The Three Foundations of Strategic FP&A with Chithra Rajagopalan

I think in the age of AI, one more kind of variable that gets thrown into the mixes, the people you hire, are they the orchestrators, or are they the just just followers and task people, right? Because a lot of tasks that you're doing, repetitive ones, just adding things up and reporting and going through data like, AI can do a lot of it. You want to hire people who are orchestrators and who are able to think, "Hey, this is how the function should work." And these are the nuances that it has and can intelligent we can map that out. Because then it's easy for them to, "Okay, this is how I want the agentic part to work out for me." Welcome to another episode of FPNA Unlocked, where Finance meets Strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FPNA Guy. Each week we bring you conversations and practical advice from thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who are reshaping the role of FPNA in today's business world. Together, we'll uncover the strategy and experiences that separate good FPNA from great FPNA. And this week we have someone who will help us do that really excited about, that's had a lot of great roles and experiences. So I want to welcome Chetra to the show. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm super excited to be here. Thanks again for the opportunity. Yeah, I'm really excited to have you. So Chetra, Rajuk Vaughan, is a finance leader. She currently works for Obsidian. And instead of me reading her background and you all have to listen to that or fast forward it, I'm going to let her tell us a little bit about herself before we jump into our conversation. Perfect. So yeah, I'm going to do a quick 10 second background about me and get into the fun stuff. So I joined Obsidian in three years back. I was introduced to the company and CEO by our lead investor, Graylock. And I've been with Graylock portfolio companies for the last couple of my gigs. So obviously have high confidence in all the introductions they make for me. And yeah, and then it was, you know, when I spoke with Hassan, it was like the problem statement was very clear. It was something I got pretty hooked to as, hey, why are we not talking about this more? Like it really makes sense. Like for me, as a finance leader, all this time security was never like in the forefront, but somebody who's handling highly sensitive data, I'm like, it should be technically. This is not, this is a huge responsibility. So it was kind of very much product excitement that that caught me more intrigued. And of course, amazing people. So it's been a bliss working here for three years now. Prior to that was with similar, similar roles with click up people AI and and prior to that, I spent quite a bit of time as the interim CFO services that we did and control our ship, which is focused predominantly on SaaS companies that are venture backed and going through a hyper hypergoat scale, who clearly didn't have like a CFO internally, but did need a finance leadership and started my career with the four where I got to do a very different kind of work. So yeah, that's a little bit about me. Awesome. Thank you. And I can relate to the cyber security. Actually work for DigiSert if you've heard of them. And then I started my career with the Navy. So security was very high. I worked on a weapons division Navy base with all scientists and engineers that were working on that kind of stuff. And then I worked for American Express, which was very strict on the security because you can imagine with credit card data. Absolutely. So one of our core ISDPs is financial services and banking, especially because of that, like highly sensitive data, high volume of data, regulatory requirements. And you know, like the exposure that they have is very, very intense, right? So it is definitely a core ISDP of us. Not surprised at all, right? I mean, government and banks and health care are probably three of the highest as far as if there's a breach type of information they have. Absolutely. And medical, the health care field and look on is also another one that we run into predominantly. Not surprised at all. Makes total sense for that industry. Before we jump into that, we'll get a little bit more into kind of what you're doing today. This question I like to start every episode off with. I love seeing the kind of diversity of answers and the similarity. So when you think of great FPNA, what does it look like? How would you define it? I mean, simply put great FPNA, I always believe is not just reporting. It's when you are able to influence a decision, influence a trajectory of where the strategy is going. I think that's what you want to define FPNA as. And I think there is a role or a phase in a company's growth where FPNA will play a lot more of a strategic role or like we'll have a lot more of a predominant contribution, right? Like I think having that strategic partnership in whatever department really brings the good together for a company and whether it's insights or data and how do you utilize that to make decisions within a department or a nor or holistically as a company. I think this is where that bridging the gap is required because accounting is always going to give you exposure to what already happened. You still need a strong FPNA partner to know, okay, with that information, what am I going to do in the future? Makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned there's some stages where it's more strategic. I'm going to guess you pricing at an early startups. It seems like that's where you really like to thrive and you enjoy that involvement as you're moving rapidly and trying to figure out what's next and how do we scale this? Absolutely. And I think I mentioned to you this before, like being in startups was something that was I was exposed to very randomly. And I just literally I was like excited about even the small little contribution that you make has a huge impact on the company. Even though I came from the accounting side of things, it really gave me a lot of perspective, a foundational perspective and I wanted to pursue my career and be able to do a little bit more towards FPNA. It's kind of like an added ammunition and a tool that I had in my backpack. So especially in an early stage company, there is a lot more weightage in getting accounting and actuals in place. But eventually once you kind of start growing, that's where you start questioning things. Okay, how did this campaign that I did? What happened to that? Like how am I measuring my leads? Did the sales get some benefit out of it? You start asking smaller questions and then it becomes a little bit more of a strategic discussion, right? So I love seeing that evolution and being there, being able to witness that and kind of taking it to scale and hyper growth is definitely rewarding. I can relate to that what you're talking about is when you really kind of involved those decisions, yes, the accountant accounting is important, it's good, but it's just a part of the picture. You get to see much more of the full picture in that FPNA