or how to remove hubris from finance

I wrote this after reading a “trade journal” article on “The Digital CFO”. It started ok but after the fifteenth use of the word “transformation” I realized what I was dealing with here was a work of hubris, full of buzzwords, and set at such an abstract and idealized level that…I would lose my train of thought. Apparently, the digital CFO can do everything (29 skill areas in 9 domains) by themselves, can see into the future, has unlimited emotional capacity and is a technologist, marketing expert, data analyst and monk all rolled into one. Not mentioned at all in the article were limiting factors of any kind (like having to sleep, or failure) or the necessity and challenge of working with other human beings or the idea of sharing such an incredible burden on many shoulders.

The following is fictional. Any similarities with anyone, anywhere are purely coincidental.

8:30 First things first. A call with the exec team via an encrypted chat room. I took a professional development seminar on encryption a couple of years ago. My assistant presses the start button. We go through the lagging KPIs we use for everything. Good ones get a piñata emoji and for the bad ones, I communicate effectively with weighted feedback about our goals and hold no one responsible. I talk about bringing in newer, leading KPIs in the future; no one has any questions. My assistant presses the stop button.

9:30 With a disruptive mindset, I interrupt the finance team, who are busy carrying out the extra manual processes made necessary by our digitalization and automation agenda. I empower them motivationally: “You must become Business Partners,” and encourage them that things will get better after the Transformation Project.

9:59 I pause to ask my assistant what the differences are exactly between agile mindset, agile methods, agile management, agile leadership, agile certificates and agile something. My assistant is much younger than I am and understands this shit. I stop him after 30 seconds because the next meeting is about to start.

10:00 Meeting with the department heads on translating strategy to operations. We get pumped up watching an old Steve Jobs videos (crappy resolution, though). We align and prioritize the five year departmental roadmaps. The expensive IT consultant talks to us about tech debt. This darkens the mood but no one takes responsibility. My ability to see into the future was less well-honed five years ago, when we decided to outsource the entire IT-competence as part of a cost-saving drive. We agree on a handful of “premium” (we have to sell it) workarounds, which the operational teams will carry out, starting tomorrow; everyone brightens up. The head of operations is off sick. He should have taken the burnout workshop, but was too stressed.

12:55 Unfortunately, someone I don’t know forgot to reserve a table for the C-Suite in the canteen. I make a mental note to hold someone responsible. I don’t want to sit with the riffraff, so I eat my sandwich outside whilst practicing mindfulness with my left brain and catching up on linked in with my right. I like some stuff, especially transformation stuff from big consultancies.

13:00 A meeting on new business models with the new new business model team. This was basically formed so someone I don’t know could be made a team leader. My assistant liked their promotion post on linked in for me. No one has had time to prepare for the meeting so we talk about cool, abstract concepts which worked somewhere else and agree to meet again next quarter. The team leader suggests we should hire an agency which creates business models for others, out of the box. We must do something with all our data.

15:00 I meet the internal marketing team and head of employee happiness (life cycle and churn) to discuss communicating the current month’s slight underperformance at the next all-hands. The Gen-Zers on staff will start having existential crises, so we want to get ahead of the curve and remind them about our vision and sustainable approach. We might just give them the performance bonus anyway.

16:09 Get stopped by legal counsel on my way to the next meeting. Send assistant ahead to get coffee. I launch into data protection regulations but this tails off pretty quickly before he asks me where he should file his expenses. Ah.

16:30 Investor call. Selling the performance dip to the investors is harder—they demand more breaking down of organizational silos with knowledge-sharing and data-something, which sounds expensive. This is the quality I have to deal with; I calmly explain that knowledge-sharing was a thing over a year ago. One of the investors is an non-exec director on data-something company’s board. My assistant make a note we should get in touch.

17:30 The idealized CFO-portrait doesn’t mention home or family, so I completely neglect them throughout the day. Don’t give them a second thought! A round of golf will surely strengthen my resilience. I think empathetically of the lead auditor as I tee off…

THWACK!