Systems Thinking for FP&A: Three Ways to Improve Planning with Daniel Bryan

Yes, I had a quite a few moments early in my career when I stayed up all night making this beautiful Excel model and then I showed it to the MD and then he said, "Well, that's nice, but I'm not going to use that because it's not doing anything that I really need." So yeah, that a few hours lost in my life to such things, but I think, at least for me personally, well, now, you know, if I put myself in that position again and someone asks me, "I would like this, this is my intention. I need a model to do this." I would really, you know, start asking, "Okay, the usual type of questions you would ask in a business requirement. What do you use it for when you need it? What should it contain?" That's all pretty simple, but it's more asking, "Okay, then what are you going to do with it?" And I think that was something of proper sight. I wouldn't have been confident enough to ask years ago. I take, like, planning is an example because everybody does planning in some kind of way in their life, you know? But why they do it and what's the purpose of it? Like, you just, you either take for granted, you don't really think about it at all, or you just think, "Well, yeah." Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of FPNAN Locked, where finance meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FPNA guy. And each week, we bring you conversations and practical advice from thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who are reshaping the role of FPNAN in today's business world. Together, we'll uncover the strategies and experiences that separate good FPNA professionals from great ones, helping you elevate your career and drive strategic impact. Today's guest is Daniel Bryan. Dan, welcome to the show. Hi, Paul. Thanks for the invite and having me on. Yeah, really excited to have you. Glad you're able to join us today. So let me give a little bit of Dan's background, and then we'll jump into our questions and what we're going to talk about. We're going to mostly cover systems thinking, along with some FPNA questions, how it relates to FPNA. But before I get into that, let me just read a little bit about Daniel here. So Daniel Bryan is a finance strategy and data leader with around 20 years' experience in financial services across roles, spanning business partnering, FPNA, and organizational transformation. He's a qualified accountant. His interests have increasingly wondered beyond traditional finance into systems thinking, complexity science, information systems, organizational learning, agent-based modeling, and AI. He is particularly interested in how models, assumptions, and measures shape decision making, which is something we're going to talk about, how organizations make sense of complexity, and why apparently sensible interventions so often produce unexpected results, something I think we can all relate to. Dan applies system thinking ideas to real-world finance and management problems, and recently wrote a series exploring systems thinking in FPNA. He's based in Switzerland, is he likes to say he's a recovering Excel geek. I say I'm still an Excel geek, so we got two things in common. He's an undercover system stinker and a pro dog walker. He can usually be found in a forest or halfway up a mountain recording audio notes and channeling his inner Dell Cooper. So nice, I love it. So welcome again. I always like to start every interview with this question. What does great FPNA look like? Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. I guess my views on that have changed over the years. If you'd asked me a while ago, I probably wouldn't say the same thing now, but first and foremost, I would say now you can't be great at FPNA if you're not involved in the conversation. What that means is basically having the right conversations with the right people in the company to influence it and to drive it. I think that's not something that you probably think is a target you might have earlier in your career, but towards the end of it you kind of realise that you need to earn that seat in the conversation. You need to be having credibility, trust. You need to speak the language of the business, but also speak to the finance language, you know, and probably more so these days IT as well. So I would summarise it really, is there anything in your seat in the conversation? I'll share it. How do you do that? That's obviously a big story. I wanted to just basically mention that what does that owning, what do you need to do to earn that seat? I think it's not something that comes automatically. You can be great at building models, you can be great at creating workflow charts, etc. But unless you really understand what the business is doing, like really, really well understanding what the management wants, not just their externally published KPIs or official targets, but really where they see value being created, what they can do about it. And the last thing I would say is really about the attitude as well. So really having a proactive kind of can do, not saying no first, but rather bringing people on their journey with you. I think they're really, really important things to get that seat at the table. No, I think you're right. I mean, obviously if we aren't communicating with the business and don't have a seat at the table, it's hard to have an impact. Exactly. I think I've seen quite a few people who are very capable, competent, know their business, know their P&Ls, their bounties, etc. But they're just really operating more like a factory, churning out forecasts, doing it just to hit the target and then see what happens. Whereas when you get a little bit more advanced, you're actually wanting to know that what you're doing as an FBNA leader is actually being used and is useful and people are coming to you asking you, can you quickly tell me what does this mean for my business? Not just what's the P&L, but how would that shape our performance, what's our KPIs looking like, etc. I