No “how do you eat an elephant analogies here. Seriously, there are definitely hard tasks and tough issues to solve. But everything can be broken down into its lower level components. It’s why I’ve historically leveraged the “single-pager” as my key documentation. Every complex item or issue tends to have one, two or three key decisions or conclusions – how you get there may be the tough part, but the ultimate answer tends to rely on a couple key conclusions. Uphill can help you reach that point and make the complex – easy.
Early to mid-career, I reveled in writing lengthy white papers, documenting every aspect of a transaction. As I stretched out my career, I realized the value in simplicity of documentation. People understand the issue when you can boil it down to its DNA we often make the tough transactions more complex, when we really just need to make it simpler. Take a complex VIE scenario ultimately the question always comes down to the PB who absorbs what risk? Which entity really controls this venture? What are the one-two-three items that drive the variability? While the ultimate path of documentation may be a bit long, the questions are simple and your conclusion is as well: we do because X,Y,Z factors. Don’t mistake the path to get there with the couple key items supporting our conclusion.
“I thought the way you laid this out helped the nonaccountants understand something highly complex in simple, nontechnical terms. I know it wasn’t that easy, and you had to do a ton of work to get there, but the rest of the committee doesn’t need to know that.”
Public Company Audit Committee Chair