role. And I'd love to see what's an example you could maybe share. You mentioned influencing decisions. So what's the time you've seen great FPNA in action maybe something you did or something you've seen someone who works in FPNA did? Yeah, yeah, and that's a great question. So I think I've been fortunate enough to have worked in amazing companies where FPNA teams were a little bit more mature and seen load more decision making that has happened with a set of people that are very much concentrated on certain problem areas. Example would be how especially on a PLG situation, right? How are each and every dollar that you're investing in? How does that translate back to top-time revenue? And this was the time where most of my career was very much focused on B2B. Suddenly there was a pivot to okay, we're now going into PLG. So what does that even mean? Right? So there was a huge learning opportunity that opened up and just understanding how your dollar investment, how does that create beats for you? How does a conversion happen? How do you change the mix to actually influence a top-line? Whether it sees anality, whether it's different different avenues or sources of marketing dollars that you invest in? Like how do you kind of make that magic happen with the mix that you're investing in? That was very interesting to see and obviously this was back in the day when the market was in this crazy. All they wanted was growth that whatever cost, that whole face. That whole user money was free, I guess? Yeah, we're interested in weight early, pretty much zero. Exactly, that face, that magical unicorn none. That's a good, good term for it. Magical unicorn land. Some recent economics always come back around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of go through those likeles.com. 10 years ago, I think we're going to speed again with a lot of AI companies. No tokens are free. No AI isn't free. Yes, exactly. And now we need to hire more people to manage AI. It's like we all go through this face, right? But yeah, I think now with the craziness in the market, where you want to invest quite a bit it is in data. data is your friend as an FBNA person. So really being able to read and understand, okay, what are the nuances you're working with and how do you translate that into actually actionable insights, which then it gives your executive team the right direction and the right path to go forward. So I think that probably is how I would look at some of the successes that at least I witnessed through my career. It's funny how often it comes back to data, it really, you know, being able to analyze. Trust me, you'll hear me talk of our data like non-stop throughout this episode. All right, we'll just title this episode data, data, data and more data. And unicorn magic demand. There we go, we got it. Thank you for that. I hope my agency is listening. So prior to becoming head of finance, you build out the FBNA team at ClickUp. So I know you and I talk a little bit about that before and as anyone knows, I use ClickUp. In fact, my notes for this episode are on one side of the screen and ClickUp. I love that kind of kind of funny detail. Most people don't know that. Yeah, it's up there. And so I don't know, what was that adventure like? What was it like building it out? Because obviously they were pretty early. This was about four or five years ago now. Yes. So this was very early and we had just raised our four billion valuation round. It was around four hundred million raise. So the team was young and it was, it was definitely, you know, we were literally going through a hyper growth phase and it was predominantly PLGS, well, and B2B was not something that explored. It was something we wanted to do at that time. And initially, when we kind of got that influx of money and how we wanted to think about it, one thing I was realizing was that we didn't have, the challenge was in forecasting, the challenge was building the foundation. It wasn't about how, okay, we're thinking about like FPNA was like about business strategy or like investor related topics. It wasn't foundational yet in how do we operationalize from a departmental investment standpoint? Two different things. So there is of course FPNA where you kind of like are forward looking, which is for an outside audience. That's always going to be there. But how do you utilize this when it comes to, hey, what happens if I invest in this? What happens if I spend hundred K in this particular strategy versus that one? How does it all translate back to top line? So that was in there. So I think initially there was a lot of relationship building that I had to invest in and working cross-functionally, understanding the nuances and understanding what kind of data is sitting where? And this was extremely critical. And I feel like sometimes we take this for granted because then FPNA just becomes something in silo just working in the corner. I think that's what I was trying to avoid to an extent. So there was a lot of education awareness that me and my CFR at that time we invested in quite a bit was partnering with the team. Let's sit down. Let's go through what you have. Why are you hiring like 20 people in this month? Probably don't need that many people. Probably hire that many that month if you needed them. We were hiring quite a bit at that time. You know, I think you're going to go through that phase of like, hey, it's money. Let me just invest, invest, invest. But what is a goal? What is it? What is where we headed? Let's work backwards from there. So it's a very different way of thinking. So if there was a little bit of investment there where we have to bring the team together and say, hey, this is more realistically planning and how does this all translate back to departments? Let me help you see through that vision. So I think that is probably where a lot of time was spent. And of course, while we were doing that, we were also investing in the data team because as we are kind of going through this hyper growth phase, we also needed to figure out some of the answers. How is this all time together? And at that time, I think the fact that we invested in the data team helped out quite a bit because it gave us so much answers and it was extremely important for the company at that stage and scale. Of course, we had some tech debt that we had to clean up. But I think it was the right timing on that cleanup. It was it was much needed investment. So that's what the initial phase looked like. Yeah. So I mean, as I'm hearing you, I hear a couple things. There's a lot of education, relationship building, a lot of trying to get everybody on the same page of how do we properly use this investment? Because I'm sure there are business leaders. You see 400 million. I need people a great I can hire them and it's like, well, you can is that the best use of the money? And that's where a broader discussion has to happen. And then as we've said before data, so building out that data foundation, I'm curious. I want to get your opinion on this. Where do you think it should sit in a company? Do you think the data in penises under