10. Building an Engaged Finance Team with Dr. Jeff Smith, PhD

Join Hannah Munro, Managing Director of ITAS, a financial transformation consultancy, as she interviews key experts to give you real-world advice and guidance on how to transform your processes, people, and data. Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance.

This session will not only talk about the why, but also identify how you can automate your financial operations and get meaningful data to drive your business forwards. Check out the link in the show notes

software services education and community to help people thrive at work he's also the creator of 15.5's best Self Academy and the Best Self Management Certification, which is a forever free online training, which you can access via academy.155.com. So welcome, Jeff. Awesome to have you on the show.

And then whenever I ended up at Bandwidth, which is where I worked before 15.5, I helped us take another look at our orientation and onboarding experience where I was applying a lot of the user experience and product principles that I knew to creating a more consistent experience for people as they joined Bandwidth, which was such a great project.

Bandwidth is such a sensational place to work, has a whole person promise, meaningful work and a full life, cares about people in a really authentic way. And through that, I became exposed more to the people side of Bandwidth's business. And then through that, I was exposed to 15.5 as we were looking at performance management solutions.

And when I met the people from 15.5, they were really extraordinary. And it was a tough choice to leave bandwidth, but 15.5 allows me to do some of the things I ended up doing at bandwidth on a larger scale.

And in a way that allows even more people to take the great things about bandwidth and 15.5 and really elevate their culture, make work more meaningful, help their people thrive as we increase performance and engagement as well.

And as we talk about motivation, motivation to me is something that is there's some consistencies across people. where it's like, okay, people value things like autonomy, mastery, purpose. From Dan Pink's book Drive, for example, people want relatedness and belonging. Many people are motivated by money and compensation as well. Extrinsic motivation matters.

And it's really important for a manager whenever they bring someone new on their team or they become the manager of a new team to really understand that individual's unique motivational signature. And that motivational signature is really understanding what matters to this specific person.

At 15.5, one of the techniques that we talk about uh in support of this is called the best self kickoff and the best self kickoff is a 60 to 90 minute conversation between a team member and the manager and both the team member and manager share responses to a long list of questions that really accelerates the development of that relationship and one of the

questions is of course about motivation another one is about non-negotiables So for me, a non-negotiable actually relates to my own motivational signature. And that non-negotiable is autonomy.

I realized a long time ago that if I don't have freedom and flexibility, which is fortunately like a sub value at 15, five, but if I don't have autonomy in my role, it's really challenging for me to stay motivated because I feel constricted. I don't feel like I can be creative.

And the best thing about the best self kickoff is that it allows a manager to learn that thing about that person within the first couple days of them joining an organization. So as you are working and partnering, like, for example, if you were my manager, you would know that about me on day like three or four of me joining the company.

And then that helps you understand what motivates and demotivates me and helps accelerate and build our relationship. And when we did that, when my manager and I did the best self kickoff, I realized like I've had great managers throughout my career.

I've been very, very lucky that I've always felt supported and seen at work and I've had people who appreciate me, but it hit me like, wow, like my new manager knows some things about me that managers I had had for years in the past may not have because of the structured approach that we took to understanding what motivates me.

So whenever I think about motivation, again, I think about the team member and manager relationship central to that and central to engagement as well.

Another thing as organizations think about engagement, I like to think about engagement as a multifaceted challenge where there's things that team members can do, there's things managers can do, things teams can do, things that HR and people teams can do, and there's things that the senior leaders can do. And then you have the context as well.

So as people teams and as leaders, and if you're a leader of a finance team, think about these different layers. Like what can I have my managers do to help with engagement? What can I have leaders on the team do to help with engagement? do to help with engagement?

What can we do at the team level to make sure that people are feeling a sense of purpose, people are feeling motivated, that their work matters, that we're nurturing progress? And 15.5 has a number of tools that allow you to, of course, measure engagement. We have our Engagement Plus feature.

We also have our Full Potential Index, which is measuring more whole person human needs. And you can try out 15.5 for free, including the Full Potential Index for a team of up to 20, where you can try these things out on your own team.

But measurement is really critical for motivation, engagement, and so on, because you want to be assessing where your team's at and then using those measurements to build new programs and approaches, again, at the team member level manager level, team level, HR people program level, as well as the senior leadership team level.

