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Writer's pictureGilbert Eijkelenboom

How to Influence with Data: Building Trust and Driving Decisions

Updated: Jun 6


MindSpeaking Podcast Episode 20 - Anders Liu Lindberg , COO & CMO of Business Partnering Institute


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🕒 Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:09 Journey to becoming a business partner

06:09 Presenting: Crowd vs. One-on-One

08:00 Lessons in One-to-One Relationships

10:36 Advice on Building New Professional Relationships

12:15 Finding ways to help your employees

14:48 Value via Customer-Centricity

17:43 Impact on influencing business leaders

22:31 Balance: Data & Experience

24:02 Importance of Hypothesis-Driven Analytics

26:32 Understanding human basics and data storytelling

31:40 Trust-Building Formula

34:43 Institute's Role

36:33 Takeaway

38:30 Where to follow Andres

40:01 Conclusion






Summary:


Overview: Anders Liu Lindberg, a co-founder and partner at the Business Partnering Institute, joins the MindSpeaking podcast to discuss enhancing the impact of finance and data professionals through improved communication and stakeholder relationships. Despite his finance background, Anders’ insights are invaluable for data professionals aiming to elevate their analytical roles.


Key Insights:

  • Insight x Influence = Impact: Anders emphasizes the importance of not only deriving insights but also effectively communicating them to influence decisions, thereby creating a substantial impact.

  • Beyond Analytics: The conversation highlighted a crucial realization from Anders' career: analytical skills alone aren't sufficient. True business partnership involves understanding and addressing the broader business needs.

  • Building Personal Relationships: Unlike presenting to large audiences, building one-on-one relationships requires personal engagement and understanding stakeholders' needs, which Anders identifies as a critical skill for business partners.

  • Hypothesis-Driven Analytics: Anders advocates for starting with a clear business issue and hypothesis before diving into data, ensuring that the analytics work is relevant and targeted.

  • Human Basics and Data Storytelling: Understanding how humans process information can significantly enhance how data is presented and stories are told, making them more effective and engaging.



Takeaway: Anders challenges both finance and data professionals to think about how they can collaborate more effectively, leveraging their unique skills to provide deeper insights and create greater impact within their organizations.


Where to Follow: Anders Liu Lindberg shares insights regularly on LinkedIn, where he also publishes a newsletter. He encourages professionals to follow him there to stay updated with his latest thoughts and findings.


Final Note: The podcast wraps up with reflections on the importance of aligning data-driven insights with business needs, enhancing personal communication skills, and building trustful stakeholder relationships to achieve better business outcomes.




Introducing Anders Liu Lindberg



Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

Today's guests on the mind speaking podcast is on this new lender. And you might be surprised because he's a finance guy on a data podcast, but I can tell you he has a really important message to share that is relevant for everyone working on this is the co founder and partner at business partnering Institute. You might know him having over 225,000 followers on LinkedIn. He's going to talk about how we can be more impactful in our analytical jobs, how to communicate better, how to build trust with stakeholders, and how to talk in a way that we can influence stakeholders to make better decisions. And talking about influence mentioned this equation they came up with, which is insight times influence is impact. And there's an impact we're all looking forward to. Well, this message, or this episode contains that message and way more. It's a similar message, a message that I spread on LinkedIn and through this podcast, a slightly different perspective. So I learned some new things through this podcast, and I hope you're gonna do as well. So I hope you enjoy this episode with Andres Liu Lindbergh. Good to see you today.


Andres Liu Lindberg

Thanks you Gilbert, it's it's been it's been a journey to get to this point, but really excited to be here today. And it's been two years since.




When did finance demand more than just analysis?


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

Yeah, we made it happen. And thank you very much for taking the time and where I would like to start this conversation is at the start basically. Maybe you can tell us where where you were what was the time you discovered that, you know, just analytical skills and the financial side or the analytical side is not enough. You know, you need more than that. Where does the journey start for you to communicate a little bit more about that?


