A few days
ago, Monsanto’s CFO Pierre C. took a break from his busy day, to meet and be
interviewed by 10-year old, Miles Jensen. Miles had recently played Monsanto’s
CFO at the St. Louis Junior Achievement Biztown Program; and was excited with
meet the company’s real CFO. The boy’s mother, Missy Jensen, is one of
Monsanto’s business partners at HLK agency. As an employee, I was proud to see
how Monsanto leaders truly demonstrate our values - building meaningful and
valuable relationships with business partners, that are beyond transactional.
Watch the
video for their fun interaction, including a Q&A and an entertaining Rapid
Fire.
Taking a cue from
the above, having worked in Finance for 15+ years in various industries, I am often
asked by young finance managers what the top skills are to be an astute finance
leader. So, here you go…
You have
your bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting or business and plan to pursue CPA
certification or an M.B.A. later. You interview with a few companies and have
offers from 3 companies. You consider the offers, benefits and position, and
accept the offer that seems most suitable. You are excited and eager to begin
your career and you meet some of the company’s leaders. You want to see yourself in their shoes at
some point in your career. Now you wonder—what would it take for me to be a strong
and astute leader in finance.
Here are top
7 skills you need to develop to become an influential leader in finance:
1) Nail the finance basics:
To be a leader in finance you need to become an expert in the basics of finance,
i.e. planning, forecasting, and budgeting. You should spend time in various
areas of finance and controllership such as accounting, external reporting, and
business partner finance. As a financial expert, you should be able to help your
business partners understand the financial and accounting impacts of their
decisions.
2) Understand the business: As an influential leader in finance,
you cannot work in the silos of finance and accounting. You need to understand
how the business works, so you can influence strategic business decision-making
through analytics. For this, you should spend time in various departments in the
business—whether assuming a role in the
business itself or taking on various business partner finance roles. You should
understand the company’s customers and take every opportunity to visit various
sites, meet with the customer, spend time with marketing, sales and customer
service departments. Look for the
experts in the business and make it a priority to learn and ask questions. This
would mean that you need to work outside the excel sheets and understand the
impacts of financial processes and decisions.
3) Collaborate closely with experts in
compliance and tax: Compliance
with regulatory requirements is changing dynamically and can have far-reaching impacts. These impacts are
complicated and difficult to translate into ordinary business language. Business
turns to finance to help them understand the impact of regulatory compliance
and taxation on business decisions. As a
finance leader, either you or with help from the right experts need to be able
to understand the impact and communicate what you learn in a business-friendly language.
4) Influence beyond finance: To be an influential finance leader, you need to reach out and work across functions
and departments. Business cannot make any
strategic decisions without understanding its financial impacts, and weighing the risks. In one of his articles, Joel Bernstein,
CFO of SAP’s Global Field Finance, refers to the current role of a CFO as the “internal
secretary of state” and says, “A CFO needs to think
strategically, communicate well, and interact with many different
constituencies and stakeholders—from the board to customers to investors.” To be a finance leader, you need to learn how
to communicate the story that numbers are telling, and use your influencing
skills to lead to impactful business decisions.
5) Leverage technology and automation: In today’s world, digital
transformation is the mantra for
business success. Technology is rapidly changing and affecting all businesses
and functions, including finance. An perceptive finance leader not only needs
to understand the technology used by finance, but also that used by the enterprise.
This combination will guide the strategic decisions needed for digital
transformation. There are a lot of technologies that are being developed, but a
finance leader needs to be astute as he/she prioritizes and guides investment
decisions. He/she also needs to consider the impacts of these changes on the skill
sets needed to be successful in the future finance function.
6) Be agile:
As Stephen Hawking very rightly said, “Intelligence is the ability to
change.” Change is one of the most common words used in business today. This
change can be brought by internal reorganizations or shifts in the marketplace.
To be successful in finance today, you need to be agile and develop it
as one of your strengths, to not only survive change, but also to thrive,
develop and provide guidance in changing environments.
7) Be a People Leader: People are the most
important asset in any function. A
finance function may have the latest systems, the most reliable data sources
and defined processes, but if it does not have the right people managing the
systems, analyzing the data or executing the processes, the finance function
will not perform well. To be a finance leader, you need to be able to attract,
hire, develop, and retain a highly skilled team of finance professionals that
includes a good balance of people. This team should include experts in
accounting, compliance and reporting, as well as business partners with great
planning and analysis skills.
