Technology has empowered financial professionals to free up their time and focus on the big-picture scenarios facing their organizations and industries. But are they actually doing that, asks Philipp Zielke, CFO of Central Eastern Europe for SAP.
Sit down, relax, and grab a cup of something. I want you to absorb the next few paragraphs. If you’re anything like me, you’re generally very busy most of the time at work. (I’m a CFO supporting 16 legal entities across 11 countries for a multi-national company.) It’s good to be busy and most of us have become exceptionally adept at juggling workloads, multi-tasking and getting things done. But have you become any better at thinking? Sometimes the ability to accomplish a high quantity of tasks doesn’t necessarily mean the quality or process of how you came to those conclusions is the best it can be.
For finance – like many other practice areas – technology has given us and our teams a lot of our time back (or at least it should have if a business has the right systems in place). The efficiencies of cloud-based ERP, machine learning and predictive analytics mean we can now manage projects, accelerate closing times, improve our forecasting and make much better use of our time. This empowers us to free up our time and focus on the big-picture scenarios as they relate to our respective organizations and industries. But are you actually doing that? And if so, are you getting any better at it?
Sometimes the ability to accomplish a high quantity of tasks doesn’t necessarily mean the quality or process of how you came to those conclusions is the best it can be
I recently read the international best-seller, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life. (It’s well worth a read if you haven’t come across it.) The word Ikigai translates to ‘a reason to live’ or ‘a reason to jump out of bed in the morning.’ Much of it focuses on the Japanese island of Okinawa, where people live longer than anywhere else in the world. The book comprises a combination of science-based studies as well as observations. One of the things I found interesting was the concept of ‘flow’ – being completely immersed in what we are doing without any distractions.
The book cites studies that show multi-tasking and working on several things at once actually lowers our productivity by at least 60% and lowers our IQ by more than 10 points. Think about that for a minute. That’s a huge decline. Rolf Dobelli, founder of WORLD.MINDS, a community of some of the world’s most famous distinguished thinkers, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs, also has a very interesting view on the impact of this type of distraction on our ability to think clearly. In contrast, focusing solely on a single task increases our retention, boosts our creativity, and means we are less likely to make mistakes.
Carving out some time in your day, every week, just to think and focus on a single issue is critically important
It’s not that multi-tasking is ever going to go away. It’s engrained in the pace of our daily professional and personal lives. However, it doesn’t need to dominate 100% of our time. As technology accelerates, it will continue to provide us with better, faster and deeper answers delivered in a comprehensive dashboard at the click of a button. Our role, as financial professionals, is to resist filling the time that technology gives back to us with more operational juggling.
Carving out some time in your day, every week, just to think and focus on a single issue (rather than continually trouble-shoot, problem solve or multi-task) is critically important. If you don’t already do this, I’d urge you to consider it.
The point is to give your mind the time and space to focus – solely focus – on an issue you want to address, and let your brain find its flow. According to the book, this requires a distraction-free environment and control over what we are doing.
The value we as financial professionals deliver is not operational management (that’s a given), but rather thinking beyond our own area of responsibility about how we can best support the business. As technology takes finance closer to automation with zero touch end-to-end processes, and greater clarity and predictive insight, we are already more informed, more empowered and more knowledgeable than any of our predecessors. Technology is doing its part in moving the business forward. Your job, as strategic advisor, is to allow your brain to do its best work.