You are about to start a new CFO assignment and whether this is your first or tenth CFO role you are going to need a plan of attack. This will inevitably mean the requirement of a 30, 60 and 100-day plan and whilst this plan is highly likely to evolve, you still need to have focus on key tasks. A review of the team that you inherit from a strengths & structure perspective should be one of these priorities.
Prioritise your team
It is often that the most successful leaders always look back and put their successes down to having the right team in place. Which is why the majority of CEO’s and CFO’s make improvements to their team in the first 6–12 months of starting a new position. Considering how the CFO role has changed significantly in the last 5 years then naturally the role of the team supporting the CFO should also change.
As a fan of Jim Collins book “Good to Great” it is worth noting some of the key points on leadership that he identified, ultimately led organisations to go from good to great. These may well be worth considering during your first few months in post.
Good to Great
“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”
“A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.”
“The good-to-great companies make a habit of putting their best people on their best opportunities, not their biggest problems. The comparison companies have a penchant for doing just the opposite, failing to grasp the fact that managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great.”
“Letting the wrong people to hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the strong people. Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated.”
“The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake.”
Building best in class teams
A new CFO will need to dedicate time to building a best in class finance team but by ensuring the structure of the finance team, and talent within it is strong / balanced, will enable them to delegate, drive their agenda, and ultimately deliver on the strategic goals of the organisation.
In “Good to Great” there is an in-depth analysis on building a winning team, highlighted by the metaphor of needing the right people on the bus before the driver starts its journey. The steps for the implementation of the “First Who, Then What?” concept is highlighted below.
1. Get the right people on the bus
Leaders must be rigorous in the selection process for getting new people on the bus. Invest substantial time in evaluating each candidate. When in doubt, do not bring the person on the bus. Let a seat go unfilled — taking on extra work as needed — until you have found the right person.
2. Get the right people in the right seats
Have 100% of the keys seats on the bus been filled with the right people. This does not mean 100% of all seats have the right people, but 100% of the key seats. Wherever possible, give a person the chance to prove themselves in a different seat, before drawing the conclusion that he or she is a wrong person on the bus.
3. Get the wrong people off the bus
Once you know you need to make a people change be rigorous in the decision, but not ruthless in the implementation. Instead, help people exit with dignity and grace so that, later, most of the people who have left the bus have a positive feeling about your organisation. Autopsy hiring mistakes, applying the lessons systematically to future hiring decisions.
4. Put who before what
When confronted with any problem or opportunity, shift the decision from a “what” question (“What shall we do?”) into a “who” decision (“who would be the right person to take responsibility for this?”). Spend a significant portion of time on people decisions; get the right people on the bus, get the right people in the right seats, get the wrong people of the bus, develop people into bigger seats and make a plan for succession.
Develop a disciplined, systematic process for getting the right people on the bus. With every passing year, ensuring the percentage of people decisions that continue to be good versus bad continues to rise. Once you fill your bus with the right people in the right seats, it becomes less a question of where you are headed and instead how far can you go!!
This leads us nicely to Level 5 leadership.
Level 5 leadership
It is worth noting that every good-to-great company had level 5 leadership during the pivotable transition years but what does Level 5 leadership really mean?
“Level 5” refers to a five-level hierarchy of executive capabilities, with level 5 being at the top. A level 5 leader embodies a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves. Level 5 leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and set up their succession for even greater success in the next generation.
Level 5 leaders look out of the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves. When things go poorly, they look in the mirror and blame themselves, taking full responsibility. The comparison leaders often do the opposite, looking in the mirror to take credit for success, but out the window to assign blame for disappointing results.
Written by Andrew Waters| Co-Founder @ Zanda
As an expert in partnering with early-stage tech start-ups, feel free to reach out to us if you require advice or are keen to hire that first or even second person for your finance function. Dav.masaon@zandasearch.com or Andrew.waters@zandasearch.com
