You've moved from being the internal face of finance to the
external face. That's a big, big shift, OK.
You're then the person that's supposed to have all the answers
as far as the board's concerned, as far as customers are
concerned, the CEO stand to rely on you a lot.
So it is a lonely place. Before we dive back into today's
conversation, I want to share something important.
This episode includes a pay partnership with Better Help, a
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If you've been thinking about it, sometimes the best
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Dems Podcast, where we share the stories of extraordinary people
and dissect hot, relevant topics that shape our world.
From visionary leaders to trailblazing creatives, we
uncover the mindset, strategy, and grit behind greatness.
Whether it's business, culture, or personal growth, we ask the
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Breakthrough, starts here. Licensing Reimagined.
Hi, ladies and gentlemen, and once again welcome to the
Kingdom's podcast and Diary of a CFO.
And today I've got one be a very important guest, Barton out of
Newcastle, United Kingdom. Mcwalken, Kevin.
Agro CFO Champion Appleby, how are you today?
We're jumping into a boxing ring at a mola.
Yeah, with an interject like that, should I have some some
inspiring music playing behind me as I walk into the ring?
Let's go, let's go. You know, I'm a martial artist,
you know, as well as a fight and expert.
And the interesting thing is that life is a fight.
Life is actually a fight. We, we have to fight a lot of
factors, you know, even business, you should know that
you've been a business for years and you've had to fight a lot of
wars and you know a lot of battles.
And that is why you are inspiring the world, you're
inspiring the next generation of CFOs and that is why you're
highly appreciated. Of course, you've fought many
battles and of course, not what everything, but we've won the
important ones in order to be where you are today, and you'll
highly appreciate it. So I'm going to read your intro,
especially curated for you. Today we are joined by Kevin
Appleby, powerhouse in the financial chip space.
Kevin is the Head of Partnerships at Growth CFO, host
of the Growth CFO Show Forecast and a mentor to finance leaders
navigating the fast changing world of technology.
A career spanning consulting, transformation coaching and
fractional CFO leadership, Kevin has helped countless finance
leaders move from isolation to E July, from numbers to strategy.
On this episode of Indians podcast and directors, CFO will
dive into the mindset shift strategies and stories behind
his journey and uncover the practical wisdom he shares with
leaders around the world. Ladies and gentlemen on today
Walker, Kevin, Mr. Go, CFO. Adam, thank you hugely for
having me as a guest on the show.
Really excited to be there. Be here today.
That was a good introduction. AI wrote that very well for you.
I am AI tati Mullah ICMS So what do you expect?
Like trends knew the assignments.
They knew what they were doing with that name.
Yeah, they kept it a secret. So they just did not want, you
know, to be so open. That's why they did not need me.
Artificial intelligence, they said, let's code it, let's code
it. You know, in more than 30 years,
people will understand. And of course I love my initials
AI so. Initial AI The future is yours.
The future is yours, Alamola. The future is by and of course,
you know, when I see people get angry and say, oh, AI is coming
for our jobs. AI, I'm not coming for your jobs
guys. I am here to assist you.
AI is going to be an assistant, you know, not a not a
controller, not a people's jobs. We are helping people to become
more efficient so you can have a better quality of life and focus
on the major things, you know, major on the major and minor on
the minor. And how do you do that by
achieving efficiency. What does AI come to help to
achieve as a human race? Efficiency at first, that is me
to the world at AI. So our let's delve into your
journey and of course your mindset.
That's something I'd love to say that when you're employing a
person on your team, you need to look at three things, right?
You need to look at the mindset or the skill set and then the
tool set. So if the mindset is right, you
can train the skill sets and of course, the skill sets are
right. If you provide them with the
right tool set, they will definitely excel at whatever it
is that they do. Or Kevin, you've had to had a
fascinating caviar, you know, from TWC bullshit that PwC
background right to IBM to bushel to EDF and a personnel,
our growth CFO. So what mindset shifts you know
have actually defined your journey from being a consultant
to being a mentor, coach and a person thought leader for?