the CFO, under IT, under its own group? Do you have a preference? Or is it more about the culture and how it's managed holistically? Kind of what's your take on? Absolutely. I think it's a great, great question. I have asked this question a couple of times for myself as well. So at click up and people AI was sitting in the CFO org. And when I came on board at obsidian, I had the data and systems as well. I don't particularly think there is a perfect formula for this. I think it to your point. I think it's a lot of it's a culture of data rather than where it's reporting to. And we recently hired a VP of data and IT. He is now handling that. So once he came on board, I kind of like shed a kind of transfer that team back to him and said, Hey, we want one source of truth, whether it's cross functional, whether it's something in security, if they're looking at, this is what we want. And you will be that person who is going to be owning it and kind of building dashboards. So a lot of foundational cleanup and what good should look like I was able to come in and establish that at obsidian because I've seen the pain of not having it. So it did give me a little bit of a perspective. And the scale at which we want to go at, I thought it made a lot more sense sitting with the VP of data and IT kind of a whole. But yeah, I don't think there is a real right answer for this. It's more of, you should have a culture of data rather than regardless of any reports. There is an right answer. Everybody has an opinion. Yes. But if there was a right answer, more people would be doing it the same way. Exactly. And so I have the conversation right because we can all have, you know, different thoughts. And I definitely think I had someone one say on the show, you could tell someone's a modern CFO by what they're doing with data kind of playing. Hey, the first thing I do is kind of want to own the data. And I'm like, I get especially early stage companies like get that idea. I think any CFO today has to have a close relationship to data. It's not necessarily open. Yes. It's honestly about what you do with it, right? You can have as much as data. But then if you don't do anything with it or don't, you don't utilize it to actually make decisions and surface risk or call out and call people accountable, it's pointless anyway. Yeah, I would agree with you. You could have all the data in the world. But if you're not using it, it doesn't do you much good. Yes. Kind of stepping back to how you shared building out the chain at a, click up. What advice would you offer if we have someone listening in a similar situation? There may be at a hyper growth company. They're trying to build out FPNA. Any key lessons learned or advice you would get them about the process? Absolutely. And I think I owned FPNA functions in the last three or four goals that have been had. It's also like my own learning through experience and my own kind of formula that that has worked up until very recently. I think I kind of look at it from a three points perspective. One is definitely, I think we've talked about this quite a bit about the data foundation. Like if you don't have good data, it's basically garbage and garbage out. I think one of the reasons why I delayed building my FPNA team at Obsidian was I wanted to have a holistic view and an centralized location for data to be held. Because I feel like it would be a disservice to the FPNA team coming in until we have some of the foundation checked out and right now it's working beautifully. I wish your view of my companies felt that way. Wait, did I say that all out? No, I mean, I also feel like every company's very nuanced as well. They all kind of go through their own different formulas of what priority. And I think having that data foundation, I feel like it's a non-negotiable. It doesn't have to be perfect. I feel like perfect data is like Santa, like you like the concept of it, but it doesn't exist. Well, it's kind of like the perfect relationship or marriage or whatever. Perfect. That's right. Yeah. It sounds like fate and theory, but good luck in reality. Exactly. So I think that's also dangerous. Like waiting for perfect data and then I'm going to do the stuff I need to do. I think that's also dangerous to think that way. So what is good enough and what is as long as you know what the what the delta is and what assumptions you're making, I think we need to have something in place rather than doing nothing. So that is one aspect. The second one, I think, very important for me is the partnership and business mindset. So somebody who has like really good soft skills to, you know, have like I think the right people basically, who are able to have relationship, build trust, and are intelligent to hold a conversation about the business. Because that's how you earn your currency to be able to influence and execute it. So I think half the job is communication in my opinion. Like how do you translate some of the data that you've extracted and help your business partner and kind of like helping them move in the right direction? Like that is an art. It's something you need to really invest in and relationships matter because you're also dealing with different personalities. So that understanding also comes with understanding of the business. You really need to know the ins and outs of the company, how the product works, how it's positioned in the market, what is the specific nuances of the vertical that you play at, what does the competition look like? I think you should be able to have an opinion and you should have an understanding of what are you settling at the end of the day. Are you convinced about what you're setting? And if you're not in that position, I think it'll be really hard for you to be a business partner in my opinion. And of course, the third thing for me is prioritization and focus. Ability as a team to be able to do that is actually one of the fundamental, I would say like fundamental elements of this whole role. You have like 10,000 problems happening at the same time. You're not gonna solve everything. So what is that one or two important things that you're gonna solve, which is actually going to move the needle for the business and do that wholeheartedly, efficiently and beautifully and executed to your best. I think that also requires a lot of discipline and a lot of cross-functionalignment that, yeah, this is what we're gonna solve as a company, right? So I think these are the three things I would say is extremely important from a hyper growth standpoint. And all the queries, which you think about this. FPNA guy here, and I'm really excited to tell you about an event I'm excited for. If you work in FPNA or enterprise planning, you're gonna want to check out the EPM summit this November in Vegas. What makes it different is that it brings together the entire enterprise planning ecosystem. Software providers, implementation partners, analysts and practitioners for independent discussions, hands-on learning, and real conversations about where AI is taking enterprise planning. If you're evaluating platforms planning a migration or simply