fully agree with you there that we want all that. So I want to get into systems thinking and where I want to start is you've written several articles recently. I think you did a whole series on LinkedIn about system thinking. So how did you become interested in this whole idea of systems thinking? How did that happen? Kind of an accident, really. I didn't really set out looking for, you know, any more management theory. But I found myself over the years kind of getting a bit more frustrated in some of my, you know, dealing with the work, etc. But also, you know, just seeing the increasing complexity of the world. And actually, I was reading a book by a guy called Dan Davis called the Unaccountability Machine, which was really a book about how big organizations make bad decisions. And I knew it, I knew him from his writings in the FD. So I took the book. And then I would say I really had a bit of a mind shift. I won't give any spoilers about the book. But there's some really good analogies in natural cases where you think, you know, a company has organized its process a certain way in with all the right intentions. But, you know, then the outcome is really not what anyone wanted. And this book led me towards some of these topics about one called cybernetics, which honestly sounds a little bit more complicated than it really is. But eventually that led me down into the system thinking whole that I've been living in for the past couple of years. And I had a course at university in the UK about it as well. How so you've gone really deep? It sounds like read several books, taken a course, written a number of articles on this topic. So you said, well, a few years now, was that kind of where you've been down the rabbit hole, so to speak? Yeah, it's, you imagine like a rabbit warren with one big long track down the middle and load a little off-hoots the sides where you can kind of get lost and go around in circles. But I think it's, I've seen it, it sounds a bit strange to say it like this, but it's more, it's a change in the way that you're thinking and we can go into that. But it really is a fundamental change for me personally in my career. I look at things very differently now. Maybe that's also getting a little bit older, else, but it's definitely something that it's really been changed the way I think. And that's good. I think one book for me, you kind of mentioned that. I haven't done much on the system thinking, but one book that I really like that waff and remind me how I should be thinking is growth mindset, right? There's a lot of them out there. Different ways to help you do that. So I'm curious, you know, for your situation as you got into system thinking, what was the challenge that you were running into or what were you hoping to solve? You mentioned, you know, as you got in your career, a lot of things you saw where you got further and further in, you're like, why is this always happening? So just talk a little bit about kind of the challenge or what you're hoping to solve by better understanding system thinking. Well, I was looking for answers to the questions that I was steadily building up. And actually, one of the topics that was really challenging was the annual planning process, right? Every company seems to have, and you're either, you know about it or you don't. Those that do know about it, I think, you know, they have a certain view. I want to spoke to someone. And they're like, they're not a finance person. I said, well, most finance people think of like financial planning processes, like getting a tattoo. And the guy was, I don't know what you're really talking about here. Well, we know it's going to hurt, yet we still do it. And that was a revelation, I think, just talking to colleagues, you know, it's something that people repair for. They know it's going to hurt, but it's like a necessary thing to do. But what I think frustrated me and a lot of other people is that, you know, getting a tattoo, I don't have any, but I presume it's a matter of hours, and it, but it's there. forever permanent. The planning kind of the opposite way around right it takes ages to do months and months probably for some companies and then as soon as it's out it's out of date or it's not used or it's you know whatever and that bothered me a little bit because I saw just the amount of effort that people go into to make plans you know really trying their best but the same issues kept popping up you know year after year and of course in our more complex world it doesn't get better because of that and it frustrated me so I found myself looking for answers and I also kind of summarized the question I was asking is why do we you know being all very intelligent people well-intentioned why does it not get noticeably better marginally it does you know a new system here a new checklist here you see little things but it eventually comes back into the cycle of you know unpleasantness and the inefficiency I felt and so I want to dig into that just a little bit there we've all been there I mean I can remember a budget that wasn't finalized to like May of the next year and then we were away ahead of target that year so in July corporate decided to change everybody's budget without telling us how they did it and then expected us to answer all the questions and I finally wrote one time on a commentary I don't even know what was used to come up with this number I can't tell you what's caused the variance I don't think they appreciated that one very much but it was extremely frustrating so I can totally relate to that but what what I'm curious is was the frustration more around that you felt the process was inefficient that as soon as we were done it was useless you know that nobody was getting value out of it what are maybe some of those frustrations for you that made you say this is broken or this doesn't seem right I think well the basic principle was we keep trying harder and harder and it's not getting any better so that doesn't make sense but you know again progressing