From the course: Finance Strategies for Business Leaders

How leaders outside finance can support finance

From the course: Finance Strategies for Business Leaders

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How leaders outside finance can support finance

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- Corporate finance isn't just the responsibility of finance professionals. In fact, business leaders across an organization need to be keeping their eye on the finances because it's important for the company's growth and for its survival. No matter what's your role in the company, you can't just sit back and let the finances take care of themselves. Now, I know finance isn't for everyone and there are plenty of people who struggle with it, but there are plenty of things that you can do in your organization to support your finance team and the finance function to help it perform its best. And you don't need to be a finance whiz yourself to do this. In fact, one of the best things you can do is ask a lot of questions. Ask about risks and opportunities. Push your finance team to provide more transparency into the key upside and downside financial factors for your company. You'll be helping ensure the right tactics and longterm strategies are implemented. Also, be sure to ask questions about what it would cost to reduce or eliminate financial risks. As a business leader, you should be on top of the critical risk topics that could adversely impact your company like currency risk or interest rate risk. And you should make sure to ask your finance team for frequent updates on this topic and for information about what it would cost to reduce or eliminate those risks. Finally, ask questions about financial statements. As a business leader, it's already part of your job to support audit activities that happen at your company. So if you're supporting what happens in the financial statements, you should understand what the big themes are in them, and how it could impact your unit, as well as your own personal career. And there are plenty of other things that you can do to support your finance team without needing to be familiar with financial calculators or how to use Excel Pivot Tables. The truth is for business leaders, it's really important to engage on important finance topics in order to have those critical conversations to support your finance function because it will be an important part of how your company grows and performs in the marketplace.

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