Follow the Money Patterns

Patterns / 4. Reframing the Conversation

Pattern 4.5

Co-author the Numbers With Finance

Build your numbers with someone in finance, so that they become finance’s numbers rather than engineering’s advocacy.

Co-author the Numbers With Finance
Co-author the Numbers With Finance

In This Context

Numbers that come from the team asking for money read as advocacy, however accurate they are. The person who prepares the numbers (a finance business partner, a controller, or someone in financial planning and analysis) often has more influence over what gets funded than the people who sign off. They know which lines are watched, how the spending would be accounted for, what format the budget round expects, which numbers will be questioned, and the route a case will actually take. Engineers rarely ask, and finance staff are rarely invited to technical meetings.

You can see this pattern is needed when finance’s first questions to you are challenges about your costs, and you answer them by defending your work in technical terms.

  • Engineers’ technical credibility doesn’t help if their self-interest looks high.
  • The trust equation: credibility, reliability, and intimacy, divided by self-orientation.

Therefore

Find a contact in finance, and turn them from an informant into a co-author.

  • Ask them how your costs would be treated, which lines are watched, and what format is expected.
  • Let them shape the numbers, including the ones that make your case look weaker.
  • Bring finance into the right technical meetings, structured so they can contribute.
  • Treat budget holders and procurement as patrons.

Consequently

  • Your numbers are believed, because someone in finance has put their name to them.
  • You learn the route the case will take, and who will check it.
  • Finance may see ways of accounting for the problem that engineering would not.
  • You give up control of the numbers, and some of them will make your case look weaker.

Seen In

Chapter 16, “Work With Finance” (Chapter 16, “Work With Finance”); the trust equation sidebar there; the CFO in the technical review in Chapter 6, sidebar “War Story: Accounts Say ‘Done’ but Engineers Don’t”.