refers to, being methodical in, in your work, being very diligent in your actions and in the follow up to your actions. So again, obviously since we're talking now about a process, processes can be measured so you can measure innovation very well. Another myth is that the success of innovation venture can only be measured once it's in the market. Actually you can measure success or the potential success of innovation ventures very early on. This is how investors live.
 
Dan: (06:45)
This is how VCs companies, exist. The fact that you wait until something is in the market to return a certain dollar amount, it's another form of success. And, some people could see already that success happening early on. Therefore they invest in early stage in that particular startup or in that particular idea, another myth that we found, and this was well, we were researching indicators. People tend to fit that everything is a KPI, right? Everything is a key performance indicator actually. We need to make a distinction between, and everybody that's in business needs to make a distinction between KPIs and the KRIs, key results indicators. The KPI, the ones with the P referring to the performance of the process, the KRI is referred to the outcome of that particular process. So, usually if we want to improve something, we need to understand the process behind it.
 
Dan: (07:53)
Otherwise we won...

Follow Larysa Melnychuk on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/larysamelnychuk/

International FP&A Board: https://fpa-trends.com/fpa-board

Follow FP&A Trends Group on social media to stay on top of the latest trends and developments in the field: 

• Receive regular insights directly to your inbox (subscribe to FP&A Trends Digest here https://fpa-trends.com/newsletters)​
• Take part in weekly discussions facilitated by a team of FP&A professionals (join the FP&A Club LinkedIn group here https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4855471/)​
• Learn from experts in the field (you can watch our webinars and videos on YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC03uGOGUAZTvcqR0PU3R0kg)​

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Adam: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Adam Larson, and I'm here with you again to preview another insightful conversation about financial planning and analysis. Here in episode, 171, Mitch spoke with Larysa Melnychuk about trends in modern FP&A. Larysa is a leading FP&A professional and influencer. She held senior roles at top organizations before establishing the international FP&A board in 2013, which has since expanded to 27 chapters in 16 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and North America. In this episode, she discusses how FP&A has evolved and explained some trends, including XP&A and digital FP&A. Keep listening to learn more as we head over to the conversation now.
 
Mitch: (00:57)
Larysa with your international FP&A board project and speaking with you previously, I understand you've traveled through many countries, 16 countries. There are 27 chapters for this project, across Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, North America. You know, this is a wide covering project when it comes to the topic of FP&A. So you've obviously seen a lot. You've heard a lot. To start things off. I would like to first get your definition of modern FP&A, and how does it kind of vary across these different regions?
 
Larysa: (01:33)
Thank you, Mitchell. first of all, thank you for inviting me, to this podcast. It's especially pleasant, to talk about, trends and FP&A at the beginning of the year, when we all look ahead, in order to understand what is happening, with our environment and with our profession. So, there are really a lot of definitions, of FP&A from, different account and boards from, different practices, practitioners. The one that I really love, it came from one of our meetings and, it was the definition, very practical definition from my former CFO at Swiss Re in Zurich in Switzerland. This definition he shared at our meeting and, actually he shared that his company really adhere to this definition in terms of their FP&A, so he said that, FP&A helps to manage the value of the company by five different ways.
 
Larysa: (02:38)
First one is, helping to understand the value of the company, describing extraction steering, and reporting it to the key stakeholders. So fantastic definition that, really described, the strategic value of FP&A and how it helps to sustain the value of the company. Our FP&A trends definition that we checked at, 26, 27 different chapters in 16 countries around the globe. It's, that FP&A is a proactive force that helps to manage, the understanding of the business, the understanding of the value of the business. It supports a decision making process at different levels of organization, and also it integrate, organizational processes of strategic financial, and operational planning. It provides a critical, insights for the decision making. So this is my answer, what FP&A is.
 
Mitch: (03:41)
That's excellent. And thank you for sharing, you know, I think in today's business environment, as we really try to focus on our management accountants, right, the finance and accounting professionals, you know, that definition must be top of mind because as everything that they're doing, today on the job, it really needs to be adjusted, you know, if not totally transformed because of the direction the profession is going. So to follow up on your definition and what you've shared from your experience, what are some of the trends and potentially some of the challenges really that go along with modern FP&A, as you define and supporting the transition in the evolution of the management accountants role.
 
Larysa: (04:24)
First of all, the trends I defined, but this incredible business environment that we all experience. So, at the moment we are talking about applying and forecasting, in the environment of high uncertainty and what it means, it means that, our traditional management accounting methods, they're working only within this span of predictability, span where we can really, apply our, variance analysis method, one plan, one forecast. But, the problem, with a current environment is that the span of projectability is decreasing. So we really have to look at different methods, how we can plan and forecast, and make decisions under, uncertainty from this point of view, the first obvious, and very important trend that we observe, especially for the last two years, it's moving, not only to scenario planning, I would call this scenario management.
 
Larysa: (05:32)
So everything at the moment, it's, about looking at, futures and deciding what is going to work. And of course, organizations that are able, to play, scenarios very quickly, practically in real time at different levels of the organization, really, with analytical insights, those organizations are at the leading stage and they really are at a good place. We looked at many different case studies and interesting to see that, practically every organization at the moment are trying to be there. But though, in order for us to be, at this, stage when, scenario management works in agile manner, we really have to look at, the way how to achieve it and, those stages, those next trends that I would like to outline here. They definitely, those important trends that are needed in order to be at this scenario management stage.
 
Larysa: (06:36)
I would say that the second one and very important one, is driver based planning many would say, oh, we are talking about driver based planning. For many years, it's not the latest strength, but I would say that, at this particular environment we are talking about not traditional driver based planning, where you have all your defined and well known, drivers, but actually it's trying to look at those drivers, that, you never realize exist. And now we have to acknowledge that, they are helping us to define those drivers. So with help of predictive analytics, for example, we can define even behavioral factors, you know, how, behavior or expectations let's say of our customers will change the way how we do our business. So let's put it this way. A driver based planning that is at the next generation driver based planning that is based on identifying those key driver, 20% of drivers that can explain 80% of the results.
 
Larysa: (07:43)
And also those drivers that, we never knew they existed, and, a lot of things h...

Alissa Vickery, Chief Accounting Officer and Senior Vice President of Accounting and Controls for FLEETCOR, joins Count Me In to talk about purpose driven leaders. Alissa has oversight of external reporting, technical accounting, and internal audit, and her leadership has helped FLEETCOR join the Fortune 1000 list and the S&P 500 Index. In this episode, she defines purpose driven leadership, the benefits and outcomes of developing purpose driven leaders, and why purpose is so valuable to the accounting and finance team. Download and listen now!

Contact Alissa Vickery: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alissa-vickery-67b3986/

References and Resources for Alissa Vickery and Leadership:

• https://accounting.cfotechoutlook.com/cxoinsights/how-being-a-purposedriven-leader-inspires-accounting-teams-nid-1672.html
• https://womenworthwatching.com/alissa-vickery/
• https://alumni.uga.edu/2018/09/24/meet-alissa-vickery/ 
• https://alumni.uga.edu/40u40/2017-class/ 
• https://alumni.uga.edu/networks/women-of-uga/ 
• https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2017/07/12/see-who-made-the-university-of-georgias-40-under.html 
• https://tenthousandreasons.org/ 
• https://www.relayexchange.org/ 
• https://www.fleetcor.com/company/leadership/ 

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Adam: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host, Adam Larson, and we are now starting episode 170 of our series. The guest speaker you will hear from today is Alissa Vickery. Alissa is the Chief Accounting Officer for FLEETCOR, a leading global provider of global business payment solutions, headquartered in Atlanta. Alissa also serves as senior vice president of accounting and controls where she has oversight over external reporting, technical accounting and internal audit. Her leadership has helped FLEETCOR join the fortune 1000 list and the S&P 500 index. In this episode, she talks about purpose driven leaders, Alissa shares, many of her personal experiences and growth and development opportunities for aspiring leaders. So to hear more, let's head over to the conversation now.
 
Mitch: (01:03)
So we were talking very briefly before we started recording here a little bit about leadership and there's, you know, a particular topic that we're going to focus on in today's conversation. I first want to start off by asking you who are purpose driven leaders?
 
Alissa: (01:17)
Well, I mean, I think perhaps everybody has a different opinion here, but for me, purpose driven leaders are leaders who are really interested in powering productivity, both for the company as well as the growth of the employee. So, you know, everybody has a benefit from it, but I think if you can execute as a purpose driven leader, then you can ultimately transform some competent employees into super high performing stars of your management team and perhaps warrant their, their next progression into leadership, whether it it's at your company or into their next role.
 
