Guide to CFO Success: Leadership Strategies for Corporate Financial Professionals

CHAPTER TWELVE

Building and Developing Your Finance Team

THE FOUNDATION OF SUPPORT for any Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is the finance team. A CFO cannot and should not go it alone. The finance team sits at the bottom of the relationship map (Chapter 8), not because it is the least important, but because it is the foundation of support for the CFO, making it possible for that key executive to deliver to the people he works for and works with.

My CFO advisors are in complete agreement with me regarding the importance of the finance team to the success of a CFO. Of all the questions that I asked them in preparation for this book, this is the only one where they all agree. One hundred percent of my CFO advisors believe that their finance teams are either important or very important for their success.

Here are some valuable comments made by my CFO advisors on the importance of the finance team to their success as CFO.

If we're only as good as me, we're in trouble—and that's how I always approach my teams. By providing them with the means to achieve more and better results, the entire team improves its performance and both the team (and me) and the company benefit.

Without a strong team, you will not be able to satisfy the duties of a CFO; you will be too preoccupied getting transactional activities completed and will not be able to satisfy the needs of your boss or board.

My finance team is highly important to my success and the success of the organization as a whole. If I recruit, ...