Latest / The Diary of a CFO / Inside FP&A: Christian Wattig’s Guide to Smarter Forecasting and Strategic Impact
Transcript
- Wassia Kamon (00:02.324) Welcome back to the diary of a CFO podcast. The podcast where finance leaders share the lessons, challenges, and wins that shape their careers as well as their organizations. I'm your host, Wassia Kamon, and today I'm super delighted to have with me Christian Wattig. He is a founder and lead instructor of InsideFPA.com. Christian spent the last three years helping over a thousand corporate finance professional take their FP &A skills to the next level via his courses and workshops. Before that, he spent over a decade leading finance teams at various startups and multinational corporations such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Squarespace. is also the director of the Wharton School FPNA Certificate Program. He has trained FPNA teams and leading companies such as Lowe's, Merck, and Google. Welcome to the show, Christian. Christian Wattig (00:51.704) Thank you, SC. I'm excited to be here. Wassia Kamon (00:54.308) yes, same here. I know we work together on your Wharton FPNA certificate. So super, super, super, super, super, super happy to have you here and wanting to start really with your journey. So you've been an incredible FPNA career across multiple countries and industries. So how did you get yourself to where you are now and any unexpected pivots along the way? Christian Wattig (01:19.244) Yeah, so I'm originally from Germany, as you can probably hear from my accent, but funny enough, I've actually never, I never worked in Germany. So after my college degree, or actually during that, I did an internship at Procter & Gamble in Switzerland, and then they offered me a job in Switzerland. Beautiful country, by the way, if you haven't been there, you know, the Alps and the lakes everywhere, beautiful. So I spent four years in Switzerland at Procter & Gamble. Wassia Kamon (01:37.612) Nice. Christian Wattig (01:47.658) right away in FP &A roles and I've actually worked in accounting. And I partnered with the sales team. And then I also had a chance to build a financial model to build a new factory in South Africa, which was super exciting. It was about launching tight detergents there. But because of tariffs, it only made sense to do this if we also invest $100 million into building the factory. So a lot hinged on my financial model being right. That was my first really high pressure situation, but I learned a lot during that time. And then I had met my wife in college. She's originally from the US. And we lived for some time in Switzerland, but it became clear that for her to really feel at home, it made a lot more sense to move to the States where we both speak the language. And so that's what we ended up doing. I started my career here in the US at Unilever, another consumer goods company, brands like Ben & Jerry's, Breyers, Dove, Lipton T. Spent seven years there and a number of different finance roles. It was a great time because every two to two and a half years, I would move to a different team. either because it got promoted or because it's just part of how these large companies often work. And so I partnered with marketing teams, with R &D teams, with sales, with HR. Learned a lot during that time as well. But then I also did my MBA part-time and I wanted to do something a bit different because what people at my MBA told me is that decision-making at smaller companies, especially at tech companies, Wassia Kamon (03:13.44) Mm-hmm. Christian Wattig (03:37.452) a lot faster than at large consumer goods companies. And that's definitely intrigued me because while I really liked it at Unilever, was decision making could be very slow because you had people, you had people in the global team and the regional team and the local team that all kind of were involved. And so everybody had to agree to everything really that you recommended and anything bigger. And that can sometimes be slow. And so I moved to tech, I worked at Squarespace, a website builder company, and I was lucky that I was there when we were getting ready to take the company public. So I had the chance to get the CFO ready to send in front of analysts for the first time and tell the financial story of the business. It a fantastic experience. And during the time, I also realized that, you know, even though the industry is completely different, know, different tech and consumer goods, large company, small company, completely different numbers, different business model, different metrics. But the things that finance people deal with every day, the challenges that they have were almost identical, you know, that really surprised me. Things like how do I improve my focus accuracy? How do I build a more robust financial model? How do I become a better finance business partner? You know, those challenges were the same. And so I could transfer a lot from what I had learned from my mentors. And it also made me think, maybe there's an opportunity for me to teach this because, I saw that it's really seems to be applicable across industries. at Unilever, I also had the chance to lead the internal learning and development team kind of as a side project where we would develop Excel courses and such. And I fell in love with teaching, you know, I just really like when I'm across from someone. Wassia Kamon (05:28.672) Nice. Christian Wattig (05:32.94) I teach them something and then I see their eyes light up when they get it, right? When they realize that this really helps them. And so then during the time at Squarespace, I also realized that in comparing to consumer goods, it's a little bit less complex for finance because often what we do is understanding why actuals are different from forecast, right? And doing the variance analysis. Wassia Kamon (05:36.16) Yeah. Wassia Kamon (05:40.918) Mm-hmm. Christian