Mitch: (01:56)
So as far as what those individuals need, you know, I think a lot of people are always as working on their own leadership development, those who obviously want to climb the ladder, but as far as skills or key activities, that purpose driven leaders really partake in, what are some of the things that you recommend or you often see?
 
Alissa: (02:14)
So, I mean, for me personally, I think it's been a bit of a journey, purpose driven leadership isn't on accident. It, you have to be the very conscientious of how the words that you use and the behaviors that you exhibit then drive behavior of your team. And I don't just mean sending an email, you know, 10 o'clock at night. I mean truly taking an interest in those individuals and their career progression as well as what's happening with them personally, because it is the whole person and remembering that these individuals, they are human beings, they have lives. And I think if the current environment has taught us anything, it's that it's not a one sided story, right? I think in the time of the great resignation, we, as leaders have been pushed harder than we probably have, in the history of our careers to try and make sure we engage at a level that's meaningful, that's personal, while not forgetting that individuals still want the progression, regardless of whether we're sitting in the office together, or we're still sitting, in our home offices trying to muddle through and get it done.
 
Mitch: (03:28)
You know, that's a great point because leadership, and I've had a few of these conversations over the last, going on two years now, but leadership itself has changed right? Based on the work environment, everything else that we've experienced. You know, my next question, it could be a little bit more historical as far as traditional purpose driven leadership, as you've said, getting to know people face to face maybe a little bit more from the virtual component now, depending on your experiences over the last couple years, but when people are conscious and they are purpose driven leaders and they're in these efforts, what are some of the outcomes, you know, tangible or intangible, that, you know, the organizations that they're working for can really expect to see as more leaders are empowered?
 
Alissa: (04:12)
Yeah, I mean, I think from, from my experience, it drives a culture where you have excellence, intentionality and discipline, and ultimately...

Contact Michael Teape: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teapetraining/

Teape Training International (TTI): https://www.teapetraininginternational.com

Get my FREE eGuide 7 Best Facilitation Tips to Ensure Engagement & Learning to ensure your Online Training Success -> https://tti-signup.ck.page/eguide

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: 
Adam: (00:04)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host, Adam Larson, and you're now listening to episode 169 of our series. Today's featured guest is Michael Teape. Michael is the owner and lead training consultant for Teape Training International. He is a thought leader in people development who brings over 25 years of corporate learning and development experience across multiple industries. He enjoys running the trainer events for facilitators globally, and works with senior leadership teams to improve their working relationships and outward facing impact in the organization. In this episode, Michael focuses on time management and building a culture around working smarter and focusing on productive work. To kick things off Michael addresses, how you can win back one whole day of your time per week. So keep listening to hear more as we head over to the conversation now.
 
 Mitch: (01:07)
 So one of the things that, I know you really talk about is how to win back one day of your team's time every single week. And when I read that at first, I thought that was pretty ambitious. If you break it down, we have accounting listeners, 20% of the week is free.
 
 Michael: (01:25)
 You know, I knew you'd be talking about figures, Mitchell since we got started.
 
 Mitch: (01:27)
 That's right. So, you know, I just want to know your perspective on this. How do you go about achieving such kind of time management?
 
 Michael: (01:36)
 Well, there's multiple streams of how you do that. And yeah, people are like 20%. They always raise their eyebrows when I say that, but truly there's a couple of things you can do. And you know, we work on, first of all, are you actually efficiently working the time you're in the office or the time you're working at home, you know, working on a strategy or, you know, a piece of technical work. In an hour, you know, how effective are you? So I ask everybody, including your listeners. The one question is, how effective are you in that hour? Are you really being productive? And I've got it down to under, I can do in 20 minutes to 30 minutes what you could do in an hour. You can get that down to half that time. If you focus, you know exactly what you're working on and you're in the zone, you're just thinking about this research.
 
 Michael: (02:34)
 You're just looking up the strategy. You're just crafting it. If you're not interrupted by the noise of the world, emails, iPhones, Androids, there's just so much going on. People interrupting you all the time. If you create a bubble, it's amazing what you can write in 30 to 45 minutes. So that's one of the biggest parts of it is can I get more out of an hour? And I guarantee you can. So focus, good planning, prioritizing, knowing what you are doing for that 20 minutes. And then the other part of it is brain chemistry. So is understanding how you work. You've heard the thing you've probably heard before. What's your best time of the day, or people often say, oh, I'm best mid morning, evening. They'll offer that quite freely. So they know they're thinking about it. And it's using those times to do your more difficult work.
 
 Michael: (03:35)
 Your more heavy thinking, research work. And then using the times, you know, you're not sufficient actually doing something that activates your body, something either physical or the boring, easy work, replying to emails. We'll talk, I'm sure we'll talk about emails. Everyone's always got a question about, that's a whole subject on, how do you look at emails? How do you deal with them? You've got a think of it as a strategy. So there's so much you can do even. So if you're working with others as well. So that was individual. If you're working with a team, is how effective are your meetings? Most of the startups that I work with, they never hold a meeting more than 30 minutes. Yeah. So you can imagine, even with their clients, they've got their clients in tune. We get into the conversation. We're 10, 15 minutes in people start getting really serious, real quick.
 
 Michael: (04:27)
 They get to the point. And if we need to book some more time, what's it about we're going to do that. So rather than letting a meeting roll on and on and on, I don't recommend that if your first meeting a client, you know, from this strategic point of view, but once you've got to know a client, they will appreciate the fact. You can get things done in half an hour instead of an hour. So you you're shaving time by getting more done in the time. And where does your team spend the time together? You don't need to attend an update meeting. It's just a waste of time An update meeting is just somebody else reading out what you could have read on a document and in an email. It's what are we going to do with it? Let's cut that. Did you all get the update?
 
 Michael: (05:10)
 Yes. Great. What are your thoughts on it? Boom. I've just shaved 15 minutes of time off your meeting, right? So there are so many different aspects to it. And I, you know, the overarching piece, I would say there's three things to consider. One is your mindset. So knowing what's going on here, how you approach work, you've heard growth mindset and fixed mindset. So that working on that piece. So you're connected as quickly as possible to your work. Secondly, is choosing goals, productivity tools, organization, tools that work for you for your work. And you personally, there is no point using tools that you is hard work for you, or you don't get, feel excited to be using. I know I used, excited and organizational tools in the same sentence, but without that, you've got to pick tools that gonna work for the work you do and suit you personally.
 
 Michael: (06:09)
 And, and lastly, get good about your time and your rituals is rituals and routines are fantastic. If you can set them up to you rather than let them happen. So if you finish a piece of work today, all of your listeners, next piece of work, you finish, focus on what you're doing afterwards. What are you doing? Do you just sit back? Do you look at the phone or are you actually okay. I'm physically taking a couple of minutes, then I'm going to get into my next piece. I am going to get up, walk around the desk, grab a coffee, change my mood, get some energy going and boom, straight back into it. Cause I guarantee once you finish one piece of work, oh, yeah. You're like, oh good. That's over. And then you waste a good amount of time, relaxing, pat yourself on the back, subconsciously looking at your emails before you get into to the next piece. And before you know it, you've lost time as well. So do you see from that, just that alone, you're able to save 20% of your time and your team's time. Yeah. Just in those areas there.
 
 Mitch: (07:12)
 That's, it's very interesting. And you mentioned a lot of things that I did want to bring up, through this conversation, but it kind of all ...

Mark Marmon, VP, Finance Transformation at RGP, and Janis Parthun, VP, Advisory & Project Services at RGP, join Count Me In to talk about transformation through emerging technologies and the audit considerations and regulations to be aware of. RGP is global consulting company that serves over 2,400 clients, which includes 3/4th of the Fortune 500 companies. Mark is a Vice President within RGP’s Global Finance Transformation Practice focused on process efficiency and improving automation in the finance and accounting functions and Janis is a Vice President within RGP’s Advisory & Project Services team, leading cross functional initiatives in finance, accounting, and risk and compliance. She brings over 20 years of experience and expertise in finance and technology process design, risk management and driving continuous improvement for companies. RGP enables rapid business outcomes by bringing together the right people who together create transformative change. In this episode they look through the lens of a CFO and explain the top trends and priorities for finance leaders. Download and listen now!

