The Shift No One Wants to Talk About Every finance leader says the same thing:“We’re adding AI to our forecasting.” But few have asked the harder question:“What happens when AI starts making the decisions we used to?” Most conversations about AI in FP&A focus on efficiency — faster close cycles, automated consolidations, variance detection. Those […]
The Paradox at the Heart of Modern Finance Your forecast isn’t wrong.It’s overfit. Across finance, teams have become masters of calibration—tight ranges, decimal-perfect models, immaculate reconciliations.And yet, the moment markets shift, those models freeze. We’ve mistaken accuracy for intelligence.We’ve built systems that can measure everything but learn nothing. At The Schlott Company, we call it […]
We once reviewed a model from a CFO who claimed his forecast was accurate to the penny. It wasn’t.It only looked that way. The workbook was polished — balanced, reconciled, color-coded, every cell accounted for. Yet inside that perfection lived a quiet flaw that erodes credibility across finance teams: false precision. The Illusion of Accuracy […]
A Counterintuitive Start Finance has always been seen as the function of “no.” No to risk. No to expansion. No to ideas that didn’t fit the spreadsheet. But what if finance wasn’t about rejection at all? That’s the paradox Sarah Schlott leans into. For her, finance is not a brake pedal — it’s a navigation […]
A Forecasting Prediction We Can’t Ignore Over the past decade, FP&A has quietly shifted from an annual budget exercise to a continuous discipline. But the next decade will force something more radical: the rise of AI-driven zero-based forecasting (ZBF). Traditional budgeting still carries legacy habits: incrementalism, sandbagging, and the classic “last year plus 5%.” But […]
The first wave of AI hype was all about replacing people. Call centers, copywriters, junior analysts — no job seemed safe. But the next wave of AI isn’t about replacement. It’s about augmentation, especially in one of the most founder-sensitive areas of business: finance. Here’s the prediction: AI-driven FP&A will become the single biggest unlock […]
Angel investing is often framed as a leap of faith — backing founders, betting on vision, riding upside. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the discipline many angels dismiss as operational housekeeping — financial planning & analysis (FP&A) — is one of the highest-leverage growth and protection tools available. It’s a paradox: angels care fiercely about […]
The Paradox at the Core of Finance Thought Leadership Finance is built on control — budgets, forecasts, risk models.Yet today’s most impactful finance thought leaders are those who embrace uncertainty, not deny it. Sarah Schlott, recognized as a modern finance thought leader, puts it directly: “The role of finance isn’t to predict the future with […]
The Quiet Failure Hiding in Scenario Planning Every finance leader knows the ritual.You run a planning cycle, spin up your “base case,” bolt on a mild “upside” and “downside,” and present it to the board. The numbers look polished. The slides are airtight.But everyone in the room knows the truth: it’s theater. Because the real […]
March board meeting.You open the renewal pipeline slide. On paper, the numbers look solid — high logo renewal rates, expansion potential, optimistic AE notes. But deep down, you know the danger: timing. Half your top contracts renew in Q3, yet the plan smears them evenly across the year. The CFO wants predictability. The CEO wants […]