Archives for August 2011

August 29, 2011 By Samuel Dergel 9 Comments

CFOs: 5 Reasons why you need an Executive Coach.

You want to be a Successful CFO. You’ve worked hard to get where you are, and you want to continue being the best CFO you can be.

If you are like most CFOs, you have never had a Coach before. Most likely, you’ve felt that you’ve never had a reason to. Your career success to date has been because of you have been good at applying and improving your knowledge, strengths and abilities.

Except…

The world is changing.

The business world is changing in front of your eyes faster than it has in your entire career. Markets and the economy are changing. Technology is changing. Customers and Suppliers are changing. The demands of your owners, board members, investors and regulators are changing.

Are you staying the same?

Now is the time to step up your game.

The good news is – most of your fellow CFOs are not stepping up their game. They are getting comfortable. They have finally achieved their career goal of becoming CFO and they feel it is time to coast.

They are coasting their way out of the CFO chair.

You, on the other hand, want to make sure that you become the most Successful CFO possible.

If you are ready to step up your game, get yourself an Executive Coach.

Why do you need a CFO Coach? Let’s take a look at the reasons why.

Plan – Do you go into the office every day and just fight fires? Or do you have a plan with long-term, medium-term and short-term objectives that will help you accomplish more with less fire-fighting. Failing to plan is planning to fail. (See our Blog – From CFO Vision to Action Plan)
It’s Lonely being a CFO – You need someone that will listen to you, provide you with advice, guide you, challenge you, and keep you at the top of your game. (See our Blog – The Lonely CFO)
Relationships – you are no longer an accountant. It’s no longer just about being technical. You need to manage your relationships. (See our Blog – Roadmap to Successful CFO Relationships)
Feedback – Now that you are at the top of the Finance Group in your company, do you really expect the people that work for you to provide you with objective feedback? You want someone candid and practical to give you the feedback you need.
Stress – remember the days when you left work at the office? If you do remember those days, I’m sure it is a long time ago. Managing the stress of being CFO is difficult, yet critical to your company as well as to yourself and your family. Expressing yourself and talking about what stresses you can go a long way to actively managing your stress, ensuring you get a better job done in less time.

Wouldn’t you love to…

have a plan?
be less lonely?
manage your relationships better?
get constructive feedback? and
be under less stress?

Email me to arrange your first Coaching session – FREE.

You have nothing to lose.

Let’s talk!

August 28, 2011 By Samuel Dergel 1 Comment

How to Find the Best Recruiter for Your Needs

As a follow up to my guest blog post (CFOs and Recruiters: Beefs and Beef) written for Cindy Kraft, CFO Coach, here is the next part – How to Find the Best Recruiter for Your Needs

Here is a glimpse of the post:

In my last guest blog for Cindy (CFOs and Recruiters: Beefs and Beef) I reviewed the 5 categories of complaints that CFOs had with recruiters.

So, how do you find the best recruiter for your needs?

[Visit Cindy’s Blog to read more]

August 25, 2011 By Samuel Dergel 5 Comments

Does a CFO need a PA?

A recent article in CFO World UK (The bottom line on time management) got me thinking about CFOs and Personal Assistants (PAs).

Personal Assistants (formerly known as secretaries) used to be standard for senior level executives in companies of all sizes. With the advent and proliferation of computers and personal devices to assist with communications and scheduling, many executives have taken control of their own agenda and their own communication methods.

So the questions that need to be asked in the current world we live in are:

Does a CFO need a PA? [polldaddy poll=5451855]
If a CFO needs a PA, why? [Share your comments below]

August 22, 2011 By Samuel Dergel 6 Comments

You’ve been promoted to CFO. Now what?

You’ve been in a senior financial role with the company for a while, and have been aiming for the CFO chair. One day, you get the call from the CEO (or the Chairman) and they offer you the CFO job.

Congratulations! You’ve been promoted to CFO. You have a new office, a new title, new business cards, and a better compensation package.

Except…

… You’re not exactly sure what to do as CFO.

Based on speaking with new CFOs in the same situation as you, you are not alone. When I speak with them and ask them if their job has changed since their promotion, they usually answer “Not really…”

As CFO, you should not be doing the same job you were doing before.

So now that you’ve been promoted to CFO, what can you do to ensure you become the best CFO you can be for your company?

1) Prepare a Plan

Your success as CFO depends on you having a plan for success. This requires that you be aware of the expectations the CEO and Board has from you, and putting in a plan to ensure you can deliver, and have a Strong Finance Team you support you in your goal to become a Successful CFO.

I recommend that this plan be completed within the first 100 days of your new tenure as CFO.

2) Get a Coach

If you ask your CEO, there is a good chance he or she has a Coach. It gets lonely at the top (see Lonely CFO). Being an Effective CFO requires someone that you can talk to that can guide you to make the right decisions and keep to your Plan.