Contact Mark Marmon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-marmon-3255414/
Contact Janis Parthun: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janisparthun/

IMA's Transforming the Finance Function with RPA: https://www.imanet.org/insights-and-trends/technology-enablement/transforming-the-finance-function-with-rpa

McKinsey's Bots, Algorithms, and the Future of the Finance Function: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/bots-algorithms-and-the-future-of-the-finance-function

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Mitch: (00:05)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Mitch Roshong, and today I will be previewing episode 168 of our series. Before I introduce our speakers we will first set the stage for the topic. The global pandemic in 2020 and 2021 has shifted how finance and accounting professionals work in a virtual environment. And this change has also triggered opportunities for the finance organization to evaluate and introduce emerging technologies. Companies want to find ways to deliver financial results faster, amid grow complexities and regulations, as well as improved financial transparency for business partners. To discuss these trends from the CFO perspective, we were fortunate to be joined by Mark Marmon and Janis Parthun. Mark is the VP of Finance Transformation at RGP, and Janis is the VP of Advisory and Project Services at RGP. They joined my co-host Adam to provide insights on what they are observing from the marketplace and their clients. So to hear about how to best manage the complexities relating to transformation through emerging technologies, keep listening as we head over to their conversation now.
 
 Adam: (01:27)
 Janis and Mark, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. And as we looking into 2022, I wanted to start off by asking you both, what are some of the top trends and priorities for financial leaders as we look into this new year?
 
 Janis: (01:43)
 Adam, that's a great question and this is Janis, by the way. You know, CFOs are really playing a crucial role to drive change and to be value creators. So according to a 2021 Gartner survey on the CFO perspective, there's really a shift from a value protection to value creation and prioritization, of digital initiatives and investments, and from a value creation perspective, it's really, focusing on a strong forecasting process. And this is especially critical time for CFOs of companies who may be carrying inventory to have a strong forecasting process, to avoid inventory supply chain issues and, just overwhelming sales teams and processes. And then from a digital investment perspective, over 80% of CFOs have suggested to increase their investments. And emerging technology was one of the CFOs top five strategic business priorities for 2021 and also a significant increase from 2020.
 
 Janis: (02:50)
 So it, you know, it really says a lot about the importance of having to take a look at emerging technologies, and how that can impact the CFO's role. And, you know, by the way, IMA also has a great resource on the transformation of the finance function and association with RPA. And interesting enough, the research had discussed in terms of how it's possible to have over 70 percent of general accounting operation activities that can be automated using demonstrated technologies. So I found that that was really interesting to read through, in one of the resources, from IMA.
 
 Janis: (03:35)
 And so going back to the discussion on the value creation and digital investments, what does this mean? So this is stemming from the need to automate core processes and having to transition to generate more data insights and future outlook. And so according to another Gartner source in 2021, it was the top priorities for finance leaders, CFOs, controllers, and FP&A leaders now all expect to focus on digital initiatives and the top priorities that are expected to be taking more time to implement. And these top priorities mentioned included advanced data analytics, technologies, and tools and finance, and there's a wealth of data that can provide insight to make operational decisions. And it's also knowing how to use it. Another one is the robotic process automation and other workflow automation technologies. RPAs deliver speed, efficiency, and cost optimization for repeatable processes. But then if you add extendable platforms that incorporate hooks into machine learning and artificial intelligence, it really becomes more important as leaders to look beyond the simple rule based workflows.
 
 Janis: (04:55)
 And I would say, thirdly is the human element, which is accelerating digital skills and that's hiring an upscaling talent to accelerate adoption of digital technologies. So now the deployment could be difficult at times and having to spend time significantly with employee engagement and retention, as well as hiring and growing digital skills, but it be beneficial to have the ability to design flexible processes and then enable aspects of self-service reporting for users. So I would say the good news is that the new generation of the workforce entrance are digital natives. So not only do they embrace the technologies, but they also expect from their employers, those are some of the key highlights that I wanted to at least talk through in terms of trends.
 
 Adam: (05:50)
 Well, Janis, thanks so much for showing that. I mean, those are some great top trends and priorities that, financial leaders need to look at. One topic that I have heard that I didn't hear you bring up was financial close optimization. You know, this is one way that companies drive results faster, are able to, do budgeting. How does this change the game? And maybe Mark, we can have you start on this one.
 
 Mark: (06:12)
 Yeah. Thanks Adam. So first let's define, we're talking about when we talk about, close process optimization, we're really looking at eliminating some of the activities that are really not all that critical to the close cycle. So in many cases, you know, ma...

Contact Ben Taylor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bentaylor8/

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Full Transcript:
Adam: (00:05)
Hey everyone. Thank you for coming back to listen to another episode of Count Me In, I am your host Adam Larson, and this is episode 176 of our series. As we hold conversations about various topics impacting the accounting and finance world, one of the underlying themes across most is strategy. In this episode, you'll hear from Paul Ruppert, an ambidextrous executive with deep experience in startups, as well as global fortune 100 enterprises who shares as knowledge and expertise on strategic partnerships. Keep listening to hear more about how the finance team can best support large strategic initiatives for the organization.

Mitch: (00:50)
So as we get through today's conversation, we're gonna look at some concepts around strategy, strategic partnerships, but I think it's first important to kick off what are some of the biggest considerations or are challenges that many are facing in today's business landscape?

Paul: (01:06)
I think, you know, many people get into business thinking that there's some linearity from a plus B plus C equals D equation, but in reality, it's all about adaptability and change. And change is not only the change that you experience when you start facing various types of problems and challenges and friction points, but also your ability to manifest change, create that change and live through that change. I've been involved in businesses on a global basis and how I approach the business in the US was very different than I was approaching the business when I was in Hong Kong or in Europe. And that adaptability, that agility as it's often described, you know, in technology is really the the watch word more than anything else, in my view. You know, there's, as I mentioned earlier, earlier before our call, I don't believe in a silver bullet solution.

Mitch: (02:13)
And as we talk about adaptability, agility, you know, the bottom line is we are looking to advance the business, right, advance the function and adapt to modern advancements. And I think you just kind of mentioned briefly technology here, but without having a crystal ball and being able to see into the future perfectly, what does the future of business really look like? And, you know, as we continue to adapt and be agile, what are we really preparing for? What is the future of the business landscape look like?

Paul: (02:45)
Well, you know, that's a big, big question in the context of where is everything going. If you just look at our immediate past in past history, you know, three years ago, I'm involved in the text messaging business and it's been around, it's how, you know, enterprises communicate and connect with end consumers. And we live through it on a day to day basis. When you get tested for what's called a one time password, you know, you just proving that you are who you are. And the business let's say three plus years ago was moving steadily along. And let's say let's call grocery store rates, meaning about three to 5% growth rate. This is a fairly established industry. You know, it's roughly about $200 billion of business globally. It's quite large, but people don't really experience on a day to day basis relative to cost and effect if you will, but they still utilize it.

Paul: (03:47)
And since the pandemic, because of the dynamics of how we behave as human beings and being working from home environments and the fact that we are now utilizing zoom and video, et cetera, the reality is that the messaging business has grown to about 30% CAGR for the next three years is what the expectation is. And I am of the belief that once human beings experience something much more convenient for them, they usually don't turn backwards and want to do something less convenient. Okay. So in all of that context, that's kind of the dynamics of where we are going, what it looks like and the over the horizon perspective, the crystal ball, as you characterized it is that your expectations often may be unexpected. Things may not go as you think they are going. And there's lots of converging factors, you know, digitalization prior to COVID, the growth of it, the speed of it, the means in which many business were able to quickly and with great agility pivot to new types of initiatives, you know, I can talk about call centers that were stripped down from being on premise in the course of four to five days and redistributed to the the call center rep's homes, because everybody shifted, you know, we couldn't be in large groups any longer, it was just too unsafe.

Mitch: (05:22)
Now a lot of our listeners are in, you know, the business of opportunity recognition. And I know it's very difficult and maybe unexpected as some of these you know, evolutions arise. You know, we first spoke, I know you mentioned something along the lines of you know, the business landscape reaching 6G. So with some of this uncertainty but so much opportunity, what can our listeners really take away you know, from the idea or what should they be doing really to maybe open their eyes a little bit and see what this opportunity means for their individual businesses,

Paul: (06:03)
Right. Yeah. You know, we all watch well, many of us watch professional football, the NFL on weekends, and, you know, the number of mobile phone companies like principally T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon all talking about 5G. And then if you were to turn to your spouse or friend that you're watching the game with and ask the question, so why is 5G better than 4G outside of the reach? You know the reality there is that what we're doing right now is probably gonna be the, one of the big manifestations of 5G value, which is video and speed and processing. And so as we then move to 6G, then it becomes much more engaged on such things as what's called sentiment and intent. So you might be reaching out to, you know, let's say your mobile phone provider, because you've got an issue with your iPhone or something along those lines and that inbound call or inbound message or whatever it might be that platform that you're utilizing to connect with your provider, they already have a sense of what your intent is.

