Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm Adam Larson, and today I'm joined by Soufyan Hamid, the founder of The Finance Circle, a company that trains FP and A leaders and finance teams to master financial storytelling, deliver impactful presentations, and develop business partnering skills. Since Soufyan last joined us in 2024, the finance world has been transformed by AI, shifting the focus away from storytelling, only for teams to realize how essential clear communication and insight remain. In this episode, we dive into Soufyan's Storytelling Maturity Model, explore what it takes for finance professionals to shift from simply reporting numbers to generally influencing the business, and discuss why human skills matter more than ever in the age of automation. So stay tuned for actionable advice and global perspective on the future of finance communication.

Well, Soufyan, thank you so much for coming back on Count Me In. We had you on here back in 2024, and it was funny as you and I were chatting, getting ready for this podcast recording. We both recognize a lot has changed since 2024, you know, in the world of finance and what you're doing. And, I thought we could start off our conversation by just, you know, talking a little bit about, you know, where does your world, what does your world look like today compared to when we last talked?

Well, I guess that you will guess it yourself. It's about AI, AI everywhere. So yeah, a lot has changed because when, when I, when we met like two years ago, it was really nice to talk about storytelling and it was already an important topic back then. The only thing is that since AI came a lot of fantasy started to come like AI is going to do a lot of stuff for us. And we have to invest a lot of time, a lot of money in that.

And so during two years, like one year and a half, storytelling was not really the priority for many finance leaders. But I somehow feel there's a sort of disappointment right now with AI and people are starting to think, okay, yes, we can do a lot of stuff. We can automate a lot of reportings. We can create dashboards. We can even create models, but our teams still don't know how to tell stories.

Our teams still don't know how to convey an important message. We have to do something about that. So I felt that now people are really wondering how we can systematize insight giving, storytelling, and really reporting in a way that will speak to other audiences. And that's what has changed is that now I feel it's become a real priority for many CFOs and FP and A leaders.

Yeah, it really has. And, and you've been working with a lot of large companies and kind of helping them work through that, that more structured storytelling. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about your, you know, your storytelling maturity model and how it came together and what problem were you trying to solve when you were putting that framework into shape?

Yes, this is very important and interesting because this maturity model is where you will find the root cause of where those teams are, because there are three levels in this maturity model. You have the level one reporting, level two explaining and level three influencing. And of course you want, you would want your teams to be in level three influencing. You're happy if they are in explaining, but in reporting mode, this is where most of the teams will just give you the data. Okay.

After their closing, they will look for the tables. They will update the PowerPoint with the graphs, the table, the new numbers, and eventually they will start to write some comments like revenue have decreased with so much percent or COGS or OpEx have increased with so much, so many percent. So that's basically something that doesn't really add value because you would clearly be able to read that in a table without having someone having to write that down in a PowerPoint. Yet this is where 50% of the teams are today because a lot of people will tell you that they lack time. They don't have the methods.

They don't have the framework. So it's the easiest way for them. They will just drop the variances on the table of the CFO or the XCO, and then hope that people will make themselves the connection between the dots. Yet some teams go a bit further. This is something like 44% of the teams that go to explaining mode.

And this is level two. A lot of people are disappointed when their teams are in explaining mode. Why? Because they think they have to go further, but when you are in explaining mode, that means that you already connect with business drivers. So the typical price volume mix analysis, you will correlate the financial variances in revenues, in costs, in OpEx with business drivers that people will recognize.

And if they recognize it, they already have, they don't have the story yet, but they already have a link to something that they can recognize and that will trigger a decision in their head. So that's already a good point. Of course, this is not the highest level because you want your teams to go to influencing mode. This is the third level in which people not only will look at the business drivers, but also start conversations with business stakeholders before the reporting, before the presentation, before the XCO meeting. And this is where finance will not only come with the variances even explained, but also, and this is important implications, the cost of inaction, for example, tell what people miss, what people can expect if things continue like that.

And the highest level is really to come with recommendations where they will tell, okay, this is the cost of inaction. But if we do this, this will happen. If we do that, this will happen, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So the recommendation part is really where finance has an influencing part that comes from their relation with business, with the business stakeholders.

