It’s HUMPDAY!

WEDNESDAY - JULY 1, 2026

HUMPDAY

Weekly Insight & Inspiration for Purposeful Leaders

THIS WEEK’S FOCUS

Making the Case

How to prepare for, navigate, and win budgeting conversations with your CFO

I hate math. I hate everything about it. I hated it in high school, and I continued to hate it into college. It wasn’t until I began to apply math to drug calculations that I wanted anything to do with it. In my early adulthood I didn’t balance my checking account because I hated math so much. So, as you can imagine my first formal meeting with my CFO as a department director evoked the worst kind of anxiety one could ever experience. I wanted to vomit, die and disappear all in one fail swoop!

It was a terrible meeting. I needed more staff to fill the schedule, and we had failing equipment that desperately needed replacing. My justification - patient safety. Not getting more staff and better equipment put our patients in danger. Everyone knows that! Unfortunately, only nurses speak “patient safety” and CFOs are typically NOT nurses.

Lucky for me, in my budgeting meeting sat a more experienced director who had already learned a valuable budgeting lesson that she shared with me. You have to speak in a language CFOs understand if you hope to make a successful case for the financial needs of your department. This meant I needed to learn the wonderful language of math.

A budget is not a constraint on your vision - it is the vehicle that proves it.

Budget season has a way of arriving as a sudden burst of meetings on the calendar where numbers get decided. But the leaders who consistently secure what their teams need treat budgeting as a year-long process they own and manage, instead of being a series of meetings set by the finance department that they just show up to. By the time they sit down with their CFO, the real work is already done.

That work starts with knowing your own numbers cold: current spend, where it is going and why. It means tracking the trends that matter all year long - turnover costs, agency or contract labor spend, overtime patterns, supply utilization - so that when budget season arrives you are not scrambling to reconstruct a story. You already know it.

It also means understanding what your CFO is being asked to deliver this cycle. Hospital finance leaders are typically balancing margin targets, payer mix pressures, and capital constraints that have nothing to do with your department specifically. Making budget requests that ignores that context, however well-intentioned, read as tone-deaf. Making request that acknowledges it however, reads as a partner.

Preparation is not paperwork. It is the difference between walking into the room asking for something and walking in already having made the case.

Speak the Language Finance Actually Hears

Department needs and financial priorities are usually the same thing wearing different clothes. Your CFO is not unmoved by patient care or staff wellbeing however saying, “my team is stretched thin” versus “unfilled positions are driving $42,000 a month in agency premium pay” are not the same sentence when received by your CFO, even though they describe the exact same problem.

Translating the first sentence into the second is your work to do. Before you ask to add staff, a new role or additional equipment and supplies you must connect the request to something finance already tracks: retention, the cost of turnover, length of stay, patient experience tied to reimbursement, safety events, throughput or risk and compliance. You do not need to inflate the case. Healthcare budgets are already full of legitimate, well-documented connections between staffing and outcomes. You simply need to make the connection explicit instead of assuming it is obvious.

This is also where scenarios help more than a single ask. Rather than presenting one number as a take-it-or-leave-it request, bring options. What becomes possible at fully funded, partially funded and what gets omitted or delayed if the request is denied entirely. CFOs are trained to evaluate trade-offs. giving them real trade-offs to evaluate instead of an ultimatum makes it easier for them to say yes.

Advocate Without Apologizing

Many leaders soften a legitimate request until it barely survives the conversation. They lead with caveats, undersell the impact, or fold at the first pushback because asking for resources feels like asking for a personal favor. It isn’t. You are advocating on behalf of your team, your patients, and the outcomes you and your department are accountable for - and that deserves a clear, confident case, not an apologetic one.

Confidence here does not mean inflexibility. When a CFO pushes back or suggests what you feel is unreasonable, the strongest response is curiosity, not retreat. “Help me understand the constraint you’re working with - is it a timing issue, a magnitude issue or a priority issue?” That question alone often reveals whether there is room to negotiate scope, phase the request over two budget cycles, or reframe it entirely. Pushback is frequently a request for more information, not a final no.

The conversation does not end when the budget is approved or denied. Following up on how approved resources actually performed against the case you made builds your credibility and makes next year’s conversation easier. Following up after a denial, with a plan for revisiting the request signals that you heard the constraint and are still committed to solving the underlying problem.

The leaders CFOs trust the most are not the ones who ask for the least. They are the ones whose numbers hold up, whose requests connect to outcomes, and who treat the relationship as ongoing rather than transactional.

3 PRACTICES FOR BUDGET SEASON

Build your one-pager early. Document current spend, the trend line, and the outcome data behind each request weeks before the meeting, not the night before.
Bring options, not ultimatums. Present what full, partial, and minimal funding each make possible, and when not funded, make impossible.
Follow up either way. Report back on funded results and revisit denied requests with a plan. Both build your credibility that will shape next year’s conversation.

A Final Thought

Your CFO is not the obstacle between your team and what it needs. In most cases, your CFO is the person you need on your side to get it. Building that partnership means being well-prepared, able to articulate your department’s needs in a language they understand and following up regularly to ensure you stay aligned and ready for next year.

Your budget reflects your priorities. Make sure it reflects the right ones.

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This week pull your department’s spend trend for the past two quarters and identify one number you cannot yet explain. Find the answer before someone asks you for it.

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I’d love to hear from you. Please reach out and share if you found this insight helpful, if you’d like to talk about it more, or if there’s a topic you’d like to see in a future Humpday. Stacie@LumisLeadership.com

~ Stacie

The “Humpday” was an e-mail originally created by a great leader and mentor - Marc Strode. He used the Humpday to bring insight and inspiration to his team every week. With his permission and at his request to Keep the Spirit - the Humpday lives on. Marc, thank you for being a leader worth following. Despite your love for camels, you truly are the GOAT!