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This blog was first published in 2019 and updated on October 25, 2022.
Nobody asks finance professionals to produce a tale about financial reporting as charming and funny as Toy Story or any other movie animated by Pixar. They don't have to develop a plot as suspenseful as a John Grisham novel or Stephen King novel.
And no, CFOs are not expected to suddenly sound like the hosts who narrate the best programs on National Public Radio.
If they want their financial reports to be memorable, however? Finance leaders need to harness elements of classical storytelling techniques and weave them in somehow. After all, the material they now have at their disposal simply deserves nothing less.
(Learn all about making beautiful financial reports in this post)
A few years ago, for example, a report from consulting firm Accenture titled The CFO Reimagined: From Driving Value to Building the Digital Enterprise, showed that eight in ten of the executives surveyed agree "data storytelling" is an essential skill for today's finance professional.
(Read more about data storytelling in this post next)
In other words? The combination of both traditional and non-financial data has been critical to allowing CFOs and their teams to conduct the kind of analysis that can help make their organizations more successful.
The result of that analysis, however? It has to be clear, accessible and actionable based on whichever audience happens to be looking at it.
In a research brief from the CGMA, for example, getting across key messages in a way that's thorough but also simple is quickly becoming an art among the most successful CFOs:
You worked hard to master the vernacular of accounting. Unfortunately, it might as well be a foreign language to your audience.
Warren Buffett has said he writes financial reports like he's talking to his sisters: "I have no trouble picturing them: though highly intelligent, they are not experts in accounting or finance. They will understand plain English, but jargon may puzzle them."
To be fair, many finance professionals might not think of themselves as born writers. Instead, they might want to concentrate on acting like a good editor.
(Don't miss this post next with the top three dashboards to improve financial reporting)
View all your labor expenses in one place, leverage our interactive dashboard and get a detailed breakdown of expenses by type and by month with this free best-practice Excel template.
A blog post from the Chartered Professional Accounts of Canada suggests pruning and curating the contents of a financial report to make sure the best or most important data comes first.
"The sheer volume of financial and other data in corporate reports is overwhelming. Think about the information your reader will value the most," the blog post says. "Emphasize the most significant and relevant information first and layer in more detailed information based on relevance and importance. Open with a succinct executive summary and organize subsequent information in such a way that additional details can be easily found."
A design firm called Column5Media offers some other great ideas of how to expand the scope of the story an annual report tells by considering how it can touch upon other organizational highlights. These could include points that tie back to company culture, anecdotes that show how money is allocated to build trust among shareholders, or even to indicate a longer-term vision.
Does this all sound daunting? It might be because finance professionals see the reporting as a self-contained story with a beginning, middle, and end. However, the best financial reporting is more of an ongoing story - a serialized account of how sound decision-making is helping lead everyone towards success.
You'll know you're telling a great story when you get questions or the audience starts generating ideas. Or when you see decisions framed within the context of what you've told. And that, in turn, may inspire the stories you tell next.
Did you learn a lot about financial reporting and storytelling in this post? Here are more resources:
Evan Webster is an experienced sales professional and storyteller with a passion for innovative technology. He currently serves as a Senior Area Sales Manager at Vena and previously worked as a Content Specialist. He continually strives to inspire finance professionals to become strategic business partners and is dedicated to helping them automate and streamline their planning processes so they can make better decisions with reliable, data-driven insights—enabling meaningful growth for organizations across the globe.
