What’s New at CFI | Crafting the Narrative – Storytelling with Data

Meeyeon (00:00)
Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of What’s New at CFI, the podcast where we explore the latest ideas, tools, and learning opportunities to help you grow in your finance career. I’m Meeyeon from the CFI content team. You’ve heard and seen me here before. And today I’m joined by Paul Barnhurst, AKA the FP&A guy, who many of you already know from, depending on what order you’re listening to these podcasts in, you might know him from our What’s New

FP&A Tool Selection course. So we’re really excited to have him back. We’re going to introduce another course that Paul has authored for us, and it’s called Crafting the Narrative, Storytelling with Data. And if you’ve ever struggled to get your message across, whether it’s in a board presentation deck, a leadership meeting, or maybe a smaller project update, if you’ve ever had struggles getting your message across, this course is for you.

Paul’s here to walk us through what you can expect and why sharpening your storytelling skills is one of the most valuable things that you can do for a career in finance today. So welcome Paul, first and foremost. And let’s dive right in. This course opens up by drawing a contrast between data and a narrative. And so thinking about that.

Paul Barnhurst (01:09)
Thank you.

Meeyeon (01:21)
What’s the danger of relying on numbers and numbers alone? And why does storytelling you think matter so much in finance today?

Paul Barnhurst (01:31)
I think there’s a lot of reasons. I first want to go, interesting enough, I interviewed a guy who works in HR last week for one of my podcasts. And I asked him, what’s the biggest thing he’s seeing in hiring in FP &A? And here’s what he said. He’s companies are really searching for somebody who can take the data and tell the business what to do with it, not just dump it on their lap and they have to figure it out. He’s saying that’s what a lot of people are finding is

People are just wanting to dump it on their lap. And so that’s why it’s so important to be able to take that data and craft a story and a narrative. When I say data storytelling, as I talk about the course for it to be a data story, really in FP &A, it needs two things. You need some insights and you need a call to action. Otherwise, you’re kind of giving an update or a report, which is fine. They have their place and they’re important. But if you’re expected to really tell the

a story and influence to move the business forward. You got it. You got to be able to put it in such a way that there can be that call to action and those insights. And that requires more than numbers. We say numbers speak for themselves. The reality is they don’t. Great book is effective data storytelling by Brent Dykes. He does a fabulous job of showing how the science says for somebody to change their view or come along as you’re trying to get them to a certain point. They need another story to replace the story they already have.

The numbers won’t do that.

Meeyeon (03:01)
And I love the point that you make about, you know, if you are just sharing some numbers, there is no real story to tell. There is no call to action. It’s more, it’s best described as a report, an update. And I remember I once upon a time had experienced a colleague at work who would often say, who would share a bunch of, you know, numbers, so to speak, various now we would call them updates at this point,

Paul Barnhurst (03:14)
Okay.

Meeyeon (03:28)
but there was no call to action. The person was in a senior leadership role and I thought that was something that I saw that was kind of lacking in that kind of person’s skill set, where at the end of the day, the person would say, here are my numbers, here’s the update. Now you’re the experts, run with it.

There’s a difference between giving an analysis, presenting your opinion on it, and then having a call to action versus just sharing the numbers as they are, kind of you interpret them on your own. It just becomes an update. And I remember I once experienced, I was at a company and a colleague that was in a fairly senior position

typically did now what I see as giving updates when that person was really supposed to be there to give insights to the business, to share their opinion and say, is what I think we should do. And being that real sort of senior FP &A leadership role. And I think this course would have been really helpful to that individual at this point in time, because as you try to grow in a business and go especially to an FP&A senior role, it’s not going to be the

Paul Barnhurst (04:33)
Mm-hmm.

Meeyeon (04:41)
best, there’s going to be a skills gap. I think if you typically leave presentations and there is no call to action, it’s more like here are the numbers, here are some general interpretations, you’re the experts, you make the decisions. And so I think that this course is going to do an amazing job at helping people fill that gap in their career if that’s where people are at today.

So my next question is that you introduced the storytelling framework built around what, so what, and now what? Can you break that down for us a little bit more without giving away too much?

Paul Barnhurst (05:18)
Yeah, I mean, that framework’s been around since the 70s. And the whole idea is 80 % of the time, people tell what happened. Revenue was down by 500k. OK, like, that doesn’t really tell me anything. Yes, 100 % correct. But just give me an email if that’s all you’re going to tell me. The whole idea of going from what to so what and now what is the so what is. So why is it important?

