Welcome to my newsletter “Behind the Numbers”.

A fortnightly newsletter where I share my Finance tips for Operational Leaders and their teams. I may also share an interesting sporting stat along the way.

For those of you who know my story you’ll get why numbers and sport are so much part of who I am.

One tip: Improving forecast quality

I was working with an operations team recently. And we were focussing on the challenges they were having with predicting costs.

I asked the team leader how they would define forecast success.

“Predicting with confidence” they replied.

How do you measure financial confidence?

Accuracy is not the best measure. It is outcomes focussed.

“I am right or I am wrong.”

And may drive the wrong behaviour.

“It’s better to come in under forecast.”

What if we included a measure around quality?

I give you a practical example of how you can do that in this one page guide.

This is my third tip to help budget owners with cost control.

Here is a quick recap:

Cost control is less about the numbers.

And more about how people understand the impact of their actions.

I refer to this as understanding “what’s behind the numbers”.

One sporting stat

According to Forbes, the world’s ten highest-paid athletes collectively made $1.11 billion USD before taxes and agents’ fees over the last 12 months, the highest total ever. Cristiano Ronaldo topped the list at $136 million, with 66% of his income made off the field.

The top 10 list came from following sports: Soccer (3); Basketball (3), Golf (2), Tennis (1) and Boxing (1).

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