through the years you realize that what you're doing isn't really what you thought you were doing you know you start to realize or it might go on on you that the purpose of the plan is not perhaps what you as a you know well-meaning finance person thought it was and you see behaviors you see different dynamics that are coming to play and I really wondered why that is you know if I talked to another finance person they probably see it similar way you know what's the purpose of the plan but I started digging deeper and realized that because of these differences all these other impacts all these other behaviors whether they wanted or not came to be and but it didn't really feel like conscious people don't feel conscious of it they're just going about their jobs doing the best that they can but when you take a step back and you realize what's going on you start to sort of pick away at it and think well I'm sure there must be a better way of doing it yeah I think we all agree you know what you said there must be a better way of doing it so I think you know we'll come back some more to plan but what I want to kind of step back for a minute is I think most people probably don't really know what systems thinking is when you hear it you think of a academic term a theoretical term so what do you mean when you say system thinking that's a great question not so easy to answer unfortunately but a give it a good go without losing people I would say the following when I first started looking at systems thinking I was kind of expecting that it meant I just said like methodologies so you know theories like management maslow hierarchy of needs type things you know but actually what it is is a collection of people's thoughts grounded in some kind of theory but really different perspectives of how to look at problems and that sounds again 10,000 feet sort of thing originally it started out as a kind of management science or some called operations research like in 1950s 60s like really and also another a topical system dynamics like really mathematically local hard systems like how does this thing work what are the interrelationship going on how can we understand it and over the years it came less became more I would say softer so dealt more with things like people's social challenges learning change all these kind of things and so this is great theoretical backbone to it I'm not going to go down that route because it's pretty pretty dense fantastic if you put the time to study it but dense I think I would summarize it in a way system thinking gives you a different number of lenses to look at situation through various heuristics or like brain works or you know need little tricks basically you can prompt questions of a situation that perhaps you wouldn't have done otherwise or perhaps other people didn't really think about and it allows you to I would say deconstruct more complicated situations you know it's not going to help you decide like which hammer to hammer a nail in or you know it's a little bit more perspective like and taking it back to planning you know I see lots of individual components and lots of people doing a great job in their little defined things but overall the whole system isn't working as or I have these outcomes which are not ideal and why is that so system thinking gives you ways of asking questions and thinking about the situation differently with the intention of kind of untangling things and it really starts with yourself as well dismantling any assumptions that you might have like kind of things as they hear it and you could tell me if I'm off base but here's kind of what I'm hearing is you know systems thinking one is a way to look at a process a thing kind of holistically you're working to change your thinking and also being able to see it from others perspectives with different frameworks because we've all seen it where 10 well intentioned people get in a room make a decision and then they share it with everybody and the rest of the world's like you're an idiot how did you guys ever come up with that solution what were you thinking right we've all seen it whether it's politics whether it's the plan whatever it might be so is that kind of a kind of way to think of it it's almost like hoping you understand and deconstruct why so many good people have built what appears on the surface to be a reasonable process but continually kind of leads to suboptible decisions is that one way to think of this yeah exactly right there are different ways and perspectives that people change different tools that they can use but ultimately it comes down to you know there's a complex situation so called messy situations like you know planning or something even bigger like climate change is kind of things where there are lots of ways to solve issues there are lots of different perspectives into relationships competing interests this kind of thing and like success you can you know it's not a binary outcome it's a matter of opinion and so when people are trying to kind of get to grips with these situations often people just go oh well you know I think X answer you know like this as you mentioned like they got in a room and decided this was the right thing to do again it doesn't take a genius to realize that won't work all the time maybe sometime and then other situations for example where there are more than more way to do things but people just aren't you know working together well for example it's what systems thinking is doing is allowing you instead of like meeting the situation and either assuming you know the answer or you know boldly going forward with with what you have it's enabling you to take a step back and find better answers by asking better questions so I wanted to go into that and then I'd love to get some examples of kind of where you've used a system thinking we'll bring it back to planning but the last thing you said there you know an example is asking better questions right they'll be get better answers so within system thinking is there