And the journey actually goes further back than that, Adam.
I'd, I'd already been spent three years of BDO qualifying to
be a chartered accountant, then ten years in the chemical
industry before I joined PwC. But yeah, 25 years as a
management consultant with PPWCIBM and Michelle and then as
an independent consult by myself.
So lots of mind shifts have taken place along the way.
Journey from consulting to mentor and thought leader for
CFOs. Like most of my career, it kind
of happened by accident. Wow.
People, people talk about planning a career.
Problem is, you can probably see what's ahead for I'll use the
phrase the next 100 days because I love that phrase.
But where do you want to be in three years time?
You can give some sort of vague answer, but.
Do you want to know? I want to be in three years
time? Yeah, I want to be in 2020. 8
That's probably a good answer. That's about as good as you get.
3 as time you've been in 2028. But that's the whole point.
No, 2019 I'd I'd left full time consultancy, I was working
independently, but working actually with a, a bunch of guys
who I knew back from PwC who'd formed their own consulting
practice and we're working on a pretty big project.
And along came this thing called COVID.
We, we were working with the British police forces doing
something called transforming forensics.
It was a fascinating project. It was a huge project but I
remember well my last face to face meeting with the client
team. We couldn't just couldn't meet
beyond one stage and for various reasons our involvement project
was was tapering down anyway. But COVID was the end of it.
And I remember stopping off at a branch of Costa Coffee because I
had some time to go before I need to get to the next place.
And a guy called Dan Wells been stalking me on LinkedIn and the
messages are going through, Oh, Kevin, I'm doing this thing
called Grow CFO, give me a phone call.
And I did started speaking to Dan and one thing led to
another. And Grow CFO ended up being my
main involvement across COVID when it couldn't do anything
else. And beyond COVID now, if we'd
sat down on New Year's Day 2020 and said, where do you want to
be in three years time, Kevin? Well, I'd never met Dan.
I'd never heard a gross CFO. Certainly nobody got any idea
what this COVID thing was coming around the corner.
So how on earth can you plan for three years ahead?
All that I knew as I was going to 2020 was I'd started teaching
in the classroom because a big thing of mine is to to give
things back to the next generation.
And I suppose that's the mindset that's key here.
I, I really do want to give something back to the next
generation. I'd go to 2020.
I was doing things in the classroom that no, I can reach
out to more people if I take some of this training and put it
online. COVID coming along forced me to
do that. I ended up doing it as part of
gross CFO because I saw that Dan and I working together had much
more power than us working separately.
But no, really all the way through, it's been this idea of
I want to give back to the next generation.
And a lot of the things I was doing in the classroom were all
about that experience of being out on a consulting assignment
and doing things for the client, asking the client's finance team
for information and to answer questions and so on that they
you couldn't easily answer. And then you'd go off as a
consultant, You'd apply your skills that came from activity
based costing, 0 based budgeting and so on to work out what
things cost, where you could save money to match costs and
revenues. Things that I believe should be,
it should have been a natural skill to a commercial finance
team, but so rarely found at the client.
So I ended up teaching folk how to do that sort of stuff in the
classroom. Wow, interesting stuff.
You know, it's the different level of understanding and
knowledge for me to be a teacher.
I did teach professional accounts and students and I
think I still feel blessed by that involvement in teaching
over time because he made me become a very well founded
professional and not just being, well, kind of professional,
having that problem solving mindset, you know, And in
economics, I learned that money is a store of value.
And when you provide value to people, you won't in turn get
value. So you are a very high value
person, right? And the whole journey from
teaching to consulting has had just one common denominator even
into thought leadership, right? That is solving people's
pinpoints, right? So what's your quick advice for,
you know, intending CFOs, you know, junk up and coming
professionals in terms of that growth mindset, I love the name
of the show, growth CFO. And when you look at the name of
my show, it has the title and of course the subtitle.
The subtitle is growth mindset, leadership, AI and business
insights. Of course, it very much fits
into my philosophy. That is the growth that the
mindset, the skill set and the tool set.
