Chief Financial Officer of H2 IT Solutions, Inc. supporting the Department of Defense with Software & Engineering solutions.
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CEOs and CFOs are both valuable strategic partners in any business, and to meet a company's future goals, it's crucial that the two work in alignment. Although they are both cut from the same cloth, they do come from different backgrounds, which can at times cause conflict between the two. CEOs are more often than not business-minded individuals and are deemed entrepreneurial innovators in their industry. CFOs are accountants who have repositioned themselves in a new direction that focuses on business strategies rather than journal entries. When the two C-suite members are in battle, the whole company can feel it as tensions can arise when CEOs are not willing or prepared to listen to their partners.
CFOs have long played the role of the bad guy in the business industry, commonly referred to as the one who says yay or nay among the company's spending. As a CFO myself, I have experienced many times the assumption that bookkeeping and statements were more my forte but that business directives such as business development and operations were not. It can be frustrating to know that even with the CFO's growing role in stakeholder management and being the data driver in not only strategic management but in innovation, some company CEOs can still miss the mark.
For many CEOs, trust is earned, and despite the CFO's clear-cut accounting policies and procedures, many tend not to see past what they have always done. When a CEO is unable to lead a company to its future because they lead from the past, more often than not, that company will eventually fail. CEOs need to trust that their CFOs are there to help keep the company moving forward and are no longer simply the number crunchers they have been defined as for so long.
When a CEO needs unbiased advice and support, the CFO is someone they can turn to, as they know the company just as much, if not more, than the CEO. This is when those candid conversations about operational issues need to happen. These are the moments that will build the trust so desperately needed between the two to promote positive change within the company.
Learning your CEO's communication habits and management style and retaining the intuitive emotional intelligence that comes with understanding your CEO versus opposing them can help build the bridge between you. I have heard of many cases in which a CFO hears there is just no way to move forward, and they feel invalidated and unheard by leadership. But CFOs cannot simply sit back and watch the numbers decline. The need for growth driven by data and team-building innovation is a constant motive for any CFO.
To earn that trust and rebuild any broken bridges, CFOs need to pull their heads out of the books and nurture intuitive traits that encompass good communication skills, transformational leadership and a general understanding that this is a partnership of yin and yang. CEOs need leaders who refuse to be "yes men" and who not only shine a light on potential risks and implications of past and future decisions but have the insight to provide effective solutions.
CEOs need to see that their CFO can provide not only accuracy in the numbers but also honesty in an environment where many people might simply tell them what they want to hear. CFOs need to have good relationships with their business partners and leaders. When the data doesn't support the initiative, CFOs will be forced to play devil's advocate and convince leadership of this while providing alternative tactics.
For companies to flourish, these C-suite members need to meet in the middle and provide the top-level management an organization deserves. Implementing skills sets such as communication, emotional intelligence, mediation and plenty of patience will assist in most cases in aligning the two into one. The ultimate goal is the success of the company, its employees and its stakeholders, and for that, the two will need to meet in the middle.
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