frameworks for asking better questions or is it more just making you aware and then you need to figure out how you do that do you know what I'm saying it doesn't give you the answers for anything but it you know there's a lot of famous probably not that famous theorists who've got a different approach is I think one thing that's really important is you've got this kind of theory about how people behave how things work but the other concept which part of my studies was about how to bring that into practice and so not just you know looking at a framework and saying okay this is you know apply this framework to this situation of course there are you know it's not like a blueprint let's say and I'm making talk about them maybe more detail later but they are someone's way of analyzing a situation you know more something more complicated than a SWOT analysis but equally quite general in a sense that allows you to explore the situation so I mean we can talk about some of them later but if I was to kind of talk about how it happens in reality you know how to use systems thinking I would kind of say there would be like three things through practical ideas that people can do and we can talk about each of them one is look beyond the symptom that you're seeing. So what is the pain point that you see? What is the outcome that's not right? You need to look beyond that. It's not just a simple system isn't working because of X. In very few cases, it might be, but in bigger complicated situations, it's not. The other one is look beyond process. So what is it that you think you're looking at? You probably automatically, you brain works automatically. It looks like a cat, therefore it's a cat, right? Obviously, but some things don't have a name. We give them a name like a planning process, but what is that? And then the last thing I'd say would look beyond the answer. So what that means is an elaborate on this is just because you think you have the answer, what matters more is how that's implemented and what that does to a system. Yeah, it's funny when you said that last one, what that does to a system. It made me think of how often do we tell people, this is the way we're going to do something and you don't get shared adoption because you're just telling them what to do versus letting the system come to the conclusion that that's the right way to do something. I know I've done it as a manager. I still remember when I was telling someone, oh, you got to do it this way. And I could tell they were looking at me and they were pushing back and I said, okay, fine. The end of the day, here's what the output needs to be as long as you get to that, do it however you want. And I got the results. And so I know the thought that came to mind is you said that. That's absolutely one aspect of it. It's a very human thing when we talk about these topics. We, so in that case, you would tell your colleague, I recommend you do it like this because if you take a step back and ask you, why did I say that? That's because I've based on my previous experience. I've classified this kind of issue whatever that needs to be solved. And I believe that if I do this, I will get X result or if the person does this, they will get X result. And of course, that's completely logical because it's based on your experience. But sometimes it's difficult thing is to kind of be a bit humble about it and not always assume that you know everything which I can tell you working in the financial services industry is pretty challenging at times because there's a lot of confident people around. But it's really like this discipline to, okay, you know, you're not going to do that every day like for every individual task. But you know, if you find an issue that hasn't worked or something that hasn't worked, you shouldn't be afraid to kind of challenge your assumptions around it. And that's what kind of system thinking and those three things I mentioned before kind of get towards. - FPNA guy here, I want to take a minute and share something I've been working on. I've spent several months adding new affiliate programs to my website by wondering why affiliate programs. Well, I can't train you on everything, but I can show you and give you trusted resources with exclusive FPNA guy discounts in many cases on my website. I have several of the top FPNA AI people in the world. I have the top certificate programs. I also have other programs like Excel, Power BI. I'm bringing you some of the top people that train in the world. There's Nicholas Boucher with exclusive discounts, David 14, Madden Carl Sideman with exclusive discount, the top programs, FPAC, FMI, and more. So go ahead and check it out on my website, sign up. And if you have a question on what program is right for you, go ahead and message me. I'll get back to LinkedIn or you can email me. So go to the FPNAguy.com and check out my trusted list of resources for you to upskill yourself. - Yeah, so can you share an example where maybe it changed your thinking, improved the process, is something kind of in your job? And then I want to discuss how it relates to planning. - So, well, we're kind of, they're both quite closely related because I've done a lot of work on planning. I guess, I think there's a few sort of, or quite a few penny drop moments, you say in English anyway, that it dawned on me that what I thought I knew I didn't really know. So one of the things that helped there was, when you see a symptom of an issue, for example, and I'll be precise about this, don't be afraid to kind of dig in and challenge yourself. So often with just a work in general finance or FPNA stuff, we, like, if we take planning is an example, right? We have created this new process, whatever, you know, on paper. People are still, like, building their spreadsheets, right? They're still ignoring your tool, they're still doing what they want. They're not following it. Usually you would say, well, that's probably because my process isn't perfect or not catering to their needs, but anyway, they need