Developing the FP&A Training Plan - Building a More Strategic Finance Capability

Episode # 157: We walk through how we build an FP&A training plan that develops individual talent while raising the effectiveness of the whole finance organization. That starts with a formal development strategy, not ad hoc learning squeezed in when time allows. We talk about the capabilities that separate high-performing FP&A teams from strong reporting teams: business acumen, critical thinking, stakeholder management, leadership, decision support, and financial storytelling that makes recommendations clear and usable.

We also get practical about how to turn analysts into trusted strategic business partners. That means immersing FP&A in the functions they support, teaching curiosity and root-cause thinking, and creating real exposure to strategic planning, capital decisions, pricing, product discussions, and post-implementation reviews. Along the way, we address how to build a culture of continuous improvement through peer learning and safe experimentation with automation and AI in FP&A, plus how to measure training success by impact, not courses completed.

Episode outline:

1.  Why FP&A needs a formal development plan,
2. Our goal is to develop strategic business partners,
3. Creating a culture of continuous improvement,
4. Measuring training success.

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

Transcript

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Why Tools Still Don’t Influence Decisions

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Organizations invest heavily in ERP systems, business intelligence platforms, planning software, and reporting automation. Yet many FPA teams still struggle to consistently influence executive decisions. The reason usually isn't technical capability is because many organizations train FPNA professionals almost exclusively on processes and software instead of developing strategic thinking, communication, executive presence, and business partnership. Today's episode focuses on how finance leaders can intentionally build an FPA training program that develops individual talent while simultaneously increasing the effectiveness of the entire finance organization. Please enjoy the episode.

The Case For Making Training Nonnegotiable

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Welcome to the Finance Leader Podcast, where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host, Stephen McLean. 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 157, and I'll be talking about developing a training plan for the FPNA team, and I'll highlight the following topics. Number one, why FPNA needs a formal development plan. Number two, our goal is to develop strategic business partners. Number three, creating a culture of continuous improvement. And four, measuring training success. Leonardo da Vinci said, Learning never exhausts the mind. I love learning and I love training. It definitely comes from my military roots of becoming better at your job, always improving. But of course, I have also worked in corporate FPA, where the daily and ongoing challenge is to find the time to train and to develop. Well, this is where leadership steps in to make it a priority, to ensure that training and development, both individual time and team training, is built into the weekly schedule, that we commit to it because this is what leaders do. We improve our people. I cannot stress this enough. One of our most important responsibilities as leaders is to grow other leaders. Build that concept into your own set of values. Last week I shared episode number 156, SWOT analysis for a competitive strategic advantage. From a finance leader perspective, I share how CFOs and FPA teams can anchor the process in data instead of opinion using profitability analysis, cash flow trends, ROI, retention, productivity, and operating metrics to test assumptions. We dig into scenario planning and sensitivity analysis to model uncertainty, then cover how to convert SWOT themes into a strategy plan. So please listen if you have not already. Enjoy. This week I will be discussing the importance of training and developing the FPNA team. Training has always been important to me. How do we become better if we don't invest in ourselves and invest in our team? Now some people do believe there's no time for it, and some organizations do not want to spend the time nor the funds to improve their team members. I don't understand this perspective. I don't get it at all. Please invest in your people. Our goal is to grow strategic business partners who can find unique insights, who can help shape business decision making, and who can help explain what to do next. Not to report just what has happened, but to help senior leaders to see what the next steps should be. This requires a deeper understanding of what it means to find and apply insights to the strategy. It requires mentorship and development opportunities. Please subscribe to the podcast on the platform you are currently listening to, and also please subscribe to my weekly email. When you subscribe to the email, you will receive a free guide about developing your finance leadership. It's filled with many tips and strategies to grow your leadership. Thank you.

