The first time someone asked me whether I had any New Year’s resolutions, I was mightily baffled.Collaboration helps with both understanding and transparency in all businessesI had seen mentions in movies, but I didn’t really believe they were really a thing. Those… resolutions. Growing up in Greece, we didn’t really have them. The general attitude being ‘if there is a thing you want to do, or need to do, why wait till January… just do it’.I tend to like that attitude. I may have lived in the land of New Year’s resolutions for coming up to 30 years now (gasp, yes, I know), but I still prefer the approach of: if you need to do a thing, do the thing.I see all those ‘new year, new me’ posts from humans and businesses and I can’t help but expect many of the grand commitments to be forgotten by March, a bit like the influx of new faces in my gym every January. We, the regulars, endure and then the gym is back to normal capacity by the second week of February.Because my cynical view of New Year’s resolutions is well documented. I get asked a lot by businesses what their New Year’s resolutions should be: the outward facing commitments.It’s a good question. I wish more teams reflected on their outward, public commitments. Or rather I wish more teams asked, ‘What should we do differently?’ or ‘What could we do better?’ irrespective of the date and the outward visibility.And my answer would be: go make friends with finance. Whatever the date. (I heard your groans just when you read that, by the way.)I know you don’t want to do this.I know 59% of us would rather avoid talking to colleagues in finance at all costs. (See what I did there? Avoid talking to finance at all costs?)I know that because this statistic featured in Pleo’s The Finance and Business Synergy Report that I wrote about last month.I know you don’t want to do it.But I also know what happens when you don’t do it. I know what happens when we make business decisions in silos. Steve happens.Remember Steve? The fictional person from my previous article who spends indiscriminately and cuts the same way, locking businesses in an endless cycle of boom and bust?So. If you are looking for a new thing to do this year, alongside your new gym membership, here’s my suggestion: go make friends with finance.This is your gym membership equivalent. And just like the gym, you will have to stay the course to see any benefit. Because, although I am sure your colleagues in finance are lovely people, you are not going to befriend them as an end in itself any more than going to the gym is an end in itself. No, no.You will do it for the long-term benefits it brings.Because people in finance… they know things. Things you also need to know.The interesting thing is, although they know things, they may also not know that they know things because they lack context, or they may not know what the things they know actually mean. Because they lack context. Context that you have
Gio. Gen 16th, 2025
