GrowCFO Show

Kevin Appleby is joined by, VP of professional services at Board International, Karlo Bustos to discuss the resurgent CFO and how the CFO can be the strategic adviser. What is the resurgent CFO about? The resurgent CFO is a white paper that looks at empowering finance leaders for change.  The research was undertaken to examine a hypothesis. To understand how finance leaders globally work through data and how they use this data to empower decision making.  How do they transform their organisation and become more of a leader, In short can better information make the CFO a superhero?  The research survey was compiled from 600 finance leaders with 20 questions around 5 key areas. These were around: strategy in the role of finance in a time of change; performance management and reporting; organisation and change management; people and talent and data. This is saying the CFO is moving away from the more operational side of the role and focus more on the strategic area. What is driving that?  In everyone’s journey map there is a maturity curve. In finance (and operations, IT, HR, marketing), at the start, there is a focus on standardising processes. You can then be an efficiency driver of identifying those standardised processes and knowing how many you need to do and which is viable for the business.  Then you look at how you are taking some of these efficiencies and gaining more insights into the information you’re gathering. Ultimately reaching being a leader and being adaptable and agile.  Over the last 18 months, there has been a lot of change in strategy and business model. Did the person with the numbers get more involved than normal? This would have been the ideal situation. The office of finance should have true seat at the table. This should not just be as a scorekeeper, but as an enabler of more insightful decisions. Organisations doing well were the ones who listened to that person. The ones who were pro-active willingly transformed which enabled the business to set a true strategy. Those individuals had a seat at the table but their voices were also heard, and better decisions were made due to the data they represented. Should the CFO look after non-financial data as well as financial? Finance leaders are looking to expand their capability. This is the capability to draw out insights, and use data as a driver. That ethos can expand into HR, operations… Some finance leaders are there just to draw a dashboard and not to provide any guidance. The finance leader who is willing to come out and be a catalyst is being successful in personal and organisational perspectives. This is a resurgent CFO. The change starts with you, be transformative. Be more of a decision-maker across your organisation. Is there anything stopping the CFO from being a strategic adviser? The acceleration of change will vary. Some will find it drastic because of its reactive nature. Some will have a more proactive nature and will make the right type of changes that are needed in the process and in the people. People, process and technology are the three pillars. You want to be looking at reducing inefficient processes with this transformation. You don't have to do something big and drastic to transform. This could simply be a method of delivery our monthly reports. Use data to support and drive insights. Asking the right questions is important as you want to clearly know what you are trying to solve, this gives you a direction which is important. Technology is an important catalyst to that transformation and you have to be able to manipulate that data.  In the survey, 89% of finance leaders know they need to make a specific choice on whether to automate that process or move on. If you stay on the sidelines for too long, someone else will stand up and be that resurgent CFO. You should be that leader. Use the data access tools to manage and improve over time.

Kevin Appleby is joined by GrowCFO’s Founder and CEO Dan Wells to discuss CFO training and how GrowCFO tries to cater for everyone's needs in their training programmes. Why was there not a good place to go to to get all of your CFO training together?  This links to why GrowCFO was set up. A lot of finance leaders asked Dan where they could go for CFO training and he had a look to see if there was anything on google etc. It was really hard to find anywhere. There were random courses and videos but nothing that pulled it all together. No businesses were dedicated to training CFOs.  There is no CFO qualification, but GrowCFO has built a syllabus so that this doesn’t have to be the case. Lots of training programmes for accountants at the start of their career can be found. These can be helpful but people have different needs and require a different skillset to become a finance leader. As a head of finance or financial controller, you are the inward face of finance. Whereas, when you become CFO you are the outward face of finance. This is a very different set of skills. You are trained for the inward-facing roles but never the outward-facing ones.  Most people who are delivering a proper CFO role spend at least 60% of their time on delivering strategy and change. We expect this to accelerate because over time a lot of the operational tasks will become automated. In 2 or 3 decades time, it is expected, this will look more like 95% of people’s time. Being a good right-hand to the CEO and being a valued member of the board requires strategy, confidence and the right skills to influence people and act as a leader.  Why is GrowCFO’s CFO training so helpful?  Often you are facing problems for the first time once you are already in the role which is why the way GrowCFO is laid out is so helpful. You can search for the topics you need to help you through the challenge. This will then show you relevant events, workshops and podcasts that will help you with this topic.  