CIMA professional development record form
Please feel free to extend the rows or provide additional pages if more space is required.
First
name
Last
name
James
Miln
DEFINE
Job title
Key responsibilities
Senior Director, Global Operations
Finance Reporting and Analytics
Lead a team of 15 managers and analysts for Global Revenue Reporting and Analytics for the entire Yahoo! business. Drive
infrastructure and capability projects to develop one source of truth. Rationalise and innovate a core set of reporting across all finance
teams. Bring analysis and insight to the business, focused on the most important revenue drivers of the business around consumers,
customers and publishers.
ASSESS
Development need/learning objective
What skills or knowledge gaps have I
identified?
Change process
Date
identified
Styles and theories of leadership
01/08/12
08/08/12
DESIGN
ACT
REFLECT
Action e.g. development activity undertaken
What activities have I undertaken to meet my
needs and/or objectives?
Co-lead ‘fast forward’ sessions for finance
containing HR exercises to help team deal with
overall change, including finance team and
organisational design brainstorms. Help drive
clarity on roles and processes with the newly
formed global team.
Status:
In progress or
date completed
Completed
Complete the Harvard ManageMentor module on
leading and motivating.
Completed
Reflect on the impact to your performance
Did I achieve my objectives/what did I learn/
how did this impact on my work/team/career?
Really useful tools to assess how big a change
the team had felt and where on the process of
dealing with change individuals and the team
were. Brainstorming new approaches to
processes with the new teams helps start the
journey of change, but it is clear that VP and
senior director leads at this point need to show
vision and direction for the team; and this is
not always done consistently.
This was a really useful refresher for me, at the
exact time I have taken on a newly created
team, so critical for me to establish a vision and
motivate my team. Thus I was able to reflect on
the steps I have been taking and refine those as
Developments in the profession
19/11/12
Read the Corporate Executive Board article – ‘A
new era of finance transformation’.
Completed
Finance challenger
20/11/12
Completed
Technology management
20/11/12
Attend the finance challenger boot camp.
This was about how finance teams need to go
beyond the partnership role and create
constructive tension. This tension requires
teaching, learning, influencing and ultimately
advising in a way that helps the business reframe
the problem and arrive at better solutions. It was a
good day of role play and tools based on best
practices from real companies.
Attend CEB session: drafting the finance
technology blueprint - delivering technology to
support return, by focusing on data
standardisation, end-user education and alignment
with business goals.
Completed
I go into the final quarter of the year. I think
the description of leadership styles is a great
framework for me to gather feedback on
myself and my managers. The concept of
holding environment is new to me, but highly
relevant to helping my team deal with the
stress of change – both through high
expectations we set ourselves, as well as
managing new customers and partners across
the company.
This was a great overview of the important
argument that finance needs to move beyond
back office to strategic, from slow to fast, from
rules to judgment; while real barriers in
competency, skill and behaviour remain. I am
very familiar with these arguments and believe
I have demonstrated them strongly in my
career, but there was good material here to use
with my own team and organisation to
continue to present that message strongly.
A great overview of drivers and skills to be not
just a finance partner but challenger. More
than for myself, this arms me with material to
help my team to: enhance their critical
thinking skills; learn to operate strategically;
communicate and influence effectively; and
apply finance skills to business problems.
A good framework of governance and
technology to help think through guiding best
technology return. Practical approach to get
superior returns through 1) data
standardisation; 2) end user education; 3)
alignment with tangible strategic business
goals.
Benchmarking and performance indicators
01/08/12
Read the Project Management Journal’s Dec 2010
article ‘Measuring portfolio strategic performance
using key performance indicators’.
Completed
Performance management tools including
balanced scorecard and all its variations
01/08/12
Read FM’s Jul/Aug 2010 article ‘Technical matters:
strategic management’.
Completed
Alternative approaches to measuring
performance including both quantitative
and non-quantitative approaches and
covering all stakeholders.
01/08/12
Read Accountancy Review’s May 2010 article
‘Which performance measures do investors
around the world value the most and why?’
Completed
Finance clearly focuses on the quantifiable
measures of a project and portfolio, but in
times of change, internal or external, it can be
difficult to model. Often business leads lead
about how ‘strategic’ a project is, but this can
be loose. The structure here of key benefits and
objectives linked to strategy is a framework to
apply to strategic criteria used in our business
across portfolios of projects.
Very interesting application of costing to the
BSC model, to get at a more strategic
assessment of resource allocation. The detail of
activities tracked (350) and the need to get to
time allocation requires strong management,
and I can use this example to add to my own
experience in this area for future applications.
This is a thorough piece of analysis on the
linkage of financial measures to stock returns,
and I don’t think it surprising that no single
performance measure dominates and that it is
more important that the underlying attribute
ties to operational cash flows. I thought it a bit
surprising that sales were a comparative poor
indicator. And more surprising that the
smoother, more predictable and more
persistent the measure, the less useful – but
they do not seem to offer any reason why that
should be the case. It just confirms to me that
we should always strive to have financial
accounting measures as transparent as
possible, and that they allow stakeholders to
ask the right questions.
Alternative approaches to measuring
performance including both quantitative
and non-quantitative approaches and
covering all stakeholders.
01/08/12
Read ‘Return on equity: a popular, but flawed
measure of corporate financial performance’.
Completed
Alternative approaches to measuring
performance including both quantitative
and non-quantitative approaches and
covering all stakeholders.
01/08/12
Read ‘Does measuring intangibles for management
purposes improve performance?’
Completed
I was not surprised that there is not a strong
link over the short term, but was surprised at
how weak the linkage seems to be, even over
longer periods of time. It goes to show that we
must value a company from the inside and the
outside using a combination of financial and
non-financial measures. The financial ratio
route is a very valuable tool and framework,
but the real world is a long way from the
theory of the classroom, where limited
variables change in business scenarios. It did
make me laugh though when it confirmed
history is not a good indicator of performance,
but future expectations are. Seemed an obvious
point to me.
I absolutely believe that long term
performance of a company is significantly
impacted by many tangible factors – strategy,
people, systems, processes. This can be at its
most extreme in silicon valley. I also think that
this paper shows what is probably to be
expected, that it’s very hard to measure the
connection to performance. The company
specific studies seem to be the most convincing
area of linking the two. Despite the lack of hard
evidence, I think it demonstrates clearly
enough the importance of strategic alignment
in a company, from executives through the
ranks.
Finance skills sets
20/11/12
Performance management tools including
balanced scorecard and all its variations
01/08/12
CEB session: between governance and guidance:
building the right finance skill set for your
company.
Developing skilled financial analysts who not only
govern the business but guide it, through
recruitment, coaching and performance
management.
Read Harvard Business Review’s Jan/Feb 2010
article ‘Managing alliances with the balanced
scorecard’.
Completed
Very good framing of the importance of
business partnering and decision support to
use with my teams, and very useful real case
approaches to recruitment, coaching and
performance management to develop a team
with the right balance of competencies.
Completed
I thought this a very powerful example of the
balanced scorecard approach, because it is
about two independent parties working
together on a common set of goals and
measures. The really powerful action is where
this allows the parties to ‘talk candidly about
difficulties, resolve disputes and share
information’.
EVALUATE
I verify that this record is a true reflection of my development needs identified through the CPD cycle and undertaken over the past 12 months.
I confirm that I will take forward any relevant outstanding development needs to the next CPD cycle.