We missed 500K because we didn’t hire the salespeople. And if this continues, we’re going to miss by 2 million. Right? That’s a real problem. We got it. We got a big revenue gap. If we don’t solve it, we’re not getting our bonuses. Let’s just, know, whatever it might be. So then the now what is, okay, so what do we do because of this? Well, we have the option to hire a few more salespeople. We could try moving a product up a quarter that’s getting, it’s in the pipeline, whatever it might be.

is doing that. And so that’s the whole idea. We tell people in all my training courses is you want to move to the right. You want to be more and more of that. So what and now what and less and less on the what. The what’s going to get automated over time. It already is. We’re seeing lots of tools that the data is in your database. It can pull it and give you that detail. You are being asked to

really help the business know, why is this important? You’re being a filter. And then what do we do next? What are our options? Now, they may go with something else. They are the experts, but they’re still looking to you for opinions. They’re looking to you to understand what’s the cost implications. What are other implications that they may not be seeing?

Meeyeon (07:00)
And another really big part of this course is about building structure before we go and do our favorite thing, which is building slides. Why do you think that, in your opinion, is such a critical shift for most professionals today?

Paul Barnhurst (07:15)
Well, if you ask most people who, especially if they didn’t come from investment banking, which I say most people in FP and they didn’t, so they didn’t get a modeling course in the beginning. Most people have never been taught structure. Like if you look at models, what’s the biggest problem? Design. You know, poorly structured. don’t have assumptions are all over the place. Inputs and outputs are mixed. You’re not doing schedules right.

A lot of that also applies to presentations. Anytime you don’t follow a framework, you don’t structure yourself. And it can even be a homegrown framework. But if you don’t have a structure, it’s really easy to kind of get lost in the details. I’m a very detailed person and I used to do that. And the reality is management rarely ever needs a level of detail that we have to make a decision.

And so that structure helps you kind of really think what should be included, what shouldn’t, what’s the order, what’s going to help them understand. Cause it’s all about the whole idea of whiffed what’s in it for them. You should be structuring it from that perspective, not, how does this make me look good? Which I think sometimes we can, we do. I’ve been guilty of it.

Meeyeon (08:27)
And the final chapter of this course includes a couple of practical case studies, one about a missed earnings target and another about an acquisition proposal. And a little behind the scenes here, why did you choose those two particular scenarios?

Paul Barnhurst (08:43)
Yeah, you know, I mean, I think one missing targets, everybody in FP&A is going to deal with that one. And I think you really have to be able to tell that story. And that’s often one of the hardest areas because here’s what happens. You have a bunch of different lines rolling up to one level and one of them beat by 300, one of them missed by 400. And you’re trying to tell what’s important when sometimes it could be 20 different little things going up and down.

And so really being able to put that story together and focus on what is important is critical. It’s really what the business is looking for and being able to separate, Hey, what’s accounting noise versus what are things that business can influence? So it’s not just being able to put it all together to say, Hey, it all ties. Yay. I figured out my variance. It’s now being able to take that and put the structure and the story to it in a way that the business can do something actionable. And that’s the harder part.

And then the other, the M&A, honestly, it just felt like a good example. I don’t know that there was a lot of thought in, this is the one I should do. It just felt like it’d be a good case to use.

Meeyeon (09:56)
And then just for fun, what’s the storytelling pet peeve that you wish more people would stop doing in presentations?

Paul Barnhurst (10:07)
So my, my one that I hate that I do, and this is more in podcasting and I really been working on it as I do a lot of swaying. So I noticed that a lot now I’ll find myself kind of just naturally without realizing it starting to sway and I’ll watch videos of myself and I’m like, ah, stop doing that. So that’s one I’ve been working on as far as pet peeve from others. I’d say, you know, a couple of things. One.

reading their slides. I hate it. If you’re just going to read it, just send me the deck. I can read just as well as you can, hopefully. Maybe not, but well enough. So that’s one pet peeve. The other is if you don’t give me anything at the end.

Like, what should we be doing? Why, why is this important? There’s no follow ups, no call to action. Nothing comes out of the meeting. That’s a pet peeve. Cause again, just send me the deck. If we’re not going to do anything afterwards, I can read about it and ask you if I have a question. Cause then I just feel like you’re wasting my time.

Meeyeon (11:09)
Love it.

Paul Barnhurst (11:09)
What about you? What’s your pet peeve?

Meeyeon (11:11)
I think my pet peeve is actually the reading off the slides. It is definitely reading off the slides because I don’t understand, then what is the point of us being, well, nowadays it’s like a virtual room, much like this. And I think people have gotten a little bit comfortable with that idea at this point because I can’t really recall many times where I’ve…

Paul Barnhurst (11:13)
And don’t say swing, because then I’ll feel bad. I’m just kidding.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Meeyeon (11:35)
been in a physical meeting and having someone present and they are like literally reading slides to me, it makes it a little bit more awkward, I think, in that type of in-person setting. But with remote working becoming more and more kind of part of your day to day, I find that my biggest pet peeve is someone that just sits there and then just reads their slides to me because I just don’t understand why we need to be in a video call for that.