Some people like the structure of a programme and going through it at a steady pace. Others prefer having quick access for when they need it and it gives them a safety net to know they have everything at their fingertips.  CFO roles are often very different. Kevin describes the three types of CFOs he has identified; the operational CFO, the strategic CFO and the Wall Street CFO. People are increasingly coming to the CFO role from different backgrounds. Depending on what routes they come from, people will be very strong at certain aspects of the role, however, there will always be gaps.  The GrowCFO Competency Framework allows you to scan across all of the skills you need to be a successful CFO and identify where your gaps are. The GrowCFO Competency Framework is something that GrowCFO has built in the past couple of years. It takes the perspective of people across the entire ecosystem. It consists of 9 competencies with 5 skills within each competency. People use our rating guidance pdf to determine whether they are at a beginner, intermediate or advanced level against each of the 45 skills. They are then provided with a benchmarking report to see where they rank for each skill against their peer group. There will then be links to multiple of the activities for each skill. You can take the competency assessment at https://www.growcfo.net/the-growcfo-competency-framework/ How would you define a peer group?  There are many different types of CFOs and people are also at different stages in their careers. We split the peer groups in two ways. It is easy to benchmark depending on what stage they are at in their career. This could be aspiring CFOs who are 3-5 years out from landing their first role. It could also be first-time CFOs who have been in the role for less than 3-5 years. Or, more experienced CFOs who may develop gaps as the role evolves. We look at the ownership structures of businesses,

Kevin Appleby is joined by Clarity First Founder, Davina Stanley, to discuss the 5 biggest communication traps. Davina goes into these in detail and how we can avoid falling into them. 1. Assume that shorter is always better Shorter text is not always faster to read.  It is important to recognise that a shorter piece of writing may actually be more complicated to understand.  It can take the audience longer to grasp the meaning and join the dots.  Laying something out in clear steps may involve using more words.  However, this approach will be quicker to digest.  Delivering a logical clear message that is well-structured may double the length of the text, but it can be read in a quarter of the time.  Avoid fixating on the length of the document.  Instead, consider how fast somebody would be able to read and understand it.  Executive summaries are a good way to give your audience a choice of how much detail they would like to receive.  Users can either read the summary and grasp the concept from that, or refer to the main document to obtain more detail.  This works well if you use the same structure within both your executive summary and main document. 2. Putting the conclusion at the end Bring the conclusion to the front. Structuring it by the way you did it forces your audience to go on the problem solving journey with you. Bring the finding to the front and then your audience will want to read on and you can include reasons why that’s true. Your audience does not have to go through the same process as you did to get to the conclusion so you don't have to structure it that way. 3. Forgetting how our brains work We need to be aware of how our and our audience’s brains work. We know in our head all the analysis and thinking we did, our audience doesn’t know this so they only have only got the words that we have written or speak. You have to try and bridge the gap and this can take a lot of energy. If we don’t understand what someone is saying or you are finding it hard you have to fight to be able to pay attention. If this person is someone important you will fight hard to pay attention but if it is someone who you value less you may not make the same effort. Forgetting how our brains work mean our audience have to do the work to make sense of what you are trying to communicate.  4. Track changes is your friend When discussing track changes in a group, the focus can end up being on the minute parts of the document that need to be changed, not the substantial changes. Think about getting the structure really right rather than trying to get into the substance of it. When you now share this structured way of doing it and get feedback on it you should then nail that down. Then create the document so you won’t need track changes. You will save a lot of time writing and reviewing your document and you will end up with a clear and compelling message. Track changes can create it a mish-mash. You can spend so much time making track changes that don’t add much value to your document.  5. Thinking good structure equals a thorough list of topics The human brain can only deal with 3 focuses at once. You should have a big idea and then 2-5 supporting ideas and these should be messages not topics. Using templates can be useful to make sure you look through the topic thoroughly, however, it doesn’t give the message of why. The finance update can also be a challenge. In this update there will be topics but it is useful to give a message with these topics that would give more of an understanding of why this has been the result.   Find out more about GrowCFO If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way you never miss an episode. GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network.

