GrowCFO Show

Mike Henebery has been involved in private equity transactions for most of his career. He’s recently co-founded Titan Partners. Titan has just completed its first 8 figure fundraising deal helping fast-growing technology business Wise secure minority funding from Inflexion. Mike’s Career in Fundraising and Private Equity Mike is a qualified accountant, starting his career in Arthur Andersen. He quickly moved away from audit and into the world of deals and fundraising transactions. His 30-year career in deals started in Montagu Private Equity and then Gresham LLC. He moved on to found several businesses of which Titan is the latest. You can find out more about Mike in his Linkedin profile. What does Titan Partners do? In 2019 Mike launched a new consultancy: Titan Partners. The mission was about accelerating success for SME owners. Titan Partners offers DISRUPTIVE start-ups and scale-ups access to a diverse range of EQUITY and CREDIT CAPITAL solutions ranging from high net worth to institutional investors leveraging our own startup/scale-up fundraising. Titan Partners facilitates fast growth, disruptive and profitable SMEs with unfulfilled Big Hairy Audacious Goals and executes a clear exit strategy.  The steps: assess value objectively; access to capital on the best terms;  boost innovation (along with sales and profit); close out the transaction. Mike explains to us how leveraging Dr Dave Richards experience is key to step 3. These steps help owners fulfil their ambitions faster while still maximising value The GrowCFO Fundraising Simulator While Mike has a wealth of experience in fundraising, this isn’t something that is common for accountants and CFOs. Over two-thirds of aspiring and first-time finance leaders have little or no fundraising experience. This can easily derail your career progression and leave you feeling unprepared when leading your first ever fundraise. If that’s you then GrowCFO can help. GrowCFO’s Fundraising Virtual Simulator provides you with essential first-hand CFO experience of leading and delivering an entire fundraising process from initial brainstorming through to deal completion. Our simulator is based on a real-life $12 million fundraise comprising equity and convertible debt for a high growth company with a pre-money valuation of $60 million. We have designed our simulator to help prepare you to confidently lead a range of fundraising deals so that you can thrive throughout the process. You will feel empowered to obtain the best available deal for your company. 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.  Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes.  You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

On this episode of the GrowCFO Show Susana Serrano-Davey and Kevin Appleby discuss how to Build Consensus so that your proposal is accepted without challenge. Have you ever wondered why some people can turn up to a meeting, present their proposals, and have them accepted without question? Yet at the same time, you bring your proposal forward and you get a hard time and no decision. Why? What are you doing wrong? The answer is you probably aren’t doing enough outside the meeting room to build consensus. If you put in the hard work before the meeting, it’s likely you will have a far easier ride in the meeting itself. There are three steps to build consensus Susana defines three steps to building consensus: Identify who you need to persuade. Who are the key stakeholders? These might not just be the meeting attendees. Some board members may take advice in some instances from their no.2 or other members of their own function. If that’s the case, you need the advisor on your side and saying the right things when they advise their boss. Engage with each of your stakeholders in an appropriate way. Find out what their issues are and talk about them before the meeting. It might require a formal meeting. It might just be a chat at the coffee machine. Adapt your proposal to take account of their feedback. The consultation process is bound to give you some new information that will make the proposal better. Make sure you recognise this information and make the updates to your initial proposal. Listen to the whole episode to find out more. 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.  Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes.  You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

Pinky Jangra teaches resilience to individuals and teams. She joins Kevin Appleby on the GrowCFO Show to explain how to create a resilient finance team. About Pinky Jangra Pinky has delved into many branches of human development and behaviour, enabling her to build a rich understanding of the human experience – mind, emotions, body, behaviour and soul. Pinky has been teaching her own courses since 2015. She delivers her proprietary Resilience Training to a variety of audiences online, in person, in business and personal environments.  She combines her human development knowledge with 10+ years of corporate and consulting experience to help organisations with other people related areas including wellbeing, culture, change management and leadership development. Following this path enables Pinky to do what she loves – “leading people towards their greatness, growth and transformation. I love seeing people blossom. I love seeing them step into their own power and unlock their inner genius. We are not here to play small, to be bystanders, to be at the whim of our circumstances, beliefs and other people’s expectations. We are powerful creators, each bearing gifts and talents, we are able to overcome even the toughest challenges. We’re here to make our lives, our teams, our companies and our world better together.” How to create a resilient finance team Pinky says it depends on what your focus is for the training. If you’re doing resilience training for individuals, or for the team as a whole. Whichever it is, the first thing she starts with in all her training is self awareness skills. The first thing you have to understand is what’s going on in any person’s mind, emotions, body behaviour, any given time. So that’s really what you do to set the foundation. And then if you are doing something for a team you can start looking at a vision of what you actually want to create, collectively, or you can do it for an individual. Visioning is only the start. Pinky teaches five or six different elements of resilience. Some people just say, oh, to build your resilience, you need to just work on your mindset, or you need to do some exercise. But you are a holistic being, everything about you is a system, everything is working together. Pinky does look at mental resilience, looking at your own mindset. But theres much more. She then considers emotional resilience, what do you do when you’re stressed? And how are you handling difficult emotions and anxiety? And so on? Are you processing them? Are you regulating them? Pinky has a whole toolkit to help you. Then there’s also behavioural resilience. So what are you doing? Are you one of those people who just says yes to everybody? And then you wonder why you’re so overwhelmed as a simple example. Using these techniques together, you end up creating a resilient finance team Listen in to the full recording as Pinky tells us much much more about each element of resilience. 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.  Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes.  You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

