We’ve wrapped up our seventh CFO Incubator series with a group of fantastic mentors including Gavin Wilkie, Greg Botham, Kate Beattie and Gerhard Ziems.
They each spoke of the individual challenges they faced on the road to becoming a CFO. One thing became clear: The path to CFO is not straightforward. There is no magic formula: A+ B doesn’t always equal CFO.
The increasing change and transformation of modern businesses means that the role of a CFO has evolved to include responsibilities in various departments such as IT, HR and legal in addition to helping drive the strategy for their organisation. A set of rapidly expanding duties has created a huge personal challenge for many finance leaders and executives.
If you want to be an effective CFO – what should your priorities be? What pitfalls do you need to look out for?
Watch some of the key tips from of our CFO mentors on what it takes to be an effective CFO:
1. Kate Beattie, FD for Endeavour Energy Drinks “To be in the Lead Finance, CFO role, you can’t be spending your day running the Finance function… make sure that you know what it looks/ feels like to run the business not the function”
2. Gavin Wilkie, CFO for Quantium “It’s hard to be a commercial business partner if you’re not passionate about the business you are in”
3. Gerhard Ziems, CFO for Pacific National “Do things in your career outside of Accounting & Finance to become a much better CFO”
4. Greg Botham, CFO for Sydney Airports “Be curious, keep learning – work out what you don’t know and go work out how to learn about it urgently”
We would like to thank each of the mentors for their wonderful insights and their honest and genuine advice to the group.
Are you wanting to become a CFO but want first-hand advice from a mentor who’s already achieved success?
The CFO Incubator program is designed for accounting and finance professionals looking to take the next step in their careers with access to leading CFOs over a series of intimate breakfast sessions.
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE CFO INCUBATOR
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