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Yeah, it's probably started a late April day 2010 I'm in this graduate program and the company I'm working on, it's a finance graduate program. And it's the last module of four and the CFO, the group CFO is coming to that module to spend a little bit of time with us. And he says, among other things, of course that he wants finance to go from the trunk of the car and into the passenger seat, becoming a co driver of the business. And what that meant was we needed to be business partners, helping business leaders make better decisions. And I guess, at that point, I probably didn't know everything that it entails, you know, just sending the analysis. Shouldn't Shouldn't that be enough, right? But obviously, it wasn't. We needed to actually make do something differently. And I think that's there's been many milestones along that way. But that was kind of where the, where the journey started telling us that what we're doing today is is not enough, we need to do something more different.


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

Right? And, of course, that was a kickable, the other journey I can imagine I've been following you for quite some time. And I'm glad we're speaking now because you have many indexes shared that are not yet relevant for the finance audience, but also for more data analytics, data science people. And I'm wondering how did the journey for you continue you just told us about you know, this first moment, how did it continue?


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Yeah, it was, it was a 10 year journey in many ways. Because I was a very classic finance professional that, you know, like to stay within my box my cubicle called what you want didn't want to talk to a lot of people unless they told me to come and speak to them, right? Didn't want to go outside the finance office or anything like that. And now I'm told to be kind of like a business partner. So I not that I didn't want the outcome. Right. I actually wanted to use the numbers for something to make better decisions. I wanted to stop being a financial controller that only looked at deviations and no clue why the deviations were there, and actually weren't going to improve in the business. So I was very excited and practical about that journey, but it wasn't natural to me in any way. So I had to develop all these public speaking kind of soft skills. Along the way, I was pretty good at communicating from from afar, right? It would be on a stage with 1000 people, but building relationship one to one was wasn't really something I was good at. So lots of things that developed even though I worked in roles where I needed to be a business partner. It wasn't until 10 years later. I was I was really good at it. So a long journey and I feel both my and your audience are on a similar journey.





Presenting in front of a big crowd versus one to one


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

Definitely And what strikes out from the strikes out for me is that you mentioned you were good at you know, speaking to a big crowd of people you mentioned that 1000s of people would maybe not so much on building one to one relationships. I think for many people that are listening there that would be terrified of speaking to 1000 people. I definitely wasn't the past and still when I'm need to present in front of 1000 people. I will be nervous. What how come how can you explain this difference or bring us back to that? Bring us back to this moment. So how, how do you see that difference between presenting in front of a big crowd versus one to one?


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Because when when you're in front of a big crowd, you're not having a relationship with the crowd per se. If you're an entertainer come meet us on our ride but most people would go up and deliver their their talk and that that they would go down again so to speak. So you're not having that kind of relationship. It doesn't really matter if if the they really need what you're saying or if they like you per se you don't have you know, once you go off stage again, you can sort of forget about all these people, right? So so there's not a there's not a personal personal estate unit per se. But when you're going into business leaders office or you're starting to work with them, you have to have a personal stake in it. You can't just be, you know, to kind of say, I don't care if you like it or not, you know, we'd have to work together. No, you actually have to build a personal relationship with them. And sometimes you have to do it without knowing if that's actually what they want. Or maybe they think finance people, data people, they're just you know, they're idiots. I hate these people. And I assign one what I do with this idiot, right? I mean, you don't know. And that's where I'm most uncomfortable is when I don't know how the other person or few people will react to what I'm bringing to the table or my presence there or something like that. So that's it's one has distance the other has closeness and when there's closeness sisters, at least for me,




Lessons on building one to one relationships


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

or awkward let's see. Yeah, yeah, I do. I do recognize that because because when you're on stage, it feels more anonymous in a way right? Instead of one on one It feels less vulnerable. Because if people don't have any virtual stakes, they may be less vulnerable to present in front of a big crowd. What have you learned about building one to one relationships and this is more vulnerable part more than one on one communication?