In this episode of The GrowCFO Show Dan Wells and Kevin Appleby discuss the 9 biggest challenges faced by finance leaders and what you can do to address some of the underlying issues. We hear about the biggest finance leader challenges all the time from our GrowCFO members, and its given us a great insight into the issues you need help with. What are the 9 biggest finance leader challenges? The challenges fall into 3 broad areas. The first one concerns making more impact. The issues that you raised with us include: Contribute more towards strategyMake more impact during Board meetingsGrow your confidence and overcome Imposter Syndrome We covered those 3 topics in the first GrowCFO finance leader challenge in September, and a large number of you participated in the 3 30 minute events and then followed up with the tasks we gave you in the sessions. The second is all about interacting with others, and you tell us the main issues are: Build stronger relationshipsEnhance your communicationImprove your gravitas and perception We are planning a series of finance leader challenges that cover these running from 1st to 3rd November and you can register here to be part of that event. https://www.growcfo.net/finance-leader-challenge/ The final three challenges relate to delivering your responsibilities and include: Avoid feeling overwhelmed with tasksMaximise your team’s performanceInfluence and obtain people’s buy-in There's a further series of events coming up in January to help you with these. The top 3 finance leader challenges 1. Imposter Syndrome This is the biggest issue raised by our GrowCFO community towards becoming the best version of yourself.  Around 80% of finance leaders suffer from this and 56% of our GrowCFO community identified this as being one of their top three biggest challenges towards delivering their full potential.Here are the typical challenges highlighted to us: Stepping up into the top roleGetting more exposure to the BoardYoungest person in the Board roomLeast industry knowledge in the management teamRepresenting the firm externallyWorking outside of comfort zoneDoing lots of things you have never done beforeNot always a right or wrong answer 2. Avoid feeling overwhelmed with tasks The second biggest issue, and one that has a strong bearing on all the other issuesHere are the typical challenges highlighted to us: You simply have too many things to doFinance leader picks up many tasks outside of finance that nobody else is doingYou are still too involved in the detail and unable to extract yourself for more value added tasksLack of the right skills in the rest of the team to properly support youCompany is growing but the finance team isn't, more work falls to the same peoplePutting processes and systems in place to deal with new business 3. Contributing more towards strategy This is the third biggest issue raised by our GrowCFO community towards becoming the best version of yourself.  29% of our GrowCFO community identified this as being one of their top three biggest challenges towards delivering their full potential.Here are the typical challenges highlighted to us: Struggling to free up time to think strategicallyUnsure how to contribute towards strategic objectivesNot being consulted on key decisionsNever been involved in strategy beforeLack of toolkits to help you document and deliver the strategic plan Events If you want to find out more then you can register for the following upcoming events. https://www.growcfo.net/finance-leader-challenge/ Finance leader challenge: Interacting with others - November 2021 Building relationships - Monday 1st November from 1pm to 1.30pm. Communication - Tuesday 2nd November from 1pm to 1.30pm. Gravitas, perception and being seen as a barrier - Wednesday 3rd November from 1pm to 1.30pm. Finance leader challenge: Getting things done - January 2022

Kevin Appleby is joined by GrowCFO mentor, Susana Serrano-Davey, to discuss storytelling and how it is useful in the CFO role. Where does storytelling come into the CFO role? No matter what job you are in, you can think about becoming a good storyteller. Not only do you want to get your point across but you also want to make an impact and getting people on board. You can use the recipe that storytellers use and apply it to our own communications. It is a presentation technique which uses stories that are memorable. You also want to give a vivid description in order to evoke emotions and insights from others. Using scenarios that people can relate to will make them pay more attention. What makes a good story?  Susana gives us a mnemonic that shows the key features of good storytelling. This is HUSSLE: Hero - This is where you have to set up context. The context is what makes the audience care. You can also help this by creating a rapport between the hero and the audience. You can make them feel there is similarity between them and the hero so they will care more about what happens to the hero. Uphill struggle - This will start to build momentum and create drama. You should now present the problem. When presenting something and there is a problem within it you want to see the problem from the audience's perspective so they can connect emotionally. This can link to a marketing technique used which agitates the problem before you give the solution. Show - It is always important to put on a good show. Use words that are impactful along with body language and tone of voice. It is not just what you say but how you say it. In your story you want to have a wow factor. Susana suggests using colour or images, something that stands out. You also want to be aware of any unintended consequences of what you might show people as the