So as a CFO or as an executive in finance, one of the things that you need to do is ensure that you're taking care of yourself. A classic definition of engagement is about the relationship between the demands that you're experiencing at work and the resources that you have to meet those demands.

And whenever individuals have too many demands for the amount of resources that they have over time, it's likely that they can become burnout.

So one of the things that's most important, and this is actually my favorite construct of 2020 for myself, is healthy selfishness, which is promoting the idea that you deserve self-care you deserve a break you deserve a vacation you deserve some rest and recovery no matter what stage your organization is at and i have such uh empathy sympathy compassion uh for finance

teams because There are certain periods of the calendar year, like at the end of a quarter or at the end of a year, where finance teams are working 80, 90 hours a week because they have to get their books done in a certain amount of time, or they have to, if you work at a public company, it's like, well, you have to be reporting your financials publicly And

it's really important in my mind to be planning for those periods and to be honoring like, okay, we just had this massive rush to close out a quarter or close out a year. What can we do during other periods of the year to make sure that our people have the rest and recovery?

And what can we do to make sure that we're designing experiences even during those times where it's like, we're getting as many things done in advance as we can. We're helping our people prepare for the fact that it's like, oh, these two weeks are going to be pretty wild as we close out the year, close out a quarter.

And as executives, it's really important for you to be thinking about those things as well for yourself, as well as for your team. So a couple of things that I recommend for executives and leaders who are looking to be more productive, but then also honor themselves, again, is this idea of healthy selfishness and self-care.

So just blocking out time that you honor where you're developing yourself or you're allowing yourself to rest and recover. Double checking your energy levels, for example, throughout a week and noticing like, hey, this is where I'm at.

Doing things like meeting audits to really streamline your calendar and understand like, okay, If you have 40 hours of meetings a week, then you don't have time to do any deep work on your own. And a lot of work, especially for executives, ends up being like deep thinking work where you're making decisions.

Being an executive is not just about being in meetings all day long. So it is very important for individuals at the executive level to make that time to care for themselves, to be self-aware, to understand what matters to them, understand their own motivational say signature, understand how they're feeling. And being vulnerable at the executive level can be tough.

Being a CEO or CFO can often be very lonely because while people can come to you, who do you go to? So I encourage you to find people in your life that you can share these things with in a really vulnerable way and then also start to normalize sharing of the stressfulness of the role or different periods of the year with your team as well.

A great way to do that with your team is to normalize practices like retrospectives or debriefs, where you just talk about what's going well, what can be improved, and you just normalize talking about like, hey, these are opportunities for us to do things differently in the future. These are opportunities where it's like we should really celebrate our successes.

One thing that I think sometimes happens with finance teams is because there are periods of the year that are really challenging and because finance roles are oftentimes in the background, you don't necessarily take the time to like savor the wins and celebrate those people.

One of the things we did at a company I worked at before was actually, we basically celebrated the entire finance team at one point, right? Where it was just like, these people are behind the scenes, but none of the things that we're really excited about right now that are more public could have happened without these individuals.

So making time to ensure that you're celebrating not only the wins, but also the progress along the way. And then again, as a senior leader and for any individual or organization, it's really important to honor and understand the impact you're making on other people.

So I was very lucky whenever I was a product leader to be working with individuals in the finance function who are great. They were strategic. We were having these really great conversations about what was possible for the business.

They were often like operating it's almost like my own investment banker in a way where it's like, hey, let's talk about the investments we should make to accomplish our business goals. There was a true sense of partnership there. And that really was a meaningful work.

And I did what I could to ensure that that individual felt really valued because they were a critical part of my process. And as a CFO, I hope all of you feel valued. And as future CFOs, I hope that you feel valued and you're not just like a spreadsheet maintainer or like a, you know, some sort of bean counter function.

Like it's a really critical function that helps a business not only go, but also thrive. It helps a business understand like, Hey, this is how we're spending our money and what the investments that we're making are doing for, you know, our top line and our bottom line.

So it's really critical, uh, for inspiration, for motivation, for people to be doing meaningful work and understanding the impact it has on other people and on the world and reminding your people about that. And as a leader, reminding yourself about that is so critical as you attempt to stay engaged and motivated.

And I think one of the challenges is that they are doing more strategic work, but they're not necessarily positioning themselves well within, you know, to the rest of the organization. They're not seen as that strategic partner. So if you were, you know, you were in their shoes, how would you approach that challenge?

