How to get up to speed quickly in a new FP&A role
Congratulations on the new role!
Here are five tips to onboard yourself as fast as possible:
1) Find out who does what
When learning something highly complex like a new role, always start high level before focusing on the details.
That’s because our brains work like a system of drawers. Facts are much harder to remember and make sense of if you don’t have a drawer that already carries similar facts.
So, build the drawers first by understanding who does what and how their roles interact with yours.
2) Learn from the experts
When you talk to people to understand their roles, listen for overlap with yours. For example, they may have used the same system you need for your job.
Figure out who the experts are for all the various topics you need to understand for your role. It’s much easier to learn from someone else than by trial-and-error.
3) Ask what’s the one thing they would have wanted to know at the beginning
Sometimes, experts struggle with sharing their knowledge with you. They simply don’t know where to start.
So you need to ask the right questions to help them help you. A great one to start with is what advice they would give themselves when they were just starting out.
4) Build relationships
You should make sure that every interaction with your coworkers early on builds the relationship.
Try to help your business partners as much as you can because later, you will rely on their help in one way or another. When your first talk to someone, ask what pain points they have and how you can help address them.
5) Don’t: Start implementing big changes right away.
It may be tempting: You come in with fresh eyes and notice that processes that worked at your previous company aren’t implemented at your new one.
But don’t give in to the thought of making sweeping changes right away. When you are new, you probably don’t yet know what you don’t know.
There may be good reasons why the business is run the way it is. How long should you wait? Three months is a good amount of time to learn all the basics. You can gently introduce more significant changes then. Just don’t forget to ask as many questions as possible while doing it.
If you’d like to learn more about FP&A, I offer help in three ways:
1️⃣ Subscribe to my free newsletter “FP&A Tuesday” here.
2️⃣ Listen to 75 bite-sized mini lessons and get FP&A advice on the go.
3️⃣ Join my live online course FP&A Bootcamp to master FP&A in two weeks.
