Every CFO needs to be a storyteller. A storyteller who injects meaning into numbers through their reports.
We can all tell stories, but how do we tell a compelling story that really engages and informs our audience and clearly delivers our message?
In this blog we’ll look at the monthly board report as an example, and we’ve gathered three common errors that we should try and avoid:
In order to create an engaging narrative, we first need to develop a comprehensive understanding of our results. To do so, we need to give ourselves enough time to digest our numbers before sending out the materials. If you are collating spreadsheets and adding number until the last-minute, you simply won’t have time to craft a compelling presentation.
Having data dispersed across lots of different spreadsheets can be very time consuming. The static nature of spreadsheets creates huge headaches when it comes to producing timely reports. A cloud-based reporting tool allows you to centralise your numbers and seamlessly pull them into PowerPoint. This enables you to finish your presentation almost immediately after the accounting teams close their books. This will leave you with plenty of time to work on your presentation before sending the document out to the board.
Nearly every first draft in history has been way too long. One of the main issues of many reports is an overload of information. As Finance leaders, we have extensive knowledge of our companies’ key performance indicators (KPIs) and data points, but often fall into the trap of reporting every single detail.
The questions you always need to ask yourself – does the reader care about this? Is this something they will remember tomorrow? If the answer is no it should probably be cut out. Most likely, your board probably doesn’t have a huge appetite for 40 different marketing KPIs, so get rid of them, and keep your presentation concise. Only sharing the most important and relevant data points automatically makes them seem more important and interesting to those following along. Additionally, resist the impulse to create an appendix with an extra 80 slides and charts that didn’t make the cut, no board member will have the time to read through them anyway.
Though we are finance professionals, our end goal is the same as any author: to give the reader a better understanding. Just providing a recap of our company’s past and current performance is like writing an ending that leaves everyone hanging.
Whereas traditional CFOs could simply report metrics from the previous month or quarter, today’s strategic finance leaders must offer a forward-looking vision. Not only does the board want to know your position on the quarter’s performance, and the assumptions that are embedded in the forecast, those board members are also looking for you to provide them with a clear path to a satisfying ending: your clear projection for the company’s future.