want to stay current, it's definitely worth a look. It's November 16th through 19th at the Bellagio in Vegas. Who doesn't want to hang out in Vegas? Go to epmsummit.com/register to learn more and register for this exciting event. That's epmsummit.com/register. Yeah, I mean, I think that's true in a lot of businesses, but definitely data. Because what happens is if you don't focus on data early, it can't guide your decisions. And two, you're just gonna end up with data in tech debt. Fix it early, because if you have twice so many customers, it's always harder to fix it. The bigger the company, the more people you have. So I'm totally with you. And if you establish it early while you're growing, the decision should be made with data. You're in a much better decision later on than getting to scale and then trying to change the culture to be data. So I think data is definitely important, relationships and communication. I mean, it's just, it's one of those key things FPNA people need. Does every single person in an FPNA organization need to be a great communicator? No, in a small company where there's a couple, you may need that. Now, you just scale more. You can have those people that aren't, but on a whole, if you don't communicate, you're just not getting things done. And I really like how you said helping the business make decisions. On the communication, I'll share this. I interviewed a guy who said, the number one thing he hears when he's hiring, he runs a nationwide hiring firm for today is the leaders always saying, I want people that won't just drop the report on the business as last. I need someone that can interpret it and help the business know what to do with it. I think so often we think our job is reporting. Our job isn't reporting. Our job is to take what's in the reporting and help the business make better decisions. So I really like that. And then the third one you said was prioritization, which you're right. FPNA has a million things. And the prime example I always give here is I work for a business where about three or four times a year, the forecast would come to the same week I had to pay sales commissions. And I'd always get a call from my boss when you're late with the forecast. And I always say, do you want me to pay people? Or do you want me to finish an arbitrary forecast that doesn't matter if it's today or tomorrow? Never once did I say, do the forecast. It was always when it done as soon as you can, but pay the people first. And I mean, that should be a pretty easy example. But I know people will be like, well, I'll get the forecast because that's my bottom up. No, people being paid is the priority. Absolutely. And I think in the age of AI, one more kind of variable that gets thrown into the mixes, the people you hire, are they the orchestrators or are they just just followers and task people, right? Because a lot of tasks that you're doing, repetitive ones, like just adding things up and reporting and going through data, like, AI can do a lot of it. You want to hire people who are orchestrators and who are able to think, hey, this is how the function should work. And these are the nuances that it has and can intelligent. We can map that out because then it's easy for them to, okay, this is how I want the agentic bar to work out for me. This is why we're able to do a lot more with a lean D. So I think that is something I've noticed that is changing in the landscape of our opinion. So interesting. And I actually just shared this earlier today, it speaks exactly to what you're talking about. You know, one of the questions I ask in every episode, so I've been doing this for two years to F&A a lot, where I asked this question, I always asked what's the number one technical skill? When I started 70, 80% of the time was some combination of Excel, Sprite Sheets, Financial Model. In the last three months, I'd say 60% of the answers may be a little less, but quite often I hear design thinking, system thinking, data, AI, which gets exactly to what you're talking about. If you're going to orchestrate a workflow, you got to be able to think about systems and design and data, not just running a process, but be able to map it and optimize it and figure out the right flow. So I think it's really interesting to watch the shift that's taking place, not to say that Excel and modeling aren't important. I don't think anyone's going to hire somebody that doesn't know how to use the Sprite Sheet or build a model, but you also need to be able to be a system thinking in design. So in some ways, almost like, well, now you're being asked to do even more. Exactly. Before you had your head of F&A, then you had like three managers under them, and then you had analysts who reported to the managers, so the hierarchy and the org structure was entirely different where everybody had their own pieces of the puzzle, but right now like what you demand out of the finance person is a lot more. And this is not just on the F&A side, I see this on the accounting side as well, right? And I feel like COVID around that time was reset for finance teams quite a bit. It was like, it's been non-stop since it's either the market or a bank run or a pandemic. So we are part of Hone Rum. Yeah. The rate of change over the last decade has been crazy between pandemic war, technology, you know, and just everything. It's really feels like the only thing we can count on is change and it's going to continue to come more and more faster and more. Exactly. And the back office is where you get the least amount of love, right? Not everybody loves their back office. I think that I knew I would back off this. I think you'll laugh at this and then you have a similar one is when we wanted to go to a Tableau conference because we were implementing it or no is a micro strategy. And I work in the travel division for this company. So there are lots of free travel stuff flying around. They told us once enough people had signed up for the company that we were free, they let us go. We had to scrounge vouchers from our supplier people. So the hotel and the airfare was free. I think the entire amount of the week and a number of the dinners recovered my boss covered a couple. I think my entire reimbursement was like 150 bucks for a week conference. They didn't even let us stay in the hotel where the conference is at. We had to stay in the cheap one that was free. I'm like, okay, I know I'm back office. There you go. Exactly. Exactly. And not to throw anyone under the bus, but it's just how the market has been. It's the need from the business has been very different. And everybody is trying to get leaner and operational standpoint. And money is not cheap anymore. How you get perceived in the market is also very different. How your bench market is also different. So collectively as a community, we're all seeing the pain. I agree. I mean, there's definitely a lot of challenges these days. So I want to shift gears a little bit. Tell us a little bit more about of city and security. You've been there almost three years. What that experience has been like, right, talk a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. So