Andres Liu Lindberg:

I think what I've learned is, if you focus on the needs of the other person, you will find because you are put in that situation, because you have some skills, unique skills that the other person doesn't have, that can help this person deliver on the needs that they have in their need could be I need to reach a sales target or I need to cut some cost or I need to build this product. Right you're good in this position because you have something that can help. Right? So you focus on their need to be fine. You focus on your own needs and only wanting something from them. You won't be fine. You won't be building a relationship and in finance, to business relationships. Most often we need to focus on their needs. So you can always say why should they just be focusing on it? Well, it's because you know, as finance people are there because there's a business business, not there because there's a finance team, right. So we have to focus on their needs and helping the business be successful. If we do that, we're hired because we're smart people we pass, you know, logical tests and we're passed all these tests right. So we are we hired because we are good enough to do the job. So don't worry about that. Just focus on the needs of that person or that team that you're supporting. And use your skills to add the piece of the puzzle that they don't have themselves.




How to become a valuable business partner


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

They've heard this quote one's hard skills will get you to a job and so skills will get you to promotion. I think it's true in many cases, and I would love to dig into you know, focusing on the needs, how do you have any tips how how we can do that how we can make that very concrete and practical. So if we imagine if I enter a room with a business partner or with a with a business stakeholder, how can I be their business partner? How can I focus on what, what should I do or avoid?


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Yeah, so of course, there's a difference between if it's an existing relationship that you've been working with for a while, and now you've just learned that you need to be in the trunk into the passenger seat. Or if it's a new relationship, right? So let's focus on this is a new relationship because that's, you will have to anyway get into that many times during your career. So what I what I would do is I would invite this person for for lunch or for a coffee just kind of informal. Let's, let's just let's just meet maybe you have met the person at your process could of course be but regardless, just have a formal conversation to get introduced to you who are they asked about how the business is going. And then you can leave with Okay, so you know, how can I help you be successful? If you do those three things, you have established a platform to begin building the relationship. That's, that's all you need to do. Right?


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

And I like the last question as well. What can I do to help you I think is a powerful question that almost no one asks right?


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Yeah. And then there's there's some duality to the question that we need to be aware of, because many business leaders won't necessarily know how we can truly help them. So they might just focus on let's say, just make sure I get the numbers on time. Or make sure they are correct, then I'll figure it out. And of course, we should do that. But if you want to be a business partner and really be adding value, you want to be helping them with their two knees. I recently set a target or cutting down the cost of building this product. Right? That's the need. That's that's what they have been assigned by hire management to achieve. Right? So you need to find ways of helping them do that. Sometimes they will articulate that exact need. I'm building this product and I would like to do on it. Other times and probably more often than that first time. They would not know how you can help. They just haven't seen it before. They haven't experienced a true business partner. If the finance needs to be a business partner or data teams need to help them you know, understand how they're doing it, you haven't really seen it. So that even to articulate exactly how we can help them so they might, you know, fall back on just some standard basic stuff. And that's okay. In that situation, we need to do what I call, surprise and deliver. Show them something that they didn't necessarily ask for but then we have identified as a need from our first first detection, do it and show it to them and say, hey, you know, wouldn't this be useful to help you tackle this Mr. challenge that you talked about last time?




Understanding goals and offering proactive assistance


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

I love that, because it comes down to this very proactive mindset. Or would you also call it a consultant approach? Is that something you would use or because that's what I hear sometimes when we talk about these things, being proactive, understanding the goals of the other person and proactively show how you can help them reach their goals.


Andres Liu Lindberg:

We I think we might call it being customer centered. Right? So we look at the business leaders as internal customers, we call them customers or colleagues because if we think of as colleagues, we insinuate that our needs are as equal as their needs and while we want to have a like, and perhaps reality is that it's not like that, right? Business leads are just above you know, finance needs for HR needs or legal needs or data needs, right is the business needs that always trials because that's, that's why we're there as a company. Right? So our needs are not equal. And that's just how it is. So if we focus on them as customers, you know, then we also see them as we need to ensure that they are successful but they need to do it as a company. You're not helping your customers be successful. You're not gonna be business for long. And it's the same with with teams.


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

Yeah, so it's more like an internal customer. And so if we put the needs of them more in focus, then automatically will will deliver more will deliver more value and like you mentioned, the added value is often in the unexpected area, right or the not the undiscovered area, where they don't yet know yet. We don't know yet. But we need to find out and we only know how we can add value if we understand their needs better.