Wattig (06:02.38) In consumer goods, there's a lot that can go wrong. You first have to make the product, lots of things that can go wrong there. You have to store it somewhere. You have to ship it. You have to sell it. A lot of moving pieces. Whereas in tech, when you have a software product, you make it, you press a button, and it gets released. So it's a lot simpler. And I had a bit of extra time that I spent in the evenings building my own course. So I built a course called FPNA Bootcamp. Wassia Kamon (06:22.401) huh. Christian Wattig (06:32.343) where I would go online and I would teach something for two hours and I would have four different workshops about different FP &A topics. It was my first step into teaching myself. And that became bigger and bigger. And it also got noticed by a company in the FP &A tool space. They were called Data Rails. They do planning tools, reporting tools. And they reached out about a marketing collaboration, which I was really, I've never done anything like that. And so we collaborated a bit with marketing that turned ended up turning into a job offer. So then I moved from Squarespace to a data rails, but there I didn't do, you know, reporting and analysis and all that. They wanted me to work directly with their customers. So with finance teams at small and medium sized companies that implement their tool. because they wanted to have FP &A experts who don't just show them how to implement a tool, but also how to improve their processes, how to get the most out of their reporting and analysis and planning processes. And there I saw the challenges that companies that are very small, that very small companies have and their finance teams was able to adjust my training to that. yeah, at some point then came the point where I said, okay, I really enjoy teaching more than working at a company and the course got bigger. And so my wife and I said, okay, now is the right time. I quit my job. went all into entrepreneurship and it was a tough decision. We thought about this long and hard because I also had my son was born around the same times now almost four years ago. And then Yeah, during that time I made the decision to make the leap and I'm really happy I did. Because a few months later, Wall Street Prep, who collaborated with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, reached out to me and they've seen my courses, they looked at my work and they asked me if I wanted to direct and put together this FP &A certificate program. Christian Wattig (08:49.87) for the Wharton School, which was fantastic because it was a way for me to have a bigger impact, to reach more people. I also learned a lot working with the professors at Wharton directly and building the curriculum and putting everything together. And that's where am today. So now I'm a full-time educator. I'm also a corporate trainer. I travel around to teach face-to-face. I train the teams. at Google, at Lowe's, at Mark, at a few other companies. And I'm also building my own education company on the side where I offer online courses and online workshops. So, yeah, that's where I am now. Wassia Kamon (09:33.696) That is such an amazing journey. Kudos to you, kudos to your wife. Especially during those time. And now you've trained any teams, like you said, at large companies. And with that program at Wharton and things like having me as a guest faculty there, side notes, what patterns do you see typically from your student? What do you typically see the common skills gap? Even in larger company or well-funded teams that have the right tools. What are the FPNA challenges that you see people have, regardless of the companies they're working at? Christian Wattig (10:10.668) Yeah, so a common challenge I see is that people are used to how they have been doing things, you know, and they sometimes struggle to see different ways. So I'm talking about specifically about forecasting, analysis, and modeling. Because when I show them different ways to approach this, I often get surprised looks, you know, so for example, when I teach forecasting, what I found one of the best ways to improve forecast accuracy is to do more than one forecasting techniques in parallel. So, and then I teach five, six, seven different forecasting techniques and the advantages and disadvantages. So for example, driver-based forecasting, time series analysis, statistical models, zero-based planning, market-based approaches. And usually I see people just using one technique the entire time and then trying to improve from there, which is difficult. When it comes to analysis, people sometimes struggle with getting the story behind the numbers. So when they do a variance analysis between actuals and forecasts, they have an idea of what happened and maybe even why it happened. But that's where a lot of finance teams stop. And what I help them get to is get to the, what? What does that variance actually tell us about how we can grow more sustainably, how we can improve profitability, what's the concrete opportunity or risk. And to get there, I teach them things like business driver tree analysis, or difference in differences analysis, so different techniques. And then when it comes to modeling, that's especially where I see people often being stuck in their ways and how they've always done things just because they've always done things a certain way. So what I teach is, figure out how you can optimize your model for fast iteration. Because you don't want to be stuck somewhere in a meeting where someone asks you a question that they need a quick answer to. But then if you have to go in your model and find that input and spend 10 minutes, you don't get there. So we look at how do you separate inputs from outputs? And how do you keep your formulas as simple as possible so you can quickly audit them and make sure everything Christian Wattig (12:34.144) is correct