Cheat sheet round up: leadership, small business controls, and essential skills

It’s getting hard to open the news without seeing disruptive headlines: geopolitical tensions, natural disasters, economic instability. Steering businesses through this uncertainty towards stability and finding opportunities for growth is becoming a central part of the finance professional’s role. It’s not an easy task, but don’t worry, we got you.

To help you navigate through the challenges of finance and accounting work—and the current climate of uncertainty—we’ve gathered LinkedIn cheat sheets on leading your team through difficult times, establishing finance controls for small businesses, and transformative finance skills.

Our usual disclaimer to the wise: You should always look for additional resources and expertise when doing complicated finance work because it can be very difficult to accurately sum up sophisticated concepts in a single cheat sheet.

With that said, take a look at these useful finance cheat sheets CFO Brew recently found on LinkedIn.

• MIT Sloan Management Review’s “How to support your team when uncertainty is high” is an eight-page slide deck based on an article written by Liz Fosslien that outlines “seven ways that managers can help support their teams during turbulent times without making promises they can’t keep.” Each of the seven methods is headlined with a short explanation of how to accomplish the advice.
  
  For example, the advice to “Help each employee work toward their dream job” is supported by the argument that career growth within their current position might not always be possible, giving them opportunities will benefit their career. Other advice includes creating quick wins, offering clarity and context, and letting them say no. 
  
• Beverly Davis’s “25 corporate finance controls smaller businesses should have in place.” In this cheat sheet detailing the finance and accounting controls that small businesses should be considering, Davis, a finance and accounting consultant, writes that “financial controls are not something that only corporation[s] implement. They are a safety net for all business.” To help smaller businesses avoid financial errors and fraud, she breaks down five categories of controls including cash, A/P, financial, data, and HR.
  
  Davis provides further context within each of the categories. For instance, in the cash category, she recommends small businesses “separate expense and revenue accounts to avoid commingling transactions,” and “limit the number of people who access online and offline bank information,” among other things.
  
• Adam Shilton’s “9 finance skills that will transform your life in 6 months.” Shilton, a finance tech consultant, lays out nine essential skills for finance and accounting professionals that he says will “transform your life.” He lists storytelling, negotiation, data analysis, and modeling, and others, as key skills and offers short, easy-to-remember tips for improving each.
  
  For example, he suggests that finance professionals “memorise the ‘Heroes Journey’ and “watch a few Disney & Pixar films” to develop storytelling skills. Other advice includes practicing active listening to improve negotiation skills, and matching visuals to data types to boost data analysis skills.

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