Now let's go tell these people who actually can just make sure all the boxes are checked and we do it. And actually, it should be the reverse. because the finance function and the people function are both talking about these really critical assets that your organization has, your money and your people, and then how can you bring them to life.

So a couple of things come to mind as finance teams are positioning themselves. One is capitalizing on the fact that many individuals in a finance function understand the mechanics of business better than anyone else in the room.

And just helping understand, like, again, taking almost like you're a venture, you're an internal venture capitalist or you're an internal investment banker and using that lens to say, like, hey, we're, you know, we're spending $178,000 on that this year. We're spending, you know, $2.8 million on that this year. What is the return of that?

Another opportunity in my mind for individuals in financial leadership positions is coming into the room with zero-based budgeting and other ideas like that, where it's like, let's talk about our business from a fresh perspective.

And actually what's going on right now with COVID-19 and coronavirus is an excellent opportunity to be doing that because 2020 is 2020 and then 2021, I think will be a year of cultural renewal. I'm going to say that again. 2020 is 2020 and 2021 will be a year of cultural renewal.

And right now is the time, like literally as this podcast is being published for individuals who are listening to this, who are leaders in finance to be going in and saying, we need to renew our company in 2021. We need to be taking this fresh approach.

And my team and I are here to support the business as we're looking at who we want to become in 2021 and beyond in this new world of remote work, of limited travel, of all the other things that are happening right now.

So I think it is about positioning, as you suggested, Hannah, where individuals need to be making themselves available and helping people understand what's possible. An example that comes to mind for me from HR is I met someone, this was my first experience meeting an HR business partner.

And whenever I talked to this HR business partner and this individual worked at a very big, successful technology company that's very well known and is now a leader at a smaller tech company and doing very well. And whenever I met her and this is an example of how I think finance people can really open people's eyes up to the possibility of what they can do.

So I made this HR business partner and I'm like, you know, I just want to meet with you for an hour before I train your people on teamwork and leadership. Could you walk me through like what's going on in your organization? And I was blown away.

She spent an hour mapping out all the people in the organization who had the right relationships with who, what the informal networks were like, not just the people's names, who had been promoted, who had wished they were promoted but wasn't, who was new for the team, what the business problems were that were associated with these different teams, like what the

opportunities were, what the leader was like. I mean, it was, there was like a whiteboard map of all these amazing things that she had observed about how that business was operating from a people perspective. And then at the end, she says, she says, I'm sorry, I couldn't tell you more. And I'm like, what else could you have told me?

Like, I mean, I was basically getting like, you know, someone's cousin's child's name type of information about these individuals. And it was really remarkable and it opened my eyes to like, wow, this is the power of HR whenever it's combined with business.

And I think finance can be doing the same thing where For someone like me who had never been, this was much earlier in my career, has never been exposed to the power of that function.

I think individuals in finance leadership roles and individuals in finance can be doing the same thing where they can be bringing and surprising and delighting other leaders in the business by saying like, hey, this is what I can do. And these are the observations I have about our business.

Like we are spreading our capital investments too thin or we're investing in too many initiatives right now. And that was one of the things that was very successful at a company I worked at before where the CFO and the finance function in that organization were very close partners with the product team.

where we looked at like, hey, this is what we wanna accomplish this year from a P&L perspective.

And then we started to look at the costs of these different bigger initiatives, like not every little initiative that was like, oh, that's a couple developer weeks of time, but these bigger initiatives where it'd be like, well, that's gonna cost us a couple million dollars in developer time to do that.

And looking at the returns through that financial lens was so helpful for me as a product leader. So I would really consider if I was in a financial, a finance leadership position, explaining the services.

So Zappos, for example, does this thing where every department, at least this is what they were doing, every department operates as basically like its own business unit. So they have, it's like, they're basically, selling their services to other internal functions.

And I think that's maybe an opportunity for finance too, even if you don't work at a company like Zappos, where it's like, hey, this is almost think of yourself as a consulting firm. Like this is our menu of services. This is what you can get from us. This is what we're here to do.