Paul: (

Contact Liv: https://www.linkedin.com/in/livwatson/
Contact David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-w-29627882/

Visit Adviseers website: : www.adviseers.com  
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Adam: (00:05)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson. And this is episode 166 of our series. Today we are fortunate to be joined again by Liv Watson and David Wray. Liv and David recently shared their perspective on a proposal for the digital transformation of sustainability information, in United Nations Climate Change conference sponsored site event. Attendees from around the world included policymakers, standard settlers regulators, to preparers, NGOs and funders. The goal was to leverage the worldwide momentum for climate change and sustainable economies. In this episode, they summarize their perspective and share with us their view on what the profession can do to accelerate this transformation. More specifically, they discuss how management accountants can support their organizations in managing the data life cycle of sustainability information from cradle to grave. Keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.
 
 Mitch: (01:15)
 So I understand you both talked in Glasgow about the greening of data and to start off our conversation, I'd like to first to ask, what do you mean by this?
 
 David: (01:24)
 It's a great question to start really setting their context for the conversation and the discussion we're going to have Mitchell, because you're right. We were in Glasgow talking last week about the data life cycle and Liv and I have coined the term greening of the data as a way to describe some of the problem, but let me be put it in context for you. So if we think back to the IFAC work, and we've talked about this in previous podcasts and some of us may be very familiar with their work, they basically look to assess the cost of prudential disclosure reporting. And it was just one example of the issue that we see around data management and the cost of that data, to the compliance and regulatory reporting that ends up happening.
 
 David: (02:08)
 So we know that in the context of the IFAC report, that about 780 billion US dollars is spent every year by the financial services industry alone on this type of reporting. So what we are saying is, look, what if we could save half of that data, like half of that cost, of processing that data through digitization and structuring data at creation. So if we really started to think about it at the point of inception or origination, and we really carry that idea through to how it's processed, how it's disclosed or how the user consumes it, imagine the kinds of things that we could do in terms of environmental initiatives that we can invest in to better the planet with the money that we save. So really what we're talking about is it's about reducing the ecosystem costs for the sustainability reporting and basically reinvesting this spend into initiatives that will ultimately result in sustainable economies and business models and have better stakeholder citizenship, because that's really what it's all about.
 
 David: (03:13)
 And all of this could be done without raising a single incremental tax dollar, because frankly, I think we all need to look at more creative ways to start achieving sustainability objectives without defaulting to what we've always done, which is raising taxes. And we can see the effect of these tax discussions in bipartisan decisions all around the world. It's not, you know, unique to one geography because as effectively a tug of war between fiscal responsibility and the social climate responsibility, and that's really what's tugging this discussion. So unless we can start to unlock this barrier, we might still actually be talking about this subject in 10 years time and time being a luxury that we don't have much of anymore. So greening of the data is all about reducing the cost of compliance and then reinvesting that for the better of the planet.
 
 Mitch: (04:03)
 Well, you have certainly piqued my interest and I think a natural follow up question to what you just discussed is how, right? So I'd like to direct this second question to Liv. How do you make this digital vision a reality that really benefits everyone? And, you know, David just mentioned some of the stakeholders and the tug of war. How do we get everybody in alignment around the world, on this topic?
 
 Liv: (04:28)
 Okay not an easy task, but Mitchell, thank you again for having us back on the IMA podcast and amazing platform to get new topics, new ideas from. I would also think IMA's and many of the listeners might not know this, but IMA was actually part of the founders of the digitization of financial and business reporting as a founding member. So, XPRL international. So our industry organization had been a thought leader in this topic for a long time. I have had lately the opportunity to lead an initiative appointed to the European commission or by the European commission to EFRAG. And for those of who don't know EFRAG, answering your question here very quickly, but the players are key to understand is that EFRAG has been kind of the similar to fast P in the United States and standard center for financial reporting.
 
 Liv: (05:39)
 EFRAG is the European equivalent working with the International Accounting Standard to recommend international standards, to the European commission that they then adopt and embed into legislations. Right now, we have talking about greening of data, two drivers, right? Regulators wants to reduce the cost of compliance and standard setters has to start thinking digital from the outset. And so EFRAG, who used to be a standard take. And with now becoming after a consultation that I was appointed to a special task force, and we proposed 54 detailed proposals on how the European commission could accelerate sustainability disclosure and improve on their current reporting requirement, which was a legislation called the Non-Financial Directive Reporting Directive to now becoming a delegated act to improve. Because now they want to be thinking not just standard that are more descriptive, not only just more descriptive, but also we are in the statement.
 
 Liv: (07:03)
 So for an annual report in the management discussion, we are now writing the standards, proposed standards for the European commission to mandate the data, to be disclosed in the management report. And why is this important is thinking digital from the first trying to get standards that are written by silos, and then trying to bring consistency so that you can digitize them, not just the reporting. So the taxonomy for the reported data, but also think about digitize the standards that today sit locked up in PDF files, et cetera, that they've actually become executable codes. So yes, number one, we need to start thinking digital from the outs and not digital after the standards and legislation, are put in place. So that is why we feel that now is a momentum b...

Contact David Wray: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-w-29627882/
Contact Lyna Kitamura: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyndahawtonkitamura/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Mitch: (00:05)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Mitch Roshong. And today you'll be listening to episode 165 of our series. A Harvard Business Review study concluded that more than 357 billion dollars spent annually on learning and development did not achieve the desired return on investment. It turns out that only one in 10 used the learn skills and only one in four believe training actually improved their performance. So we must ask, is there a better way to learn the critical, personal and business skills we need? Fortunately, for today's episode, you will hear from Lynda Kitamura, a seasoned Chief Financial Officer with a background that covers multinational to startup. We will also hear from David Wray, the author of the Power of Potential, and the President of the International Group of the French CFO network, DF CG. They spoke with Adam about their view on what accounting professionals can do to accelerate the transition to effective continuous learning. A skill the World Economic Forum Report on the future of jobs concludes is critically important and will remain so through 2025. So now let's head over and listen to the conversation.
 
 Adam: (01:25)
 So the Harvard Business Review findings that only 25% of learning attendees, find that what they learn improves their performance. What has been your experience with traditional learning approaches?
 
 David: (01:37)
 Maybe I'll start that question then. Adam, it's a great question to really set the context for the discussion with Lynda and personally I've long believed that the traditional methods of learning are woefully inadequate, and that's because they use the same approach in terms of being an outside-in approach. Let me explain what I mean by that. So I've got this philosophy that says, you know, an outside-in approach is effectively when someone comes into a room and they start talking about their experience, the way they learn their techniques, their tools. And that's great for them. In fact, it's brilliant for them, but it's not necessarily good for me. It's not necessarily good for Lynda or even for you or anybody else. So what I talk about a lot more in what I've practiced my entire career is this idea of the inside out method of learning.
 
 David: (02:28)
 And basically, let me give you an example of, what that inside-out method looks like. And I'll use public speaking as an example. So if you think of the traditional way of learning, you would end up going into a classroom, they would teach you about tone. They would teach you about pitch. Maybe they would teach you about what to wear, how to use media, how to walk around the stage and things like that. So all external things, but what they don't teach you for example is how do you harness your nerves as you're about ready to walk on stage and you're nervous. You've got butterflies. You're feeling that little bit of nausea. As you walk on thinking this, can I even do this? That's what they need to teach you. And when you look at experts in this, they've got a very specific technique for how they harness that nervousness and create a really positive energy for themselves.
 
 David: (03:15)
 That's what I mean by inside out. So it's taking the things , you can't see the skills and attributes you can't see, and basically using that to develop expertise. And that's what I refer to as the visible versus the invisible elements of being skilled at something. And it helps to put this in context from the stages of learning. So if you think about learning from the standpoint of we've got this unconscious incompetence, meaning we don't know, we don't know something, right? And we all start there every single one of us at some point. And it's then recognizing that we have that gap in knowledge, and then how do we then move it from the first phase, which is not being aware to then the awareness we're still potentially incompetent in that context. And I use that term very loosely, but at least now we know we don't know something. Then we need to move it to having this conscious competence.
 