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Yeah. To give you a concrete example, Gilbert. I saw I once came into a new role. And I had a senior stakeholder and he asked for the use of his team. And so I did what I've just mentioned to you, right, I did that process with the four leaders in the team because I had already met them this year. So I invited him for lunch individually and ask those questions. And then one of them. He said to me that he wasn't impressed with the support he's gotten from finance in the past. He felt like he and his team. Were doing the work of finance, ie performance management. And they were doing performance management on their own plans, which is obviously not not such a great setup, but no one was doing it for finance was focused on financial performance management, not business performance management, and you can probably have a whole podcast on the difference between those two but they were not focused on it. So you didn't tell me, Anders, I need you to do next. Basically just said, I'm not being helped with this. Florida to the highest level. In that case. It was the CCO and it just said well, then you got to help is to do the job, right. So it kind of directly indirectly was telling me I have a need, but he wasn't articulating exactly what and how and so on. But I basically said okay, you know, I do and I went back from those conversations say, can you just send me your plan for the year What are you trying to achieve? So all the 40 years, they sent me their plans. And I'm looking at it. I'm saying, Okay, this is what we want to achieve. Let me build a view deck that kind of mirrors your own deck, just looking at performance, and say, Should we look at your business goals like that? So they didn't ask me to do it. I just did it. And then I went back to them and said, Would this be helpful? You're like, oh, and finance do that. I mean, they didn't know they wouldn't have been able to articulate it. But because I could understand that need from what they said I could surprise and deliver, right so we started to run multiple business review processes waited for the IRS, and they delivered great results as an outcome.





Impact on influencing business leaders


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

Fantastic. And this This example shows you right how it didn't work in practice, and how how you can open people's eyes to things they haven't seen. Yet and how to add more value. And you're also often on LinkedIn and on your other blogs. We often talk about influencing business leaders as well so you mentioned like inside with him without influence is useless like that catchphrase. Can you expand on that? Can you elaborate on on influence and all these topics I mentioned?


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Yeah. So I mean, really the the very core foundation and belief of what we do here at this popular Institute were rarely ever popular and a big part of starting a company is an equation. Insights sides times different equal to a pack. I know that that's probably the simplest equation your your data scientist audience have ever heard. But, you know, there's power and simplicity as well. Insights is the way I would define it. And of course there are other data leaders for dogs as well as some great definitions out there. But the way I would define it is it sizes when you have information that lives up to two criterias? One, your stakeholders business leaders customers currently don't know about this. Information and to get help to make better decisions. So why shouldn't advisors should know about already? Well, it's all about it's already factored into that decision making. Right so it's nice. I'd be telling them that their sales are 3.6% but they probably knew it was between two and five and it doesn't really matter that we give them the precise number. So it's nice, but you know, they already know that cells have been in that range. So it just needs to be some of that they don't know. It also needs to be something that can help them better decisions. Because if it's not let's say we've done analysis, that is completely irrelevant to their current priorities. We are taking their mental capacity away from focusing on the real issues. So it's actually even worse than just sharing something you already know. So it has to be those two criteria. And that means insights can come from all over the place. Financials business operations, soft dialogues that you that you can have, and so on and so on. Right. And I think that's important because the financial data people, this was so grounded in the numbers, but it also needs to come from conversations, you know, data, we need to look at data much more broadly than just that hardcore data point that we can get from from some sort of analysis, right? It's a lot more than less, that's the inside piece. And we need to have that. If we're doing insights then. It doesn't really matter that we are in the medium because we have nothing to contribute to any the insights for sure. Right say we are reasonably good at that. Grade we're reasonably good at it is it's quite okay. Then we'll also influence and influence is is the ability to build relationships, your ability to speak a language that your your audience understands. Your ability to communicate, you know, whatever insights that you have, if you cannot do that, you have to listen to listen to you have the greatest insights in the world. It doesn't matter. And that's why it's insights multiplied with influence is one of them is serial very small. You don't get impacted. Alright, so if you have a lot of insights with this matter, you know, go home, you have a lot of influence, but no insights. Just a nice person to have coffee with and that guy can be nice as a friend right but not necessarily in in business. But if you have a reasonable amount of both, right I'm not saying anywhere world class at both at the same time. That's that's pretty rare. Reasonable out of both you have the impact impact could be increased to the value creation for most companies, right? We're actually creating value. We're making better decisions and we have a stronger institution. So that's, that's the fundamental belief for us. And where we do most of our work is really on the influence piece, because that's where more technical people I finance people or data people or activities struggle.