I think I believe the most rewarding part of it was kind of like seeing the company grow so rapidly and evolve and succeed every year. I think for the last. you know, six to seven maybe quarter as we have exceeded our numbers, we have you've met all the goals, we have over achieved on a few other metrics and definitely proud of that. We have a world class team. The company has been being in the company has been a great learning opportunity for me as well like working with some of the most intelligent people and cyber as you can imagine is pretty nuanced and then you kind of it takes a little bit of a different kind of flavor people in cyber security. So it's been a great university and a capsule format for me personally and the other element is that you know like I'm not saying because I work here but the exact team has been it's it's been an amazing executive team and everyone's invested in what's important for the business and what does it take for us to succeed overall and this makes a huge difference like the culture and how the executive team thinks it does trickle down to the rest of the company's culture and I think we have set a good standard on how we want to go tackle a problem or whether it's a vision of the company or responding to a market I think it's been it's been a bliss working here and very grateful for Cousin our visionary leader our CEO as an among he's been phenomenally phenomenally kind of like being being our backbone like I think he's done a fantastic job kind of spearheading the team in the right direction so it's it's been great and and where we play is very interesting as as a product because think of I mean I can tell you from a finance example right you as a finance team you have ERP you have HRIS you have a cloud-based FPNA system you have Slack these are kind of like the typical stack you work with and it's communicating to each other at all times where security kind of stops is where you authenticate yourself you log in like who's protecting the data that's flowing between these two applications that's where we play so anything of anything third party application that's the security you protect overall as soon as it goes outside a system to another system exactly inside the system exactly and the scary part is now you put AI in the creation so the same API connection between two application is being used by agents as well who were never had to be authenticated to enter in the first place now their over-provisioned has access to more data than you actually need and are performing at a hyper scale and kind of like exposed to so much more and has high exposure to a bad actor coming and and and hacking through the surface so this is the problem we solve whether it's your SAS supply chain issue or your agentic it's actually all part of the same equation and authentication or your just because you have to factor authentication or that says so if that's not going to mean anything because no more hackers are no longer going to enter identity and trying to hack that they're actually within the in between the application that's that's where the most vulnerable sweet spot is for them and a very recent example has been like the sales law of sales force attack or the worst sell attack that happened there was another one that happened which is clue which I believe is a go-to-market tool that got hacked so these these are exposed customer data that that lives inside the inside your sea bottom that's why I have lifelong night on life lock but I do have my credit frozen because I've had my data shared more than once unfortunately so I can can relate to that and that makes a lot of sense you're going to attack the the transit versus the the home base so to speak when something's in transit absolutely and I think the land you also has changed quite a bit if you look at many many decades of cyber investment has always been on the identity whether it's you know zero trust networks or you know the actors of the world you know like that that's where the most of the investment has been now that's no longer interesting for people to go hack so this is this is a new era and and we are kind of going through a phase where we don't have much security guardrails and there is a top down stress on having to adopt AI and to go fast so how do you do that and still be secure and safe about it I think that's the equation people are trying to figure out today so speaking about what are the questions finance leaders should be asking is they're adding AI and they're thinking about site or security I mean what are the questions they should be going through so I think first of all I think we should treat it same as purchasing another technology or an application right so is it measurable is that a business outcome or are you just following a hype so I think you should partner with your GRCT and your IT team go through the process and vouch and ask them tough questions is my data protected am I going to get in trouble for connecting this to other things you know like I think you need to partner with your internal IT team to make sure that what you did you're taking your part of the responsibility right because at the end of the day there are definitely a lot of options and to make it more useful you have to give it provisions you have to give it data so how are you doing it in the most safe secure way and rather than having your internal team be a blocker for you work with them to get the output you want so especially on the finance side at any day you have to go through a sensitive data like it's just part of the job you have to be responsible along with that so every single step of the way ask yourself like is is my data protected if you have questions ask and if you need help also ask and now flip side how are we using this to enhance productivity for us I think obviously we're thinking of AI as an accelerator rather than replacement of a judgment right so on that matter there are still a lot of stuff we were manually doing I think AI has become definitely lifesaver for my my teams because they do a lot of reporting a lot of budget analysis a lot of commentary around BBAs a lot of research that they do all of this has kind of like accelerated with AI and finance is always known for being the late adopters of any sort of way like we're we love like if something's working don't touch it like let it be so in that way I'm glad that my team has been a little bit more AI forward and of course we drink our own cool aid and we feel a little bit more secure and we have obsidian running in the background FP&A guy here I want to kick him in it 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 FP&A guy discounts in many cases on my website I have several of the top FP&A 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 FP&A guy dot com and check out my trusted list of resources for you to upskill yourself yeah now it's always good to know the data secure and agree with you I mean finance tends to be laggards when it comes to technology there's many different reasons for that we could probably spend a whole episode on just