When you're working with these corporations and you're, you're explaining the different stages, do you ever have that moment where the leader's like, oh my gosh, we've never made it to the influencing stage? What like the, when does that light get turned on for them?

It's generally in the first steps because when I have this maturity model, then I will show them the first, the four step approach, which is basically starting not with your PowerPoint, but starting with determining what message you want to convey. What message you want people to remember at the end of the meeting. The real click is when I first I send a questionnaire to all the teams and they have to, to fill it in before training. And the results are generally not so surprising to be honest. People, when they call me, they already know that their teams are not doing such a great job, but the clicking moment is when I tell them the highest trick when it comes to determining the main message.

It's that their teams have to, when they want to communicate something ask themselves, so what? Why am I bringing this on the table? Why is it important to the people in the meeting? Why do they care? Why would they care about that?

And when they start to have this systematic question, then they already have a mindset that's different from the reporting mode. That's why generally when I teach them, there's no one left in reporting mode because they already have this so what. And of course you can go further with the now what, what do we do about that? But the clicking moment is okay. Now whenever my team will communicate me something, I will systematically request a so what?

Why would I read your email? Why would I read your report? Why would I sit with you ten, fifteen minutes to listen to your presentation? If you don't have that answers, you're not ready to have a message.

Yeah. And as I was, as you were talking about that, it made me think, you know, is there a hole in our accounting and finance education that so many people get into the accounting finance teams and don't understand the importance of the storytelling and being able to say more than just reporting what the data is and is there something missing in our accounting education? I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

No, actually I have two thoughts. The first one is basically our education because in accounting and I didn't work in accounting, but I worked in auditing. You have to ensure a 100% accuracy. You have to ensure completeness. You have to ensure that your data corresponds to the regulations, etcetera.

So there's no room for perhaps maybe, or opinion. This is basically data and you have to sort of fill the gaps. The mere fact that your debit and credit must be a 100% equal will trigger that sort of mindset in our mind. It has to be correct. And so whenever we talk about the variants, well, we will start to see a variance, a 100 K and then we have something that's maybe 80 K, but then we have 20 other variances that in total would maybe do 20 K, but we will tell everything because otherwise it's not complete.

So that's one, the, our education as finance people, as accountants triggers that I want to be accurate and complete to the max. The second thing is that we were all the time valued by our expertise, the kind of work that we do. That's what our value was because so far, whenever I had an interview in the past, they asked me to fill a business case where I had to write down some accounting scriptures and then go on a business case where I had to do a forecast. It was very technical. We never learned to position ourselves in the other side.

How is that relevant to me? You know, when there is a reporting, people want to know the performance of their business unit, their department. They do not want to know that the work that you've done, ensure that this was a 100% correct. It's the baseline it's expected from you, but we do not have that in our mind that doing something and communicating about this something are totally different jobs. Have to ensure that when we go to the communication side, we have to think how is this relevant to the other?

Not how did I, did I do that?

I like that, that, that approach there. And it's interesting because as you were saying that it made me think of sometimes people get so focused on the reporting, like I don't want to go deeper than reporting because I have to make sure I get it all right. And storytelling feels like a luxury because I have all these deadlines and I have to make sure all the reports are correct. And you know, I don't have time to think, I don't have time to think beyond that. How would you respond to somebody who kind of feels that way?

They're listening to you say that, say like, well, that's great, but I don't have time for that.

Well, I would tell you something that's become the, the, the, the trend these months and these years. It's that now we have to automate this part. The, the, the reporting stack, the technical stack has to be automated. And it's been a trend in the last years because of AI. But the thing is, if you really think about that, this is something we could have done in the last ten years.

I mean, we had more and more, much more than enough with Excel, with Power Pivots, with data models, with ERP system, with EPM systems that are almost automated. And if we just invest the time to make sure that the reports that we create are somehow something that we can just give to the machines, then we do not have this excuse of the time anymore because it's never been what's expected from us from the other side of the company, which is basically 95% of the company that does not work in finance. So, and it's never been the expectation of us that we start to spend our time in reportings and tables and models. No. It's been that we would use them to help them do their job.