because I always like to aim for reducing the surface area for mistakes as much as possible in the model. And so I give people the rule of thumb. I don't know if you heard that before. Have you heard that before, the rule of thumb in modeling? So that's where you take your thumb and you put it on the screen. And if the formula is longer than your thumb, then you're not there yet. And you have to figure out a way how to simplify the formula. And then people look at me and say, Wassia Kamon (12:45.394) No. Uh-uh. Christian Wattig (13:00.878) How is that possible? Sometimes I need to do a complex formula. My business is complex. Then I say, well, there's a way. And the way is to break the formula up into multiple steps and then have multiple rows that calculate different parts. Then at the bottom of the screen, you just add the different parts up. Then each individual formula is shorter. it's much easier to review because if you hit your F2 key in Excel, you can see everything neatly on one screen without having to scroll. And so that's what I teach in financial modeling, for example. But then the other thing where I'm often surprised that there are gaps is when it comes to AI. Because when I ask people, okay, what do you use AI for in your job? They say things like, help me write my emails, maybe even help me prepare for a presentation. But there's so much more you can do, especially in financial modeling as well. So when I teach financial modeling and someone asks me, hey, how do I do this formula? I'm not familiar with this formula. Can you walk me through? I tell them, no, I'm not going to walk you through how the formula works. Why don't you open up a ChetGPT or Co-Pilot or whatever your company is using? and then show me the prompt and then I'll help you with the prompt to get there. Because I'm always looking for ways how I can teach people how to catch the fish rather than just handing them the finished cooked piece of the fish. And then often what I get back with is they show me the prompt and it's three words, three or four words. People sometimes they treat AI like Google, but if you do that, you're not getting the best possible results. Wassia Kamon (14:22.39) Nice. Christian Wattig (14:48.526) So then we go over how do you write a prompt where you provide background and context and the right level of detail so that the machine can give you a good answer. But if you do that, these tools can walk you through exactly how to write the formula, what the different parts do, and even give you a finished formula. You can paste into Excel and see how it works. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But that's okay, because even if it doesn't work, you're learning something, you're going back, you ask follow-up questions, until you're there. Wassia Kamon (15:21.032) Wow. Yes. I love that approach of really using AI because I do it too when I'm stuck on the formula, especially if I haven't used it in a while, I do use AI. But I wanted to take a step back about the different forecasting techniques. You mentioned driver-based and other techniques that you're using for different part of the P &Ls. Can you share your top three favorite or maybe per specific line on the P &L? Christian Wattig (15:46.604) Yeah. Yeah. So for revenue, I'm a big fan of driver based forecasting. So that's where you think about, okay, what are the five to 10 things the company is doing that have an impact on revenue? And with things, I mean, things like, are we increasing our marketing investment in a certain area? Are we hiring more salespeople? Are we planning to roll out a new feature? Are we entering a new market? And then You need to talk to the people who are responsible for that. It's super, super important. It can't just be a finance exercise. And you estimate the impact on your revenue with each of those. And I like that because it's a model that stays relevant throughout the entire year. Because every month you learn something new about at least one of those drivers. You can go in, you can update it. And so it stays up to date. And I also like that it forces you to really understand the business. know, that's so important in finance is that you don't just look at what you get out of your P system, but you look at what are the strategies people are using, how do they translate to tactics, which tactics are working, which are not working. And the result of that, what are the drivers, right? What are we actually doing differently and putting that in the forecast? So that's number one. I'm also a big fan of zero-based planning, especially for identifying cost savings. So that's where you either pretend you started the company from scratch and you think about which expenses do you actually really need. That's doable when you're a very early stage company, but for most mid-size and larger companies, it doesn't work. But what does work is you can make a list of your expenses. Wassia Kamon (17:17.74) Mmm. Christian Wattig (17:40.078) and then go through them, group them by whatever they are trying to achieve, however they're connected, and then review them and say, this one looks high, we should probably do a tender and look at different suppliers. This one has a great return on investment, we should keep it. This one, someone implemented this vendor 10 years ago, we don't really know what they even do. Let's look into that and let's consider whether we can eliminate that. And that forces you to address status quo bias. Status quo bias means we've done things a certain way, things are working okay, so we don't even look at it anymore, because there are other more urgent things in front of us, other fires to fight. Zero-based planning gets you to figure out what's actually working, what's not working. It can be time consuming, but it's definitely doable. I implemented it at Unilever. Wassia Kamon (18:12.284) huh. Wassia Kamon (18:20.224) Yeah. Christian Wattig (18:36.396) for the North America marketing budget, which at the time was 1.2 billion. So a very complex, big, big budget. But we did it and we've learned a lot and we found a lot of efficiencies. That's the second one. And then, you know, there are fancy approaches, but I still think that old fashioned time series analysis still has a place at most companies. So that's essentially where you look at what were my actuals. How did they behave in the past and what does that tell me about the future? It's especially helpful if you do that combined with something like driver-based forecasting because that's a way to bring realism into the plan because you tie it back to your history. And you can do that. It depends on your complexity and your company. It can be an exercise, just an analyst, and an analyst does. Or if you have more data, you can also get a machine learning. algorithm to look at the data for you and make a prediction based on that. So those are my top three. Driver-based forecasting, server-based planning, and then time series analysis. Wassia Kamon (19:46.24) Thanks for sharing. That's very helpful. And I still remember your rule of thumb. And I think that my spreadsheets are illegal for that rule. So what do you typically advise when somebody comes in and they learn that they're illegal for your rule of thumb or that they're being used to doing things a certain way? Because you have worked for them, like you said, at different industries. Christian Wattig (19:55.128) Not illegal, just not optional, yeah. Wassia Kamon (20:12.352) We are going through the same things, right? So what do you typically advise in those cases? What helps usually people to make the shift to more proactive approach? Christian Wattig (20:22.892) Yeah, so the first thing I do is encourage people to think about what's about the tasks that are urgent and important and the tasks that are important but not urgent. Because often with things like process improvement, with building models differently, they are the things that are important. Obviously, you know, people get that, but they are less urgent than a lot of other things, you know, much more urgent to get that report out that your manager asked for. to update that dashboard over there. And what often happens is that the important but not urgent things get pushed back, get pushed back, get pushed back, and then people never do them. So first, I would encourage them, how much time can you really devote to this? And then put it in your calendar. Put a two-hour block on Friday afternoon where you have the most time to say, I'm going to look at that finished model. I'm going to put my thumb on the screen. And I'm going to see if I can. Wassia Kamon (21:04.842) Mm-hmm. Christian Wattig (21:21.92) optimize it. And that can make a big difference. And often it's just about making the first step and getting started and moving in that direction. And then people are surprised to see that, yeah, now that I've done this for these two sheets, actually, they are less challenging to update, they are less scary when I quickly have to make changes, you know, and then they're much more encouraged to keep doing and working on process improvement. It's just that first step that can be difficult. Wassia Kamon (21:51.678) Yes, yes, thanks for sharing that. What would you say, you know, because at the end of the day, FP &A, the ideal is to be a strong business partner instead of just an analyst. What do you think, what's your definition of that strategic business partner when it comes to FP &A and what does it really take to get there? Christian Wattig (22:12.578) Yeah, so ideally, the goal should be that leaders across the company come to you before they're making a big decision for your advice and for your financial analysis. That's the ideal, right? That's what we want because then we have real impact. We are seen as a partner whose opinion and whose analysis leaders across the company value because they, there's also some vulnerability associated with going to finance and saying, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. Here's all the data is everything I learned. Do your analysis and let me know what you think. Because finance might come to the conclusion that we shouldn't do it, right? That maybe we should cancel this their favorite project, which nobody wants. So it's about building the trust first and showing people that we can do more than cut budgets. We can actually help them get there. And so what I think is really important in terms of the foundations is business acumen and empathy. So empathy, not necessarily in the sense that you have to sympathize with people's feelings, but that you have to be able to put yourself into their shoes and understand their goals and where they're coming from and how they're looking at the business. And business acumen in the sense that you understand how the company makes money at a granular level and what the company is doing to grow, strategies are the tactics, what the metrics are to measure those across the company. And then, yeah, it's about setting the right, creating the right environment for this to happen. you know, Google is a company that wondered about that as well. So what makes an effective finance business partner? What does what how can you create the best possible environment for themes to thrive or cross-functional themes to thrive. And they try to understand, okay, what separates those best performing teams from the others. It's called Project Aristotle, if anyone wants to look up more about it, because Google was kind enough to share that publicly. And, you know, going into that, they thought, okay, Christian Wattig (24:26.542) Probably we need to put people work better if they work with like-minded people. So maybe we should put inter-words together in one team, extra words together in another