CFO Series: Acute Uncertainty Won't Go Away = More Failures?

Overview

"Man plans, God laughs." Perfection is fantasy, we must accept uncertainty. Most of our plans are useless and outdated within weeks after we think they are 'finished'. Welcome to today's world, e.g., the pandemic, great recession, supply chain issues, tax changes, tariffs and countless other changes that come from nowhere. What do we do? Do we stop planning? No! Instead we need to change what we do because the 'old' methods have failed countless times. We must change our way of thinking in a world where change is normal and a better way to plan. Some risks can be quantified, but most cannot. Some hazards are measurable, most are not. We will discuss multiple tactics to minimize (as best as practical) threats and gambles so we can feel better about our decisions. We can do a better at planning and dealing with uncertainties, but it is impossible to be perfect. Join us to learn how can we better deal with an ever-changing environment. There are methods to deal with ambiguity and doubt, we will review these approaches to help you plan.

Prerequisites

None, preferably at least six (6) months of professional financial statement analysis experience and/or at least six (6) months of professional experience in preparing or reviewing accounting processes and reports; experience working with internal clients or external clients and business leaders.

Objectives

After attending this presentation, you will be able to...

• Indicate strategies to manage uncertainty.
• Distinguish between precision and accuracy.
• Develop strategies to deal with unpredictable events.

Highlights

The major topics that will be covered in this course include:

• How and why ambiguity is good, and how certainty can be harmful
• How the past blinds us to the real future
• The difference between risk and uncertainty
• Managing measurable risk and unmeasurable risk
• We need to ask what could happen, not what will happen
• Why have our current planning approaches failed?  What can we do to improve?
• The need to analyze decisions from multiple perspectives; why we must ‘think twice’?
• Probabilities are not necessarily predictive. How statistics can be misused and misunderstood, thus increasing risk
• Not everything can be anticipated, e.g., the success of Google
• We must focus on our goal
• Our plans must be flexible!