I mean, it's not so sexy to say that today, but finance remains a supporting function and we have to support our company, the rest of the company do their work with our talents.

Yeah. We do. And it's I I like I like something you said previously where like, if you're gonna if you're gonna present something, ask yourself why, why am I presenting this? Because that starts getting you in the point of getting to the storytelling of like, what's the point? What's the point of giving this this chart or this number?

And it kind of sets you on that path. And if, and if you're using AI to create some of these things and to get there faster, you have more time to ask those questions and think on those things. Do you have examples of like where like kind of AI is kind of clearing the path so people can actually do the influencing work that you've been talking about?

Well, last week I gave a workshop in a company in Belgium and I got these objections like, yeah, this is nice, but where do we find the time? And so not during the training, but during the lunch pause, I asked them, okay, do you do your reporting today? And they had Copilot. So they had a license, corporate license of Copilot, but they were really manual. And so I just looked at it and downloaded the add in of Copilot and asked them, okay, you have a corporate license.

So it's supposed to be guaranteed that your data does not help training the models and that your data is not sent. So you can have the add in and just what you do every month have some sort of prompt that will recreate the reporting and do the checks for you. And I showed them, of course it was not perfect because we had like twenty minutes, but with thirty minutes more, the part that took them two days after the closing could easily take them maximum thirty minutes. And during these two days less thirty minutes, well, they could easily go to the departments and check the variances and bring a bit more business context. They could easily tell themselves, okay, who is this going to and what matters to them so that I will turn my message for them.

How can I create a structure that's not their usual template, but the waterfall will simply show the main variances that I will talk about? All these could be done in the, in the, in the time that's saved. And that's only one example.

Yeah. Yeah. That is, it's interesting how once you just do one simple thing like, Hey, just use the plugin that's already available to you and how much of a windfall that can be when you're just applying it. And it I think it's interesting also what you said where, you know, we've had the technology, we've had machine learning, we've had be Power BI, Power Query, we've had all these different things that are available and all these ERPs that are available, but it seemed like nobody really put two and two together until suddenly this AI wave came. And it's an it I just I guess I'm like, we're we're how are we all missing it so much?

The thing is that it's not so new when there was Visual Basic, for example, in Excel. I was in the, maybe 1% of people using it when there was a Power Query and Power Pivot in Excel itself. Well, there were maybe 3% of finance professionals who use that. So it's, it's always the case. It will always be the case.

The problem now is that there was no pressure on us because this would, this was basically a sort of individualism heroism of, okay, I'm good in that. I'm going to automate my reporting stack. And I had that in the past where I came, I automated my reporting stat with Power Pivot. And I said to the rest of the team, okay, do you want me to show you how to do that? No, I prefer to do it my way because it's easier.

And what do you want to do? Even if you are a manager, then you have people and they would start to burn out if you, if pressure them too much on automating. So no, the thing is that I don't think that AI will miraculously change how we work. I mean, it's a question of direction and a question of mindset. The only thing is that today people will start to feel for their job because it's started.

The fact that AI will replace people. I mean, whatever we say, we could say, yeah, you know, AI will not replace people. They will replace tasks and so on, but let's be realistic. AI will replace job. Maybe they will be back in some years like the tech companies do now.

They fired, I don't know how many thousand people and now they're rehiring those people. But I think that this must be a sort of wake up call. We have to understand what is expected from us. And I think that our human part is what's expected from us so that our opinions, our judgment calls, our ways of collaborating with the rest of the business and making the connection between everything is our differentiator. And today, yes, with the automation that's possible and the sort of trigger that the companies have, it's now that we have to do this.

Well, I think that finance departments will have to understand, okay, this is our time where we have to find other values than just the reporting part.

Yeah, we do. I, I think another point too, is like the, the, the tools you were mentioning that people were using before we had the Ready Accessible AI, you had to have some sort of coding knowledge. You had to kind of really get into there and be able to type it out the right sequences. Now with the AI, you just have to be able to ask the right questions and it does those, the work that, you know, like, you know, I think of the macros in Excel, like I, we, I knew somebody who was a power user, like you were mentioning, and suddenly something we were doing could, you know, it was like click of a button and then suddenly it did it all for us. And we're like, that used to take five minutes now it's just a second, you know, and that would cut down on time.