that you're like yes we could but let's not so you know one of the question I want to ask is obviously you've been working to think about how to use AI within your finance department and and sometimes I like to call it kind of this generative AI craze I I just asked on LinkedIn the other day I asked a question you know how are you doing with AI fatigue you know yes exhausted you know sometimes and about you know 70% of people were somewhere between sometimes and all the time they're just feeling exhausted with the conversations about 10% just give me more world cup please and about 4% of people said I just ignore AI all together kind of where are you out with all that and how do you manage the fact that it just feels like it's a constant cycle of change of hype of new things we have to learn it's not just the oh hey AI's came it's first now figure out how to prompt now go ahead and give it a lot of context now also build workflows with it it's like you're continually being asked to learn new skills that you may or may not be you know have the aptude or even the desire to learn I just don't be get a little your thought there yeah yeah I love this question I think remember the face when we all went through where it's like oh I can wipe code this I think I'm going to totally build sales force by myself so I I think I'm glad that we're out of that fun because I somewhere down the lane we forget God, the token cost existed and you know, there's a cost to experimentation. So whether it's my team or team at the broader scale, I think we need has to be outcome driven. You could spend so much time sitting and experimenting things, like, what is it actually doing for you? Like, let's start from there. I'm sure you have better things to do, rather than sitting and experimenting through models. I mean, maybe there are some people who want to do that, but I think it absolutely have to start from outcomes. What is the outcome you're trying to drive? How is this contributing to what you're trying to achieve through your role? And ultimately, how is this contributing to the organization? Yes, there is some experimentation you might have to do, but I don't think it should be part of the hype. It should be part of intentional decision making around what tool to use that best suits you and your organization and the security team to make the best out of. So in my team, at least, my guidance was that, hey, make a list of things that you're manually doing today. Or you feel like, you know, this, I could outsource this. Or I feel like I'm not getting much value out of it, but it's like, Jeff, I need to do. So let's start from there and see what happens. But from that, what happened is that they start to creatively thinking about, hey, maybe there's this other thing that I could do. And then it kind of like bloomed into something beautiful. But it was it never was like, hey, here you go now, now, you know, go have fun with it. That that definitely was not the guidance we provided. Because at the end of the day, of course, you can sit and wipe code things. But is that really what you want to do with your time? And is it actually more cost efficient to do that, rather than buying maybe a software that's much more cheaper? And that that's kind of like the view that I had on the whole topic. Makes sense. I get it. What does it say? So, so no token maxing leaderboards at your company? It's just trying to forget that phase. It wasn't as bad, but it was also like, what is going on? Like, it's like, okay, there is flawed running on one side, there's codex running on the other side, like, okay, pick a lane, like, what do you guys want to do? Like, why are you doing the same thing on two platforms? So there was a little bit of like that shock. I'm pretty sure everybody went through that. And I feel like slowly settling down and we had to write, like, we had to see the ugly side of everything before we kind of took a step back. But but I feel like it, it unless it's outcome driven, you will probably find yourself in questionable situations again. Because the optionality is that you, of course, you'd have so many models and so many options out there. You will have fatigue. Like, I'm not surprised people feel fatigue. Because you kind of don't have that much kind of time to sit and figure this thing out. No, I agree. And I, I'm very forward past the, the height. I still think we see a lot of the kind of, you know, the vibe coding thing. And as I've said, nothing's wrong if it makes sense to vibe code a solution. I think it's more about work flow than applications. You're going to maintain them. I kind of compare it to Excel. Like, I like asking people, how many of you, when you inherit an Excel model, start over? Almost every hand goes up, right? There's a few people that don't, I mean, how many times did you start over when you got a model? If I've inherited it, I'm pretty sure I really didn't. Now we're going to inherit somebody's vibe coded tool that has no idea what the programming means, no training on maintenance for engineering, and expect them to use the same thing. Net is so true. And, and I, I under appreciated how much maintenance these things required. Because of course, I also create a bunch of dashboards, and I'm like, well, this thing forgot everything I told them yesterday, but the having started or I guess. So I think there was a little bit of, I mean, I wish, I wish, I mean, maybe this is a call to action for all the AI companies out there. Spend some time in training, spend some, was something out that actually gives us some best practices and how you guys are doing it within your company. That will actually go a long way in also building a brand and, and loyal customer profile. Agree. Those that can really help understand best practice, governance, how to build, not the ones that can just talk about it, but those you can really trust, whether it's companies, individuals, you know, they're going to have a bright future because we're all learning. And the reality is, I'd much rather have an expert help me then figure out 100% by myself. Exactly. Exactly. And I think for finances also a little different because you don't want hallucinated numbers. You get a little bit, you know, on the accounting side, lack of a better word, a little uptight about how you're thinking about numbers in general, right? Like, you want the decimals and everything to kind of die off. I get obsessed about it. I think that is hard for me to pallet that all of this was AI generated. Like, I'd be sure about that's what we want to do. So I think baby steps, right? But my teams, using it as much as they can in different areas and, and you're also learning as we go. Yeah, and I think that's the key is you need to be willing to learn, you need to be open, you need to experiment. 