Like you think of us as, you know, the spreadsheet nerds, but actually we can be individuals who are your strategic partners. Here's what that looks like. Here's how to initiate.

the conversation here's what we've heard how we've heard that done in other organizations that's worked very well because really it's an it's an opportunity that to support people in an area where a lot of people are weak well whether they admit it or not like many people can rise up in an organization and other leadership roles and not really have the clearest

understanding of the actual mechanics of the money side of the business, which is a large part of why organizations exist. And finance can really become a strategic partner in that way. But I just make it so clear, like this is how you engage with us. This is what we can accomplish with you. You know, put it in terms, like we can be your shark tank.

We can be, you know, put it in terms that are dragon's den, depending on where you are in the world, or I don't know what, the equivalent show is in the UK, but Shark Tank is basically in the US is individuals who are wealthy, basically make offers to invest in people's businesses on the spot or not.

And finance can play that same role where it's like, hey, we can be your second set of eyes on your proposals. We can be your partner earlier in the conversation. We can help you red team these major investments. And a CEO is making a mistake in my mind if they're just allowing an organization.

And it's interesting because actually, let me step back for a second, because I think this is a really important point.

oftentimes in my experience organizations will scrutinize like expenses above like 500 with all this scrutiny and people are involved and like checks and balances and then like oh my gosh like where's your receipt for that like and those things are important they're very important for financial reporting but then we'll let and a leader in an organization make a decision

that costs 14 million dollars in person time And there's no scrutiny, there's no second opinion, there's nothing happening.

So, and that's really unusual now that I'm talking about it out loud that like we don't use individuals with financial expertise and finance leadership positions to like almost fact check and partner in making these investments whenever it's like, well, this is our new strategy or even like a sub initiative, right?

Like where it's like, oh yeah, this initiative is actually gonna cost us know 2.8 million dollars in people time over the next quarter like and it gets less scrutiny than like where's your receipt for the webcam you bought because we're on zoom all day and like that that doesn't make sense to me so uh i think that's an opportunity for maybe that's the story you

tell whenever like feel free to borrow that analogy and whenever you're arguing for a more strategic role in your company's um thought processes and decision making because That's really backwards thinking like we should be providing additional scrutiny and checking around these really big strategic investments.

And oftentimes the individuals doing that are, you know, minding a spreadsheet separate from the business when they should be.

as part of the triumvirate of CEO, CFO, and CHRO, where it's like, let's talk about the strategy of the business, let's talk about the financials, and let's talk about the people, and how do those three individuals work together to make the right strategic investments to take your business to the next level.

And actually what they need to do is shift to being that enabler, you know, and actually getting involved at the early stage of the conversation. So they're not the ones always saying no. So the ability to, you know, speak with the different people teams and offer early stage advice.

A bit, you know, Dragon's Den conversation is giving them hints and tips before they make the pitch to ensure that they're successful because otherwise they can go down a route that doesn't work. And then finance gets seen as the one that's stopping these awesome ideas from happening rather than the one that's actually enabling those ideas to go through.

So I think there's a lot of ease in that. Yeah, I love it.

And the investment person is like, well, I should have been involved when you were looking for like seed money, you know, whenever you were looking for angel investment. Right. So getting people getting people with the financial expertise involved earlier is basically like a no brainer for me.

And and I think it's incumbent upon every leader in an organization especially as you're attempting for more cross-functional collaboration to make that as frictionless as possible right so i if i was in a leadership position in finance i would not assume that anyone else in the organization knows how to effectively partner with you the same way that i would not make

that assumption if i was a chro or a chief of product or a head of design or whatever the role is like making it really crystal clear clear for other people, the value that you can provide. And again, it's almost like you're a consulting firm, right?

So you might even consider hiring a freelance marketer or someone on your marketing team where it's just like, hey, we want to put together a one page description or menu of services that we provide as we're looking to reposition ourselves from the this person says no after we already spent four months talking about this and they were never involved to like oh one

of my first conversations or first thought partners whenever i'm coming up with a new idea should be our finance counterpart because they like i've had this actually happen to me in a really positive way where someone i've talked to someone in finance early And they're like, oh, I think this would actually be a terrible idea. And it's good to know that.

And I've had the experience where it's like, oh, this actually makes more sense than some other things I know that we're doing. Like, let's find a way to reallocate some of the money on this investment that we were sort of lukewarm on, but we didn't know there were any other options. And now we have options, right?