team. And probably if people are friends outside of work, they work better together. So we should do a lot of team building. That's what they thought going into it. But then Google being Google, having a lot of cash on the hand, they threw money at the problem. They hired psychologists and economists to look at the data, to interview their team. Wassia Kamon (24:44.086) Mm-hmm. Christian Wattig (24:56.326) and data scientists as well. And after they looked at all this, they found out that it's actually not about the characteristics of the people themselves, but it's about the norms. So about how people work together. And what they found is that three norms specifically stand out. Two of them were pretty straightforward, but one was a surprise. So the three norms were accountability, So can you point to what's working, what's not working, dependability? Can I rely on people doing what they say they would be doing? And then those two, not a big surprise, but a big surprise was psychological safety that ended up being the number one norm. psychological safety, for those of you who are less familiar means that you have Wassia Kamon (25:33.28) Mm-hmm. Christian Wattig (25:50.892) an environment where people feel safe to speak up when they think something isn't working, to share mistakes that happened, and to admit those mistakes without fear of repercussions or fear of retaliation. And they realized that the teams that had that psychological safety performed the best by far. So if you're at a company where you're leading the finance team, I would definitely make this a priority because this has to come from the top, right? Leaders have to create that trust, ability for people to speak up, to share when they think something isn't working well. And then teams end up working better together and you create the best possible environment for business partnering to thrive. Wassia Kamon (26:22.593) Yes. Wassia Kamon (26:42.292) Yes, and I remember when you were speaking at Engage 2025, I think your session was getting a seat at the table and you mentioned you faced it in your career. Would you mind sharing it to our audience? Christian Wattig (26:52.535) Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I'm going to keep the people in the company anonymous because it was an experience that was not very pleasant. I was newly promoted, leading a large team. And a few months, two months into the role, a member of my team made a mistake. And it was an accounting-related mistake where they Wassia Kamon (27:02.294) Thank you. Christian Wattig (27:23.32) booked a journal entry incorrectly and it was not a simple mistake. It was actually a very complicated calculation behind it and the analysts thought they did everything correctly. And I was not, I didn't catch it. I wasn't up to speed enough and I also thought the entry was okay. It turned out a month later that the entry was not okay and We had to, of course, we immediately flagged it. Unfortunately, the correction that we had to book made the numbers less favorable. they made it them, the correction made the numbers worse than they were before. And nobody likes that kind of surprise, right? And unfortunately, the correction was so big that it wouldn't go unnoticed. So I talked to my manager about it. And I said, look, this happened. And what she said was a bit shocking for me because she said mistakes like this are unacceptable and that I should tell my team that and that we need to look into letting that analyst go. And I just thought that that was the completely wrong response to that. Definitely didn't create psychological safety. I didn't pass it on to my team what she said. I really do think that instead what she should have said was, okay, this happened is obviously not good. Let's talk about the process, right? Let's talk about how we can put additional checks in place, how we can reduce the likelihood of an issue like this happening again, right? Let's understand. What additional training can we do? What can we change in the process? That's, think, how you need to approach something like that and what would actually protect psychological safety because it tells people that, hey, you make a mistake, you flag it, you correct it, you learn from it, you put safe checks into place, and that's fine, right? That's how we should approach it. So that was a learning that really opened my eyes as well about the importance of psychological safety and how you approach Wassia Kamon (29:33.93) Yes. Christian Wattig (29:47.854) this and how you do not approach issues like that. We didn't end up having to let that person go, fortunately. yeah, in the end, was okay. But yeah, was definitely a moment where I learned a lot. Wassia Kamon (30:02.59) yeah. And thanks for sharing that too, because it happens. I have been in those situations too. And as a leader, you own up and you advocate for your team and you move forward. So what do you think or what do you wish more senior finance leaders did to really set them teams up for success? Cause I feel like when we think about success as FPNA, we're thinking FPNA tools, right? But it takes more than that. Christian Wattig (30:29.622) Right, right. That's definitely part of it. first, what I often see is that people get promoted for their technical skills, right? The first promotion from senior analysts to managers, often because you're great at modeling, you're great at your technical analysis, forecasting skills. But then when you get promoted and maybe you're leading your first team, What people expect from you changes and now your interpersonal skills are much more important than those technical skills. And I don't see a lot of companies investing enough into their middle management there. know, some large companies, very large companies like Unilever, like Google, like Merck, like Lowe's, where I train, they do a better job. They see the importance