Acing your first 30 days as a new CFO
Traditionally, CFOs were referees, blowing the whistle on a foul, post-facto. They oversaw bookkeeping, financial reporting, and compliance?— everything that comes after the business is completed for the year.
Today’s CFO is no longer just the finance person. As a modern CFO, you are expected to be Chief Value Officers (CVO), a strategic influencer in the organization, overseeing procurement, investor relations, M&A, enterprise transformation, IT, ESG, board engagement and then some.
With all this in play, taking over the mantle can be a daunting task as a new CFO, and that’s exactly why we at Spendflo decided to chart out a roadmap for the first quarter. This article highlights the initial steps - the first 30 days.
Ignorance is your superpower
As a new CFO, you have the superpower of ignorance. Yes, you read that right. Irrespective of how much you research the organization you’ve joined, your knowledge is limited to what you see from the outside.?
Use this clean slate to draw an accurate and comprehensive picture of your new role and organization. Here’s how.
Build relationships
Use the first few days of your tenure to speak to people in the organization. Speak to every stakeholder you possibly can.
Functional/divisional leaders: Understand the structure of your organization. Familiarize yourself with the company’s products/services. Ask leaders questions about their challenges, needs, and financial prerogatives.
Finance teams: Speak to as many of your own team members as possible. Learn their challenges. Ask for their insights. Remember that those on ground have the best view. Also, learn their relationship with the rest of the organization.
Investors: Your success at a high-growth startup will depend on how well you meet investor expectations. Speak to key investors to know what their expectations are, how they envision the future, and what they would like to see.?
Customers: You don’t know how your business is doing until you’ve spoken to the customer. Set up meetings with some of your biggest customers and understand them in greater detail.
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"Be the one to always have business partners involved in the budgeting as well as the spending. Build speed and agility, but most importantly, connections throughout the organization. Keep everyone involved to have proactive persevere-or-pivot conversations."
— Chris Ortega , CEO, Fresh FP&A
Familiarize yourself with the tech stack
The finance tech stack is one of the most important toolsets within an organization. Yet, it is often underused.?
As a tech-savvy CFO, get ahead. Access every tool — however trivial it might seem — and try them yourself. Ask users about their opinion of the tool. Speak to the IT teams and see if they have suggestions.
Know your metrics
Before you set measures of success for your time as the company’s CFO, you need to understand the metrics currently used by the organization.
The goal of the first 30 days is to develop an intuition for how everything works. Test this intuition and strengthen it over the next few weeks.
This article is an excerpt of our ebook, '30-60-90 day Springboard For An Incoming CFO ', where we chart out a longer roadmap for new CFOs on how they can seamlessly get through their first quarter. Read it here to get a full rundown!
P.S: If you're an experienced CFO