Management Academy!

The Academy! The words conjure up images of youthful enthusiasm for learning by the leaders of tomorrow. When I think of 'The Academy' I think of West Ham's famous Academy of Moore, Hurst and Peters! Every great Football Club now has an Academy so what has this got to do with Finance?

Finance Transformation UK has created Finance Management Academies for Clients to identify, develop and grow the Finance Leaders of tomorrow. We have always invested time and effort in passing on our experience to young Finance people who want to learn and grow! When you look back over 25 years and see young Accountants who you hired and developed now in senior Finance leadership positions it is something to be proud of. We made a difference!

The Finance Management Academy was inspired by a desire to identify and develop Finance leadership talent in an unconventional and ground-breaking manner. The approach we promote challenges both the young Finance stars and crucially their Line Managers! It can yield fantastic results and is well suited to the Millennial Generation who prize autonomy and innovative thinking.

How to create a Finance Management Academy. It is really very simple, and its simplicity is its strength. There are 5 Golden Rules:

1. All Finance staff with no Management responsibility are eligible

2. The Academy exists to make a visible difference to Finance

3. One Meeting per week of 2 hours

4. There is no Agenda, Objective, Rules or Leader set by the CFO

5. The Academy is self-regulating and confidential

It is the ultimate crucible of learning and development. There is no Line Management involvement, so it is a completely flat team structure.

This creates one huge benefit and one challenge. Both of which are benefits to the CFO. The prime benefit is that it teaches responsibility, self-reliance, and innovation to all participants. It is a platform to perform for all those wise enough to see the opportunity it offers. If you have 2 hours to fill in any group, you will see natural Leaders emerge and ideas will flow.

In my experience the Finance Management Academy has provided solutions to challenges on the Finance Transformation program that my Management Team were not focussed on. By empowering the Academy to consider what is important, what change can be made and how to deliver it the true Finance Leaders of tomorrow start to emerge.

The challenge for the CFO is to manage the responses of the middle management Line Managers who normally manage these people from 9 to 5. I have however found this to be equally good at developing their Management capabilities. The heart of the matter is Trust and without Trust there is no World Class Finance Team!

Our Partners Lumilinks have a similar mindset and as they believe in the development of young people, they have a unique Graduate program. Lumilinks specialises in Data Analytics and Predictive Forecasting. They are cutting edge Data Scientists and they want to share this great knowledge with young Graduates.

Lumilinks can provide Businesses effectively with an Outsourced Data Science service. They hire the Graduates, as Data Analysts, on a 2-year program and train them for their Clients. If after 2 years the Client wishes to hire them into their Business, then they can do as easy as Martin Peters transferring from West Ham to Spurs!

Finance Transformation UK always challenging convention!