to follow it. So I'm gonna, you know, escalate. I'm gonna talk to their boss. I'm gonna make sure because, you know, we all need to work together and they're not. And I guess that will get you so far. But one of the questions I decided to ask is, well, what is it that this, you know, well-meaning person, why do they behave that way? Why do they think what they're doing is not necessarily better, but why do they do it in the face of such logic? And it's kind of a bit uncomfortable to ask that question because it draws a bit of attention onto what you're doing itself. But asking more deeper questions about the motivations and asking, you know, what is it that they gain from the situation? What is the risk that they're avoiding? It's not just a case that, you know, they prefer their spreadsheet to my new process, but do they, is it linked somewhere to another associated process? Is there another really, really good reason that they're just not really willing to talk about that means that they're not following my change, basic? And being able to kind of surface these questions carefully, subtly, that you can start to understand people's differing viewpoint. It's obviously quite difficult, but it's essential when you have really big challenges to solve where it needs, you know, people working together and being open to change, not just, you know, in words, but actually in actions. So that would be one kind of case where, I mean, well, I think I use this spreadsheet as an example because he tried to once harmonize five processes into one and wondered why people weren't doing it. That was exactly the reason why, because we didn't ask the right questions to start with. Yeah, what you ended on there, we did not ask the right questions to start with. Done that so many times. And honestly, and I'd love to get your thought, we're going to diverge here for a second, but I think we'll come to our last area kind of a little around, how does this all connect to AI? You know, I was interviewing someone they said, and they go, "Now it's more important than ever to be able to ask the right question." 'Cause you can get answers from AI super quick. And if you're not asking the right question, you know, the answer you're getting, you may go off and do, but you're not doing the right thing 'cause you didn't ask the right question to start with. So I mean, I think it was always really important with humans, but I'd love any thoughts there. It feels like, you know, kind of that, asking the right question has become more important than ever, especially with AI. Yeah, that's a good point, actually, that was one of my first thoughts about AI as well, and I've been learning last year or so, is it's fantastic at optimizing challenges and answering like super complicated math questions. You name it, but what's really the deciding factor is how you phrase the question or the challenge or how you set the reward. And it's like, you know, having a higher caliber rifle than you had before or something, it's just gonna do a lot more damage if it's misdirected. And definitely that, if I think many, many years ago, a good example would have been the account opening scandals, one of the US banks, where they'd set a KPI to, you know, other advisors need to open X number of new accounts and they found that they were opening accounts for people that didn't exist. This is a reason, you know, where the KPI kind of drives the behavior rather than, you know, rationality. And the same will, I think, will come from AI in that sense, you know, if you set a reward that's narrow or that even, you struggle to put the nuance into that reward, you know, then you're gonna have some trouble, for sure. And I think you shared a great example, anyone in the US remembers that example. It's one of the reasons I stopped using that bank. So I know exactly what bank you're talking about. I remember all of that coming out. And it's interesting, as you mentioned that, yeah, we could spend a whole episode on incentive theory and how you incentivize people and getting them right, you know, we all see it in finance. And there's some tie-in to systems thinking and all that. And so that's where it kind of made me go is make you think about, I think about that. So let's bring it back. I'm curious. I'm sure you've had plans where you feel like the plan looks great on paper or you've built a model. You go to the business and the business is looking at you kind of like, what are you talking about? You know, there's that disconnect. I think everybody's experienced that. So advice, kind of, what do we do in that situation? How do we bring, you know, systems thinking? What do you do now that you wouldn't have maybe done earlier in your career because of systems thinking in those situations? Just a great question. And yes, I had quite a few moments early in my career when I stayed up all night making this beautiful Excel model. and then I show it to the MD and then he said, "Well, that's nice, but I'm not going to use that because it's not doing anything that I really need." So, yeah, a few hours lost in my life to such things, but I think at least for me personally, well, now, you know, if I put myself in that position again and someone asks me if I would like this, this is my intention, I need a model to do this. I would really, you know, start asking, okay, the usual type of questions you would ask in a business requirements, you know, what do you use it for when you need it, what should it contain, and that's all pretty simple, but it's more asking, okay, then what are you going to do with it? And I think that was something I'd probably say I wouldn't have been confident enough to ask years ago. I take planning as an example because everybody does planning in some kind of way in their life, you know, but why they do it and what's the purpose of it? You just, you either take for granted, you don't really think about it at all, or you just think, well, yeah, you know, I'm sure there's different reasons, but, you know, in the