So presenting the CEO with options that are backed by business cases, like you can definitely lead that or assist other people in that. And again, I'm a big simplicity person. At one point, I would tell people when they asked me, well, what's your PhD in? And I would say, I have a PhD in simplicity.

Really, my job is make things simple whenever I was doing UX and CX stuff. And I am a big fan of simplicity where it's just like, yeah, one page menu of services. what do you do? And they could even make it funny, right? Like, so, you know, Mr. Wonderful, I think is Kevin O'Leary from Dragon's Den and from Shark Tank, like position yourself that way.

Like, I think people might be finding it refreshing to have a little more lightheartedness from a finance function anyway, because again, all the stereotypes are like, you know, these individuals who just look at spreadsheets and say, no, And it's like, no, we want to be thinking of, you know, the money's important, like you need the money.

So we need to be making ourselves available, you know, if we're leaders in finance and making it really clear, like this is how we best partner. Get us involved earlier. This is what that means. This is what we'll do. Like, this is our SLA when you come to us with an idea. Here's the times of year whenever we really are able to do that.

Like, it's remarkable to me Like one of the questions that I often ask clients is like, well, when do you need to make the decisions by for next year? Because next year is the year that you're gonna change something or next year is when you need the investment for. And people won't know. You know, like, I don't know.

And it's like, I think that's the time where it's, finance can, as you're positioning yourself as strategic and now's the exact time of year to be doing this, assuming that this airs in early Q4, then it's like, no, we need to know these things now because the decisions we're making on our 2021 investments or our next year investments are really made by December 1st

or whatever the date is. So then you can be providing your, counterparts at the executive level or others in your organization with almost like a calendar where it's like, hey, we need to know we're making these decisions by this date. So we need all the leaders to have their business cases ready by this date. So like, let's get us involved on this date.

Like, by the way, we're doing year end close from like December 15th to January 30th. And yes, we work during the holidays, even if you don't. But just like making these things really clear and freeing up the space and possibility. And And again, this will also help control the inputs that you get to make it easier for all of you to collaborate as well.

Because the last thing you want, if you and your team are already stretched thin and many Staff functions like finance, HR, legal, other internal functions don't get the level of investment that they need. So many of you, I'm sure, are overwhelmed, stressed out, overworked, and now you're listening to a podcast that's like, do that and be more strategic.

So making it really clear how you want people to partner with you is also essential. And again, this one-page menu of services, and maybe even start with one service.

And it could be about Dragon's Den or Shark Tank, but just maybe start with one strategic service that you provide, and then start building relationships at the executive level around how finance can be more strategic. And I think, I think your end of it, your people will, you and your people will have fun with that, right?

Like where you get more visibility, you get a chance to have a greater impact on the business. And then you'll get to see that impact differently. And you'll get to see like, oh, we actually helped that big sales initiative that drove revenue increases. We helped those decisions that were made on product and R&D about what we could build.

And you'll feel more connected to the rest of the business and not just feel like a team that's like, well, after the fact, you know, we help us count the money and make sure we're compliant, right? Like we're actually a strategic business partner as well.

And I can just imagine a world where, you know, the finance team are regularly meeting with those executives and, you know, members of the finance team are assigned to different teams. as their finance business partner. I love that example.

And they're the ones that feed them the relevant information, offer insight based on numbers and the data that the finance team are collating and interpreting. And isn't that the definition of this new finance role that we keep talking about the future of finance? CFO 4.0, that strategic transformational person. That's such a shift from what we've got today.

I'm not sure if that's a role right now, but maybe it is like finance business partner, the way that HR has moved into those conversations differently by having people business partners or people services business partners or HR business partners, where it's it's repositioning and giving a new name to this idea that like, hey, we're here to help you accomplish your

business objectives. We're not here to just make sure that like your paperwork is done accurately. Like we're here to help you make the right strategic investments.

And many leaders, like I said, that are outside of finance, don't necessarily have all of the business acumen necessary to make the right decisions or to even understand the financial implications of a lot of decisions that they make.

Even in a small organization, a small initiative may cost millions of dollars to do in terms of people time and CapEx and OpEx and everything else. We make those decisions.

Like I said, like thinking about I'm now like my new my new thought is like, oh, my gosh, we spend more time as organizations scrutinizing receipts for books that people buy for their Kindle and on Audible than we do like these massive multimillion dollar initiatives that we're investing in. Right. So and I think that.