same thing can mean different things to different people. Solution - It's essential to present or propose a solution. This brings the tone. Although there is a problem, it can't be all doom and gloom but bring it towards a happy ending. When you think about the people you enjoy working with they usually are the people who will come to you with a solution and problem not just a problem. In a story this is where you include how the situation was solved. Learning - The most powerful thing from the story is what can be learned. Fixing a problem on it's own is pointless, you want to see the problem as growth for the future and preventing problems in the future. What can you implement to help you in the future? You need to be able to come clean about things that have been broken in the past, the important thing is what you are doing to prevent it from happening in the future. Extraordinary - This is about making your presentation memorable. It is important to do this so your audience will go away remembering the key points. It will also help you remember what you are talking about. You don't want people to forget your key messages and you can do this by using mnemonics, your imagination and imagery. Storytelling is to make the message memorable as if you only show them numbers they will not remember as much. It will also help to get buy-in from people which, in the CFO role, you are constantly looking for. What stories to tell?  Personal stories can be useful by giving examples or metaphors. The examples may appear not relevant as it may not be identical to your current problem but it may be similar giving you more insights. At work we often shy away from sharing our personal information. Showing snippets of who you are as a person can be an asset as it shows you as yourself not just your professional side. You want people around you to have the confidence that you can solve the issues. You can help this by showing your track record but including your problems in this too. The most powerful capabilities builders are the examples of very challenging situ...

There's a big gap between the skills and competencies you need as CFO to those you have as Head of Finance. The GrowCFO competency framework provides a great way of assessing your readiness for the top job. We use the framework as part of the Future CFO Programme. It usually highlights a lot of potential development areas for our students. One of the challenges for you as a prospective CFOs is prioritising your personal development plan to address the most important competencies. Module 3 of the FutureCFO Programme is all about that prioritisation so that you can effectively fast track your personal development plan. In this podcast Kevin Appleby and Dan Wells give a preview of Module 3 of GrowCFO's Future CFO Programme and show how you can successfully accelerate your development to get to your dream CFO job. The GrowCFO Competency Framework In Modules 1 and 2 of the Future CFO Programme, you complete the GrowCFO competency framework and identify your biggest issues. These give you powerful insight into your current skills and challenges; how these rank against your peer group; and where your opportunities for future development lie. The competency framework is split down into 45 different things. Most people on the Future CFO Programme find that they score well in relatively few of the 45. The potential gap between where you are now and where you think you need to be becomes somewhat daunting. Don’t worry. You don’t need to have expertise in all 45 to become a good CFO. The purpose of module 3 is to take that assessment, and develop a sensible development plan. This allows you to fast track the particular skills you need to make that initial step up to the CFO role. The techniques you learn in this module will also take you beyond stepping up. It will provide you with a way of planning your own development for many years to come. Everybody's Personal Development Plan is different The first thing to remember is everybody is different. You have your own unique set of strengths, skills and experience. You will build on these and that will make you a unique CFO. The remit of the CFO can be wide – there is no standard job description. What the CFO does varies from company to company. The role of the CFO in a startup or high growth organisation might also be very different from that in an established corporate.  The CFO will be the number 1 in the finance function. What the number 1 does is often determined by what your number 2, direct reports and wider team can do to support you. The CFO is the co-pilot to the CEO. The role of the CFO is often determined by the support that the CEO feels they need, both to complement the CEO’s skills and to bring something extra to the business.  In short, there is no one size fits all. So, in determining your development plan you need to decide what sort of CFO you want to become and prioritise what is important to you. Module 3 allows you to address this systematically. What do you do in module 3? There’s a 5 step process and we suggest you use the next 10 days to work through it to build your own personalised development plan. Step 1 – Current state assessment. Where are you now?Step 2 – Set a Vision. Where do you want to get to?Step 3 – What do you need to do next? Set your priorities for the next 90 days.Step 4 – Make space to take action. Identify where you add the most value.Step 5 – Build a plan. A plan on a page with clear milestones for each of the next 12 weeks. Find out more about GrowCFO If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way you never miss an episode. GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars.

