Ep. 45: Anders Liu-Lindberg - "Insight x Influence = IMPACT"

Contact Anders: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andersliulindberg/

Additional Resources from Anders:

• Link to book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Create-value-Finance-Business-Partner/dp/1724850741
• Link to the ebook: http://businesspartneringinstitute.org/sign-up-to-our-newsletter/
• Link to blog: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andersliulindberg/detail/recent-activity/posts/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)

Hey everyone, thanks for coming back for episode 45 of Count Me In. Our featured guests for today's conversation joined us from Denmark as Anders Liu-Lindberg spoke with Mitch about the popular topic of business partnering. My favorite part of the conversation was Anders simple and clear equation. Insight times influence equals impact. Let's listen in for more valuable insight and hear what else Anders has to offer. 

Mitch: (00:34)

Recently we've heard a lot about the term business partnering. So in your perspective, what is business partnering? 

Anders: (00:42)

Thanks for asking that question. And I agree that a lot more posts than information is coming out about business partnering these years. But for me it's, it's really quite simple. Business partnering is insights times influence equals impact. What I mean with that, I mean, you've got to have some insights then you can share with business leaders that can improve that decisions. but You gotta be able to influence that decisions before you can improve that decisions? So if you insights and could influence decision making, you have impact. You have the ability to change business decisions, ideally for the better. Let me, let me try and break it further down. So what is insights? Insights is when you bring something new to business leaders that one, they didn't know and two, will help them make better decisions is if all you bring to them as information that they know already nice, but it doesn't help them and to what you bring to them as somebody they don't know but doesn't help him. It's even worse actually because you take away capacity from them to focus on making better decisions. and insights can come in really three broad, broad categories. There's the operator role, we optimize processes to drive efficiencies in both the finance function but also in business operations. Then there's the controller role, which is where we managed risks, which all the numbers and with you, who is this performance to see how things are going. Then there's the advisor role or recovery, new insights and perspectives that can help the business grow. That's really what insight is all about. And that of course means it can be lots of different things as long as it satisfies the first two criteria. You don't know it, but it can help make better decisions. How influencing is then more the secret sauce to this because I think finance professionals have been turning our insights for years, but maybe not gotten too far with it. You need influence to go the full mile. What does influence is about being customer centric or focus on your internal stakeholders and build trusted relationships with them? I said, if they don't trust you, it doesn't matter what you bring to them. It's about understanding the industry that you're a part of and your specific business. And if you don't understand the business, it is also hard for them to trust you and feel that you have something valuable to say. And last but not least, you gotta be assertive and communicate with impact. If you cannot communicate the result of your findings in a language that they understand, you're not getting very far with the insights either. But if you could do all of that, then you can have impact, can ensure better and more profitable business decisions. You can drag performance by tuning all these insights into action. So that's to me what, what business partnering is all about. 

Mitch: (03:27)

I think that's a great explanation and I really, appreciate your detail and explaining it all. So a lot of our accounting and finance listeners, they are hearing regularly about how they have to become business partners. Right. And with the explanation you just provided, what kind of, you know, advice would you give our listeners for becoming business partners or, you know, how do you get more time in that role to really secure their position in the organization? 

Anders: (03:56)

Yeah, so I think the first day was really making a personal choice to step outside your comfort zone. There's many finance and accounting professionals, they have a comfort zone that starts and ends with their desk in front of their Excel sheet or that BI tool, right? I mean, that might be a bit black and white and maybe it's not exactly like that, but I think many, many finance professionals can relate to the fact that every time they had to go talk to someone else, it's feels a bit uncomfortable. Especially if that someone else is outside of the finance function. So I at least from personal experience, if I go back five, 10 years, I feel that. And to some extent I still feel it today, but I've made a choice long ago to step outside my comfort zone and go where business partnering happens, which is together with other people together with, with business leaders and other other business stakeholders. So thing. That's really the first step because if you make that choice and you say, I'm going to stay out of my comfort zone and try to go do these things, everything becomes easier from there. I was saying it gets more comfortable right away over time. It will. Yeah, but that's what you need to do and yes, you will fail quite a few times probably before you succeed, but Hey, that's, you know, that's the new mantra these days, right? Fail fast to succeed sooner. So I think that's really key here. Then we can talk about all the skills that you need, you know be storyteller, communicate better, how to build relationships, understand other's perspectives and so forth. That is also hugely important. But we start with making that choice. 

Mitch: (05:31)

So what if our listeners are, you know, an accounting and finance professional is able to step out of their comfort zone. They take this first step, how do they measure their impact? You know, how can they actually become that business partner? When can they appreciate taking on this new responsibility? 

Anders: (05:48)

Yeah. So if you talk about measure impact as a business partner, I think there are, there are three things that you can look at. The first thing is does the business that you support deliver better results? Do the meet of beat the targets that we've set for them. So that's, that's one, right? That gotta be some sort of a business impact value creation part in them too The second is do the business leaders or the business stakeholders, internal customers call them what you want. Do they feel like that you actually helping them achieve these results or are they're thinking, Hey, you know, it's great you're there to your business partner. But hey you're not helping me and it's me and my team that are driving these facades, right? Because if they think you are helping them and you're delivering better business results, then to me you have an impac...