of that skill training, especially at that transition from individual contributor to manager. Wassia Kamon (31:23.201) Yes. Christian Wattig (31:25.154) But a lot of small and medium-sized companies don't. So I think that's the first thing that I'm advocating for is investing more into the training of their individuals. But then as you said, tools play a big role as well. I would even go as far as saying they play a role in job satisfaction, you know, and how motivated people are. Because I've worked at companies where we only had Excel and then relatively old ERP system. Then I worked at companies where we had cutting edge FPNA tools that automate reporting. And the difference is just night and day. know, if one of my biggest fears in FPNA was, what if we, what if I made a mistake and I copy pasted the wrong numbers, or I messed up a formula, then I present the numbers and people realize immediately that the numbers are wrong, right? That's kind of the horror scenario. Wassia Kamon (32:21.791) Yes. Christian Wattig (32:23.854) But then when I worked at a company where we had this FPNA tool in place, it just went away because I knew that I don't type in any numbers, I don't type in any formulas, it's connected to the cloud, it gets the numbers directly from the ERP system, from the CRM system, from the HR system. And so that it just becomes almost impossible to mess this up, which is great because then you can spend more time on what does this even mean rather than quality control. And it also makes it so that the job becomes less reactive. Because the other thing that can sometimes be challenging is a board meeting is the next day and a bunch of leaders send you requests about, can you send me this report? Can you send me this slide? Can you put this cut of the data together? I want to know the top 10 customers in South America by product. And you're just pulling everything. Wassia Kamon (32:53.632) Yes. Christian Wattig (33:20.61) But if you have an FPNA tool in place, then they can go get it themselves. They can open up the browser dashboard, they can select the data they want, and they don't have to run to finance just to give them a specific cut of the data. And so, I hope that more companies realize that. That's also why I'm happy to talk about that, because there's a big selection of FPNA tools. available now for every budget starting at $200 a month all the way up to of course $100,000 a month a year and more. But they're there for every budget for every industry. You just have to go look and do a few demos and really get beyond also the fear that this is a six month project. That's another thing that changed in the last five years or so. You can implement these tools without any IT support and you can implement them in one or two months. So yeah, I'm not endorsing any specific tools, but I do endorse the category as a tools over just using Excel for sure. Wassia Kamon (34:33.772) Oh yeah. mean, I'm right behind you on that. Anything but just Excel. Like anything that can come into Excel. Fine. But just Excel. Yes, I completely agree. Now in terms of, you know, technology, like you mentioned earlier, big buzz about AI. What do you think will actually change in FP &A in terms of skills? What skills do you think will become more valuable or less valuable as we look into the next part? Christian Wattig (34:42.743) Yes. Christian Wattig (35:01.74) Yeah, yeah. So what I mentioned earlier that your first promotion from independent contributor to manager depends on technical skills definitely still holds true, but I do think that it will less so over the next five to 10 years. Because even in entry level roles with AI, with automation, technical skills matter a bit less because now even an entry level analyst isn't spending 30 hours a week just on number crunching and report creation. Maybe now it's 10 hours a week and it gets less in the future. And it opens up the time to do business partnering, to do deeper analysis. And leaders see that as well and leaders expect that from people. And so building those interpersonal skills becomes even more urgent. You really need to do that earlier in your career because yes, AI will make your job more fun, more interesting because it removes a lot of the annoying parts. But it also puts the, also really necessitates that you learn those interpersonal skills because I think that that really is the direction that finance is going, the leaders are going. Some companies are already there. Some companies are still lagging behind, but I think in five to 10 years, most companies will be there. And I do hope also that schools are shifting their curriculum a bit in that direction. I've done it already with the Wharton certificate program, with my trainings. Every module has technical skills and interpersonal skills. And we're putting even more emphasis on interpersonal skills now because I really do think that's the trend where it's going. Wassia Kamon (36:48.468) Wow, thank you so much. This was so helpful. One last question for you. What is your favorite thing to do outside of work? when you have time. Christian Wattig (36:58.926) Right now, my favorite thing to do outside of work is chasing my three-year-old over the playground. It's so fascinating. He's at an age where he's developing so quickly and he's growing so much. I always notice things that, last week he wasn't able to do that. Now he can do the monkey bars. Now he can climb this thing. Now he can do that. That's just super fascinating. That's my favorite thing to do outside of work now. Wassia Kamon (37:19.38) huh. Wassia Kamon (37:27.024) that's awesome. Definitely cherish those moments where they still fit in your head. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you so much for being on the show, Kristen. Christian Wattig (37:31.767) Yeah. Christian Wattig (37:36.782) Thank you, Wassia. I really appreciate it.