Service-company finance executives who are committed to advancing their roles—and having a broader impact on the business—need to develop their skills surrounding the company’s number-one asset: people. Being perceived as antisocial, whether deserved or not, is hardly a path to advancement. “You have to get your paddle out and start rowing the boat with other employees,” says Nick Araco, president & CEO of The CFO Alliance. “It’s not enough to be counting the strokes.”
There are several ways finance leaders can position themselves to enhance their interaction with their fellow employees:
- Participate in meetings outside of finance. One high-ranking finance executive, frustrated that her colleagues perceived the finance function as brimming with no-sayers, requested that members of her team be invited to meetings outside of finance, so as to supply their own viewpoint. As finance folks joined technology and sales teams on an ongoing basis, they not only expanded their own scope but also broadened the others’ understanding of what finance actually does. In doing so, they helped groomed themselves for other positions. In one case, a finance executive lost one of her top performers to the sales team—and even prodded the person to take the job by promising to keep a finance position open, just in case.
- Figure out how to create value for other functional areas. At some companies, others perceive finance as a function whose members are only interested in tracking numbers—whether they are useful or not. Rather than robotically emailing digit-packed reports to colleagues, try playing the internal marketer and ask other functional leaders what kind of report would be most helpful to them. Engaging in a face-to-face dialogue will help restore the human element to your working relationship.
- Help demystify finance. Having joined a service company as a CFO, one Dallas executive kept hearing the same refrain: “I don’t really know what finance does.” Those who did suggest they understood the role of finance typically ventured a textbook definition that was more suited to financial accounting. To reduce the mystery that surrounded his role, the CFO sent out a companywide e-mail inviting all employees to join him for a brownbag lunch on the first Thursday of every month. After six months, he regularly drew a large crowd. He used the meetings to speak candidly about the factors that impact shareholder value and the bottom line, and to find ways he could help support his colleagues. The dialogue not only lifted his function’s profile—other C-Suite executives soon started following his by lead.
By Josh Hyatt
Source: www.cfo.com