Another thing, another opportunity for finance to partner and to move from the 75% transactional to 75% strategic is not only encouraging other individuals in the organization to be thinking about these investments they make as financial investments, where you start to think about the return and the risk.

but also doing that in a way that supports the right balance of experimental investments in organizations where you're trying new things intentionally to see if you can generate change versus the investments that you're making that have less risk, but maybe less return as well.

And thinking about how can the CEO and the other members of the C-suite ensure that your organization is investing properly in what's working and your core business, but also you're exploring these other ideas with great intention.

And one of the, I think, best and simultaneously most dangerous phrases in business that has come out over the last maybe 10 years or so is this idea of failing fast, where it's like, try stuff and experiment and fail fast. And I do believe in fail fast, but the misinterpretation of it, I think, is that the focus is on failure and not on learning.

And an individual in a finance function can help an organization say like, oh, that experiment's gonna cost us say a million dollars to do in terms of all the costs associated with it. Like how can we make sure we're getting the right amount of learning from this?

Like how are we actually capitalizing on what we're learning, whether this goes well or this goes poorly in a way that it's worth that level investment? And is there a way for us to learn the same amount with 50K investment or like a 10K investment, right?

And looking at the world through that lens of, again, thinking about your individual's time, like honoring that they're people, but thinking about the cost of it in terms of costs. So balancing the idea that, you know, these are humans, not resources. We care about each individual person, but then also realizing there's expenses associated with these investments.

And again, focusing on not just like the after effects of these decisions where it's like, well, that's what happened this quarter, but also like the forward looking effects of this is what this experiment costs.

This is where our investment portfolio at the business looks like right now at the business level looks like right now where it's, Oh, like we're spending $30 million this year. And we're realizing that we only have, uh, like 500K set aside for understanding new business models and new products and opportunities for us.

Like, is that the right mix for you and your business? Other leaders in your organization may be thinking about that, but not with the same level of numerical and financial rigor that you can bring to it, where you're looking at it as a portfolio of investments intended to drive business outcomes for you, not during this quarter or this year, but beyond.

So looking at the right balance of, investments that are intended to pay off now versus intended to be more experimental is another way that CFOs and other finance leaders can be involved in these conversations. And again, partnering with different business units, different functions as well.

And that's a whole, you know, that's that for me is one of the interesting pieces is that the data is available, but they're spending so much time on the transactional processing, they're not actually able to offer that that insight and that feedback.

And I guess that's my shout out to those that are listening is that in order to be that finance business partner, you have to have the tools. you have to do your basics.

And if you listen to what, a board and the CEOs want is they need a strong finance function they need to know the numbers are right but actually they want it done with the least amount of effort because then you can add that value to the business through your strategic conversations exactly what you were saying there is actually being able to analyse you know

where are we spending are we spending enough on those innovative activities because it's Google I think 10% of everything they do is innovation so it's on stuff that they don't even know is going to work and they've got no business case is whatsoever for. But actually, that's where some of the most interesting projects that have come out of Google have come from.

And so actually, you're right. Without that allocation of funds and that ability to assess the impact, I think there is a bit around being able to step back and analyze the impact of what investments you are making in a manner that allow you to feed into that conversation.

Another one that's really strategic in my mind is zooming out and looking at what are the investments we're making across our entire business to understand whether we have that right Like for example, maybe not the CTO, but other individuals in R&D who are leaders might not have an understanding of what experiments are happening in other parts of the business.

Now there's experimentation, not just around your products and services, but around business models as well. So there's a tremendous opportunity for individuals with financial expertise and financial leadership roles to be involved in those conversations. So to me, really the sky's the limit around this new idea of finance business partner as a concept and as a role.

So it might be quite interesting to think about what, when you're recruiting, you're second in command as a CFO? Is that a person you'd send in front of the rest of the executive team to meet with them and feedback on information and data so that you are not the only one having those conversations? Because that's the danger, isn't it?

That you're the only person that communicates with the rest of the organization.

But there's a second part to that book that I actually think It's even more insightful. And it's about this idea of rock stars and superstars. And rock stars are people who they don't have a desire for as much growth as superstars, but they're really high performing in their current role.

And superstars are individuals who are high performing, but they're looking for a lot of growth. So as a CFO and as a leader in finance, it's really important to be looking at the composition of your team and your organization in a way that honors both rock stars and superstars.