Paul Barnhurst (11:46)
Mm-hmm.

I like to say it takes a very good meeting to beat no meeting at all. And if all they’re going to do is read the slides, it’s not a very good meeting. So just cancel it.

Meeyeon (12:02)
I think it’s much more effective use of time for me.

Yeah.

Yeah, and like generally, I think that I ⁓ take away a lot more, a lot quicker if I can just read it on my own and kind of sit there for like 10, 15 minutes, read your presentation, take my notes, my takeaway, have my follow up and then call you or like have a meeting with you and talk. I think that is much more productive than me just sitting and listening and then, you know

Paul Barnhurst (12:21)
…

Meeyeon (12:38)
before you know it, like 45 minutes has passed rather than the 10, 15 that I need. There’s not room for follow-up and whatnot.

Paul Barnhurst (12:44)
Mm-hmm.

And a great tip around that, and it’s actually one I didn’t include in the course. I should have now that I think about it. But if you’re presenting and you want people to focus on you, just put in a blank slide. You don’t need a slide for every story. Strategically, there’s areas where you really want them to focus, you don’t want them to read what’s on the screen, throw in a couple of blank slides in your presentation and tell your story.

Meeyeon (12:57)
That’s great.

It would really throw people off all of a sudden seeing a white slide in the background. White slide in the background. Yes, yeah.

Paul Barnhurst (13:12)
I did have someone go. Was that deliberate? And I’m like, yes.

Because I’ve done it. And if you’re telling a good story, I’ll throw them off for a second, but then they’ll focus on what you’re saying. That or they’re not paying attention and it won’t matter anyway.

Meeyeon (13:22)
And like honestly with presentations.

And honestly, like with presentations, when someone is just reading it, the whole issue is that it could be me reading it. It could be you reading it. It could be ⁓ one of our children reading it. And it is the same information. I like to think that the person that is behind that presentation, you we’ve chosen them for a reason. We’ve assigned them this task for a reason. And part of that is like in supplement to whatever you’re presenting.

I’d like to hear your thoughts as they come naturally and not just on this tiny little slide.

Paul Barnhurst (13:59)
Here, they should be able to add value

beyond what’s on the slide. And if they’re reading it, the slides are probably either too dense or they’re really, really nervous and they may just need practice. So sometimes we have to have a little bit of empathy. Like first time presenting big room. Some people just get so nervous. They start reading off the slides, but then there are those who think the slides are the presentation and they’re super dense. And you’re like, no, please just stop.

Meeyeon (14:06)
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

True, so true.

Paul Barnhurst (14:30)
I had a professor that read all the slides in one class I had. Of course, was like an eight-hour all-day course on Saturday. So painful. In grad school. So painful.

Meeyeon (14:41)
For us, so like when I

used to work in investment banking, all of our like presentations, were not like literally, we weren’t gonna go through all of them in front of a client because they’re far too dense. But the point of it is that we would have like a, when we say it like a deck, it’s not meant to be put onto a screen and us go through every number. What we have is that is the takeaway. Yeah, that is the takeaway. And then when like the whole purpose of us being there.

Paul Barnhurst (14:59)
Sure. Yeah, sometimes the deck will work with presentation. The Amex will.

Meeyeon (15:09)
is to like, we probably don’t have slides, especially if it’s only a meeting with like one or two people, but it is to say like, we’re gonna have this discussion, like I’m here because it’s gonna be more valuable to talk to me in live, in person, I answer all your questions, get everything we need to discuss. And then like, here’s some takeaways, here are further details that you can read that are important and pertinent to this decision and then we can follow up after. So like, I like the mix of like, when there’s detailed notes and whatnot as a takeaway

and then the presentation that is the actual person there being much more, you know, brief and still valuable.

Paul Barnhurst (15:45)
Yeah, I hear you. I totally know what you’re saying.

Meeyeon (15:49)
So if you’ve ever struggled to get your message across or felt like your analysis just wasn’t landing the way that you wanted it to, the way that you felt it should, this course is absolutely for you. Crafting the Narrative is going to help you level up your executive communication skills, structure your message more effectively, and tell stories that move decision makers to action. This course is live at CFI in our library.

Thank you so much for tuning in and joining myself and Paul here for What’s New at CFI, and I’ll catch you in the next episode. Yay. Thank you. I love your hat, by the way.

Paul Barnhurst (16:23)
Thank you for having me. Enjoy chatting with you.