And so with the new systems and the new AIs, like you said, there will be jobs that will be taken over like analysis jobs that people used to sit there for days and hours doing that analysis. You can just click of a button and the AI can do some of that analysis for you, you know? So maybe we can talk a little bit more about, you know, where does the human fit in in this, this storytelling and why is it so important to still have that human insight?

Well, because I think that AI is really great at doing a lot of things. The only thing is that if you really think this true, the difficult part of storytelling is giving the business context, the real root cause. And in my career so far, I've never had a real data system that will systematically put things contextual information in a data system, even in textual system. It's all in the heads of people. It's all in emails and so on.

What I've seen is that the most difficult part, and this is the one that adds value in storytelling is going to retrieve why something happened. It's really easy to say, okay, my revenues have decreased by so much. It's even easy to say my revenues have decreased so much because the volumes have decreased in that country, let's say. But then do you have in your data something that will tell you yes, in that country that decreased because the political regulations on that type of project changed. Now almost never you have that.

And so all of these will be the main differentiator of humans. And I will even go further because this is only the root cause and eventually possibly it will be somehow automatable in the future, but then quantification of the risk is something we could automate, but then the recommendation part is something that has to come not only from us, because from my experience, when finance comes and tells all the rest of the company, you have to do this. Generally, the welcoming of that solution is not so good. If you are a business partners and that you come to the, your business stakeholders, discuss the options. And then with your powers of finance professionals, start to quantify these options.

I mean, what's the cost, what's the outcome and so on. Well, you do your job as a business partner. And this is exactly where I think, I do not have a crystal ball, but I think that we will have the most value in the future by bringing that human part of the job into finance. Well, I want to pick out a pick up something you just said where you really have to

be the business partner. So if you're coming to the table and you don't feel like you're the business partner, probably step one would be, Hey, establish yourself as that business partner. And do you have any recommendations for somebody who's like listening like, Hey, I don't really feel like I'm the business partner yet. How do they get to, what's that first step to get to that point?

To develop your business acumen, there are really a lot of steps, but the first one, and this is mostly the tech guy that speaks is to modelize your business. So that means if you work in a business, commercial business unit, try to modelize with business drivers. Okay. Is it a question of volume and number of hours worked, the number of hours connected, the number of clients, etcetera. So whenever you have that, go a layer deeper because one customer can have usage.

One customer can have a subscription one and so on. Whenever you have that modernize it. And whenever you have that sort of Excel logic in your head, be a business partner by discussing with your business stakeholders. Okay. Discussing, but also listening to them.

What are the plans? What are the products that they have in mind? What are the objectives? And by doing this, you will relate with your superpower of creating a model and the, what the people live in their daily life. And that's how you develop business acumen.

And after that, by developing the business acumen, then you become a partner by helping them. Okay. Help them on things that you love to do and they hate. For example, how many times in my career did I have people who wanted to launch a product? One of the steps was to create a business case and business cases must be done in Excel.

Well, I came and I just took my hat off Excel nerd and I started to create the model with the input that they wanted to put. By helping them, they will clearly see you're not just on the other side, controlling them, but you are already partnering with them. And this is how it's developing. It's a question of communication and services rendered on one side and on the other.

Yeah. So let's say you're a CFO, you're listening to this conversation. You're like, Hey, I already am a business partner, but I recognize that my team is not where not at the influencing stage. I want to get my team there. Are there like one or two things that you could give advice like right now, Hey, to start getting that team moving in the right direction.

Well, one of the things that I will recommend, and I know it hurts a lot because people really don't like to, to give that responsibility on two sides because first they want to be the umbrella for their team. And secondly, because they don't want their team to give a bad reputation to finance is the presentations. It's it might seem stupid, but I started to develop more and more myself in all the senses and my business partnering when I started to present. And I wanted to do that without umbrella, without filter. And of course I took some slaps, but it's how you learn.

You start with a methodology. And if you're just thinking about improving and that you're open for feedback, you will improve that way. But the best way to ask your team develop in business partnering is to give them a business stakeholder they are responsible of. And every month you go and take the results of that specific business unit or of that specific product line, for example. And you ask your team, okay, this month, it's not going to be me.