Kevin Appleby is joined by GrowCFO's Founder and CEO Dan Wells to discuss the launch of GrowCFO's Finance leader support Forum. Finance leader support Forums overview GrowCFO's community support Forums help finance leaders to share knowledge, seek advice and solve common issues. They allow free or Premium members to quickly benefit from the combined knowledge and experience of your finance leader community. Many finance leaders are spending too much time delivering recurring finance tasks that add little value to your business. These Forums contain valuable insights regarding how you can automate, outsource, delegate or ditch such tasks. As a result, you will have more time available to make a bigger impact in your role. As you get more involved in strategy, you will face challenges that you have never experienced before. In most instances, your community will have already conquered such challenges and can easily share the solutions with you. This will save you huge amounts of time and allow you to quickly identify the best solutions. How many finance leader support Forums are there? There are two finance leader support Forums. Of these, the main Forum is called Finance Leaders Community and is designed for all GrowCFO members. This is where the majority of the community discussions take place and is the ideal place for you to discuss your specific challenges with the community. There is also a Forum for the Future CFO Programme. This is designed to help you with your biggest challenges towards securing your first CFO role. Within this Forum, we also post regular updates for our Future CFO Programme activities to ensure that our participants don't miss anything exciting! We previously had various other Forums featuring The Situation Room, Women's Finance Leaders and Startup/Scaleup Finance Leaders. However, we found it more effective to have one main community Forum and there is a tagging system to help you quickly navigate to the most appropriate discussions. Who should join the finance leader support Forums? Our finance leader support Forums are available to all free and Premium members. We recommend that everybody in the community joins the Forums as they will save you lots of time and help you get to a better answer. In fact, it is hard to think of a reason why you would not want to join in the Forums...! Where you can access the finance leader support Forums? Any GrowCFO community member can access our finance leader support Forums within the GrowCFO website. Simply log in and click on Forums within your left-hand menu bar. We also strongly recommend that you download your free GrowCFO mobile app by typing GrowCFO into your App Store. We have integrated GrowCFO's entire platform into your App, which provides a fantastic user experience and is very popular! How to get started Your starting point is to click on your Finance Leader Community Forum and introduce yourself to the community. Tell them a few basic details about your job title, company, location and aspiration. You will be pleasantly surprised how friendly and welcoming people are! Next, scroll through the various discussions and benefit from the insights offered by other community members. Think about your biggest challenges and click on New discussion to seek advice from your peer group. Monitoring the Forum activity You will receive tailored notifications when other members reply to your discussions. This provides you with an opportunity to enter into conversations across a number of members within a particular topic. Don't be surprised if other members also offer to support you in more detail through private messages or phone call - we are friendly and helpful bunch...! We recommend that you scan through the latest Forum activity every few days and show your willingness to help others by contributing to their conversations.