100%, 100%, what about that right balance? And every company's going to be a little different, what they're comfortable with. That doesn't mean one's better than the other. As long as you're challenged constantly, I think, challenging the thinking and trying to find ways to move forward and be more efficient. The examples I often give is, I had someone ask me in the webinar, "Hey, could AI do this?" I was teaching something to say. I'm like, "Yeah, AI could do that, but you can already do it with a deterministic solution that you can automate," called power query. "Why do you need AI to do it?" There's a, there's a variable cost to it. You're not sure it's always going to be right. You know, I think it was just kind of that, "Oh, that's cool. So can I have AI do it?" But why would you? And I think that balance is what people need to think about, because sometimes it is. I do it. It's cool. I want to bite. We all play with it in our own time. Absolutely. Absolutely. The other danger that we noticed was with AI, some of the departments same problem solving was happening by multiple people in different departments. So you're actually duplicating work. This was also like kind of lack of time. I've heard this from multiple companies and peers in the industry like, "Oh, you already have this? Oh, I just spend like a week doing this. Oh, I also have it." Like, okay, somebody's already solving it. It's all over the place, right? So, which is why I was going to think going back to like really be clear on the outcomes you want to drive. Maybe somebody already has a solution that might be much more faster and easier than anything. Yeah, probably a good way to track what are the projects you're working on and to track those across the company. You see, okay, these five people are working on basically the same thing. Get them in a room and figure out what makes sense before they all just spend a week building something and we waste four weeks of productivity. But they just were all tired of dealing with it. So they all said, "Oh, I can code this." And a way they went. Exactly. All right. So I want to go ahead and move into the FKNA sections where I ask some kind of standard questions. And then we have a little bit of a get to know you or ask some personal questions for you. And then we'll let you go here. But I've really been enjoying this. The first one I want to ask, in your view, given kind of today's environment, what's the number one technical skill in at the NA Professional Needs? What's the number one they should master? I think I would definitely say the orchestration mindset. That's what I figured, based on our earlier conversation. Yes, exactly. And I think that encompasses a few things. I think we talked about it, right? Like how you think about business systems, how you think about strategy, how you think about execution, how you think about automation, how you think about adding resources. So if you have that mindset which is able to orchestrate that along with a business, you know, dynamic business acumen, I think that's the sweet spot. And you mentioned business acumen. So what's the number one soft skill we need? Kind of talk the technical. What do you think the number one soft skill is? I think being able to navigate different kind of personalities. I think as you become a leader in FBNA, you're dealing with an executed team that, hey, been there, done that, different kinds of egos, different kinds of way of problem solving. It's very nuanced. And so I think being able to take a step back and understand that, hey, everybody's coming from different kinds of background and have a little empathy in that process goes along. You'll appreciate this when you mention a lot of different personalities. You know, Jack McCullough is, have you ever heard of him? Yeah, I think so. So he's a, he's the CEO of CFO leadership council. He's written a couple books. He's done a podcast. One of the books he wrote was called The Cycle Path C-E-O. Okay. Like almost a survival guide for CFO. Where was a study done? And, you know, he kind of painted it a little bit, but basically they found someone at the C level likely to be a psychopath is somebody in prison. The percentage. So he joked you're likely at the board meeting as you are at the prison to be sitting with a psychopath. So it talked about learning different personalities. I always think of that on the executives. What he shared that I want on my podcast. It's a fun, fun listen, something, there's something for you to think about. Absolutely, absolutely. And managing personalities. Not that I'm saying you have one, but it would find it made me laugh. We're yet to work together. We wrote a whole book about it. So if you need to know how to survive your a Cycle Path C-E-O, there you go. I want to get your opinion. I mean, obviously everybody has a different thought on this. What do you think FPDs? The role is going to look like the professional in kind of three to five years. What do you kind of see changing or staying with saying what's your thoughts? Yeah, I think there will be a shift. I think they're just the words of automation. I feel like, I mean, I'm really curious about this for myself personally as well, like what happens to the Anna plans, the pigments of the world, right? Like how, how do they play a role in all of the AI shift? There is a huge movement happening in the ERP world, right? Where they are adopting so much AI that they're able to become ERP plus. So how does this all shift in tooling and systems happen? Where what happens is that you will naturally shed people who are traditionally thinking. People won't be able to keep up and it will be really hard for them to shift into the new mindset. So, which means you'll see a lot more FPNA folks or finance folks who are more dynamic, a lot more business mindset people and who are more strategic than just doers. So I think that natural transition will happen where your doers are basically your systems at this point. So I'm really, really curious on how that all plays out. But I think that's where the world is headed. I don't see huge finance teams anymore. I don't think that's a thing. Eventually, these things will get narrowed and leaned down quite a bit. I can also see how the relationship between offshore teams and core teams sitting in the HQ, how that is going to play out would also be interesting. But yeah, these are some of the things I think about. No, I appreciate that. I think that's interesting. Now I want to move on to the section where we get to know a little bit more about you personally. So the first one, you're very involved in I think it's Blossom Projects. Tell us about that, how you got involved, what it is. I know it's a not-for-profit. If I remember, I think it's people in India that you're working. Are other kind of countries with disadvantaged? So Blossom Projects started like 12 years back. So this was set up by a wonderful lady from Bay Area. So she went to a Buddhist camp and she met this individual who was actually helping students graduate high school because they were part of a suppressed community in a part of a different parts of India, where they just needed help because they were not being supported by the community. That inspired her quite a bit. So she took on, she retired and reformed the boards. I'm the president of the board and we kind of rebranded, reputed the whole organization. So what we do is give marginalized