end, you want something which is a representation of what could happen in the future. When I kind of scratching my head, wondering, like, why are, you know, a certain area of people, why are they resisting this so much? Like, what do they care about my change? I'm just, you know, changing a template, or I'm putting an extra step in a process or something. What is it that's like bothering them? And then there's a moment where one of the techniques in the systems thinking is like, that these great mapping techniques, so you can kind of dump your mind on a page and then talk to others and compare pages and this thing. And I drew this big like a three-pitcher. It was one of my assignments and it was like an active scene from a war film or something, you know, people coming in from the left, from the right, it was a central pot. And it was basically my depiction of what I was seeing as a kind of, you know, planning system, as if it was drawn, you know, not by a child, but, you know, to animate that somehow. And when I stood back, I thought, well, yeah, but that's because all these different issues or, you know, frictions are occurring because people just have a difference of opinion about what something is for. And it's not that it's like hidden, but it's just not explicit and discussed. So, you know, the CFO asking for a forecast, you know, it could be for many different reasons, right? He might want a best estimate or his next encounter with the CEO. He might want to start thinking about another, you know, I wonder if I've got capacity for X or something. Whereas like you ask someone in the business, okay, we need to make a plan. And their immediate thought is, well, you're going to judge me on this plan. And maybe taking that step further, oh, by the way, I need a plan to judge my own business on two. And so on. So you start picking away and you realize that where the different viewpoints come from, again, it's not from a bad place, but they're just with a different starting assumption about what you're doing collectively. And when you start to realize that, which is, again, it's super obvious when someone tells you, is that you start to ask the questions or think about solutions in a slightly more nuanced or better way. So how can these two systems, if you like, you know, you've got corporate planning, you've got your formative appraisal, you've got your kind of in banks, and you have a lot of other technical regulator views, things like this. How can they coexist? How can I structure what I'm doing to make them coexist and not just rub against each other and create friction? FPDA guy here will get back to the show in a minute. This section is on scripted. When I started my business, I had two main goals. To be trusted, and for my content to come across as authentic and helpful. I've heard from many of you that I've accomplished those. Today, I have three goals. To be trusted, authentic, and have the best beard in finance. All right, enough with the jokes, enough with the fun. What I'm asking for is I'm asking for you to help me out. If you've enjoyed the show, if you've enjoyed an interview, if you found it helpful in your career, can you please leave a rating and review? That helps more people find the show, helps me grow the show, helps me grow my business. So I'd really appreciate it if you could take a moment and leave me a review. You can do it on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen, or you can go to my website, www.vfpnaguy.com. That's fpandaguy.com. Go ahead and go to Wall-A-Love, go down to the bottom, and you can click to leave a testimonial. Thanks for doing that. Thanks for listening. A lot you said there. I think one that I couldn't help but think of is when you gave the example, you know, the CFO says, "Hey, I need this number." And so often, the business is hesitant to give it. And you're like, "Why?" And it's like, because they're concerned you're going to hold it to them and come back and say, "Okay, now you have to deliver that exact number when you just ask for, "It give me a quick number." And so I've seen that time and time again. So that example resonated with me. I think there's a lot in there. But it's like, listen to all of this. And, you know, I want to see if you have any kind of final thoughts. I want to ask a question on AI and then we'll kind of wrap up. But it fills to me that so much of this is around learning tasks, better questions, kind of getting back to the source, trying to understand others' perspectives. So you can design and build processes that are, you know, going to lead to better outcomes. Is that kind of how you think about this or am I oversimplifying it? I don't think you can simplify it enough. It sounds like a bit self-defeating that one, but it's very true. To many, it sounds a bit fluffy. You know, I will say that, but as soon as you start doing things and seeing or, you know, that penny dropping for yourself, you really start to see the magic of just being able to think differently about the same old challenges. So I think your description was very, very well made. Okay. And any last thoughts you want to share on systems thinking for our audience? Any advice for them that they should take away from this conversation? Well, firstly, you know, these ideas spark your interest. There are lots of resources online. You can read about it. Probably better people than I to explain it. I think to start to use it in your daily life, it's not like something you take out the box and start using it. It's just a little, little experiments that you can do when you encounter a situation. So I'll probably go back to the three points I made earlier, which is, you know, and anyone can do this, you know, tomorrow in their job or Monday, even. What you're seeing, the pain or frustration of something, it's not just something that needs to be solved. But you look beyond that symptom and ask why, why is this person doing that? What makes it make sense for them? What is this information telling me? Look beyond