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

Definitely, I agree with that observation. And so let me let me recap. So we have inside times influence people's impact. You're saying insights, it needs to be new information, and it needs to be helpful for reaching their business goals. So that means that for the first side for insight, we don't don't just need the analytical skills, but we also need to understand how the data relates to the stakeholders, right, how it contributes to their goals. So actually, in both of those elements, insights and influence is a way of communicating business partnering, as you mentioned. So this only illustrates and amplifies how important this is to get through to impact.


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Yeah, absolutely. And I wanted to maybe add a point there, right, because I'm sure your your audience is also very much in tune with this that for the past 510 years, all we've been saying is that we need to help companies become more data driven. Right and it's almost to a point where we would disregard or at least discount any view that is not rooted in some sort of data, like you know, experience or gut feeling from from a single year. Is like we are you know, that's not validating more on a data driven system. And I've probably said that myself as well. I think my my more nuanced view on it now is that, you know, yes, you should make data driven decisions, but the data becomes even better when you add the god and experience of these business leaders. Right. So if you only do the analysis in a vacuum and don't talk to anyone about it, then it's might be good. And you might have influenced, I can use it for something for when you enrich that analysis, with insights from talking to different people around the business, it becomes 10 times better, because you only talk to people about the business, you would have opinions and essays and lack of data. So we definitely need both. But we can't just be you know, blindly driving data there's good decision making because then we are completely ignoring the experience of all these distinguished longtime us.





Importance of Hypothesis-Driven Analytics


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

I recognize what you're saying because there's a lot of focus on data driven decision making, and for very good reasons. And there are other ways other facts that we can we can take into account. Completely agree. You also mentioned hypothesis driven analytics in one of your LinkedIn posts I saw what why is that why is that important? And can you elaborate on that part?


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Yeah, I actually I stole it from Roger Martin, who's one of the leading management thinkers in the world and co author of the book when to win which strategy framework I saw him in on stage last year. And he was speaking about his new book, a new way to think where he's basically talking about models, that if they own you, you're gonna fail, so you have to own the models. And one of the models he was talking about was this data driven data scientists kind of mantra that all companies are raving about today, right? And he's saying you know, 90% of it is going wrong, because you are not starting with a hypothesis around what is the business issue that we need to solve and what could be potential root causes that are in our way, or potential solutions that we need to test to understand are they actually relevant solutions or the real root causes? Right? So if you just jump into the data, expecting something to appear, it's like looking for a needle in the haystack without even knowing what it looks like. And in that case, it restores the needle right? So you're basically you're completely dead in the water. And that was kind of his, his take on it. It's of course, you know, kind of a black and white take and I'm not saying that, that thing, many data teams, they definitely do have some sort of hypothesis, or the real. The real point here is that if you don't start with a business issue, before doing analysis, you can hope to get lucky. But we're not doing businesses because we want to get lucky right?


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

Exactly. I think we need a more foundational


Andres Liu Lindberg:

approach. Yeah, exactly. So that's where it comes from. It's not something I mentioned myself, but I thought it was really, really provoking in terms of the whole data driven decision movement.





Understanding human basics and data storytelling


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

So it's definitely I also saw a course post on some courses on your LinkedIn account have been really sneaky on your LinkedIn account in the last weeks. You also have some focus on human basics and data storytelling, but what do you mean human Basics, I'm very creative.


