Guide to CFO Success: Leadership Strategies for Corporate Financial Professionals

PART ONE

Successful Career Strategies for the CFO

THE PREMISE OF THIS BOOK is that CFO success requires two elements:

1. Success in your career (long term)
2. Success with your current employer (limited term)

My premise about CFO success is simple, yet very hard to accomplish on an ongoing basis.

You cannot have career success without employment success, and you cannot have employment success without career success. Becoming a better CFO benefits your employer and your career.

Many of the senior corporate financial professionals I speak with do not give their careers enough thought while they are successful and busy in their current employment. Successful financial professionals as a whole are generally very hard workers, and give 110 percent plus to the companies they work for. Too many of these finance professionals forget about nurturing their careers. They think that the best they can do for their careers is to hunker down and focus on delivering at their current employers, and being the best CFO or senior financial professional they can be. They believe that their reputation will stand up for them and help them move along in their career if (when) they are out of work.

In my experiences speaking with CFOs in transition (i.e., without a current job and looking for their next one), I have found that most did not prepare enough for the time when they would be in transition. The people most surprised by the idea that they had to focus on their careers are the individuals who have ...