So from that framework, what's your advice to the young up and
coming generation? What kind of mindset should they
adopt? What kind of skill sets should
they look at developing? And of course, what kind of tool
sets should they look to utilize?
Right, Tool Sets is the easy one.
Don't worry about tool sets because what works today won't
work tomorrow and especially with AI coming along, you're
going to have to be incredibly agile and move from tool to
tool. The only advice I'd give the
upcoming CFO is don't. Do not get stuck in the the
past. You've got to keep looking and
moving forward with the tool set.
Skill set. Well skill set is really
important. You will learn a certain set of
skills to pass your exams. You learn another set of skills
as you rise up through the finance function and have to do
the various things that you would do within a business to to
run finance. But there's there's a point
where you switch from being a finance leader internally to
becoming ACFO. You switch from being the
internal face of finance to being the external face of
finance, and that means you've got to develop the right skills
to be able to do that. A lot of that's about
communication. It's about a communication, it's
about a commercial mindset, it's about understanding where the
other person's coming from. You will probably used as as
head of finance to still having your nose in an Excel
spreadsheet to producing a lot of the numbers yourself and to
then be working as a a business partner with the rest of the
business team. You move to CFO, you're copilot
to the CEO, you are working with the investors, you're working
with customers, you're working with suppliers, you may well
have the bank to talk to. And the last thing you're
probably doing is crunching the numbers yourself.
And you really are stepping outside of your comfort zone and
you've got to learn to live with certain degree of discomfort as
you do that. And that's when mindset, I
think, becomes then very, very important.
We ask CFOs to be master of so many things these days that it's
almost impossible to have all the skills you need.
But having the right mindset helps you through.
The biggest challenge to a new CFO is probably impostor
syndrome. It's probably lack of confidence
and it's probably task overwhelm because you've you've probably
not gone through there that process that delegates a lot of
stuff that you should delegate. You're still very hands on
yourself, yet you've got to be more hands off.
So you've got thinking space and can advise the business.
So mindset skill set, they're very strongly related.
You've got to be in a position to constantly learn.
The mindset has to be that that says I can do this, I just need
to go and acquire the skills. I could do this because it just
speaks to my favorite Bible verse.
Absolutely, absolutely. I can do all things.
If you're open to picking up the skills, you're open to asking
for help when necessary, asking for support.
And one of my big things is gratitude.
Be thankful for what you've got and the resources.
And I'm thankful every day that I've been given all the
resources I need and all the time I need to deliver my
mandate. Gratitude is good attitude.
Yeah, yeah. So long answer to a simple
question there. Thank you very much.
You know, sometimes you need that long walk to feed up in the
words of Nelson Mandela. So you talk about loneliness of
a CFO seat. We often talk about how lonely
the CFO world can E. Why do you think many finance
leaders struggle in silence? And how can communities like
Grow CFO change that pattern? You've moved from being the
internal face of finance to the external face.
That's a big, big shift. OK, You're then the person
that's supposed to have all the answers as far as the board's
concerned, as far as customers are concerned, the CEO stand to
rely on you a lot. So it is a lonely place.
Chances are you've got, if you're in that position of being
part of a scale up, chances are you've got a fairly small team
around you. You might not have a really
strong #2 you may have somebody who's very good at doing the,
the financial controllership sort of things, but are they
necessarily the commercial person that you need to bounce
ideas off? And that's where the issue
starts. Actually, it's one one of the
reasons behind Gross CFO taking off in the 1st place.
Dan Wells, founder. Dan was an equity partner in
KPMG and he was talking on a daily basis to KPMG clients who
were CFOs of scale UPS and he was finding repeatedly that
every CFO was talking to had the same problems.
And one of the concepts behind Grow CFO in the 1st place was
the idea that if you could just get these CFOs talking to each
other, they wouldn't have help to solve each other's problems.