Your success as CFO depends on your ability to deliver. Take responsibility for your new role. Make sure you have a Plan for your success, and have a Coach that ensure you keep to your Plan.

August 19, 2011 By Samuel Dergel 2 Comments

CFOs and Recruiters: Beefs and Beef

This blog post was written for Cindy Kraft, CFO Coach, following our joint survey.

Thank you to everyone that provided input. It was most helpful.

Click here to read the guest blog.

Samuel

August 16, 2011 By Samuel Dergel 9 Comments

Dear CEO & Board: You can’t afford to hire the wrong CFO.

Hiring the wrong CFO can be detrimental to your business.

Costs of hiring the wrong CFO include:

Risk to your company reputation.
A weak CFO will not help your company with what it needs.
Not being able to get the most out of your CFO as soon as possible.
Opportunity cost – the wrong CFO misses the opportunities to add value to the company.

Yet, many companies fear doing a proper search because

Cost of a CFO Search.
Effort and time required to do a CFO Search properly.
Cost.

As CEO or Board Member, you may think that you know people (that know people) that know CFOs. And you ask yourself “How hard can it be?”

Let’s face it. The cost of hiring the wrong CFO is way more than the fees you will pay for a proper CFO Search.

Well. Have you ever hired the wrong CFO? Wonder why they were wrong for you? The CFO was not right for your company because you didn’t do a proper CFO Search.

Now, there are options to how to do a proper CFO Search. You can work with me, work with any good executive search firm, or even manage the process internally.

However, you must have the following elements in your CFO Search.

Assessment: You need to assess what your company really needs from the CFO, both today, and in the future. You need to assess whether your leadership is really ready for a good CFO that will add value and be a leader in the business. You need to assess what skills, knowledge and abilities your new CFO will have to have to be successful in your environment. If your last CFO failed, ask yourself if you did a proper assessment first before hiring him or her.

Search: “Who you know” will not cut it. You need to do a proper search for CFO caliber people that can meet the needs you’ve assessed. If you don’t do a proper search, you will not end up with the best possible CFO for your business.

Onboarding: For a new CFO to be successful, it is important to invest in ensuring that the CFO has what they need to be successful. Onboarding allows your new CFO to acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become most effective for your organization.

If you’re ready for your next CFO, do yourself and your company a favor. Hire the right CFO this time.

August 12, 2011 By Samuel Dergel 15 Comments

The Lonely CFO.

Many finance professionals aspire to become CFO. Once they get there, they realize it’s lonely at the (almost) top.

As CFO, you have relationships with those you work for (CEO, Board, Investors), the executives you work with internally, your important outside relationships (bankers, auditors, lawyers) and of course your finance team. (See Road Map to Successful CFO Relationships). With all these people you work with, can you really be lonely?

The answer is yes.

CFOs have told me they feel alone because very few people in their organization understand all the pressures they face, the complexity and the volume of issues they deal with, and the difficulty of the conflicts they manage. The only people that can relate to the challenges CFOs face are other CFOs.

How can a CFO find other CFOs to commiserate with, learn from, and talk to?

There certainly are many groups that bring CFOs together. FEI (both in the USA and Canada) is an example of great organization that brings CFOs together. There are regional groups (like The CFO Roundtable and The CFO Alliance) that bring CFOs together for topics of interest and networking. Social Media CFO groups like CFO or TGL are very visible and active.

However…

There are few places where a CFO can go online to discuss with their peers matters of interest to them. To meet the needs of Lonely CFOs, I am announcing the launch of CFO Lounge, a closed LinkedIn Group specifically created for CFOs to have discussions about the real issues facing them – whether they are technical, interpersonal or strategic in nature.

My role in this group will be to moderate, engage and sometimes lubricate discussion with the CFO members. This group will only be open to CFOs.

If you’re a CFO that would like to be a little less lonely, join your peers at the CFO Lounge on LinkedIn.

Photo Credit Jeffrey Munro

August 10, 2011 By Samuel Dergel 9 Comments

When should a CFO hire?

According to a recent article in CFO.com (Always Growing Means Always Recruiting), a growing finance team should always be in hiring mode.

We recently touched on this subject in our recent blog post A Strong CFO needs a Strong Finance Team.

Should a CFO always be hiring? Well, let’s see…

For a CFO to be successful, they need a strong team to support them.

For a CFO to have a strong team, they need to properly manage their talent.

For a CFOs to properly manage their talent, they need to have a Talent Plan.

A Talent Plan requires understanding the needs of the team today and in the future, the current structure and capabilities of the team, identifying growth opportunities for key performers, and managing the probabilities that staff will leave the company.

In the context of a Talent Plan, ‘always hiring’ is a good idea. However, done outside a well prepared Talent Plan, time and effort will not be spent efficiently or effectively.