Why FP&A Needs A Formal Plan

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Now let's talk about developing a training plan for the FPNA team. Number one, why FPNA Needs a Formal Development Plan. Analysts don't often become strategic from routine work alone. Most FPNA professionals naturally become proficient in technical responsibilities such as budgeting and forecasting, variance analysis, financial modeling, and reporting through experience. While these skills are essential, they primarily focus on producing accurate financial information rather than influencing business decisions. Becoming a strategic finance partner requires deliberate development in areas such as business acumen, critical thinking, executive communication, financial storytelling, stakeholder management, leadership, and decision support. Without a structured development plan, individuals often remain highly skilled analysts but struggle to translate their analysis into actionable recommendations that shape organizational strategy. A formal development plan also ensures that learning aligns with the organization's long-term strategic objectives instead of occurring in an ad hoc manner. As business environments become increasingly dynamic, FPA professionals must continuously expand their understanding of market trends and competitive forces, operational drivers, emerging technologies, and also artificial intelligence. A structured plan identifies competency gaps, establishes measurable development goals, and provides targeted learning opportunities that prepare finance professionals for greater responsibility. Rather than reacting to immediate business needs, the team proactively builds the knowledge and capabilities required to support future growth, strategic initiatives, and increasingly complex business decisions. Developing strategic FPA capabilities also requires consistent exposure to cross-functional collaboration and executive level interactions, which are rarely acquired through technical training alone. A formal development plan encourages finance professionals to work closely with leaders in operations and in sales, on the marketing team and supply chain, human resources, and also information technology to better understand how financial performance is created across the organization. These experiences help analysts connect financial data with operational realities, ask more insightful questions, anticipate business risks, and develop recommendations that are practical and aligned with organizational priorities. Now, as trust grows between FPNA and business leaders, finance evolves from being viewed as a reporting function to becoming a valued strategic advisor.

Building Trusted Strategic Business Partners

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Number two, our goal is to develop strategic business partners. The ultimate objective of FPNA development is not to produce better analysts, it is to develop finance professionals who are trusted advisors that consistently improve the quality of business decisions. Technical excellence remains the foundation of the profession, but is no longer sufficient. Organizations derive the greatest value from FPNA when analysts understand the business as well as they understand the financial statements, anticipate challenges before they occur, and influence leaders through sound judgment and practical recommendations. Developing these capabilities requires intentional experiences that extend far beyond traditional finance training. One of the most effective ways to develop strategic business partners is to immerse analysts in the business they support. Every FPNA professional should regularly spend time with operations and sales, marketing, manufacturing, the supply chain team, customer service, and other functional areas to observe how work is performed and how value is created. Rather than analyzing numbers in isolation, they should understand the operational drivers behind revenue growth, cost structure, customer behavior, production efficiency, and organizational constraints. When analysts understand the business firsthand, their financial analysis becomes significantly more relevant and their recommendations become more practical and actionable. Finance leaders should also teach analysts to approach every assignment with curiosity instead of simply completing a reporting requirement. Rather than asking, did I finish the variance report? They should ask, what story are these numbers telling us? And what decisions should leadership make because of this information? Encourage analysts to investigate root causes, identify emerging trends, challenge assumptions, and quantify risks and opportunities. The goal is to develop professionals who naturally seek to explain why performance changed and what actions management should consider next. Developing business judgment requires exposing analysts to real decision making processes. Rather than limiting participation to monthly reporting meetings, finance leaders should intentionally involve FPNA professionals in strategic planning sessions, product development discussions, capital investment reviews, pricing decisions, acquisition analyses, operational improvement initiatives, and post-implementation reviews. Seeing how executives evaluate competing priorities helps analysts understand that strategic decisions involve balancing financial returns, operational realities, customer needs, organizational capabilities, and risk, not simply maximizing a financial metric. Mentorship is another critical component of developing trusted advisors. Experienced finance leaders should regularly review analyses with junior analysts, not only correcting technical errors, but discussing how executives will interpret the information, what additional questions may arise, and how recommendations could be strengthened. These conversations accelerate the development of professional judgment, which is difficult to acquire through classroom training alone. Analysts benefit greatly from hearing how experienced leaders think through uncertainty, communicate trade-offs, and make recommendations when information is incomplete.

Creating A Culture Of Continuous Learning

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three, creating a culture of continuous improvement. Creating a culture of continuous learning within an FPNA organization requires much more than offering occasional training courses or scheduling quarterly workshops. A true learning culture exists when professional development becomes part of the team's daily work rather than an activity reserved for annual training plans. The objective is to develop intellectually curious finance professionals who continuously seek better ways to analyze information, solve business problems, create value for the organization. When learning becomes embedded in the team's mindset, FPNA evolves from a reactive reporting function into a proactive strategic partner. Finance leadership must establish the expectation that learning is part of every analyst job description. Too often development is viewed as something employees do only when time permits. Instead, leaders should explicitly communicate that improving technical skills, business knowledge, communication, leadership, and strategic thinking is a core responsibility. This expectation should be reflected in performance evaluations, promotion criteria, and career development discussions. Analysts should understand that career advancement depends not only on producing accurate work, but also on demonstrating continuous growth and expanding their ability to influence organizational decisions. One of the most effective ways to reinforce continuous learning is through regular knowledge sharing within the FPNA team. Every team member develops unique expertise through projects, stakeholder interactions, or external training. So creating recurring opportunities for analysts to teach one another transforms individual learning into organizational capability. Monthly learning sessions might include demonstrations of new forecasting techniques, lessons learned from recent budget cycles, presentations on emerging industry trends, or discussions of how artificial intelligence was used to improve a recent analysis. Teaching others reinforces the presenter's own understanding while exposing the entire team to new ideas. Finance leaders should also normalize experimentation. Analysts should be encouraged to test new forecasting approaches, visualization techniques, automation opportunities, AI prompts, dashboard designs, and analytical methodologies without fear of criticism if an experiment does not produce the expected result. Organizations that reward thoughtful experimentations often discover significant improvements in efficiency and insight generation because employees become comfortable challenging existing processes rather than simply following established routines. A culture that values innovation encourages analysts to ask, is there a better way to do this instead of accepting current practices as permanent?

