Pedals in Sync: Finance, Vision, and the Culture of Conversation

“We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy” – Albus Dumbledore

Just as in life, we face the same choice in an organization between what is right and what is easy. It’s easy to make standalone decisions—but are they always right?

Imagine a bicycle with pedals moving in opposite direction. Now imagine an organization with different departments working in a haywire direction. Same end result - fall! 

Connecting the Graffiti: Culture Through Collaboration

If you’ve ever sat in a meeting wondering, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell us?’—you’ve felt the impact of disconnected dots. The lack of communication between departments can often cause avoidable issues.

“One piece of graffiti does not mean much. Forty pieces of graffiti might mean something. It’s all about connecting the dots.”

I like to think of each piece of that graffiti as a standalone department. For a few years now, my biggest passion has been to connect the dots of the entire organization with what I like to call an “Organizational Vision Map”! Imagine a living dashboard where departments log major decisions, expected impacts, and dependencies. Finance overlays scenarios, legal flags compliance risks, and operations sees downstream effects before they snowball. I believe that this "dashboard" that I envision and hope to create some day will shift the corporate culture significantly.

Finance as the Chain: Strategic, Not Just Tactical

This brings me to the role finance plays—not just in cost management, but in shaping thoughtful, strategic progress. Finance is my passion and I have been lucky to have had an opportunity to work in the field for the last several years. I have experienced the first-hand evolution of the role Finance plays in any organization. From number crunching to preparing reports & dashboards to providing insights and now to storytelling and it does not end there. Finance is rapidly becoming the chain that keeps an organization from pedaling out of sync.

East to West: Looking Beyond Departmental Borders

If you want to travel from east coast to west coast, you look at all the states that you might cross on the way and not just the one you live in or the one you wish to go to. Similarly, if you want to achieve company goals, you don’t just look at what you are doing, you need to look at what steps you need to take, which departments will it impact and work with them to make sure that the steps you wish to take will not disrupt or dismantle an existing process in another department.  

A change in one department might have an impact on other departments that might not be noticeable or obvious at the moment. A reactive response is often the only solution such circumstances—it could be either favorable or unfavorable; it's a reaction nonetheless. Now processes will have to be altered in other departments or change will have to be reversed in the department where it originated from. However, in my view, this approach can be re-imagined; which would save a significant amount of resources for the company—human and monetary.

The chain does its job—it keeps us linked, steady. But steadiness isn’t the same as direction. East doesn’t replace the chain; it offers another way to read it.

A Real-World Example: Finance as the Forensic Lens

Let’s say that the operations department wants to change their product offering for a popular service. They implement the new offering and incorporate system changes that are required to provide the service. Little did they know that by doing what they thought was a minor change, impacted the company both financially and legally. Finance, in its efforts to tell a story using the data, is now trying to figure out reason for the sudden and drastic loss of margins. In this exploratory journey, they discover that this was caused by the "so-called" minor change in a service offering.

 Often, the assumption under such scenarios is that finance will notice the changes as soon as it is implemented. A perfectly logical assumption given that the information systems are highly connected. However, that is not usually the case. The impact on financials is only noticed when such unexpected discrepancies arise.

If in the haste to get things “moving”, a department fails to understand the importance of connecting the dots which creates a domino effect and if finance fails to ask the right questions to connect the dots, the company will lose millions of dollars.

“You can’t connect the dots going forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future” – Steve Jobs

The Human Engine: Working in the Zone of Genius

In any finely tuned system, synchronized pedals alone aren’t enough to create motion—there must be torque behind the movement. That torque comes from people operating in their zone of genius. When individuals contribute in ways that align with their strengths and passion, they don’t just perform tasks—they elevate the quality of work. 

Finance may coordinate budgets and measure outcomes, but it’s the depth of human engagement that drives real progress. Teams that feel empowered, valued, and trusted tend to collaborate more effectively, adapt more quickly, and make decisions with greater foresight—all of which enhance financial responsiveness.

A Culture of Connection: It Starts With a Question

“Everything you do in a company is interconnected; if it is not interconnected, then it is broken”

It took me a while to understand that even though the information system is very well connected, until finance learns to ask the "right" questions, things will fall through the cracks and will only keep widening that gap until there is a wedge in the system and by then it's too late.

For instance, instead of asking, “How much did we spend?” we ask, “Which assumption broke when spending spiked?” Instead of asking, “Where did the margins go?” we ask, “What story is the data resisting?”

Choosing what’s right may not be easy. But it starts with intention. It starts with a map. It starts with finance asking better questions—and everyone else daring to listen.

So let's all come together and shift organizational culture from working in silos to connecting the dots. Start with a conversation. Start with a question. And above all, start with the intention to connect the dots.