Financial Expressiveness: Be A Storytelling Financier.

I remember that in the last examination of CIMA (British certified public accountant), 10% of the scores were tested in communication. It is evident that financial expression is the basic quality that a qualified financial executive must possess.

Financial professionals often give people cautious and conservative and misrepresentation of their professional image, which can not all be said to be biased, mainly because most financial personnel themselves are "bored".

Due to the limited pattern of professional training, the focus of financial professionals often focuses on numbers, while ignoring the communication objects behind digital reports.

One of the first misunderstandings that we often fall into is the problem of WHO. It is not clear to whom it is to be expressed. Who is your communication object? The central theme and complexity of a report often need to vary from person to person. To the general manager, we should be brief and concise, avoid the unfamiliar but not explain the professional terms, and give more technical demonstration to the immediate supervisor.

The common fault of many financial professionals is to get into the technical details at first and let people see it. A truly understanding person must follow the thinking process from outside: making necessary adjustments according to the readers' understanding of the content of the report, or introducing background, or starting from the key points.

The second misunderstanding is that there are many data, few refining points and lack of essential points, that is, the problem of WHAT, and the core content is not refined enough.

Many people's reports, whether they are demo or data sheets, have been written in a large number of books. Most of them are listed in the data. After listening to the report, they walked out of the conference room and did not take anything away.

Data (DATA) can only be said to be the basic material. Only after refining can it become valuable information (INFORMATION), and if the information is too complicated, it needs to produce a message (MESSAGE).

For example, a comparative table of actual cost and budget, after calculating the expenditures of different departments, you'd better sort out a message that can be summed up in one sentence, for example, "in addition to the overrun of the one-off exhibition in the marketing department in March, the expenses of other departments are within the budget", which is the finishing touch of dragon painting.

When I was working in Germany, I worked with world-famous McKinsey consulting company. A super formula I learned from them was expressive power = chart + explanation + message, which corresponded to the above data.

And the three levels of information.

The third mistake is to have a heavy head and a confused structure, that is, the problem of HOW.

Many people are accustomed to taking the most time-consuming, the most grind or the most satisfying content of the content as the key point to explain. They think they show the essence, but they do not know that the whole structure is chaotic.

I have a senior partner friend who works in four big accounting firms. He said that the four most important thing about them is the way of doing things.

To express a topic clearly, the structure is the most important.

It should be from the coarse to the fine, from the big to the small.

When drafting a report, the first step is not to write, but to design the structure of time. For example, in which part, there are several small points in each part. Where should the data chart be used as auxiliary material?

The "lightness" here is concise and light.

The first page PPT presentation is often the conclusion or core point, then click on the relevant points and then highlight the details of the data support.

Sometimes the text may be just one page, all supporting materials are linked as files in Appendix.

In fact, the demonstration of a large company will leave the speaker with a topic of ten minutes to explain. If you don't focus on the most important position, you won't be able to catch the interest of the participants in the first three minutes.

Then how to avoid the above three mistakes and do the above "outside and inside", "from big to small" and "from coarse to thin"? I think writing knowledge documents is a good exercise.

This is the best technique of efficiency improvement I have learned from German companies and working life in Germany.

Professionalism is relatively strong. It is not easy to make clear the complicated financial process.

If we can learn to do some knowledge summarization, especially through the drawing process or writing operation guide, we can sum up the key points of knowledge and write out the key points of operation.

For example, the complex pactions of affiliated companies can clearly mark the information flow, logistics and value flow separately in different colors, and make clear the change of trading currencies, the distinction between domestic and overseas and the price changes. This can not only train a careful and complete logical thinking, but also make people do things more standardized and rigorous. The most important thing is to cultivate the sense of pposition thinking in "standing at the angle of readers' thinking. Once this mode of thinking is formed, it can even enhance the level of professional competitiveness.

From immersing oneself in numbers to communicating objects, it is not just expressive power, but also a career pformation process of a financial person: from a material processor to a narrator of a story.

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