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Human human basics is essentially how are humans processing communication? Right. It's kind of like, okay, you're showing the visual, where, well, I'm gonna go first. And I'm not saying 100% All humans are the same, but for most humans, it would go in a specific point on a page or ad or something like that, right? So if you're planning your communication, without understanding the human basics, then it's like, you know, trying to shoot birds with cannons, right. It's probably not the best way of, of communicate. But if you know, okay, you're first going to look in the upper upper left part and then they're going to go to the right hand corner and then they're going to go okay, then that that's how I should play my communication, right? I think instinctively we are. We're most of doing this because if that's how I see information, and other information, then I would also you know, plan the day or storytelling in the way I would like to present it. Now that's that's the one part of it understanding human basics. The other part of it is then understanding okay, I'm a finance leader, communicating to a sales leader. And I'm a numbers person and she's a visual person, that's to say, right, so if I'm the finance person and this person I passed their last slide with a huge table. Some variances are some traffic lights and some heavy text heavy explanations. And going into the city there's often say, less disgusting numbers. Here it is. And she's like, what, what is this? I have no idea what we're looking at here. Please explain to me that she's probably already decided mentally, that she's not going to design my ideal storytelling in a way that suits the audience, in a way that seems to me and that's very challenging for most professionals, maybe also.





Trust-Building Formula


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

I even think that data professionals finance professionals, over overvalue information on slides, even when they present to do a data or finance audience, so to their peers. I think we have this assumption that we need to have all this information on slides and a lot of detail. And even with a detail oriented audience, I think we put too much information on there. Which is funny.


Andres Liu Lindberg:

The thing is, you know, I, because I'm here this is useful, pious people. Yeah, but that's because my CFO is very detail oriented. And I'm thinking to myself, that might be but he or she is a detail oriented because they don't trust you. They don't trust that you understand the numbers. They want to see all the numbers themselves. So until you can tell a compelling story about the numbers. They are going to want to see all the details. So you need to fix your problem, then you will automatically because it will of course take a bit of time, you will fix the perceived problem that your CFO has, right. So it's always starts with us, and it's often us that have done it to audit as well. And I'm going to give you an example. So I was doing a quarterly forecasting around in the business I was most proud of. And I'd recently gotten into a new stakeholder relationship. And then this stakeholder comes to me and he says, you know, I'm currently planning my forecast of import export numbers. And I just wanted to know that describes 3000 units that the system cannot allocate properly between import and export. So when you do your controlling you just I just wanted to know if it's not gonna be 100% accurate for trying to work with the Systems team to find out why this is and so on. But I haven't really gotten to the end so just just to see, you know, I think to myself, 3000 units, you're shipping half a million units on annual basis 3000 That, that's nothing. So I'm telling him on the spot. I didn't even let him go away and say, Who cares? I don't we don't care about the 3000 you should care about the 3000. If someone gives you grief and to me. It was like, Oh, great. I can actually focus on running my business. But I received a ton of others because some finance personnel told them in the past that it needs to be 100% correct and you need to fix it. I do we have. We've done this for a guy. And now I'm telling him it's not relevant. And guess what? No one came and bug me about it. So it's really have to focus on what's relevant and what's not. And when you put all these details out there and want everything to be 100% accurate or correct.


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

You just got to use 100% And if you are not presenting relevant information, you're going to break that trust and and not build it and you you mentioned the formula before so maybe let's throw in a lot of formula because we have quite an analytical audience. One formula I use in my training is the formula of trust. You know, you're aware of that. So for the for the audience. It's not mine. It comes from the book. No, I forgot the name of the book. I'll get back to it in a second. But the formula is that the trusted advisor, the trusted advisor, thank you very much. So that trusted advisor so the formula is trust equals credibility plus reliability plus intimacy. And that all divided by self orientation. So how credible you are, what's your track record? Have you build results in the best? Are you reliable? So it's more about the how are you delivering on time? Are you making promises and not breaking them? Are you communicating them and if they're, if you're if you're about to break them, so if it's not gonna happen, do you have a high degree of intimacy with people? Do they trust you to share their secrets with you, and self orientation? today? Do you care about the other people's goals are mostly about your own agenda. And also the bottom one, the self orientation is an important one. In this conversation in this context, where we should focus more on the needs of auditors instead of our own.


Andres Liu Lindberg:

We need to trust equation is an integral part of some of the training programs that we run and I think you know, so credibility with typically there, but of course, if the data foundation is not in place, we're going to struggle with that. Reliability. We're typically there. But it's mostly because I don't know if it's the same in the data world but for finance professionals I know to under promise and over deliver, right, so revise it, I'll be ready in 10 days, why we know we can do it and then seven rather than saying six because then we're going to stretch ourselves. So we're okay now without intimacy, not our strongest suit and I'm not going to be stereotyping here. But at least there was a challenge for for me to let some a way to work on self orientation. To me, it's the easiest one because we have customer focus of your customer centered. Only there to help you be successful to help you meet your targets. I have no self interested. So cellphone tasting is easy. But of course, many professionals are not acting this way. I'm just saying you should because then you can take the cell phone technology integration.