the process and challenge the process as we just discussed. So the next time, again, the CFO asks, can I have a forecast? I mean, sure, you're going to ask, what for? That's probably natural. But perhaps if you're talking about another, you know, with another colleague, ask them, or ask multiple people, what do you really think we're doing here? What's this for? And maybe you'll be surprised with one of them that says, well, actually, I, you know, I see it more as like this. And that can tell you something. And then I think the last thing to do is, you know, right before you kind of send that email or, you know, suggest, oh, I think we should change the process to this or maybe just stop and ask yourself, like, and then what? Like, what could happen? Or what do we, you know, what would reasonable people think would happen if you make this change? You might still make the change, but at least you start to think more systemically about change. Thank you for that. It makes some good points there. So obviously, I think the, feels like the word of the decade, maybe the century is right, generative AI, AI, artificial intelligence, this whole transformation that we're seeing go on before our eyes. So how do you kind of think about AI? You think there's a connection between AI and systems thinking because obviously, AI is going to require change. So I'll just leave it to there and let you take that where you want. Yeah, I mean, exactly topic of the day of the century, maybe even, I'm, I like, well, like all of us, like finance professionals, we're interested in multiple angles, you know, and I've planned to write a little bit about this in the future, but, you know, just taking a step back and my natural kind of system thinking brain, if I have one yet, starts to kind of ask questions, like, you know, simple things, what's the purpose of what we're doing? Do we truly understand it? Which is kind of obvious, right? Everybody asks because that kind of thing. One of the points we mentioned earlier, which was quite an interesting one, is like just how powerful, but then how dangerous it can be when we're, you know, letting AI agents or just ourselves fall into the trap of, if we optimize this, we're going to get this outcome. And, you know, if we define things poorly, yes, you're not going to, you get, well, that means that you just have to approach things a little bit of, I think, humility and be very careful about how you define success. You know, of course, KPIs are needed, we need to measure performance, don't disagree, but we have to think carefully how we package that up for AI to. go away and solve for us. The other thing which I have in mind is, and this is maybe slightly geeky, but it's in the way that AI is based off of digitized knowledge and information. So the machine can only read information that's been encoded in a certain way. And this is called compression. And eventually that's how large language models work, where you're taking the whole of the internet and boiling it down into vectors as they call them of semantic meaning. And then we take that and we ask it questions and then we take the output and we double check what it says and that's all fine. But one of the dangers I think we have is that that kind of data bit going in, that's for me our representation of reality. It's not the truth, it's a map. When we have these ready-made answers for us, given on a plate, we tend to trust it and in doing so, we trust that what went into it was correct as well or valid or helpful. So that's the definitely risk I would say. Yeah, I think we all saw it especially early on some of the biases the day I would have because all humans have bias, right? I mean, that's a fact. Now some of us have more unconscious and conscious how much bias we have, that's all debatable. But we all have bias, so the information is going to train on, it's going to have some bias and that's something you have to be careful for. So I think you make a great point there at the end about that and some great thoughts. So I appreciate you sharing some things in the system thinking, this kind of been a different episode, so it's been fun to talk about a different topic. I want to transition, we have a couple of standard sections we do at the end of the show. The first is what I call my FPNA section. I usually ask three questions, generally the same questions and most guests. So the first one here is what is the number one technical skill that you believe FPNA professionals need to master today? Very topical question. I'm very tempted to say, you know, AI or data literacy, that kind of thing, which is very, very, very true. But what I'd probably go for is data visualization and why I say that is humans are quite visual things, right? A person that can say something very concisely with one picture is infinitely more accepted than the person with like a whole list of things, right? And often finance people are really, really good at the detail of the numbers, but not in the sharing of that information with others. And I think we've gotten better as a profession over a year of the time and there's now there's lots of cool tips and things and tools to do that. But I think it's really, you know, is it a technical skill? Yeah, I think so. Like displaying the trend in a certain way to guide someone's, you know, inner thoughts rather than telling them what they see. I think that's a really, really powerful thing that is for me a technical skill. Okay. Appreciate that. I like it. What about soft skill? Well, if I can't say system thinking, which obviously I want to say, I'll say something very close, which is kind of, I always say critical thinking and listening. So I think some of your guests before I've spoken about critical thinking. I think one of the things like I found from from from my studies was like unpicking what I think and why I think it people often take like mental shortcuts when we, you know, we're trying to do things fast. It's just how the brain works. But then we do things without