Building Strategic Finance Capacity through Alignment, Automation, and Development

Episode #147: Too many finance teams are stuck formatting data while the decisions fly by. We tackle a smarter way to work: build capacity by aligning effort to strategy, automating the grind, and developing the skills that turn reports into results. Stephen walks us through a practical approach for FP&A and accounting leaders who want to shield their teams from noise, prioritize what matters, and partner with IT to unlock automation without a costly tech overhaul. The focus is simple—reduce friction, raise insight, and spend more time advising than assembling.

We start with clarity: how to map every role and deliverable to a strategic objective, choose the leading indicators that actually drive action, and say no to work that doesn’t move the needle. From there, we dig into process and systems—standardizing inputs, automating routine pulls and reconciliations, and using collaborative workspaces so knowledge isn’t trapped in inboxes. Along the way, we challenge the culture of daily fire drills and offer a guardrail: route ad-hoc requests through a priority gate so the team’s best hours aren’t lost to random tasks.

Finally, we talk people. Coaching time management, building stronger analysis and storytelling skills, and running short, focused development sprints can transform morale and output. A tighter partnership with IT helps you ship quick wins—scheduled queries, clean templates, and self-serve dashboards—that free analysts to interpret trends and shape choices. Expect clear takeaways you can apply this week: an audit of calendars and tasks, a skills plan that sticks, and an automation backlog that delivers measurable time back.

Episode outline:

1. Clarify priorities and align with strategic goals,
2. Leverage tools and automation, and
3. Build capacity through development.

Please connect with me on:

1. Instagram: stephen.mclain
2. Twitter: smclainiii
3. Facebook: stephenmclainconsultant
4. LinkedIn: stephenjmclainiii

For more resources, please visit Finance Leader Academy:  financeleaderacademy.com.