Tom Berry joins us on the GrowCFO Show to talk about communications. Tom is passionate about building businesses, creating brilliant places to work, teaching kids and making people happy. His background is in journalism and communications. These days he teaches business in a secondary school and has several non-executive directorships. We discuss communicating in a crisis. Communicating in a crisis isn’t easy Tom’s main advice is “Don’t Panic”. Communicating in a crisis needs to be calm and clear. Honesty is important, and it can be a mistake to hide bad news. The CFO needs to assess their skills. Just because the CFO has all the information doesn’t make the CFO the right person to communicate it. If communication isn’t your strength then get somebody else to deliver the message. Tom has much more to say than just this. Listen to the recording to get Tom’s full advice on communicating in a crisis. Tom Berry as a Non Executive Director Tom moved from being a financial journalist to running a communications agency. He went on from there to become a Non-Executive Director. Tom tells us how that journey came about and his passion for working with mental health charities. Why a CFO should also be a NED Tom advises CFOs to consider taking on a Non-Executive role too. It gives an insight into a different organisation, allows you to see first-hand how other companies work. A good NED listens and is constructively critical. The CFO can enhance their skills by learning to do this. The transfer of ideas across organisational boundaries can be invaluable. CFOs can bring ideas back to their own business. What makes a good CFO? Tom has worked with quite a few CFOs. He believes a good CFO is somebody who will look very closely at the underlying truth and tell the board the truth. A good CFO doesn’t talk to the board that often, but when the CFO needs to communicate he will do so and you know it will be important. There’s no point in repeatedly talking about the status quo. 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.  Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes.  You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

One of the first tasks you have as a new finance leader is creating a blueprint for your finance function, and the other parts of the business you have responsibility for. Susana Serrano-Davey tells us how she uses a heat map for change to determine what needs to be done and in what order. Susana outlines a five step process to create a heat map for change. You have just arrived in your new finance leader role. Chances are you have been hired to fix stuff. Besides the things you know you have to fix there will be other things to change. You may well have your own opinions on what the solutions are and what needs to be done. Susana councils us to proceed with caution and follow a process. Step 1: Dont start too quickly You need to be mindful of your new situation. You need to get to know the organisation. How does your leadership style work within the culture of your new employer? The first few weeks are all about discovery, building relationships and finding out how things work around here. Until you understand these it’s too early to implement change. Step 2: Beware of the pitfalls Change will fail if you haven’t taken the time to build relationships. Take time to meet with the key stakeholders, and to really understand the nature of the problem. Make sure you ask the right questions. Why are things not working? Why those particular things? There may be a variety of issues to explore. Why is it so difficult to report? Why are we getting the wrong numbers? Or, why are suppliers not being paid? Why aren’t we closing on time? Whatever the question there are reasons behind it you need to know about. Make sure you involve the people at the coal face in the solution. They will know more about the problems than you do. They will buy into the solution and the business change if they think they created it. Don’t be a know-it-all super CFO. Be humble. Even if you think you have seen it all before. Then you can build from that. Step 3: Draw a Heat Map for Change The heat map is simple. It’s a 2×2 matrix. Take your team off-site to populate the heat map. This way you get consensus about the problems, their importance and their ease to fix. First look at the problems and agree on your level of concern about each. Rank them red amber or green. Park the greens, and then map the reds and ambers on the matrix according to ease of fixing. Heat Map for Change Step 4: Build a plan The heat map will help you identify what needs to be done. It helps you prioritise what comes first. You need to turn this into a plan that identifies specific tasks, assigns responsibilities, and sets a timeline. Plan in detail for the first 90 days and an outline for the quarters that follow. Stop the bleeding first. This will create some quick wins with a big impact. Then think about the big projects. You may want to take in some low hanging fruit. This will give you some further successes to celebrate while the longer-term changes are being worked on. Step 5: Implement Implement the 90-day plan. At the end of 90 days take time to celebrate success. Review what went well, what could have been better and plan the next 90 days. Before you plan again you need to update the Heat Map for Change and make sure that any new or changed priorities are reflected in the plan 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.  Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes.  You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