really thinking about them, you know, using the kind of active part of our brain. And I would say when you don't do that, you end up kind of running around trying to solve problems literally around the company. You know, you are the fix it people generally in finance. So definitely having the ability to understand what really someone wants and thinks and the why is something which again comes with age and experience. But more so again with the world of AI, you need to be giving people the opportunity to be challenged to make decisions like that, I think. So definitely that critical thinking and listening, you know, smoothens any kind of challenging business relationship or meeting or something like that. Definitely think so. Yeah, so I think data visualization I've heard here and critical thinking. So appreciate both of those. The next one is just a fun question. If Excel removed one feature tomorrow, which feature would cause you the most panic? Well, I mentioned earlier or you mentioned I'm a recovering Excel geek in a while. When they first added the ribbon, I was not happy and then I managed to adapt. I think one of the things I couldn't live without would be keyboard shortcuts. For a couple of reasons, one, like just to get stuff done faster, right? And when I started out my early days, I was amazed watching these guys next to me, you know, cutting, tasting, moving data. And now, you know, maybe it's a bit lost, I don't know. But definitely, you know, when someone sees you, oh, wow, that happened fast. It's also like a badge of honor or a tool, you know, especially for finance people. So I definitely would not be happy if they got rid of the shortcuts or changed. So you're not going to be a Google sheets or a Mac person anytime soon for Excel. They got me while I was young, you know. Yeah, I hear you. That would be a tough one. All right. So this is our Get to Know You section. We just have a little fun and get to know about you a little better. So if you could travel anywhere in the world tomorrow, go on a vacation. Where are you going? Oh, lovely question again. And it's a Friday afternoon to my mind's already thinking about the weekend. I don't think when my wife and I got married over 10 years ago, we went on a honeymoon to run a little tiny island near the Cook Islands in the Pacific. And there was a tiny little atoll that we stayed on. I would love to take my daughter back there. Now she's nine years old. She's been swimming pretty well and interested in snorkeling. So I'd love to take her back there and live our little Robinson Crusoe life and paradise at least but I also love it. So you take her back there. You did your honeymoon. All right. Next one. If you could have dinner with one person dead or alive in the world, who would you pick? Oh, tough one. I would have maybe two ideas. Maybe I'll go over there. The firmer one. I'd pick the author Michael Lewis. I'm not sure how many of your listeners might know him, but he's kind of a big deal in finance writing. Anyway, written some really fantastic books that have shaped my, I think if you recall the film, The Big Short, that was based on his book. Yes. I think so. Wolf of Wall Street or Big short. I think there's Big Short with Sammy. He was big short. Big short. Yeah. He did another one about Sam Mountain Free. He's done loads of fantastic books, but he does podcasts as well. And so I've gotten to listen to some of his discussions. I just think you'd be really good dinner guest. He'd tell me lots of cool stuff about people he'd met. And he's also from the south. I'm like New Orleans around this way. I think I'm sure he can cook and know something a bit about hospitality. So I'd probably pick him. I think you might be one of the first guests to have brought in the cooking angle to who you selected. So I love that. That was fun. Yeah. I think he wrote Moneyball as well. If I remember right, you know, he's written several books. So yeah, he'd be a fun one to get some of the behind the scenes type of stories and things from him. Because I would imagine he'd have a lot of great stories. So I like that answer. All right. Well, as we wrap up here, two things. One, you've written some articles on LinkedIn, right? So if people want to find those that you've written about systems thinking they're those just on LinkedIn, they just go find your profile or how can someone find those if they want to check any of those out? Yeah, I mean, you can find me on LinkedIn. I post and comment a little bit these days. There, you'll find links to that I wrote a series of articles about systems thinking in fpna. There are audio recordings on there as well. Not me either. Someone with a better voice than I have. Thanks to AI. And you can listen to those again, as I often do walking my dog. I listen to a lot of stuff. I'm going to be writing a little bit more as well on this AI systems thinking angle topic as well. So look out for that on my sub stack as well. So perfect. So you can follow down there. He has a sub stack. You can find them on LinkedIn. You could see some links to those articles. So we'll let people put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes, put those links there so people can find that. But thank you so much for carving out an hour, especially on a Friday afternoon for you. I'm sure your mind's been wondering a little bit. It's like, okay, when I'm done, I get to go enjoy my weekend. So I hope you have a great one and I appreciate you coming on the show. Great. I really, a great time. Thanks a lot, Paul. Thank you. That's it for today's episode of fpna unlock. If you enjoy fpna unlocked, please take a moment to leave a five star rating and review. It's the best way to support the fpna guy and help more fpna professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpe.com downloading the app and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education credits for the fpac certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the fpna guy and I'll see you See you next time.