Steve: Welcome to CFO Talk. My name is Steve Rosvold. I am the founder of CFO.University. Today, we have Hiten Keshave with us. Hiten is the CFO at PRP Solutions in Johannesburg, South Africa. He’s gone through a finance transformation at his company that I’m excited to have Hiten share with our Member Scholars. Welcome, Hiten.
As just about any finance professional knows, there’s a huge need for FP&A teams to become more strategic partners to the business. When we surveyed more than 300 CFOs on how FP&A can play a broader role in guiding corporate planning and performance, 75% said they wanted their teams to have a significant and strong impact on their organization—but only 46% believed they could have that kind of impact in the near future. What was the disconnect? The chief reason cited was a lack of time for strategic planning.
WHAT is Bottom Up Leadership?
Bottom-Up leadership is thinking differently and being the pioneer amongst the other executives who promote a better way of thinking and doing. Bottom up leaders contribute towards the career journey of an individual, with the principle of “lead as if you were following”.
This will not be news to some of you, but taking a route through Finance business partnering is now the best way to achieve your ambition of getting into a CFO role.
It used to be the case that financial control and reporting was the established path to the Chief Financial Officer’s chair. A solid Financial Controller was seen as not only the CFO’s right hand person, but the CFO’s natural successor.
This, I believe, is not the case any more.
There are three areas you need to develop in if you want to be a good Chief Financial Officer or Finance business partner – business acumen, tools/techniques and behavioural skills.
And my intention is to unpack these three areas a little bit, so that you can get to grips with planning your development journey more effectively.
In another article I shared my belief that Finance business partner is the new best route to a CFO role. That is to say, core CFO skills are Finance business partnering skills. And well-developed Finance business partnering skills are what you need to be a CFO.