Kevin Appleby is joined by Ian Kaye, CFO and executive coach, to discuss how to present with confidence and how to improve confidence. What is your background and how did you learn to present with confidence?  Firstly, Ian trained as an accountant at one of the big 4 and worked in industry for 5 years. This led him to be based in Hamburg, returning after 2 years to do a full time MBA. Directly after his MBA, Ian moved to GE as a consultant. Ian's roles have usually been business as usual finance roles and in smaller businesses as finance director or as leading quite large bits of change. He has also been largely interested in personal development elements. This included him expanding his interest of neuro linguistic programming during 2014-2017 by attending many courses and becoming a doubly qualified trainer. He explains how the benefits of this create a toolset for you to understand yourself and the environment and people around you. Also, you can understand drivers of how we show up in the world. This personal development in this area has lead to Ian being an expert at how to present with confidence. How can you get over the fear of presenting? While Ian admits he is not a therapist, he recognises that exposure therapy can be very effective at tackling any fear. Exposure therapy theorises that the more you expose yourself to your fear, the more you will be comfortable with it. This will mean your fear will become less intimidating. If it is part of your monthly set up to give a presentation, you will be getting practice. It may not improve after the first 2 or 3 times, but Ian says, progressively this will reduce the fear of presenting. What do you think gives people the fear of presenting? This fear can come from many places. Ian gives an example of someone being made fun of when they made a presentation at school. This will make them associate standing up and speaking in public with an unpleasant feeling. There is somewhere in the unconscious dialogue that tells you you are not interesting or good enough. This roots from the incident at school. While you may not remember why you have those feelings, you still feel them. Ian says a big part of moving forward is understanding where the fear came from. This will enable you to reframe what meaning you have associated with presenting. You also have to pay attention to the skill side. This will include what formats you use for presenting, how do you build your confidence to hold your presenter status and how do you engage the audience. One side of being able to present with confidence is the skill you have. The other side is feeling comfortable trying to present or removing the fear. What should you start doing to build confidence?  There are many approaches. Ian suggests listening to your internal dialogue. You have to see what phrases you are saying to yourself when you are presenting. You should then be going down a timeline and identifying the root and where this started. This is when you try to question, challenge and reframe what it is. This will give you the resources to feel better about presenting. This will further lead to the ability to present with confidence. There will not be an immediate, huge difference but you can increase confidence quite quickly after a few coaching sessions. It would also be useful to work on different presentation formats. Ian also reiterates how important practice and knowing your subject is. This can lead you to being able to present confidently. He also suggests thinking about what is the worst that could happen. For example, if you are worried about being asked a question you don't know the answer to. Ian explains how very rarely does anyone expect every person to have every answer at their fingertips. What do you do when you make a mistake? It is human to make mistakes. You should be assertive to correcting your mistake. Ian does, however,

Kevin Appleby is joined by Andrew Tapson, experienced portfolio CFO, to talk about becoming a CFO to fast growth startups. How did you start being a CFO for various companies? As a teenager Andrew was surrounded by peers who were massively influenced by others and the group above. This is shown as 5 went on to be engineers and 5 to accountants! He at first wanted to be an accountant but then realised he wanted to get into business as he saw it as the place to be. Andrew went to the big six (as it was then) for interviews. This lead to six offers. He decided to go with Arthur Andersen. This was because the people were interesting and they paid a bit more. The Big Bang then took place in London which led to Andrew working for a subsidiary of Bank of America. This set the tone for the next 30 years. It was all about finding a problem, finding a pragmatic solution and then executing it. Andrew then became a finance director in Paris and then moved on to work for AT&T Capital. He continued to move to various places including Dutch bank ING. He then ended up as a CFO in 2011 and went on to be CEO. How do you pick up the skills you don’t learn in exams?  You don't go on courses in how to shut down companies. Andrew says it comes back to heads-up management. It doesn't matter where you are in an organisation, walk around with your head up, talk to people and be intensely curious. Andrew is not keen on job titles. It didn't matter what his job title was, he just did what needed to be done. He used to call his job title the minister without portfolio. Changing the description of a finance director to CFO puts it on the same level as CTO, CMO etc. This will mean you are looking across the business helping other people and your team as you are in it together. Andrew saw in larger organisations that the CFO became the focal point as much as the CEO. Despite them having different skill sets, Andrew prefers when the CFO and CEO are walking side by side. This means if the CEO is seeing an issue, they have their trust lieutenant next to them. This will get them that different perspective and get better results. There needs to be a partnership there. Why are you called to fast scale startups?  