Transcript

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Stephen McLain: 0:05

In the last two episodes, I talked about how both fpna and the accounting team can be more strategically aligned throughout the organization, with operations, with senior leadership and other departments. This week, we dive into how we can help our team members to find and build more capacity as leaders. We must coach our team members to become more efficient and to grow. We must hold each person accountable for the tasks they are responsible for by setting clear expectations and establishing a more structured framework teach them how to prioritize the most important tasks and not be distracted with least important requirements. We as leaders create systems and improve processes to better support them. That's what finance leaders do. Set expectations, coach your team to greater accomplishment and create the best environment for success. Please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host. Stephen McLain, this is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. Please consider following me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. My usernames and the links are in this episode's show notes. You can also follow finance leader Academy on LinkedIn. Thank you. This is episode number 147, and I'll be talking about helping your team members build the right capacity through efficiencies and alignment. And I will highlight the following topics. Number one, clarify priorities and align with strategic goals. Number two, leverage tools and automation. And three, build capacity through development. I have loved sharing the last two episodes. I have talked about being more strategically aligned, but this takes more effort. This requires a partnership and trust by always asking the following, are our goals aligned, and what information do you need to be more successful so we don't have to guess about the key metrics. What trends are you seeing and what direction are we going in? What can we do better? The fpna and accounting teams, who are willing to evolve beyond just reporting and becoming a strategic partner will see their organization become more successful in an already chaotic marketplace and economy. We need to dissect metrics to fully understand how they behave and what leaders need to make better decisions. We must look at the most important and impactful leading indicators so we can change direction, if that is required before our competition does I last shared episode number 146, strategic accounting, not just reporting. What if your accounting team did more than just close the books? What if they helped shape outcomes before the month end process begins. We explore how to evolve accounting from a reporting function into a true strategic partner that translates numbers into decisions. Please go back to listen to that episode, in case you missed it. Now, let's help our team members, including ourselves, build capacity through prioritizing and dropping low quality and non urgent tasks and requirements. Also, let's do this without becoming a micro manager. When I say, build capacity, I bet that people are hearing me say, add more tasks. And that's not true. It's doing the right tasks, attending the right meetings, working on clearing your schedule to ensure we work on what's important and then either delegating or deleting everything else. We build the right capacity to add the most value and to have the most influence over the key projects of the organization. Our roles in finance and accounting come with many requests and tasks. We must help many other employees to be compliant, like submitting expenses and other ways that they need help. Now, let's be real. Non finance and non accounting people get lost in how to follow proper procedures. So it becomes our job to educate, to guide and to help people from across our organization to do a myriad of required activities. A well implemented structure helps to manage the daily requirements to create an environment of success, leaders should create a repeatable system of support for their team members. Now, what can we do to support decision making? Everything we do as a team must add value, such as helping a leader understand the financials a little bit more provide clarity on how the business is performing, give context on a key metric that matters, develop a more accurate forecast that helps to commit our resources more efficiently, and even calculate projections that assist senior leaders make decisions on product lines and services there are. Many ways we can help support our organization. One thing we often can't control is how much senior leadership puts everyone through emergency fire drills every day. We all deal with it. We have a plan or a to do list for the day, and then we get pulled in to answer a number of random questions or requests from senior leaders. We do this because something has come up, but if this is an everyday occurrence, then our process is flawed. I will talk more about this in an upcoming episode. Please subscribe to the podcast on the platform you are currently listening to, and also please subscribe to my weekly email. I am bringing this topic up this week in this episode because it's important as leaders to help our team members to have a better work experience. There are factors we can control as the leader of our team. We can help them with what meetings they attend, how they prioritize tasks, what tasks they have assigned to them, and we can protect our team by telling others to leave them alone when they need something. You can tell other leaders to reach out to you if they need something. So you can decide the priority. You can also determine what additional training and resources your team needs. You have more control than you realize, and you can help manage your team members so they can succeed. Now, let's talk about helping your team members find more capacity. Number one, clarify priorities and align with strategic goals. We are all busy and can get easily distracted. Team leaders can help by shielding their people from unwanted distractions from outside the team. As a leader, you have immediate impact that can shape what your team members are going through each day. What can you do is to clarify the priorities for each person, for the team and the priorities for the organization. You can help your team members understand better what the organization needs from them. One thing I like to do is to show how the work of each person supports a strategic objective. This helps to give the team purpose and to show that what they are doing matters to the organization. How are your team's processes and how helpful are the systems that your team is using? Do your systems share data easily, or is there a lot of manual work required? We want to focus on supporting decisions rather than just random data gathering. When I look at accounting and finance teams, I see lots of busy work because systems don't share data. I see a lot of time in formatting reports instead of finding and sharing useful information and insights. Number two, leverage tools and automation. The daily grind of our staff accountants can be detrimental to their morale, usually, because our processes are horrible and our systems don't support automation. I see organizations try to buy separate solutions that don't go together well. You have to manually move information from one system to another, and then you have to spend wasted hours formatting data instead of analyzing it. Automate as many of your routine tasks as possible. Now how can it help you automate reports? So all you need to do is run the query, use collaborative tools and workspaces to maximize others knowledge your teammate next to you may very well have the answer you need, and you may not know it until you start collaborating. Number three, build capacity through development. Improved skills, especially on time management, help to grow better habits, which means more efficiency and a more excellent work product. I want to encourage you as a leader, to coach your team members, to develop the skills and habits that matter. We should strive for a continuous improvement culture. We don't have complacency with our current skills level. We are always looking to upskill ourselves, which in turn will help us later, as our career moves onward and upward. As a leader, what is your relationship with the IT team? They can help you tremendously in automating processes that are capable within the limitations of the system you have currently, I can't stress enough the importance of having a positive professional relationship with it. Now for action today, I would recommend conducting an assessment in three areas to help your team build better capacity. The first assess each team member's schedule, task list and work requirements to coach them to better prioritize, reassign and even delete some tasks based on team and organizational priorities. Second, what training or development needs does your team need assess habits and skill level to help determine how to build a professional development plan that can benefit your team best? And finally, I would recommend partnering with it to. Determine what automation that you can develop to save time on work products and reporting that is required continue to find ways to be more efficient and to help improve the daily grind of your team. Today, I briefly talked about helping your team members build the right capacity through efficiencies and alignment, and I highlighted the following points. Number one, clarify priorities and align with strategic goals. Number two, leverage tools with automation. And three, build capacity through development. This episode is about helping you think through how you can best assist your team members to have a more focused and efficient work day so they can concentrate on the most important tasks in the long term. This should alleviate stress and worry from systems that don't support you, from processes that are overly manual and getting stuck in the wrong meetings. It's about putting your effort into the most value added tasks and meetings and to not waste any more time. It's on us as finance leaders to figure it out. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast. You can find this episode wherever you listen to podcasts. If this episode helps you today, please share with a colleague until next time, you can check out more resources at finance leader academy.com and sign up for my weekly updates so you don't miss an episode of the podcast, and now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you. You.