The CFO Playbook

Don Dixon has held finance positions in startups and established organizations, been through acquisitions and IPOs, and is now CFO at DataStax. In his experience, rising to the CFO position requires understanding something much more complicated than finance: people.Once you’re at that executive position, managing numbers is a smaller part of your daily job than managing the people on your team.Don is so committed to empowering the people in the finance department that he doesn’t even think of it as managing. He sees his role as closer to coaching. Instead of trying to mold each person to fit DataStax, he helps them improve their all-round skill sets so that they can achieve their career goals.Even if that means employees end up leaving for a higher position the organization can’t currently offer, Don knows he’s done his job.On this episode of The CFO Playbook, Don discusses how to help the finance department feel connected to customers and how to give everyone on the team just the right amount of transparency. He also explains why your IPO delivery team should be as small as possible.Connect with Don on LinkedIn.If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, checkout Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In October 2020, Malcolm Finn followed his conscience to chemicals company Johnson Matthey, which is transitioning its business model to focus on producing clean energy sources. As Director of Finance Operations and Control, Malcolm has been a key figure in that change.Guiding a company through such a major transition would have been challenging even for a seasoned leader at the best of times. But not only was Malcolm new to the company, most of the team was working from home, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.Everyone has struggled with the world-altering impact of the pandemic to some degree, and leaders can no longer afford to ignore this emotional fallout. In addition, in the midst of such uncertainty, confident assertions that everything will be fine don’t carry the same weight they once did.Now, the best leaders are those who treat their employees with understanding and leniency, while also admitting that they don’t have the answers to every problem.On this episode of The CFO Playbook, Malcolm explains the learnings he wants to take from remote work, why companies should question the purpose of digital innovations and why agility has never been a more valuable skill in a leader.  Connect with Malcolm on LinkedIn.If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, checkout Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paraag Amin’s route to becoming CFO of omnichannel digital marketing company dotdigital isn’t conventional — but he believes it set him up for success. Paraag started his career as an analyst working for investment banks, beginning at Goldman Sachs and including Citi and RBS. These jobs taught him what makes a promising investment opportunity — and the best way to present a company as a promising investment opportunity.His experience on one side of the transaction helped Paraag transition to the other side. He founded luxury lifestyle platform StyleCard in 2011, and in 2018 he was hired as dotdigital’s CFO. Helming the finances of a publicly traded company brings extra pressure, but knowing the company has a strong business model behind it makes him feel secure.On this episode of the CFO Playbook, Paraag explains why analysts make great CFOs, his inside take on pitching investors, and why knowing an industry before you dive in will help you wrangle with the numbers in your first few months.Connect with Patrick on LinkedIn.Connect with Paraag on LinkedIn.If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, check out Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andreas Melzer joined the consumer research company Quantilope two years ago and is the company’s Associate Director of Finance, which is similar to a Chief of Staff role with a finance focus. An advocate for helping SaaS startups stay on top of their finances, he published a B2B SaaS finance model that has received more than 8,000 downloads. While determining which KPIs and metrics a company should share while fundraising, Andreas believes in being transparent about the state of the business while keeping things simple.  Quantilope leverages a “land and expand” strategy. As a result, net retention is a main KPI that is a centerpiece of its pitch to investors. Additional data, such as how long it takes to upsell, is also included, “but really net retention is what it comes down to,” he says. On this episode of The CFO Playbook, Andreas talks about how he’s scaling Quantilope’s international finance team, why you shouldn’t be tracking more than 10 KPIs, and how he’s carved out a niche as a roving advisor with a finance focus. An avid chess player, Andreas also applies lessons from the chess board to the world of business strategy.Connect with Andreas on LinkedIn.Connect with our host Ross on LinkedIn.If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, checkout Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now CFO of affiliate marketing network Awin, Virpy Richter has never been the kind of finance professional who prefers to hide in a corner with her spreadsheets. Not only has she worked all over Europe, for startups and big companies, she’s also held positions in human resources and legal departments.Diving into different cultures has taught Virpy the importance of local knowledge, especially in companies with a global reach. Understanding the similarities and differences between how things work in other countries underscored for her the value of adapting to an environment, while also standardizing frameworks and processes for the sake of efficiency.Far from stymying her financial career, these international insights into workplace culture make Virpy more qualified to hold the CFO spot. As she argues, CFOs today need to think more like business partners than number-crunchers if they want to claim a seat in the C-suite.On this episode of The CFO Playbook, Virpy explains the challenges and benefits of parachuting into a foreign workplace, why CFOs need to embrace technology for the sake of their employees and how Awin is rethinking its approach to work-life balance.Connect with Virpy on LinkedIn.Connect with our host Ross on LinkedIn.If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, checkout Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lessons we cover in this episode: Successful CFOs look at the big picture. As the source of financial truth, CFOs need to be able to look at any number and know if it’s “true” or not. Decide where you want to be on the spectrum of strategic vs operational. A good CFO needs to be a thinker and business partner, but they also need to be a doer (able to build a team, get work done, etc.). When you first step into a new role, focus on people, process and technology. When you get it wrong, acknowledge it, fix it, forgive yourself and move on. Focus on 2 things as a CFO: growing yourself, and growing your team. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lessons we cover in this episode: As you progress in your career, your responsibility is increasingly to ask good questions - not have the right answers You should maintain a humble mindset as you grow in your career When you’re a CFO and have a firm grasp on the numbers, you often have the right answer on decisions. But in feeling that you’re right - there can be a temptation to not listen to what others think. You need to maintain a listening posture in your team, even if you don’t agree with all that’s being said As a CFO, you need to take responsibility for your team’s output, be aware of the big picture and the details, and be forward-thinking - you can’t rest on past successes, or simply repeat the plan that you ran last year Find out what your team’s goals are, and help them succeed by achieving their goals The top things that make a great leader To be a great CFO, you have to learn to prioritize and know what you should say “yes” to, and what you should say “no” to. You can’t do everything. The benefits of having 1 on 1’s with your team Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this brief episode, Rob passes the torch to the new host of The CFO Playbook, Ross MacKay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The CFO Playbook is taking a break until April 29th, but we’ll be back then with an exciting announcement followed by more interviews with some really incredible guests. Until then, we’d love to invite you to catch up on previous episodes at cfoplaybook.com or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and as always, thanks for listening. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After spending more than three decades in finance, Kelly Battles has come to appreciate that the budget isn’t the only balancing act CFOs have to master. The finance team needs to support the growth of the company, while also knowing when to implement limits. Kelly learned that lesson in her first operational finance role, at internet security company IronPort. Under Kelly’s six-year watch, IronPort’s worth grew from $2 million to $250 million. The company was eventually bought by Cisco for $830 million in 2007.To achieve that balance between growth and restriction, Kelly emphasizes a streamlined approach to data and robust company-wide communication.Data collection and utilization must be as simple, accessible, and connected as possible; this way, different parts of the business will be focused on the same information. As for the human element, Kelly says there are two levels of culture — culture with a “capital C” and culture with a “lowercase C” — both of which are crucial.On this episode of The CFO Playbook, Kelly explains why creating a positive workplace culture is more important than many people think, how to be a cross-functional business partner and how to build a technology infrastructure that best serves the company.Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn.Connect with our host Rob on LinkedIn.Full show notes and resources can be found at cfoplaybook.fm.If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, check out Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices