From the course: Strategic Financial Intelligence for Business Leaders

How to make numbers make sense

From the course: Strategic Financial Intelligence for Business Leaders

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How to make numbers make sense

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- So far, we focused on understanding the link between business decisions and financial outcomes. You saw how strategic choices like investing in growth, scaling revenues, extending credit terms all show up in your numbers. And we discussed how making strategic connections across all your three financial statements and the different financial health dimensions is all critical to make better business decisions. But here's the thing. Even the best analysis is meaningless without action. And to drive action, you must communicate in a way that drives action. That's where financial storytelling becomes vital. A CEO doesn't need 100 rows of general ledger data. They need clear red flags, return on invested capital, leverage points. Meanwhile, a team lead may not need return on invested capital at all. Instead, they may need some other metric that connects directly to their KPIs. When you get these nuances wrong, you lose the room. So let's talk about what poor financial communication actually looks like. Ever seen one of these? A CEO walks into the boardroom, flips open a slide deck full of numbers, and reads them line by line. Their message is lost on the audience the moment they start. Or consider the department head that presents their numbers with zero context. Revenue is up, but they don't explain why, what changed, what they should do next. Or worse, let's say there's a problem in the numbers and nobody says it out loud. The audience knows it, though. So trust erodes, and the conversation becomes reactive. These mistakes are all too common and very costly. When communication is weak, teams make decisions without relevant information. Leadership loses trust in the numbers, and opportunities start to slip through the cracks. That's the purpose of this final chapter, to show you how to deliver clear, high-leverage insights without drowning people in detail and to tailor your message to your audience, your executives, your boards, your teams because telling a financial story isn't about reciting numbers. It's about turning your insights into impact and driving decisions at the executive level.

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