Business Partnering Institute


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

Yeah. 100% and make it very low. So that people started to build trust with people because I think many people have this assumption light assumption like yeah, I'm not I'm gonna tell orientated. But then those might be the people that are actually not thinking about too much about how can I help others how can I be actively reach help either reach their goals? Or good we touched upon your company a bit that you co founded the business partnering Institute. Do want to share a bit more about what what you do there and what the team does?


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Yeah, absolutely. So essentially, we help finance teams become more influential, right? So we're, we're trying to fix the part of the equation where we typically struggle the votes most and we do that in different ways. Obviously, we have a lot of thought leadership mix in LinkedIn a few times, right, where it's grown in increasing terms and then in the last few years, like when I have 25,000 followers there now and we have other of our consultants that have been 130 and one is 15,000. So we have we have a lot of thought leadership groups where we certainly share different perspectives to help. It's a push to profession at large, so millions of people. It's not, you know, it's kind of like well, of course, it was also marketing, what we do, but, but it's a significant part of what we do, and it's also why we call ourselves Institute and not business partnering consulting company, for instance. So it's very important to us. They would do a learning and development to take team clients teams on learning journeys to teach them both the soft skills both communication influencing customer focus, but also problem solving. And I like the role of worship as part of Duke because we do do storytelling and so on. So a bit bit of the hot stuff, but mostly the soft stuff, obviously. And then we do consulting related to the learning, learning program business where we need to assess the show foundation in place for you to get return. on investment on the burning or do you need to fix some other issues. So we need to ensure that that's that's in place. And then we have a short term, short term contract or insurance business where we go out and work as finance people ourselves to to lead the way from the inside as role models.





Takeaway


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

Beautiful and I'm happy to know that I'm not alone in this journey, helping analytical people and analytical type of people. It could communicate better part with the business they'll tell stories. It's incredible to see what you have built so far and what what the future will look like. Looking at this, this episode, we talked about different topics. What is what is one takeaway that you would like listeners to take away from this episode?


Andres Liu Lindberg:

I think that data professionals have the exact same needs as professionals in today's world. We all need to become better at communication. And where I'm sort of not decided yet is does it make sense that we all chase that or does it make sense that data people really double down on the data side and then the virus people double down the communications part so that we can work together becoming two pieces of the puzzle, rather than what I see many companies is that these teams are competing and they are trying to get to the table first with their insights. So I don't know if it's a takeaway, but it's something I want you to think about and say How is your relationship with your data scientist? Or how's your relationship with your finance team? And how could you work together to bring better insights to the table and elevate your ability to influence together, you can create much higher impact in the company? Because I think if there's an collaboration or an alliance between professionals that's something I want you to think about.





Where to Follow Andres Liu Lindberg


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

And where people want to know more about you about your organization where most people follow you and find you I know you have a lot of different channels. Just shout out to one.


Andres Liu Lindberg:

LinkedIn is usually the main place, right? I mean, that's where we share all our content. Every day, there's two posts coming out and there's also newsletter coming out every Monday and Thursday. With thing one of the best monitoring subscribers by now so there's this enough content for the ages that are out there. And you'll get new perspectives all the time. So to go there and feel free to go follow i Unfortunately, I've maxed out on connections. So I have a backlog of four and a half 1000 people that want to connect and I just don't know what to do with it obviously. So the do follow letter that you sent the message was really good. I'm hoping to do that as well.


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

Wonderful. I'm so happy we finally got the time to to meet together to speak about important topics or finance professionals and data professionals to focus more on the needs of auditors to build relationships, one on one, and eventually, great, create better and more impact. So thank you very much for taking the time. I enjoyed the conversation and I wish you all the best with your ambitions, skills.


Andres Liu Lindberg:

Thanks for bearing with us.


Gilbert Eijkelenboom:

All right, thank you Andres.



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