It's going to be you. And you can be there as well. But the only fact that it's done will push them in the arena. And I know a lot of people don't like that, but I mean, you either have the opportunity to put your toe in the water or just jump and do the bomb. And as a finance leader, I always like to ask people to do the bomb because it's hard, but it goes so fast and the results are so much more valuable than just starting by sending an email and then having a small conversation, but you are still the filter.

I like that. That's really cool. So, you know, you've, you've been building your practice, you speak at conferences across Europe, and I wanted to kind of tap into your, what you've kind of learned as you've seen the broader audience, you've seen people across different industries and regions. And I wanted to ask like, you know, how do the finance storytelling challenges vary or they, or they don't, you know, as you've been in different regions and different industries, like, is it, is it different depending where you are?

Well, of course it's different. What I've seen in The U S is that it's expected of finance to formulate recommendations. So there you can directly go, you can be blunt and start to propose things. They are used to have consultants. They are used to have, people who want to go the extra mile.

It's not because of that, that it's done. It's just that it's expected. So you have normally a future less. In Europe, you have to be careful. And when I say Europe, I simplify because you have like Western Europe, you have Germany countries, etcetera.

So it's a bit different, but if I generalize in Europe, it's people want to be helped, but they want to have the final words. So it's better when you say I'm going to bring options rather than recommendations. Like you formulate a sort of menu. If we do this, this will be the effect. If we do that, this would be the effect.

What are you choosing? Okay. And they absolutely want you to check those with their staff before the XCO because they don't want to spend time checking what you did, how you calculated this. So if their team didn't give the buy in, they don't give the buy. I would even go further.

I went to Asia sometime in Singapore, for example, a lot of people were really not that determined to give feedback in the sense that it's really hard for them to publicly judge someone's opinion, someone's opinion. Example, if in a meeting you have, because at a certain point in a meeting you have to transform from presenter to facilitator. That means that sometimes you have to contradict people. That means that sometimes you have to add contextual information. It's the hardest part for them.

In, in Japan, that was totally the contrary of what we learned in The U S or in Europe, because there people will start building their trust in what you present from the details that you bring. So long jump with the bluff method, bottom line upfront method in which you will tell the conclusion and then expose what you, how you brought to, how you came to that conclusion. Now there you have to bring all supporting evidence first and then only formulate the main message, the main conclusion, and ask them for support. Exactly the opposite of what we generally say in our country. So that that's that, those are the main cultural differences that I got.

Of course, I didn't travel all around the world, but those are the main that I'm, that I noticed.

No, I appreciate that. It's cool that, that, that you have that perspective to understand the difference. And I wonder also if we don't really teach this part of, in finance education because there's so many, every culture is different and no matter where you're getting your education, I wonder if the workplace is different and that's why we don't necessarily teach. Because like, it seems like based on everything you're saying, it seems like every finance and accounting professional should take like a bunch of communication classes so that they can understand how to communicate with, like, as opposed to just making sure the numbers are right. We still need to be able to communicate.

And it just seems like there's something missing there, you know, especially as we, as we need to be developing our communication skills, especially now in the age of AI communication is even more important between humans.

I'm pretty sure it will come because many of the things that, I mean, back when I studied, I learned accounting, etcetera, having Excel, you know, in our university. I mean, we were doing debits and credits on paper. We were doing reportings on paper and I remember having one class of Excel, but I basically learned Excel on the job. Now today they have computers, they work with Excel directly and they even work with AI. So I guess that's at some points, many of the things that we used to teach will be taught differently and they will understand how to complete the curriculum with, I wanted to say soft skills, but it's more like human skills.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it'd be more in like technology skills and then human skills and maybe the industry you'll change the naming. I don't know. Soft skills is always a weird term for me.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, Soufyan, this has been an amazing conversation. I really appreciate you coming back on the podcast and kind of catching us up where you're at and sharing just the great expertise and knowledge that you have with our audience.

Well, thank you, Adam, for having me back. It was, overfull to talk to you again.

This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast, providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.