There’s No Such Thing As Too Early in CFO Readiness Development

There’s an understandable view that getting ready to be a CFO or Finance Director invariably takes many years.

The other thing that’s common is to see CFO readiness in terms of special leadership skills that are, like, advanced learning...

... like something that’s only available to you when you’ve done your years of experience within the Finance team.

Neither of those are true.

It doesn’t need to take many years to be CFO-ready...

... (although sometimes it does... but that shouldn’t matter to you, even if you’re ambitious, so long as you’re moving in the right direction).

No waiting, No more exams

And you don’t have to wait to start practicing the things that will set you apart as CFO-ready. They are not things you layer on top of your technical skills, like you have to wait until you’ve got the technical bits covered before you can start on ‘the advanced’ parts.

CFO-readiness is not about some advanced skills.

Does that surprise you? I’m expecting it will.

They are seriously not advanced. You can start developing them easily when you’re 18 or 20, or whenever the lightbulb goes on – perhaps that’s today!

You don’t need to take exams to learn them.

And you can practice them alongside all the technical things you learn as a Finance professional.

And building them up leads to the two things that set you apart as being CFO-ready – business acumen and leadership.

Here’s a 4-minute video where I talk more about this:

And I’m hoping that gets you interested enough to read this slightly longer article, because I really think it will help you.

https://www.superchargedfinance.com/blog/accelerate-your-cfo-readiness

As always, let me know what you think!

Finance Pro to CFO Video Series

My intention is to put together a more in-depth video series (FREE) that looks at how to develop yourself so that you reach CFO readiness – Finance Pro to CFO is the working title for that at the moment.

That’s all in the runup to opening enrolment for CFO Readiness Builder again in the last week of March.

So, watch out for more details over the next few weeks!

The Purpose-Driven CFO Newsletter

You can subscribe to The Purpose-Driven CFO Newsletter by clicking the ‘+ Subscribe’ button at the top of this page. If you want to hear my thoughts each week, exploring how we can raise our game in the Finance function by starting with the end in mind, consider subscribing. All it means is that LinkedIn will notify you when I publish a new edition.

About the Author – Andy Burrows

I’m Andy Burrows, and I’m Founder and CEO of Supercharged Finance, a provider of online learning and coaching, aimed at helping Finance professionals get better at helping the businesses they work for.

I qualified as a chartered accountant in the UK, and have worked for more than 25 years as a senior Finance professional in a variety of businesses of different sizes and sectors.

I’m now a popular writer in Finance and Accounting. In 2019 Anders Liu-Lindberg described me as one of the "Top voices on LinkedIn for Finance, accounting and FP&A". And in 2024 I was given official LinkedIn Top Voice status (see the little blue badge on my profile!)

If you’d like to hear even more from me, go to my profile and click the follow button!

CFO Readiness Builder

If you are keen to progress quickly in your Finance career, you need to focus on the skills and capabilities that make the difference.

Our CFO Readiness Builder program is designed to help you to do that. CLICK HERE to find out more and register your interest, either for you or for your team.