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. Almost 90% of finance leaders believe they need to automate their finance function but only a third feel like they need transformation to do so. This shows us that people are aware of the problem but don’t want to acknowledge it. Correlation between the tech side and the people side Finance leaders want and need more time to become part of the strategic side. Many from the survey shared that they still spend time fixing the basics. Do the introspective look and see where you can take the low-hanging fruit and be that winner no matter the size of the success. You want to find a way to automate the process and make reporting more forward-looking so the focus is more on goals. This gives you an opportunity to start doing multi-functional analysis. Have these conversations about growth and how this will be beneficial for the whole organisation. Should CFOs push for bigger finance function budget? It’s an important investment. 47% of people in the survey are confident their team can take on the demand of capturing valuable insights and create data sets that lead to better decision making. 92% also know they need to be more forward-thinking.  You need to spend money to invest money. You invest in the raw materials to make it a finished product. It is the same with services and from a transformation standpoint.  To enable this transformation you have to look at it collaboratively. It is not just an investment in finance. You don’t want it to be just finance asking for a larger budget, but show how this will allow the COO, CSO, CEO etc to become more efficient too. Imposter syndrome being a big concern It is a self-diagnosed issue that finance leaders put themselves in. Finance is the central hub for data and information to pass through. About 90% agreed it was time to change the way they were perceived. You should see yourself as the scorekeeper, not the imposter. This should be when you want to change how you are perceived rather than just being a scorekeeper and reporting results, you should become a performance driver. You want to identify options that are backed by data. If you see something, say something. It’s right for you to ask because you are a central repository of insight. Change the mindset from imposter to decision-maker.  Three main points to be a resurgent CFO 1/ Aligning finance with operations is a critical must-have. You can’t work in a silo.  2/ Integrating FP&A with every aspect of the business, not just finance. It is not just the budget repository. Build a bottom-up approach that is insightful.  3/ To become a strategic advisor, you have to invest in future-proofing your business. From a people and tech standpoint. Buy something that will last for 15-20 years from now. Reassess your current tech landscape, processes and people and find the fundamental gaps. 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.  Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes.  You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

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, the sizes of the companies and the industry boots.  This benchmark can very clearly show you where you are above and below the average of someone at your level at each of the skills. It also very clearly shows where your biggest gaps are. People could alternatively look to strengthen their strongest areas further. The skills you focus most on will depend on the direction you want to take your career. Focus on being very good at the things that are relevant to your role and not trying to be good at everything as it is unrealistic.  Some people are happy to work within the platform, which they can do within their GrowCFO premium subscription. Others may want to go a step further and get involved in a programme that is very structured and easy to work through. People could also benefit more from one-to-one professional mentoring. Everyone is in control of their CFO training.  The CFO qualification certificate was requested early on into GrowCFO. Anyone who does the Future CFO Programme or the CFO Programme will get a certificate at the end. This can be put in the qualification section of your LinkedIn profile and in your CV. This shows others you are motivated, aware of your gaps and you are working hard to address them. It will really make you stand out in your peer group.  GrowCFO’s training programmes focus on support GrowCFO does not only focus on training but also offers support. This is done by allowing questions to be asked and having interactions with the members. A lot of a CFO’s challenges are not black and white and there is no right or wrong answer, it therefore helps to be able to ask specific questions.  You have a chance to ask people in your peer group how they would deal with the challenges you are facing. They can also provide you with experiences of how certain things worked for them. This could extend to help with finance systems, for example, if you wanted to automate something or how they have done something before. The Finance Systems Survey really shows what people are using and what they like.  Training doesn’t just mean structured courses but also includes having a chance to talk to your peers and other experts. The Situation Room held on every other Friday gives you a chance to voice your challenges. Here there is usually someone who can give you an insight or advice as to what you could try. 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.  Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes.  You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

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. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars.  Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes.  You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

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 strategy Make more impact during Board meetings Grow 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 relationships Enhance your communication Improve 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 tasks Maximise your team’s performance Influence 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 role Getting more exposure to the Board Youngest person in the Board room Least industry knowledge in the management team Representing the firm externally Working outside of comfort zone Doing lots of things you have never done before Not 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 do Finance leader picks up many tasks outside of finance that nobody else is doing You are still too involved in the detail and unable to extract yourself for more value added tasks Lack of the right skills in the rest of the team to properly support you Company is growing but the finance team isn’t, more work falls to the same people Putting 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 strategically Unsure how to contribute towards strategic objectives Not being consulted on key decisions Never been involved in strategy before Lack 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 Feeling overwhelmed with tasks – Monday 24th January from 1pm to 1.30pm. Maximising your team’s performance – Tuesday 25th January from 1pm to 1.30pm. Influencing and obtaining people’s buy-in – Wednesday 26th January from 1pm to 1.30pm. 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.  Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes.  You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net