 David: (04:08)
 Now we're starting to be aware that we've got a skill. We're applying it. We're starting to get fairly good at it. And ultimately when we move to mastery, it moves to a level of unconsciousness again. So then, you know, you look at experts and they can be incredibly talented. And when you speak to them and say, Hey, how do you do that? How do you harness your nerves before you walk on stage? And the typical answer you get at first is, I don't know, I just do it. And it's about how you get below that to say, Hey, how do you really do it? Tell me a little bit about what you go through so that you can start to understand the techniques that are basically hidden. So that's why I feel that the traditional outside-in approach of learning, doesn't work. So the Harvard Business Review finding's really don't surprise me from that perspective. What's your take Lynda?
 
 Lynda: (04:53)
 Thanks, David. Certainly would concur , with everything that you are saying, just from my experience, I would say, to everyone that we wouldn't discount traditional learning. I think of it more as a foundation, but as David, as you said, you absolutely as an individual or with your teams need to build on it. So an analogy think of watching a cooking show versus going into the kitchen and cooking. Both important. But you do not know until you actually do something or as you say, David, you practice something or you try it. You don't uncover what you do know and what you don't know. You haven't taken the technical learning. Maybe it's your accounting designation. Maybe it's some other expertise and brought it to top of mind where it's more inside, it's more intuitive. So I would say, you know, build on, on those traditional, if you have them, because they do serve a purpose, but David, as you said, then how do you internalize it? How do you become self aware? This is what I do well, but these are my gaps and then start doing things and it can be a class or it can be practice, or if it can be a volunteer role or it can be an assignment on a board. There's ways, different ways of doing that practice.
 
 Adam: (06:13)
 So you both raise some very interesting examples. And if you could choose one example to share with the listeners where you personally had the richest learning experience, what would that be and why that one? Lynda, can we start with you?
 
 Lynda: (06:29)
 Let me think. an example. I think one of my best examples for myself was early in my career. So I was working with a multinational high tech company and I was very early mid twenties. And this company went through its first acquisition of a workstation company. And at that time there hadn't been processes or protocol. They said, Hey, Lynda, would you go over to this company's offices, other side of the city and just figure out how to integrate it. So I had my accounting and business degrees and I had that piece, but until I went over and learned, okay, where is your general ledger? Where are your systems? What do you do? And immerse yourself in it, you don't know what you do and don't know. About a company, about the business model, about the people, as David said, half of it is, the emotional intelligence and emotional quotient. And so I think for me, immersing myself...

Contact Gordon Van Wechel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gordonvanwechel/
Email Gordon Van Wechel: gordon@thealchemyconsultinggroup.com

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Adam: (00:05)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson. And this is episode 164 of our series. Today's featured guest is Gordon Van Wechel. Gordon is president of the Alchemy Consulting Group. He is a business marketing strategist and he helps firms recognize the true business value, grow their business, and provide strategic support to professionals in business. In this episode, he talks with Mitch about the value of working with an agency and the benefits that come from proper advertising. Keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.
 
 Mitch: (00:49)
 So Gordon, thank you again for joining us. And, you know, I just want to start off our conversation by asking, in your opinion, your experiences does a professional practice need to have an agency working for them?
 
 Gordon: (01:02)
 Well, at the risk of sounding a little bit, self-serving Mitchell, because I do run an agency. I'll answer the question with a yes. But let me give you some reasons why I say that. There's such a multitude of marketing channels available today. If you think back just 15 years ago, you know, a practice had, you know, the yellow pages, they worked off of referrals. Google was in its infancy, YouTube hadn't been invented, social media, wasn't a factor, you know, they could do radio and TV, but there just wasn't that much to choose from. So it was relatively easy to get the word out. That's changed today. I mean, it would be easy for you and I in two or three minutes to come up with 50 different effective marketing channels that a professional practice can use and, and be effective. Now a lot of times when I speak with professional practice owners, they'll say, well, you know, my business is referral based, so I don't really need to do any advertising.
 
 Gordon: (01:57)
 What they don't realize is that there are multiple surveys out there that say that between 85 and 90% of the people who are referred to a business will first go online and they're looking for two things. They're looking for the company's website, because that kind of proves that they're legitimate and, and they want to look at that about us page and see who they might be dealing with so they select that company. But the other thing they're looking at is the reviews. That social proof has become critically important in the mind of a prospect because they want to know that the vendor they're considering is doing an excellent job with their current client and is likely to do an excellent job with them. Well, putting all of that together, managing `that diversity of channels and keeping up with the testing, knowing where their prospects are going for information updating of campaigns, you can't legitimately run a practice plus do all of that. So for those reasons, I think that having an agency is important even for a smaller, professional practice. But the caveat to that is to find an agency that understands your business and that's willing to work with you where you're at with the budget that you have available at this time and grow with you.
 
 Mitch: (03:13)
 So I think you've probably already addressed two of the answers or possible answers to my next question. But you mentioned, relying on referrals and then potentially budget concerns, my next question is what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see professional practices make for those that do pursue some form of marketing? You know, what are some of the obstacles or challenges that you find to be most familiar?
 
 Gordon: (03:41)
 Sure. I think one is not having a really clearly stated value proposition in their advertising. You know, the value proposition is why should I choose you versus the multitude of other firms that are available to me in the local marketplace? Something that we enjoy doing with a new client or even a prospect is we'll have them open up their website and take a screenshot of the homepage, the portion that's above the fold, that a prospect can see when they open up the website, take a picture of that and print it out and then do the same thing with four or five or six of their competitors. And what they'll be surprised to see is how similar all of those websites are. You know, they all promise the same things. They all use the same platitudes and generalities. Many times the only difference between those pages is the phone number.
 
 Gordon: (04:31)
 And if that's the case, then what your prospect is left with is the impression that everybody is the same. And if everybody's the same, all that prospect's going to be concerned about is who is going to give me the service for the cheapest price. And, that's a war that I don't want to get into. And I don't think many business owners do. Nobody wants to be in the race to the bottom. So not having that clearly stated value proposition and in today's marketplace, the absolutely most effective way to state that is in a little short, 60 to 75 second video of the business owner looking right into the camera and saying, here's who I am. Here's who my firm is. Here's what we do. And here's why you should consider using us. And just 1, 2, 3 bullet points, you know, whatever that value proposition is and state it as clearly and succinctly as possible and literally in 60 to 75 seconds. Any longer than that and people aren't going to listen.
 
 Mitch: (05:29)
 So taking that a step further, what is the most overlooked marketing channel professional practices could be using more effectively based on what you just shared, it feels like potentially a lot of practices are very interested in the social media, maybe? Maybe their website is their go-to, you know, from your experience, what kind of gets overlooked and really should be focused on better?
 
 Gordon: (05:51)
 Well, let's assume that a firm has a decent, basic website in place and it doesn't have to be a 10 or $12,000 major investment. It's got to be something that, as I just said, states their value proposition clearly and gives a person some insight into what the firm stands for and who some of the people are. Assuming that's in place and they have a Google business page that's in place and optimized that's the foundation. The next most overlooked step is retargeting. Now retargeting is a form of paid advertising. If you're not familiar with that term, you've certainly experienced retargeting. If you've ever shopped on eBay or Amazon or, really most any of the major retail...

Contact Stacey Ashley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceyashley/

About Stacey Ashley: https://ashleycoaching.com.au/about-stacey/

Leading Possibility: https://ashleycoaching.com.au/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Mitch: (00:05)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and this is episode 163 of our series. Today's featured guest is Stacey Ashley. Stacey is a high performance leadership and coaching expert. With over 30 years experience, Stacey has helped thousands of individuals develop their leadership, competence, confidence, and credibility. In this episode, she speaks with Adam about creating your own positive mindset, developing resilience, and developing accountability in others to learn more about these leadership skills, among others, keep listening as we head over to their conversation now.
 
 Adam: (00:51)
 Stacey, thanks so much for coming on today with us. I really appreciate you joining our Count Me In audience. One of the most important factors of great leadership is having a positive mindset and resilience. So can we talk about how one goes about creating that mindset and developing resilience?
 
 Stacey: (01:09)
 Yeah, and isn't it important right now after the last couple of years? I think more than ever. So look, there are so many things that you can do, but for me it's kind of like keep it simple and I think that there's some really straight forward things that everyone can do for themselves. There's some people of course kind of come with a positive mindset, which is great, so just keep going. But for those who need a little bit of help, I think, it's kind of noticing the little things. So noticing, what you do well or something great that happened today. Really you can be quite deliberate. You know, I have a session with my team every week where we actually deliberately go "what were our wins this week?" And we can kind of accumulate them, and we keep track of them.
 
