Keeping the Wheels Turning: Managing the Routine and the One-offs

The Challenge of Keeping Up - Balancing the Routine and the Unexpected

Finance teams in growing SMEs live in two worlds at once.

There’s the world of routine: the monthly cycle of pay runs, close processes, reconciliations, and reporting that keep the business running. This world is predictable. It repeats month after month and should run smoothly with enough clarity and ownership.

Then there’s the world of the unexpected: a last-minute request from the board, a project to implement new billing software, an audit finding that needs fixing, or a supplier chasing a delayed payment. These moments don’t care where you are in your monthly finance cycle. They arrive when they arrive, and your team has to make space to deal with them.

So how do you lead your team to stay on top of both?

It starts with culture, not process.

Culture First: The Foundation of a World-Class Finance Team

Before introducing processes and frameworks, leaders must build the right culture. Processes help, but culture is what makes ownership and delegation work.

Here are a few working beliefs to cultivate in every finance team:

• Everyone comes to work to do their best. Assume positive intent.

• Decisions are right at the time they are made. No need to second-guess or blame in hindsight.

• Behind every action is a positive intention. Nobody is trying to make life harder for their teammates.

• There are a number of answers to every question. Stay curious and open-minded; listen to each other.

Building a healthy culture is essential, but far from easy. It requires patience, consistency, and a willingness to lead by example. It cannot be faked; people see through that quickly.

It is especially challenging when inheriting a team. Even though holding the leadership role, a leader is initially the minority. Shaping a culture takes time, persistence, and a lot of listening to understand where the team is starting from.

And there are no shortcuts. Culture isn’t built through slogans on the wall or company-wide emails. It grows through daily actions, consistent behaviours, and - perhaps most importantly - how leaders show up when things are tough.

Making the Business-As-Usual Visible

While building a healthy culture takes time, making your finance team’s monthly cycle visible is a straightforward step you can take right now, and the payoff is immediate.

I’ve found that mapping out the recurring finance activities brings a surprising amount of clarity. People stop seeing their work in isolation and start seeing how their tasks fit into the bigger picture. They understand where the handovers are, what happens before and after their piece, and how the whole finance function works together to deliver accurate, timely reporting.

It’s also easier to manage changes or improvements. If you adjust one part of the cycle; say, Accounts Payable closes earlier, it’s immediately clear how that affects the teams that follow.

This doesn’t need to be a complicated tool or a static document that no one reads. For my teams, a simple shared file (we used Excel, pinned in our MS Teams Finance chat) worked well. It acted as a live checklist the whole team could see and update. Every task was listed by workday, with a clear owner, and each team could track their progress without chasing each other for updates.

And it makes transitions easier. When someone takes leave, is promoted, or eventually leaves the business, the team doesn’t scramble to figure out what they did. The responsibilities and timelines are already mapped out, making handovers smoother and giving new hires a head start.

Once this rhythm is in place, it frees up headspace. People aren’t scrambling to remember what’s next or worrying about what might have been missed. Instead, they can focus on doing the work, and improving how it gets done.

Monkey Business: Managing What Doesn’t Fit the Cycle

Even with a well-mapped monthly cycle, not everything fits neatly into routine processes. One-off problems, unexpected questions, and new projects pop up all the time. How those get handled makes the difference between a scalable team and one constantly bogged down by interruptions.

This is where I borrow a concept from William Oncken Jr.’s classic HBR article, Who’s Got the Monkey?. In short, a “monkey” is a next step on a task or problem. When someone brings an issue to you, whoever walks away holding the monkey is responsible for what happens next.

The risk in many teams, especially fast-moving ones, is that managers end up taking the monkey. A team member outlines a problem, and the leader, eager to be helpful (or impatient for progress), says: “Leave it with me, I’ll figure it out.”

Multiply that across a growing business, and soon the leader is overloaded while the team waits for direction.

Shifting the Default

Instead, leaders should help their team hold onto the monkey, and take the next step themselves. This doesn’t mean abandoning your team. It means coaching them through the problem-solving process rather than solving it for them.

Oncken outlines five levels of initiative. Ideally, you want your team operating at levels 3 to 5:

1. Wait until told: Lowest initiative. The person takes no action until directed.

2. Ask what to do: Slightly better, but still passive.

3. Recommend, then act with approval: The team member thinks through options but still seeks sign-off.

4. Act, but advise at once: They take action but let you know immediately.

5. Act, then report routinely: Highest initiative. The person takes responsibility and updates you as part of normal reporting.
   

Levels 1 and 2 may be appropriate for someone brand new to a role, but they shouldn’t become the norm. If they do, you’re stuck in the weeds forever. Your aim is to build a team where problems are owned and solved as close to the action as possible.

Practical Conversations

When assigning a new responsibility or tackling a problem, I’ve found it helpful to:

• Clarify what level of initiative you expect: Is this something they need to check with you first (Level 3), or can they act and inform you later (Levels 4 or 5)?

• Agree on how you’ll stay in the loop: a quick check-in, a progress update, or just part of the regular reporting.

• Coach through the problem-solving process: Help them build the skills and confidence to take ownership, rather than just handing them the task.

And perhaps most importantly, create an environment where it’s safe to try, fail, and learn. People won’t step up if they’re afraid of getting it wrong.

This approach takes more time upfront; coaching through the problem rather than simply giving the answer. But it pays off in the long run. You build a team that is comfortable making decisions and solving problems independently. And as a bonus, their professional growth accelerates. They don’t just learn what to do; they learn how to think.

If ownership isn’t taking hold, it’s often due to one of two factors: a lack of desire or a lack of ability. Each requires a thoughtful leadership response.

Bringing It Together: Culture + Clarity + Ownership

When your finance team has:

• A healthy culture built on trust and positive intent,

• Clear processes that map the recurring cycle,

• And ownership frameworks like the monkey metaphor to handle the unexpected,

..you’ve built a finance function that can scale with your business.

Running a finance team in a growing SME means balancing stability and agility. You don’t have the luxury of pausing one to build the other. But with the right foundations in place, your team can deliver both: keeping the day-to-day on track while stepping up when new challenges arise.

If you’re building your finance team’s next chapter, whether it’s improving your monthly cycle or helping your team take on more ownership, start small, stay consistent, and lead with clarity.

And if you’re curious how this could look in your business, I’m always happy to chat.

Akin Karaca