So to the point that you just made, Like there might be individuals for whom this is not what they wanna even do. Like maybe they selected into a finance function because they wanted to focus more on the back of a house endeavor that comes with the analysis of the business and the reporting and the compliance.

And those individuals, as long as their performance is at the right level, we should honor what they're doing. It's really important that you have these rock stars that are providing this sense of stability and just basically like the anchors of really high performance.

And then also there's a tremendous opportunity for superstars in an organization as long as you have the right mix of people to have a greater growth path in a way that allows for additional collaboration with others in the business, taking on this more entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial mindset, taking on like a capitalist type mindset to the investments other parts of the

organization are making.

And one of the things that going back to this concept concept of menu of services or just like describing your services and as a marketer would if you were a consulting firm is it helps productize the conversations that you're having with other parts of the organization such that it allows for individuals who are maybe more junior or newer to finance or newer to

your organization to still participate in these conversations because there's some boundaries and some control set up around what these conversations are going to be about. It's not like you want to go from like, oh, on one day we're, you know, the behind the scenes compliance reporting, like making sure everything is done properly.

And then the next day you know we're this freewheeling group of management consultants like that's not necessarily a jump that many people are ready for I know I wouldn't be ready for that like one day it's like I'm doing one thing and the next day it's like oh yeah you're basically like an in-house McKinsey or Bain in your organization so but that's why I think

like starting with like very specifically framing up like this is the, these are the services we can provide, this is the value it will provide, the benefits to you, here's how we get started. And then honestly asking yourself and others in your organization, like is that something that they wanna be part of? And you might get some resistance from certain people.

And again, as long as they're performing well, like I would encourage you to think about that right mix of rock stars and superstars.

So you have the stable high performance in addition to the growth, because the reality is if you're not, if you are say 75% or a hundred percent, like just, making sure your organization stays out of jail and does the proper reporting. There's a reason for that. That is absolutely critical work that's basically indispensable to the function of your business.

However, there's also critical work and a tremendous amount of business risk involved if you and others with your expertise are not making themselves available and not participating in these bigger conversations about the strategic investments your organization is making as well.

And you know, that's something I think every, every strategic finance leader is currently sort of thinking about for themselves, their organisation, and moving forwards. And if I just can sum up the different bits we've gone through today, because it's been, it's been a a bit of a whirlwind. We've gone through all sorts.

So we started off talking about making sure you're managing your team and your time and you're giving people the chance to recover from those crazy quarter ends, month ends, year ends. They always seem to appear. And maybe think about celebrating those successes and keeping that team engaged.

We talked about the vision for finance and actually understanding what it is that you as a team are delivering. Where is your value to the organisation over and above just that tax and compliance that I think finance is traditionally associated with. And how do you become that finance business partner? I love that term of the future.

And how do you build a team and figure out a team that can deliver on that? And it might not be, if we're being really honest, the team you've got today, but you need a balance. You need to deliver that sort of business as usual, as well as living all this amazing, innovative relationship stuff as well. So thank you so much.

It's been incredible, Jeff. It's been wonderful to have you on. And if our listeners want to learn more about you and the business, what's the best way for them to get hold of you?

And as you were summarizing, here's the thread that ties those things together in my mind is To keep your people motivated and energized, one of the main things you need to do as a leader is make sure that they're doing meaningful work that matters, they're making progress on that work regularly, and they're seen and noticed for it.

And that meaningful work in finance is transitioning from making sure that everything, all the numbers are in order, the reporting's done properly, into being your strategic business partner, as we talked about today.

And by meeting your people where they're at on that journey and then also pushing forward for that vision, you'll continue to inspire them, motivate them and engage them for years and years to come because you are providing that outlet for not just their need today, but also their future needs around creativity, having more meaningful work.

And I loved your summary. I think that absolutely nails it for today's podcast. So thank you.

Feel free to tell me what topics interest you most. I would really love to hear your feedback. Don't forget to check out our latest CFO 4.0 webinar on budgeting and planning in a volatile environment. Click the link in the show notes or visit www.itassolutions.co.uk and click on our events page for more info and great content.

And if you want to reach out at any point, tell us what you liked, tell us what we can do better, then feel free. Just email us at cfopodcast at itassolutions.co.uk. Thank you and speak soon.