I almost skipped the organizational behavior module in my MBA program. It sounded soft compared to the finance and strategy courses. That would have been a mistake. Turns out, the hardest part of FP&A isn't the numbers. It's getting people to act on them. The module covered motivation theory, group dynamics, power structures, and change management. What surprised me was how directly it all maps to the business partnering side of my job. A few things I'm still thinking about: **People don't resist data. They resist losing control.** When a budget holder pushes back on a variance explanation, it's rarely because they think the numbers are wrong. It's because the numbers imply something about their decision-making that they're not ready to hear. The course called this "threat to self-concept" and once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. Now I try to frame insights as shared discoveries rather than gotchas. **Influence is not the same as authority.** In FP&A, I rarely have the authority to make someone change their forecast or cut their budget. But I can influence by building trust over time, by being the person who always has clean data, by showing up prepared. The module called this "referent power" and "expert power." Fancy names for being reliable and useful. **Change management applies to process improvements too.** Every time I've tried to roll out a new template or reporting cadence, I've hit resistance. The org behavior lens helped me understand why. People need to understand the why, see early wins, and feel like they had input. I used to just send a new template and expect adoption. That never works. **Stakeholder mapping is underrated.** Taking ten minutes to think about who cares, who's affected, and who has veto power before presenting a recommendation has saved me more than one awkward meeting. These ideas connect to how I think about AI adoption at work: tools are only useful if people actually use them. And honestly, a lot of this reminds me of [[life/Lessons from Zambia|Lessons from Zambia]], where I first learned that context matters more than content when you're trying to create change. Still processing all of this. But I think the "soft" skills might be the hard ones. ← [[Notebook|Back to /notebook]]