Start up businesses sometimes have a 5 people with all C titles. Andrew aims to make them all a team. At ING there was a scaled down board with four people together who trusted each other. Andrew describes a venn diagram where connections between people are in the middle. At this board in there were a lot of connections and complimentary skills. Usually Andrew is found by fast scale startups when their Venn diagram isn't working, or there's a three-legged stool with one leg. Without balance there is bound to be mayhem. Andrew knows he is someone who understands team and partnership and has done a lot. He also knows how dangerous he is with all this knowledge but he is also good at knowing when to call another expert in. He emphasises that you need to know what you are not expert in so you can talk to someone who is more expert. What are the differences of being a CFO at corporate and portfolio level? Kevin and Andrew agree on a general rule that a CFO needs to have 3 things that they know about everything and also someone who knows the detail. CFO-ing in corporate land compared to portfolio CFO-ing is having that network behind you. In corporate life, Andrew didn't really have that. Now his network is a lot more. This means he has people he would call on because they know something more in depth than he does. Within this network there is a strong degree of mutuality. This level of trust comes from shared values. The key value with this is the trust. You hear about people going to help a founder and then stealing their idea. That is not what it is about for Andrew. It is more about helping younger people on their journey step by step. Andrew's role here is to show them the way,

Kevin Appleby is joined by Paul Marchant to discuss his fast track to CFO at the Rail Safety & Standards Board. Where did the fast track to CFO start? Paul qualified at a small firm in Birmingham and then proceeded to move into politics for a few years. The political world gave him certain skills that are still useful in his current role. He then transferred back to finance 7 years ago. Paul's role when moving back into finance was an management accountant role at the RSSB. Management accounting, Paul says, is a good step in. This is because you are dealing with decision making for the rest of the business and providing information for decisions that need to be made. It's an opportunity to not only give data but also show you can provide insight and thinking. How much of a politician does a CFO need to be?  Paul says a CFO massively needs to be a politician. Similarly to politics, as a CFO you have to deal with different stakeholders and you need to evangelise your position. The biggest similarity Paul identifies, is the messaging. You need to take complicated concepts and communicate them in a way that people can understand and get on board with. As CFO you know all the numbers but you need to put them into key messages that are compelling. One of Paul's first tasks he was given after he made his fast track to CFO was to reform the pension scheme. Translating the complexities of a pension scheme to people on the ground is difficult. 2 or 3 clear messages would be most helpful. Within your communication you also have to be empathetic and understanding of the fact you are dealing with people's lives. What happened from day one that got you that fast track to CFO?  When you join a new role it will take 6/12/18 months to get your head around the new business and how it operates. Paul explains that he was possibly put on a talent list. 18 months into his role at RSSB, Paul was asked to become a senior management accountant. This was with a view for him to take on the role of head of finance 8 months later. This is when Paul really felt imposter syndrome. RSSB brought in an interim head of finance with a view of developing Paul into this role. When you reached the head of finance role did you experience imposter syndrome? For Paul, he experienced imposter syndrome when moving from management accountant to senior management accountant. This was due to him not having managed line before and suddenly he was in charge of his peers. Your peers can struggle to see you in a new role and this can make you question yourself. When Paul reached the stage of head of finance on his fast track to CFO he saw the big task that was in front of him. This means he didn't have enough time to think about imposter syndrome. The best way, Paul says, to overcome imposter syndrome is to chuck yourself in and expose yourself to everything. To mitigate it, the urgency around the need for action Paul faced meant he would have to sink or swim. How did you take onboard skills on how to manage a team?  This is the first challenge you face that you did not pass exams in. Managing people is vital to having a successful team. The people side of things was Paul's biggest driver of imposter syndrome. Paul had a decent mentoring platform. These were mentors in and out of the business who he could discuss strategy with as he makes more difficult decisions. Paul mentions this being the first time he felt lonely in a role as you have previously been on the same level as others. He also mentions reading around as being very helpful for him. These books can help you understand different characters and how to manage them. Lastly, Paul's previous experience in politics means he can spot an agenda being formed early on. You're exposed to certain political environments where spotting warning signals early is very important. The move from head of finance to the board in your fast track to CFO ...