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TBH, this was a tough cheat sheet roundup to write. Summer is here, there’s yard work to be done, drinks on the patio to be had, and digging through LinkedIn seems low on the priority list. But, as they say, there’s gold in them there hills (and as much as we want to goof off, there’s still work to be done.)
To help you navigate through the challenges of finance and accounting work—and fight off the urge to ditch it all for a pitcher of margaritas—we’ve gathered LinkedIn cheat sheets on using better language during presentations, what CFOs are looking for in controllers, and FP&A KPIs.
Our usual disclaimer to the wise: You should always look for additional resources and expertise when doing complicated finance work because it can be very difficult to accurately sum up sophisticated concepts in a single cheat sheet.
With that said, take a look at these useful finance cheat sheets CFO Brew recently found on LinkedIn.
- Ryan Donaghy’s “Stop repeating yourself in meetings.” We’ve all sat through dull meetings that should have been emails. And, if we’re honest, we’ve caught ourselves droning on repetitively in meetings that we were running. Donaghy, a specialist English communications skills coach, offers a PDF with seven tips for freshening up and energizing your language during presentations.
The first step Donaghy recommends is getting specific with your language and avoiding overused or overly technical words. He then offers six overused meeting words and highlights synonyms, along with definitions, that you can substitute them for. Examples include yawn-inducing words like increase, improve, grow, decrease, achieve, and innovate. - Howard Katzenberg’s “7 things every CFO wants in a controller.” Katzenberg is a former CFO turned startup founder of an accounts payable platform. Here he looks at the hard—and soft—skills that make controllers valuable to CFOs. These skills are particularly important as CFOs move away from the technical accounting tasks of the past and controllers assume those duties.
Katzenberg lists strategic thinking, leadership, technology fluency, and a focus on controls among the top skills that controllers need to be effective. He also defines each of the skills and offers examples. For instance, under ‘strategic thinking’ he says that “a strategic controller might analyze revenue trends and highlight which products/services are most profitable.” - Erik Lidman’s “7 KPIs for FP&A.” Continuing our theme of seven things, Lidman, CEO and founder of Aimplan, a Power BI FP&A platform, provides key performance indicators to guide FP&A teams and gives specific numbers for achieving those KPIs.
For example, the first KPI he shares is “Forecast Accuracy” and writes that one should measure forecasts against actuals aiming “for 5-10% accuracy.” Other KPIs that Lidman shares include cash flow, revenue growth, margin analysis, and customer metrics, among others.