youth a second chance to life. Think of any underprivileged kids who didn't have a chance to education. Not because of any other reason, just because they were born into a certain dag in the society, so that's what we are trying to help and that's we are just here to provide education for kids who actually deserve and where we're not given a chance. So we run a residential program, they come in, they stay with us for a good 9 to 10 months. They graduate high school, either they're given a path to higher education or they're given vocational training to actually start making living. So we kind of cut the chain of poverty that way and these kids who are actually going to college for the first time in generations. So yeah, it's a very humbling thing and I don't know who I would be without it. Do you have a kind of favorite experience or something you could share? I imagine there's a lot with that. I mean, anytime you get to see people. Yeah, I think one of my favorite absolutely is there was this young little kid. She was actually a victim of her sexual abuse and within her community. So she at night, like a random vocalization, God, the mannerist did, came to us and she, you know, this was the first time she actually got some attention, right? And she was like, I just needed a safe place to stay. That's that's all I needed. And we were able to provide that for her. I mean, she came to us very malnutrition, dramatized. And she ended up graduating high school and ended up pursuing college. So this is just one of the stories, by the way, and you have many more like that. So most of the students who come to us are very much, you know, they're malnutrition. They're extremely traumatized. They don't have family members to support them. Usually come from an alcoholic family or have maybe raised by a single parent who is kind of like a, you know, just a daily laborer. So very, you know, like extreme poverty, poverty of a situation and is what their background is. Even just three meals a day is a life win for them, right? So it really gives you perspective in life. When we talk about all of these things that are happening and we are kind of bubble, there are people still struggling out there to just make and smite. And for them, AI is not even a thing, right? Yeah, I remind you what's important. Get caught up in the world of work. But at the end of the day, one of my favorite quotes is, "Service is the rent we pay for the world we live in." Yes, I love that saying. And I think that's truly, truly remarkable way of thinking about life. Because I think at the end of the day, we're all here to help each other out. And let's do our part and if it's a little bit. Nobody asks how big our bank account is when at our funeral. So, all right. One more question here and then we'll let you go. If you had to build a playlist, we're going to go to a little direction here, prepping for the board meeting. What are you putting on it? What's on your playlist is your prepping for that board meeting? So I'm a part of a podcast person. So I. Oh, my podcast is on, right? Yes, your podcast is always on while I'm prepping for board meetings. All right, now that we've got the false stuff, what's really on there? What are your podcasts? So, one of my favorite ones that I, of course, I love Andrew Huberman. I love Gary of the CEO. These are my two go-to that I always love. There's Mel Robbins that I really like. So, I usually have a podcast that's running in the background. But usually when I'm prepping for board meetings, I have nothing happening. This is more when I have to do like mundane stuff that I know is more manual. I need to like click through numbers, you know, be on my Excel wizard mode. That's when I have something kind of like running in the background. Or, you know, sometimes it's just a few episodes of friends or how I match your mother or something brainless. And I don't have to put on it and it's just like background noise. Yeah, that's what I do. Got it. All right, got to ask one more get to know you. Because I saw this somewhere where I read it. I think it was in a magazine article that you did. I can't remember the name of it. But you've called yourself addicted to startup chaos. So, no, I'm not wearing it at the start-up part. But what do you love about chaos? Great question. So, I think I am a builder. I love taking nothing and making into something that's useful for myself and other people. I love the journey of that. And I think chaos was addictive because I noticed that sometimes when we we made best decisions when we are at the moment, you know, it's everything is on fire. Just go get shit done. That's when you do some of your best work. And I've since then noticed that, you know, like, it's very interesting how human mind works. You're procrastinating for the whole time. And then suddenly everything is on fire. And you're getting, you know, you're as productive as you might not even have thought of. So, I think I did get addicted to that. Plus, you know, like, I think startup is the best way to learn real-life scenarios. And there's no university that can provide you this. And in a big company, I feel like, you know, been there. And it was more of, you're kind of like part of this small machinery. And you're kind of like contributing in a certain way. But you don't see the impact much. And it's just not working for me. Yeah, you're a cog in a machine. I get it. Some people like want to be able to see the whole thing. I can say you learn a ton doing a startup, having built a business for the last four years. I can definitely relate to the learnings that take place. Especially finance a little different. But when you're the one who has to sell and do marketing and definitely have learned a lot, I would be better at FPNA and I say this all time. I'd be better tomorrow for the last four years when I've learned running my own business. And it's not that I'm saying I'm going back. But I would definitely have a different appreciation. So I can appreciate that. All right, last question. If someone wants to get in contact with you or learn more about obsidian, what's the best way? So if you want to contact me, you can always email me at my first name at obsidiansecure.com or you can shoot me a note at LinkedIn. Happy to answer any questions or provide any information I can. And if you want to learn more about obsidian, we have a page where you can request a meeting or just shoot me an email or a message on LinkedIn. All right, great. Well, thank you so much, Chethar. I really enjoyed the conversation. I appreciate you carving out some time for me. I know our audience will get value out of it as well. So thanks for being on the show. Absolutely. Thank you. This was amazing. And thank you for making it super conversational. I learned a lot as well. And yeah, thanks again for the opportunity. That's it for today's episode of FPNA Unlocked. If you enjoy FPNA unlocked, please take a moment to leave a 5-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. Thanks for listening, I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FPNA guy, and I'll see you next time.