 Stacey: (01:51)
 So if we're having a bad week, we can always look back and go, there was some really good stuff that we've been doing. And so let's focus on that and that kind of keeps us buoyant and positive. But I think the other one, that's really important is just to remind yourself of all of the incredible resources you have and the strengths and the great things you've done in the past. And I know a lot of the clients that I work with, I kind of get them to journal it, even if they're not big on journaling, but just to start to keep a little bit of a track again. Once a day or once a week of, you know, things that they have done well or that they have accomplished or, made progress with and sort of creating that evidence of you know what, I can do this, look at this track record that I've created of things that I've been able to do or overcome, or, you know, rise to achieve.
 
 Stacey: (02:42)
 Because when we are having those kind of down days and we all have ups and downs, but you know, when you have those down days, you can just open your journal and go, actually, you know what? I can do this. Look, I've done this before and I've done that before, and I've learned all these things. So I think sometimes it's just making sure that we keep balance for ourselves because often as humans, we kind of focus on the things that don't go well, are a bit negative , and those sorts of things. So we want to offer ourselves some balancing out of that. So if you start to, kind of notice the things that do go well, what you are capable of and create that history for yourself, you're balancing your own conversation. I think that alone really allows you to then kind of rise and sort of bounce back.
 
 Stacey: (03:26)
 I remember, my kids a couple of years ago, well, a few more actually, when they were little kids, they did a resilience program at school and it was called bounce because it was recognizing that we don't all stay up and positive all the time. We all have ups and downs, but it's the ability to bounce back up that actually creates that resilience opportunity. And so I think if you can do that for yourself, have that evidence of your ability to cope and have great strategies and make progress and that sort of thing. I think that takes you a long way to developing that positive mindset. Because you've got all those reminders right there for you.
 
 Speaker 2: (04:03)
 Yeah. Having all those reminders is important because, you know, I was thinking, as you were saying that, you know, we do have lots of ups and downs. Nobody can be positive all the time. So are there other strategies besides, you know, not everybody's good at keeping a journal, are there other strategies that, to deal with those ups and downs as you're working through that?
 
 Stacey: (04:22)
 Yeah, I think so. As I said, even just noticing things in a positive way. So just asking yourself questions in the positive, you know, what did I enjoy today? What was good about today? What was one good thing that happened today? So just in the moment you can grasp, you know, that positive element, I think, you know, other things that we can do, certainly what I've noticed in the last couple of years of course, is that goals have not been achieved. Like everyone has goals in different ways, whether they articulate them or not. And organizations certainly had lots of goals and for lots of reasons, we didn't actually make them right? Because the world changed and a lot of it was out of our control. And so for, many people, teams and organizations, they can feel like we sort of failed.
 
 Stacey: (05:07)
 We didn't make it and that's not great for your mindset. And so I think a better focus just even every day is to focus on progress. You know, don't focus on, did we hit the goal, but did we make progress? Did we put some effort in, did we move forward a little bit further than we were yesterday or did we actually have to change direction because that's what the circumstances dictated. So again, I think it's just noticing day to day, how you can, you know, contribute and make a difference. And you know, that you have put effort in and all of those sorts of things and recognize yourself for it and your team and you know, all those sorts of things. But I think that's the in the moment stuff is so powerful to support yourself and your mindset.
 
 Stacey: (05:54)
 And then I think the other thing Adam, that's really important is, one of the things about resilience I think is not going, Hey, everything's sparkling and amazingly wonderful right now, but, having the ability to go, okay, it might not be great right now, but I do believe that I can do some things that are going to improve it over time. And so I think having that conversation with yourself as well, like, okay, it's not ideal right now, but what can I do to actually help it along a little bit in the future? And, that feeling of doing something, of taking just a little bit of power back in the moment, again, super important for your resilience and positive mindset.
 
 Adam: (06:36)
 Yeah, it's almost like you're taking back that power from the down moment. It doesn't have to make it a high moment, but you're kind of bringing yourself out of the hole and you're able to kind of push through in that way. Is that what you're saying?
 
 Stacey: (06:47)
 Yeah, absolutely. And so it's not about that. I'll just, you know, be a victim of circumstances and go, ...

Contact James Petrossi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamespetrossi/

PTNL Website https://www.ptnl.com/

"Know Your True Self" Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-your-true-self/id1575535864

Know Your True Self: The Formula to Raise Human Consciousness Book https://www.amazon.com/Know-Your-True-Self-Consciousness/dp/1734669144/ref=sr_1_2?crid=V853BCIL5IQB&keywords=know+your+true+self&qid=1636492862&sprefix=kbnow+your+true+self%2Caps%2C260&sr=8-2

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Adam Larson, and I'm pleased to bring you episode 162 of our series with featured guest, James Petrossi. James is the founder of PTNL and a researcher on human connection. He joined my co-host Mitch to talk about individual perspective, wellbeing and employees feeling fulfilled. Burnout has been at the forefront of everyone's mind following the demands of global work environment. So James has set out to help leaders develop organizational consciousness and recreate wellness for individual purpose. Keep listening to hear more about these strategies as we head over to the conversation now.
 
Mitch: (00:54)
So James, there's been a lot of talk about the workforce across all industries in recent times. So, you know, from your perspective, I'd like to kick things off today with asking you, why are so many employees feeling unfulfilled and why are they choosing to resign at this time?
 
James: (01:11)
Yeah, we're definitely facing a really challenging time and one extremely unique to evolutionary history and one to really embrace, accept and learn from. And I think there's three main reasons that employees are feeling that unfulfillment right now. The first is really the inability to cope with change. We've been going through so many changes over the past couple years and living in a state of uncertainty, especially as it relates to our job. One when the pandemic first hits, we're in a state of survival, anything to keep our job, then we're adapting to technology, Zoom calls being out of the office, changing landscapes, having kids at home, then all of a sudden there's a bright light and it looks like we're going back to the office and we're preparing ourselves for that. But our children aren't necessarily prepared to go back to school. So we've been navigating change in so many different aspects of our life and our brains rely on habits and it's through habit formations and repetitive actions that neuron chains develop in our brain. And we start to do things unconsciously. If you remember the time when you did commute to work, when you were either going there or going home, you sort of got lost in the commute. You weren't thinking about how to navigate to the office or the routine about stopping to get your coffee. Those all become unconscious behaviors. So as we continue to splinter those neuron chains and try to develop new ones, it really makes us feel lonely, disconnected, searching to find peace. So that's been a really big challenge is just navigating change. Making people feel unfulfilled and just comfortable in how they're navigating life holistically. I think another one is especially with the millennial generation and all generations, but specifically millennials and the emerging centennials in the workplace. We were coming out of the experience economy, really at the pinnacle of the experience economy and inside the experience economy or concerts, activations, all of these Instagram moments that we can share with friends and all of a sudden we became so used to just experiencing so many things on a moment to moment basis. And now we're with ourselves, we're with our thoughts, we have to contend with our emotions and our unconscious mind is not going to like this. And it's gonna tell us, you deserve to have all these things like you deserve to have life the way it was. I think it was Helen Keller said something to the effect of like character can't be developed in peace and quiet. It's through suffering that the soul gets strengthened, that we learn, we grow and we develop. So, you know, we can't get back time. We can only embrace the present moment and helping employees connect with the present moment. And the reality we face on a moment to moment, day to day basis helps us cope with change, and also feel like there's no getting back what we had. We can't quit our job and earn time back. We can only address what's currently happening. And then some of the onus of why employees are feeling unfulfilled at work is really on the employers themselves. Clearly identifying the purpose that you're creating in people's life. Just because we might not feel like we're contributing to a higher purpose on a day to day basis because not all work is infused with meaning, but it's the small actions. The things that we learn from the trying relationships that we have, the way we connect with our teams, the problems that we solve, all of these small moments in the workplace help us connect to a higher purpose. And if an organization can share their purpose through their vision, their values and making sure they're showing their employees how we help serve humanity, cuz every business that's out there is serving humanity. Whether they're providing pleasure, whether they're providing food, whether they're providing connection, we're all in the business of serving humanity and employees need to know that and make sure that an organization is living up to some type of core values. I think definitely where that connection gets lost between employers and employees is core values are sort of on the placard somewhere in the office, but how do we now activate those core values? And those values bring virtue into people's lives and help them feel like they're connected to a purpose bigger than themselves. So that purpose is really about creating a unified shared experience that truly builds a culture around an organization. And one employees can really, you know, glam onto and enjoy.
 