Measuring Training Impact Not Activity

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four measuring training success The effectiveness of an FPNA training program should never be measured solely by the number of courses completed or certifications earned. Those metrics indicate activity, not impact. The true purpose of FPNA development is to improve the quality of organizational decision making, strengthen business partnerships, and ultimately contribute to better business performance. Therefore, success should be evaluated by measuring how the team's behaviors, capabilities, and business influence change over time. The question finance leaders should continually ask is not did our team complete the training, but rather is our team making the business better because of what they learned. The first area to measure is technical excellence because it provides the foundation for strategic partnership. Analysts must consistently produce accurate, timely, and reliable financial information before executives will trust their recommendations. Metrics such as forecast accuracy, budget accuracy, reporting cycle time, variance explanation quality, data quality, model reliability, and the percentage of automated reporting processes demonstrate whether the team is executing its core responsibilities efficiently. While these measures alone do not define strategic FPNA, poor technical performance will undermine the team's credibility with business leaders. The second category should focus on analytical quality and strategic insight. Instead of simply counting reports produced, organizations should evaluate whether FPNA is delivering actionable recommendations that influence decisions. Finance leaders might measure the number of strategic recommendations presented to leadership, the percentage of recommendations accepted and implemented, the number of scenarios evaluated before major business decisions, or the frequency with which analysts identify emerging risks and opportunities before they become significant issues. Another valuable measure is whether executive meetings increasingly focus on discussing recommendations rather than explaining historical financial results. When leadership spends less time asking what happened and more time asking what should we do next, FPNA is becoming more strategic.

Action Steps Plus Sponsor And Close

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Now for action today, does your FPNA team have a formal development strategy? Does every analyst have an individual development plan? Is time intentionally set aside each week for learning and continuous improvement? Has your organization invested the financial resources needed to develop strategic finance capabilities, leadership skills, business acumen, and AI proficiency? If not, now is the time to change that. Evaluate where your FPNA's team stands today, identify the gaps between reporting results and driving decisions, and create a deliberate development plan. The organizations with the most strategic finance teams don't get there by accident. They build them through consistent investment in their people. Now this episode is brought to you by Finance Leader Academy. If your FPNA team is ready to move beyond reporting numbers and become trusted strategic business partners, we're here to help. We help FPNA professionals strengthen strategic thinking, business partnering, executive communication, financial storytelling, forecasting, scenario modeling, and the effective use of artificial intelligence to deliver better business decisions. Whether you're developing a new analyst or transforming an entire finance organization, our training equips your team with the skills needed to create measurable organizational value. Learn more at FinanceLeader Academy.com. Today I talked about developing a training plan for the FPNA team and I highlighted the following points. Number one, why FPNA needs a formal development plan. Number two, our goal is to develop strategic business partners. Number three, creating a culture of continuous improvement, and four, measuring training success. The future of FPNA belongs to professionals who combine analytical rigor with business judgment, effective communication, and technological fluency. Organizations that intentionally invest in developing these capabilities will create finance teams that do more than produce accurate forecasts. They will shape strategy, influence capital allocation, identify emerging risks, uncover growth opportunities, and become indispensable partners to executive leadership. Artificial intelligence accelerates this transformation, but it does not replace the need for critical thinking, curiosity, and trusted relationships. The organizations that thrive will be those that develop both their people and their technology together. I hope you enjoyed the Finance Leader Podcast. If this episode helped you today, please share with a colleague and leave a review. Please check out FinanceLeader Academy.com for more resources and for ways that I can help you and your team. And now go lead your team, and I'll see you next time. Thank you.