Collegiality that demystifies project finance

By Ian McGregor, Finance Manager, InFrame Project

Finance is a pivotal part of any project, and the InFrame project is no different. When the word Finance is mentioned most people tend to deflect it as someone else’s problem or perhaps they want to be more involved but simply have never been given an opportunity to develop their skills in this area. Financial management is thought to be difficult work, that has high stakes and consequences if it’s done wrong, hence colleagues can be fearful of it and feel overwhelmed by it.

This is why demystifying good practice, and surfacing the specialist language and unwritten rules, is important, and my view is that it should be part of any finance leader’s role is to help build financial confidence in teammates and demonstrate collegiality within the finance function.

I am a qualified management accountant (CIMA/CGMA) and have worked in finance roles all my life mainly within the private sector. I oversee the finances of the InFrame project and when I started on the InFrame team I was given a vanilla platform to work from to create a controlled environment and produce a reporting system that would benefit the multipart (many sub-projects), multi-institutional, and dynamic nature of the project. To fit the needs of the team and project I chose to use a hands-on ‘Business Partner’ approach embedded within the core team as a collaborator who actively participates in daily transactional duties, management and decision-making as well as providing high-level reporting and strategic advice. I encourage requests for support and make myself available for any type of interaction with any colleague working on the project.

One of my loves is helping people to develop their professional skills, hence over the last year I have taken the opportunity of using my position, experiences and knowledge-base to introduce the InFrame Project Coordinators to a position of partial oversight of the finances of sub-projects alongside their existing duties providing a range of project management and tracking support.

This has of course benefited the colleagues who now feel more confident with these tasks. It will also hopefully provide a recognised feature on their CVs that will assist them in future career moves. It’s also benefitted the 26 sub-projects by giving them extra points of contact to assist with and answer finance related questions. Also, with me being the only finance specialist on the project, this assistance has allowed me to delegate work, and so to concentrate on other tasks. Having a shared understanding of and vocabulary for finance processes means that we have increased the capacity of the team, in an area that would otherwise have represented the risk of being a single point of failure. More, the Project Coordinators are embedded in the three InFrame partner institutions (St Andrews, Glasgow, and Edinburgh) and therefore have staff access to systems and processes that I don’t. Using this model we are creating all round wins.

Aligning with InFrame’s ethos

Within the InFrame project research leadership is positioned as a collective effort that spans disciplines, roles, and career stages. It recognises that to solve challenges, different knowledges and ways of thinking must work together, and that leadership is not confined to job titles, role type or seniority. InFrame is supporting deeper understanding of how we might shift towards new, collaborative models of leadership, in the pursuit of ‘team research’ (sometimes called Team Science).

In role-modelling this ethos, our project uses a Matrix Style of leadership, with different specialist managers, leading across inter-university cross-functional teams. It doesn’t maintain traditional vertical control of decision making and as such everyone is expected to cross over functional and work collaboratively. This requires us to create ways be open with each other, and to share our specialist knowledge and perspectives, in order to share decision-making effectively.

As well as the central team, there are 26 further teams attached to the 26 sub-projects and InFrame not only manages these projects, but it is also the bridge across and between them, supporting project leaders from a wide range of different specialisms and disciplines. The funded projects champion ideas that challenge traditional hierarchies and surface new leaders and so InFrame is responsible for supporting those new leaders in all aspects of research project success including project finances. This includes seasoned grant holders, as well as colleagues with lower levels of experience and confidence. For the Project Coordinators this means playing subtly different roles with the different teams, according to the needs of each. Layer on to this the added challenge of having three different institutions with different financial cultures and routines to comply with. Hence the need for developing the Project Coordinators confidence with finances and empowering them to work within their own specific contexts, enablers and constraints.

Building confidence and collegiality

Despite the obvious benefits of this way of working, I was very cautious about how the Project Coordinators would react to me asking for extra duties to be done in addition to an already busy work schedule. To help them ‘buy in’ I helped them to understand the importance of transparency in the numbers and understand how to help prevent poor reporting or any bad decisions being made. I also communicated my collaborative approach and that I wanted them to have an active role and the ability to share their own knowledge and experiences. I also wanted to listen to their concerns to gauge their different levels of confidence and experience. My approach was therefore:

• I started with the use of small incremental steps to prevent panic moments happening and let the Project Coordinators be involved in developing the processes together from the start.
• I presented instructive sessions on building a budget, and creating a forecast.
• I held regular meetings to advise, and to demonstrate to them what was being done at whole project level and how they fit into a newly created project reporting structure.
• I involved them at all stages of development of the approach which I feel made them keen and attentive to move forward to the next steps in the journey which was to be involved in the oversight of their own sub-projects.
• We next discussed how to gain the same level of detail on budget and spend, despite our different financial platforms.
• Separately, we have had one-to-one catch ups and walked through their ongoing sub-projects discussing what we can see in the transactions and the type of questions which need to be asked in order to complete the forecast for the project.
• Throughout this journey I have always made myself available for any questions, or assistance whenever they required it.

The democratic model we created, allowed my Project Coordinator colleagues to see how important the role of finance is, to know how to do it well, to not feel isolated in performing any of the tasks undertaken and also feel included in part of any larger project discussions which are going on. Through the collegial relationships we built, I saw their willingness to ask for help, and to get involved to help to bridge any problems which we encountered. It has been great to see both the confidence level and financial literacy of my colleagues grow, demonstrating the impact of collegial leadership, in supporting colleagues to learn and grow, from the finance role, just like any other.