The document provides lessons and advice from various CFOs on their roles and responsibilities. It discusses how CFOs need analytical skills to understand financial information as well as social skills to present and convince stakeholders. Several CFOs offer specific advice, such as maintaining mentor relationships, understanding the business problems to be solved rather than just the financial aspects, getting involved in change programs, understanding what levers can be pulled to drive business growth, and engaging managers in budgeting. The document emphasizes that the CFO role requires both strong financial skills as well as business strategies and marketing understanding.

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10
LESSONS
FROMLEADING
CFOS

2. CFOS ARE THE FINANCE BRIDGE BETWEEN THE
OPERATIONS, CEO AND BOARD OF THEIR ORGANISATIONS.
THEY NEED THE ANALYTICAL SKILLS TO DISCOVER
INFORMATION AND THE FINANCIAL ACUMEN TO
UNDERSTAND WHAT IT MEANS. ADD TO THAT THE
REQUIREMENT FOR SOCIAL SKILLS TO PRESENT THEIR
KNOWLEDGE AND CONVINCE OTHER STAKEHOLDERS.
READ 10 LESSONS CFOS OFFER ABOUT THEIR VARIED,
CHALLENGING AND STIMULATING ROLES.

4. “Find mentors you can
learn from, preferably
in different industries
where you can engage
and learn different
things. One thing I’ve
done with every position
I’ve held is maintain
those relationships after
I have left – they’re so
important.”
Jacquetta Griggs FCPA,
CFO Australian Industry Standards (AIS)
MENTORS MATTER
READ
MORE

5. READ
MORE
“Knowledge of finance is one
thing, but it also takes knowledge
of the business to find a solution.
What’s the problem that people
are trying to solve? How would
you solve it in their shoes? People
are not interested that there’s not
enough money for their project;
they want to know what you can
bring to the table.”
Greg Stenton CPA, CFO at Department of Health and
Human Services, Victoria, Australia.
ADD VALUE TO HELP
SOLVE PROBLEMS

6. READ
MORE
BE INVOLVED IN CHANGE
Every organisation faces some form
of change agenda to ensure they’re
competitive and sustainable. I
recommend that finance professionals
get involved in change programs – it’s
a tremendous learning opportunity
and you can see the intersection where
planning and execution meet, and
where order and chaos meet.
Johanna Platt CPA,
CFO Vanguard Investments Australia

7. UNDERSTAND THE
LEVERS YOU CAN PULL
“In a growth business it’s more
important you understand the kind
of levers you can pull, how hard
to pull them, what order to pull
them in and where your untapped
potential is. You also need to be
cognisant that if you try to pull all
the levers at once, and drive too
much change at one point, you
could break the business.”
Scott Scoullar FCPA, CFO Summerset
Group Holdings Ltd, New Zealand.
READ
MORE

8. READ
MORE
DON’T GET LOST IN
TRANSLATION
“When you’re adding value,
don’t get too caught up
on the detail; think about
the process. Translate the
numbers, but don’t tell people
what happened, tell them
about the trends, what the
impact of those trends is and
how they can be used to grow
the business or manage risk.”
Marcell Judkins FCPA, CFO Victoria International
Container Terminal (VICT), Victoria, Australia

9. READ
MORE
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF
THE DIGITAL AGE
“With the internet,
everyone has access to
the same information,
so it is up to us as to
how we utilise it. Spend
time each day learning
something new because
CFO roles and the
expectations of our roles
are rapidly changing.”
Ronesh Dayal CPA, CFO Bank South
Pacific, Papua New Guinea.

10. IT’S ABOUT MORE
THAN FINANCE
As CFO, it’s about more than
the finances; the role also
requires smart business
strategies and marketing.
Nowadays, CFOs have to truly
understand their businesses so
they can successfully give an
opinion or lead a strategy..
Annuar Marzuki Abdul Aziz, CFO and Chief
Investment Officer, KLCCP Stapled Group, Malaysia
READ
MORE

11. READ
MORE
TAKE YOUR OPPORTUNITIES
“Be open to take an
opportunity when it’s
presented, even if you’re
not 100 per cent sure you
can do it. You really develop
an ability to learn through
such opportunities. Don’t
pigeonhole yourself, be
flexible around the industry
or role you look at.”
Samantha Drury CPA, CFO Bethanie, aged
care and social housing, Western Australia

12. LEARN FROM MISTAKES
“My experience working in a
declining industry (the automotive
sector) enables me to engage
people with a narrative to motivate
them to change. It’s not so much
presenting a pessimistic scenario,
but sharing real-life situations
where historically stable and
profitable business models can,
over time, become not only unstable
but actually go out of business.”
Dennis Grech FCPA, COO and CFO of Geofabrics Australasia
READ
MORE

13. GET PEOPLE INVOLVED
“Engaging with your managers in
preparing budgets, and working with
them on their financial reports, is crucial.
Everyone in this small organisation,
albeit with different degrees of financial
literacy, is very involved in the budget
process and engaged in getting their
finance reports. It makes my job a whole
lot easier.”
Max Meikle CPA, CFO of Variety WA,
Western Australia
READ
MORE

14. To read more CFO stories, visit
https://www.intheblack.com/topics/meet-the-cfo
Job positions were accurate at the time these articles were published in INTHEBLACK, but some of the CFOs may have changed roles since.

15. INTHEBLACK.COM