Six Traps To Avoid Financial Work

People are looking forward to the corresponding rewards for their own efforts, and think that diligence and talent can bring more opportunities and rewards.

However, it is frustrating for many smart and dedicated financial personnel that talent and diligence do not make them more outstanding in their careers. Why? Those outstanding financial experts are not more diligent and intelligent than those less than peers. They just avoid the six pitfalls of financial work.

These pitfalls are the real killer of senior accountants, analysts and financial managers.

Trap 1: pay attention to the known and avoid the unknown.

They like to be sure and precise, do not like ambiguity and uncertainty, so they naturally pay more attention to observable and measurable determinate things.

Specifically, financial accounting pays attention to historical data. History can not be changed and can not be improved. The possibility of improvement lies only in the unknown future.

And success comes from this unknown field.

The unknown opportunities and risks dominate the future of every enterprise. The top leaders should have the confidence and insight into the knowledge and skills of the unknown through internal uncertainty.

If this is clearly understood, financial personnel should look for opportunities to develop their abilities in the areas of planning and investing in new investment projects.

Trap two: pay attention to measurement, neglect creation

A financial officer is only a scorer, not a scorer.

In nineteenth Century, British scientist Rod Kevin once clearly defined the relationship between measurement and improvement. He said: "we can not improve it without measuring it."

Few cases show which enterprise can effectively pform the measurement result into an improved power from beginning to end, and most financial personnel only choose measurement.

Measurement does not create value in itself. Only when the improvement occurs, the measured data have practical guiding significance. The senior leaders in finance know this very well, so they not only pay attention to what has happened, but also pay attention to the improvement measures that can be realized.

Many accountants know the cost of things and do not know their value.

Historical cost has measurable, definite and small risk measurement attributes, so it becomes the target of financial accounting.

Although accountants and analysts are trying to reduce costs, this is not a lottery.

Compressing costs is not difficult: just stop any overhead related to production or service delivery.

Zero cost means no value creation, no value creation means loss of customers, no customer, no enterprise.

On the other hand, if prices are reduced, it will be easier to create value for customers.

So the real challenge is to create value at the lowest cost for businesses, customers and other key stakeholders. Companies need to make profits, but they are not just making money.

Trap four: focus on yourself, ignore the whole.

In the case of disputes within the enterprise, the phrase often heard is "this is not something in our department".

If a financial officer merely thinks his job is confined to his department, he falls into another trap.

Selfish departmentalism makes people care only about their departments but ignore other departments that constitute the whole enterprise.

Excellent financial personnel should step out of the accounting department and adopt the method of empathy to create greater value for enterprises.

Only when we know the real needs of other departments and personnel can we make scientific decisions so that we can create value for the whole enterprise.

Contrary to the concern itself, senior financial leaders should look beyond the Department to familiarize themselves with others' functions and create good inter departmental cooperation.

Financial personnel are often accustomed to the knowledge and skills they have learned in the past. Past experience accumulated and the habits of their predecessors have rarely questioned and challenged these practices and fallen into a trap of sticking to rules.

In fact, financial personnel need to find opportunities to improve, innovate and work hard to implement them.

Open your eyes, open your mind, and focus on some new ways of doing things so that you can create more value for your company. Such talents are most popular.

For example, there are many new programs that can improve the results of financial work, which are not what you can learn in school.

Moreover, even if you have experience in auditing and consulting, you will not be able to see that there is a massive improvement and improvement because it requires investments that can not be measured in terms of banknotes, which can reduce the time needed to pay wages.

Trap six: buried in work, obscurity

Many financial staff feel that they can get a fair return if they do their jobs well. This kind of understanding was correct decades ago, but today it has become an illusion.

The fact is, if no one thinks your job is pertinent, unique and valuable, then your job is worthless.

Only you have the obligation to promote and maintain this understanding.

Financial personnel are often not good at selling themselves, but they only hope to let work speak, which is wrong and wrong.

People who are most able to help you inside and outside the company don't know your job and can't judge your ability, unless you take the initiative to report to them regularly or explain what you do and why.

This communication does not require rigid business faces, nor need to disclose business secrets. It should be a series of ingenious and sincere hints, letting the other party know how you help the enterprise achieve its goals.