Mitch: (06:05)
So you touched on many things that I can personally relate to over the last year and a half. You know, this is now we're recording this end of calendar year 21. And a lot of the things that you mentioned are certainly relatable having kids around when you're trying to work on teams calls and even the idea of commuting again, I think it's interesting because I know at least I had a bit of a longer commute. It was almost an opportunity at the end of the day to kind of stop your mind from working and transition to home on your way. And you know, nowadays it's a bit of a challenge cuz there isn't really that time to break. You know, it's just one thing to the next you're living in it at all times. I'm sure that's just one of the many. So I'm curious: you mentioned a lot of reasons for unfulfillment, but I think, you know, employees certainly still have an opportunity to feel fulfilled, you know, and organizations have an opportunity to really hone in on those core values. And I think a lot of businesses, you know, if they didn't adapt right away, they certainly have by now. So wh...

Contact Omar Choucair: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omar-choucair-cpa-80264815/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Mitch Roshong, and I'm pleased to introduce you to Omar Choucair. Omar is the CFO at Tritech a world class financial operations and insights company committed to transforming financial processes to best in class levels of efficiency and effectiveness. Omar is a senior level financial executive with broad experience in corporate finance, accounting, corporate governance, and FP&A management skills. Here, in episode 161 of our series, he talks about why and how corporate M&A operations are falling short and where he sees the trends going in the future. Keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.
 
Adam: (00:57)
Omar, thanks so much for joining us today, and we're gonna jump right into things in Bain's global M&A 2021 report, they state that M&A is expected to spur 45% of revenue growth over the next three years. Up from 30% over the last three years, one of the first lines of the report says as the world locked down and masked up M&A endured, do you agree with their sentiment?
 
Omar: (01:23)
Yes. Wholeheartedly. And, thanks for taking the time it's, you know, the last 18 months have been quite overwhelming in terms of, the things that have happened to, you know, public companies and private companies. And, you know, to the extent that, somebody would said back in, the February, March timeframe of 2020, what was about to happen? I think a lot of people wouldn't have believed it, but yes, it's, it's been astounding.
 
Adam: (01:50)
Definitely. I think everybody's just their minds have blown what's happening. but what's great is that business seems to be booming or not really booming, but increasing, which I think is one of the things that with everything locking down, we're still moving forward, which is great.
 
Omar: (02:07)
Yeah. It's if you go back and think about just how many companies have grappled with, employees working remotely and the technology and the processes and the procedures that all these companies had to deal with early on in the pandemic. And to think that whether it was, you know, strategics, large strategic public companies, private equity, venture capital that this M&A engine continued, and not only continued, but accelerated all the way through the end of 20. And then, continuing through the first, you know, 10 months of 2021 is absolutely stunning.
 
Adam: (02:48)
So even with this positive outlook that we've been talking about, many corporate M&A operations seem to be falling short still, can we focus a little bit on why and how this continues to occur?
 
Omar: (03:01)
Sure. I would say a couple of things. So first of all the large strategics, you know, they had the capital. So I don't think there was an issue with respect to capital. I think they had cash on the balance sheet. They had plentiful access to, you know, to public debt, private debt, et cetera. I think what could have happened was that these large strategics had a process and a control procedure about how to do M&A, it was like very programmatic. And I think what could have happened was when everybody went and started working from home and the remote side, that a lot of that programmatic process, it wasn't hardened for people working from home. And that's my personal belief. And I think additionally, to the extent that those companies, those large strategics had, built in technology, whether it was on the FP&A side on the financial close side, just in terms of, you know, R&D, those companies that were really hardened and connected on the IT side, I think they did extremely well versus their counterparts that maybe had not invested in technology. And they saw this like, gap between what they thought they could do and what they actually could do. And just the, the astounding pace at what's, the M&A, you know, market continued. It really, it probably put a lot of pressure and squeeze on some of those companies.
 
Adam: (04:28)
Do you think that there was a bit of a change management gap as well for those companies that were not kind of up to par?
 
Omar: (04:36)
I think the, the change management is always difficult. And if you kind of, you know, zoom out a little bit in terms of change management and just the integration, I know the first hundred days are just, it's almost like it's the, it's all the due diligence, you know, up until the time that there's an M&A deal that gets signed. And there's a whole process around that. And I think we can talk about that in a little bit, but in terms of the first hundred days after, those first hundred days after are critical in terms of culture, in terms of what did companies buy, did they buy technology? Did they buy, did they make customer list? Like, what is it, what was the strategic asset that they bought? And I think that's really important.
 
Adam: (05:16)
Do you think that first hundred days is even harder when you have a remote workforce?
 
Omar: (05:21)
I think the first hundred days are significantly harder when you have a remote workforce. And the reason is because there's two cultures that have to get fused. It's the it's, you have to prep the buyer's culture, right. In terms of now we have this additional responsibility. And a lot of times, you know, the C level and the board, they're all super excited about, you know, doing the M&A, but then it's the mid-level management. Everybody else go, wait a minute, I've got all this additional work I have to do. Right. So, sometimes there's a gap between the board and senior management and what, you know, the people that actually are doing some of the work. So I think there's that. And then I think also to the extent that, you know, the systems and the process and technology are not really running at optimum level, when you bring on an additional, you know, set of revenue streams, and HR and people and technology, it can be a very stressful period. And then if all those people are working at home and they don't have that culture. Yeah. It's a lot of work. And I think, you know, for the CEO, CFO, et cetera, there's a lot of gut checks that have to be made all along, all along the way.
 
Adam: (06:36)
All right. So we've been talking a little bit about the, how and the why and how it affects the people, but can we focus now just what's some steps that we can take to overcome these challenges and the things we've been discussing.
 
Omar: (06:49)
Right. I would say it's really in two pieces. So the large public companies, you know, they have obviously the large public companies versus, you know, private, you know, PE-backed companies, if you will, it's a different ballgame, right? So those public companies, they have, you know, legal obligations to have programmatic controls and processes, et cetera in place. So, so any company that's a public company. And then we can talk about the SPAC and little bit, they they've had to jump into that public company real quickly, but to the extent that they have controls and procedures, it's a little bit easier for them to solve the gaps because they have a roadmap and they have certain monthly and quarterly controls that have to get done. And they're very well documented. They're very well tested. They have third parties that are testing them all the time. So the gap is a little bit easier for public companies because I think they know what to do. I think the real question then is for the management is how do they get folks th...

Contact Katie Thomas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiethomascpa/
Leaders Online: www.leaders-online.com

4 C Process: www.leaders-online.com/4cprocess

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:04)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Adam Larson, and I'm here to preview episode 160 of our series. Katie Thomas, owner of Leaders Online, rejoins Count Me In today to talk about finding, connecting, and developing relationships with key stakeholders. Katie does a lot of marketing and social media for executives and helps them increase their presence in the industry. In her conversation with Mitch, she talks about the power of technology and social media as it pertains to increasing influence and nurturing lasting relationships. Keep listening as we head over to the main part of the episode now.

Mitch: (00:51)
So Katie, the first time we spoke, you talked about how technology really changed the landscape of the accounting industry. We talked about analytics, growing your business, becoming more profitable, things along those lines. But I understand a lot has changed since we spoke and that was, you know, February of 2020. So what I wanna kind of get into and, and start off is if you can kind of explain, you know, what you've seen over the last year and a half, and what else has changed across the accounting industry?

Katie: (01:20)
Yeah, so man, since February of 2020, I feel like technology has had to be embraced more than ever. I mean, there were a lot of firms using technology, but then there were a lot not, and I think it was this thing where the firms who weren't fully embracing technology, they knew about it, but it was kind of scary be because what you've done before, and if it was working, it's like why fix what's not broken, but then the pandemic hit and there was something that was broken. You could no longer have face-to-face meetings. You could no longer operate as you did before. And so it really forced the accounting firms and their clients into digital relationships, even if they were traditionally local relationships, like come in, meet face-to-face, it was, Hey, we've gotta find different ways to communicate with our clients. A lot of people jumped on Zoom and then managing the staff and the firm members that also had to change. So if you didn't previously use project management tool or document sharing, all of that had to be quickly learned and leveraged and utilized. So I think that the outcome of all of this is really cool because firms had to become confident in using this and they realize that they don't necessarily need as big of an office or they don't need to meet in person as much. And they can still maintain those relationships, whether it's with clients or with staff. I know a lot of firms I work with. They're like, okay, we miss getting together in person and we're still gonna do that. But you know, maybe it's, you don't have to be in the office eight to five every single day. There's some flexibility.

