It’s that time of year again. Sales teams chasing one more deal before the deadline. Project leads pushing to get something, anything, across the line before July 1. Someone in the corner hunting for a receipt they swear they kept somewhere. Everyone moving a little faster than usual, for slightly different reasons, all pointed at the same date.
Every business in Australia is doing some version of this right now. Closing deals, closing projects, closing the books. Fair enough. The tax office isn’t going to accept “honestly, it was a weird year” as a line item, and neither will the board waiting on that last quarter’s numbers.
But here’s the thing nobody puts in the spreadsheet. While you’re closing the books on the financial year, there’s another tally happening whether you run it or not. Your people are doing their own stocktake. And it has nothing to do with revenue.
It’s been a properly topsy turvy year. Restructures. Leadership changes. Curveballs nobody saw coming and a few everyone saw coming from a mile off. And here’s the truth that should be on every leader’s whiteboard right now: people don’t remember the numbers. They remember how they were treated when things went sideways.
Nobody at your Christmas party is going to corner you and ask about gross margin. But plenty of them will remember exactly how it felt the week the restructure was announced. Whether someone checked in. Whether they were told the truth or told what was convenient. Whether leadership disappeared into back-to-back calendar invites or actually showed up.
A quick story, because we love one
A CEO we worked with once described their year-end like this: “Financially, it was our best year ever. Culturally, it was the worst.” Turned out the business had hit every number on the board, while three of their best people quietly worked their notice periods in silence because nobody had checked in with them since March. The Excel spreadsheet looked magnificent. The exit interviews did not.
The kicker? When we asked what happened in March, the answer was a major system change that went sideways for weeks. No one above said a word about it. Not “this is hard,” not “thanks for holding it together,” nothing. Numbers were fine. Nobody asked about the humans. The humans noticed.
So here’s the EOFY question that matters
Forget the numbers for a second (we know, heresy, put them back the second you’re done reading this). Ask yourself: what’s the story your people will tell about this year?
Will it be “leadership had our backs when things got messy”? Or will it be “we got through it, but I’m not sure anyone above us even noticed”?
Financial year-end gets a clean close. Reports filed, accounts reconciled, slate wiped on July 1. But the things that actually went sideways this year, the tension, the unresolved tension, the thing everyone’s tiptoeing around in the lunchroom, those don’t tidy themselves up just because the calendar flips. If you let “new financial year” become code for “let’s just not talk about that,” you haven’t closed the chapter. You’ve just stopped reading it out loud while everyone keeps living it.
The actual to-do list
Before you toast to FY27, do one more reconciliation. Not the kind with a calculator. The kind with a few honest conversations.
- Ask your team what the hardest part of this year actually was, and then sit still long enough to hear the real answer.
- Name the things that went sideways out loud, instead of letting silence do the talking for you.
- Find out what story is already circulating about how leadership showed up this year, because one is, whether you’ve heard it or not.
Numbers tell you what happened. People tell you what it meant. Both belong in the EOFY wrap-up, but only one of them is currently getting any airtime.
Close the books. Just don’t close the conversation along with them.