Becoming a Strategic Partner: Key Leadership Competencies

1. Becoming a Strategic Partner:  Key Leadership Competencies

2. Objectives: • Understand what it takes to meet the emerging expectations of the FMA role • Gain an understanding of these essential new skill sets • Learn how to establish a framework of personal action plans to foster the skills • Outline: • Overview of FI Competencies • Building Competencies • Becoming a strategic partner

3. Overview of Competencies There are functionaland behavioural competenciesthat FIs must employ in tandem; leadership competencies require a foundation of functional competencies: FI Functional Competencies: Accounting Operations Planning and Resource Mgmt. Financial Policy Financial Systems Behavioural Competencies: General Communications Risk Management Negotiation/Persuasion Leadership Values and Ethics Strategic Thinking: Analysis Strategic Thinking: Ideas Engagement Management Excellence: Action Management Excellence: People Management Excellence: Finance

4. Building Competencies • Education: provides the foundation to build competencies for any functional domain and for the finance function a professional accounting designation is ideal but not an absolute requirement • Experience: depth and breadth of experience is essential to building strong competencies • Continuous Training: is essential to keeping your competencies strong and current (aligned to priorities)

5. Building Competencies: Experience Your experience should have an appropriate balance of depth and breadth: Depth: working in one functional finance area in one organization will build expertise in that functional area for that organization but it could inhibit behavioural competency building Breadth: working in many functional areas across many organizations can expose you to wide variety of issues, best practices and people that can strengthen your behavioural competencies but it could also limit your functional expertise

6. Building Competencies: Continuous training • Building Relevant Competencies through training and professional development plans: • Know yourself • Know your current environment • Yourself: • Know your strengths and weaknesses; self assess against competencies • Use Performance Management Plans to seek two-way feedback (i.e. manager and employee feedback) • Outline your career goals (i.e. talent management questionnaire) • Source documents such as work descriptions or succession plans, if available, to identify competencies related to goal positions • Environment: • What is the Government of Canada’s long term vision and current priorities? • How does your department contribute to this long term vision and current priorities? • How do you contribute to these priorities through your current roles and responsibilities? • Identify competencies you will need to contribute or the skills you need to strengthen the required competencies

7. Becoming a strategic partner • Why is there a need to become a strategic partner? • How can we transform towards becoming strategic partners? • What are the competencies that strengthen us as strategic partners? • What are the challenges to our own transformation?

8. Becoming a strategic partner: Why? • The Government of Canada’s Vision: Blueprint 2020 • An open and networked environment that engages citizens and partners for the public good • A whole-of-government approach that enhances service delivery and value for money • A modern workplace that makes smart use of new technologies to improve networking, access to data and customer service • A capable, confident and high-performing workforce that embraces new ways of working and mobilizing the diversity of talent to serve the country’s evolving needs • The result of this long term vision is transformation and with this comes: • Increased partnerships (i.e. SSC) • Increased organizational complexity • Communication Challenges; Lack of common language • Expanded mandates with fewer resources (Operating Budget freeze; SR and DRAP reviews) • Decreased employee and stakeholder trust • Talent or competency challenges • The above list increases the pressure on the Finance Function to make a role change from Transaction/Compliance manager to Strategic Business Partner. In other words the Finance Function must transform in order to support government-wide transformation.

9. Becoming a strategic partner: How? Must haves to move to the next Stage in the transformation Develop Talent to meet Business needs

10. Becoming a strategic partner: What Competencies? • Skills or knowledge to bolster Functional Competencies as a result of the vision and its transformational impacts: • Change Management • Performance Management • Risk Management • Investment Management • Project Management • Costing Expertise (i.e. TBS Centre of Expertise for Costing) • CFO attestation • Examples of skill that are important in this environment to strengthen your Behavioural Leadership competencies: • Values and Ethics: Fosters a climate of transparency, trust, and respect within the unit and in partnerships • Strategic Thinking (analysis): Identifies interdependencies across unit projects • Strategic Thinking (ideas): Leverages experimentation, constructive questioning or innovation • Engagement: Creates and collaborates with strategic alliances • Action Management Excellence: Maintains composure in demanding or stressful situations • Action Management Excellence: Identifies and integrates key information to report on results or performance • People Management Excellence: Coaches, challenges, and provides opportunities for growth • People Management Excellence : Develops and supports career plans and learning opportunities • People Management Excellence: Develops HR strategy for unit succession planning • Financial Management Excellence: Implements strategies to achieve operational efficiencies and value for money

11. Becoming a strategic partner: Challenges • Multiple and unaligned Finance agendas • No single version of the truth • Too much time on gathering & reconciliation • Inadequate management into available for decision making • Communication to stakeholders constrained • Working as individual not as a team • Lack of relevant skills • Ineffective communications • Low morale and motivation • Poor Talent Management • Inadequate succession plans • Autonomous and unaligned functions • Unclear R&R & accountabilities leading to duplication • Shadow finance functions • Limited mobility of Finance Leaders • Minimal or lack of Finance governance structures • Multiple consolidation layers • Multiple systems and black books • Manual Interfaces leading to unreliable data • High reliance on end user computing • Inconsistent reference data • Poor integration between program systems and financial systems • Unreliable costing • Lack of or lack of understanding of processes or systems to access internal or external funds. • Inconsistent policies/procedures and controls • Significant reconciliation issues/errors • Late entries, adjustments and/or period close-outs • Close process • Budgeting, Planning and Forecasting are ineffective and/or inefficient