Mitch: (03:02)
Yeah. I think that's a great point. And you know, our focus for today's conversation really is on these relationships, right? Whether it's clients or key stakeholders inside or outside of the business, we'll get into, you know, how we connect with them and such, but to kind of connect the dots where we were and where we are. Can you first talk a little bit about maybe some of the things that technology can influence when it comes to stakeholder relationships and where we're going with our conversation today?

Katie: (03:29)
Yeah. So people really connect in two ways. There's gonna be emotional connections. So like that's just gonna be like conversations and how you feel out someone. maybe you have similar views, goals, thoughts, and people really connect this way through talking and through stories. So there is some technology that can help with this, even like Zoom or Loom or apps that just connect us. But really I see technology on the other side of how we connect the logical way that we connect and with technology, you can really see into the data and create a story through this to then help you connect and talk about why you're doing certain things, the outcome of why of what's happening. The data really gives us the facts and the technology and able to us to access the data to then create stories around this data. So technology is a key piece in communicating, but I really see it supporting a lot of that logical side of how humans can connect.

Mitch: (04:28)
That's really well said. And we did briefly talk about analytics last time and you know, the data and everything you just mentioned. It's, it's a great point. So to take it a step further, you mentioned Zoom and some other, you know, apps, as far as technology goes, whether they're specific tools or more broadly social media, just in general, what kind of resources can our listeners use to better find, connect and develop relationships with key stakeholders? You know, what can they go out and access in order to improve these relationships for the long term?

Katie: (05:01)
Yeah, so I definitely think Zoom's a really popular one. Another one I mentioned was Loom. So that's like a screen recording tool, which is super helpful if you're trying to explain something and you're not, maybe you're gonna deliver this through an email. You can walk someone through like financials or maybe a process or a report. And you can actually show yourself talking about it as well as share your screen. I think this one's great client portals are great tools. So client portals can be used to share documents, securely, communicate through them. I think that's a great one. and then social media platforms are also awesome because you can create content for a wide variety of people. You can have conversations in the direct message. You know, there's a lot of platforms out there. Maybe it's even like your project management tool where you're communicating, but really it's just identifying maybe where there's a gap in communication. And since there is a tool for about everything, if you Google that, you'll probably find someone that's found a solution or created a solution that you can utilize.

Mitch: (06:02)
Yeah. Google is a, it's a great tool in itself and very, you know, very helpful on a daily basis. But as I said earlier, you know, there's obviously a lot more to our conversation than technology. There's a lot more to the profession than just technology. So I do wanna take this a step further and really make sure we cover, you know, our listener side of things, the management accounting side, a little bit more of the accounting finance profession. As far as connecting with individuals, I know something that you really focus on with the marketing side of your business is enabling individuals to increase their influence. So I'd like to hear your thought on, you know, whether it's tools or strategies, what can individuals do to increase their influence and really make a greater impact on the business.

Katie: (06:47)
So I think one of the number one things that individuals can do to create a greater influence on the organization and individuals as a whole it's to really align their why with the company's why and wh...

Contact Jamie Gregory: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-gregory-7030455/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Mitch Roshong, and you are now listening to episode 159 of our series. Today's featured guest speaker is chief financial officer at Synovus, Jamie Gregory. In this episode, Jamie talks about strategic initiatives and leading through change during a tough economic environment. As an example, he is a part of Synovus Forward. Synovus Forward is a revenue generating and expense saving initiative that began in late 2019 with the goal of achieving top quartile performance and an annual 175 million pre-tax run rate benefit by 2022, as well as best in class experience for clients, employees, and shareholders. Keep listening to hear more about this initiative, the role of innovation and adapting to change.

Adam: (01:05)
Jamie, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. We're so glad we could have you on, and we all know that the last 18 months have been really hard for many, many businesses. Some shut down other ones, you know, have struggled going forward and companies have to be strategic. And something I was reading about is Synovus Forward, an initiative that your company, has put forth recently. And can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Jamie: (01:29)
Yeah, absolutely. Adam first, thanks for having me today. I look forward to this discussion. Synovus Forward has been transformational for us. It all started back in 2019 when we looked at our long term plan our multiyear forecast and thought about how does that relate to our objectives to be a top quartile performer. And so we looked at that, we looked at where we expected the industry to be and our peers to be. And we realized we had a little bit of a gap there. And so we took a step back and looked internally and we realized that we had opportunities to be better. We had ways we could improve, we could, improve our delivery, to our customers through enhanced processes. We could look and then ensure that we have the right physical infrastructure. We realized that we had opportunities to improve, some of our third party, including, the partners we choose to help us deliver Synovus to our clients. But then, you know, as we progressed, the world changed on us. We started Synovus Forward in late 2019, and the first quarter of 2020, the whole world looked different. And so we had to reassess. And so it changed our outlook of what was required, to be top quartile. And we pivoted from there, but Synovus Forward started off as an initiative. It became a bigger initiative and now it's becoming just a cultural mindset of continuous improvement.

Adam: (02:58)
So I think that's a great example of, you know, seeing the economic environment, seeing the environment around you and adapting, you know, not just, taking, taking the initiative as you first saw it, but adapting as you went along, are there some major lessons that you can share since implementing.

Jamie: (03:14)
Well, you hit the nail on the head. The first thing is being willing to adapt. So you have to always be stepping back, looking at, you know, the impact in your vision and how does, what your outlook for the company, what that outlook is, how does that relate to your objectives? And so we're really clear on what our objectives are. And so as the outlook evolves, our tactics to achieve our objectives have to evolve. And so that was a piece of it. And that's what we were assessing in early 2020. But other lessons we learned is that there are win-win scenarios. If you're willing to really dig in and look for them, there are ways that everybody can be a winner. When you think about our key stakeholders, we have, you know, our shareholders, our team members, and our clients, and all of these can benefit through improvement. And so, you know, that was a big lesson that we've learned. And the last thing I would say is you do have to be persistent. Change can be tough, but you have to be there to support your team members and monitor the progress. And to see the initiatives through, to the finish line

Adam: (04:21)
Change is definitely tough, especially when you're looking to kind of be agile and move and adapt with the environment and financial and accounting industries. They're highly regulated, whether it's it's banking or taxing, all that stuff, everything's highly regulated. How do you continue to be agile in those types of environments?

Jamie: (04:42)
Yeah. First and foremost, you have to have a strong control environment, just to ensure that as you evolve, you're evolving from a place of strength, you know, but agile is, you know, bringing that up is a great point. When you break larger initiatives into smaller components, it can actually help enhance your control environment because you're able to test as you go along rather than wait to the end of a large initiative, to look and ensure that you're maintaining, sufficient control environment. So to me, agile is an important framework, as you think about, you know, maintaining and potentially enhancing your control environment as you go through these initiatives.

Adam: (05:26)
So control environment, internal controls, how important having internal controls been, especially as most of the workforce went to, working from home. And then now back in the office or hybrid environments.

Jamie: (05:39)
It's absolutely critical. And you look at ways to enhance the internal controls, both through your processes, but also through automation. and we believe that, you know, one of the major benefits, of automation is enhancing the control environment, reducing operational risk and trying to take human error out of the equation.

Adam: (06:02)
That's very important. So taking human error out a lot of times involves things like innovation. We've talked about agile, but now let's talk about being innovative. Change is not far behind and how can leaders, how can leaders guide their teams effectively through an innovative process?

Jamie: (06:19)
Well, first the first priority is ensuring you began with the end in mind that you had a long term vision, no matter what. So that way, no matter what short term changes or what tactical changes happen during the course of an initiative or a project that everybody's aligned on long term vision, so that, you know, your tactics may change and your strategies may change and the project may evolve, but it's all driving you to the same endpoint and that's what's critical. So that the team and anybody involved internally, externally, they can see that the progress towards the end, it remains the same, even if, how you're getting there may have changed from when you began the project.

Adam: (07:02)
Yeah. So do you have any examples maybe, of a time where you've led a team through that innovative change that you can share with us?

Jamie: (07:11)
Sure, sure. You know, I want to kind of go back to the Synovus Forward as you look at how that evolved. And so I mentioned that when we started this, we had a hundred million objective. This was to get us to top quartile and then the world changed. And the world changed, you know, when you have, interest rates declining, growth slowing uncertainty on capital liquidity, our outlook evolved with that. Now one thing that's interesting about our income statement is, that we are heavier on interest income, as a percentage of total revenue, than some of our peers. And so when you have that declining rate environment, it can impact us, a little bit more than others. And so when you look at what it takes to achieve top quartile performance, it changed. And that's what, resul...