It's about networking, sharing experiences, sharing what works,
what doesn't work, or just play, brainstorming what we've got to
do. And that was born out as well in
the very early days of Grow CFO, we found ourselves very quickly
in lockdown, lots of CFOs wondering what to do, how do we
survive, how do we claim this grant that grant, how do we
replan what the business is doing?
And we started something in Grow CFO called the Situation Room.
Literally, we just advertised that, hey, we're going to run
this thing called the Situation Room.
Friday lunchtime, we're going to switch the Zoom cameras on.
Here's the here's the link to join in.
Come along and let's have a chat.
Literally, that's how we started networking Grow CFO.
We built a community up very quickly of people who just plain
wanted to come along and talk and find out from other CFOs
what on earth they were doing at the moment about all these
problems that had suddenly come along out of nowhere.
Wow. That's the power of community.
The power of community is very, very strong.
Yeah, I come from the city, takes a village to raise a
child. And of course, businesses are
like our children. We are what I say our
brainchild. And yeah, it takes a lot to to
view them. And it's honestly to the right
ecosystem of our right minded individuals, right minded
individuals, individuals with a good mindset, with the right
skill set. And of course, utilize the right
tool sets. So our Speaking of the rules
here for ecosystem, are you able to tell us you know what makes
it more than just a network? Like how does it empower the
CFOs through collaborations, the technology adoptions, the
leadership support? Like what are the nitty features
that makes you different from just the regular community that
just sits and talks, right? Because I have a very big
program with no are too much talking.
See, talk is cheap and a lot of people in this age of time
suffer from something alcohol paralysis by analysis, right?
They absorb a lot of education, but they lack implementation.
So for me, I feel like success comes when you have the
execution or the implementation of the education.
Right. Then, yeah, have results.
So I'll love for you to speak to that.
Actually, that's sort of expanding on what we just talked
about. That idea of getting folk
together to brainstorm problems and sort things out for each
other is something that's the kind of echoes across a lot of
the stuff we do now in the gross CFO community.
We've got a membership platform and anybody come along and be a
grow CFO member for free and get some resources.
But if you're a paid member, you get into the learning system.
A lot of it is, well, it's aimed at finance people, which makes
us unusual because we've probably got more finance based
training you find anywhere else that's that's the sort of
self-service stuff fairly standard.
There's video on demand training, but on top of that, if
you're a grow CFO member, you can attend a certain amount of
live training, virtual classroom training.
It's like being in the classroom, but it's over Zoom.
And we've spotted the power of getting folk together in small
cohorts and letting them work together and spend an extended
period of time so they can get to know each other and support
each other. So we've got FP and a boot camp,
a finance business partnering boot camp, both of which are
available to gross CFO members, part of the membership.
And the way they work, each one of them, we, we run them over a
course of two months. And over those two months we do
7/2 hour workshops in small groups.
So we, we wouldn't really want more than somewhere between a
dozen and 20 people in a cohort. And they'll work in the
classroom with a trainer, they'll go into breakout groups,
they'll do case studies, and every one of those sessions will
end with practical, implementable stuff you can take
back to the workplace the next day.
We call it experiential learning.
I love that. Or you give people practical
skills they can use straight away #2 is you form peer groups
that can continue and support each other.
And we've got a couple of flagship programs as well.
They're the future CFO program and the CFO program.
Now both of those work in roughly the same way, but the
period's bigger. They run for a year and the two
hour workshop rather than being every week is once a month.
So you take this community of a dozen people, we have an intake
into once 1/4, so a dozen new people every quarter.
And the only criteria for future CFO is I want to be ACFO in the
next couple of years. However, I want to see how I can
knock down all the obstacles that are currently stopping me
getting there. So we put them into a cohort,
take them through the program by the end of 12 months working
that cohort, you've formed a fairly strong networking group.
One of the things we do in the very first session, we find out
what people's individual skill bases are.
We've got the CFO competency framework and grocery of us,
everybody on the on the program's taken that how we know
what everybody's core skills are, the strengths of their
weaknesses. So in the first session, each
person gets to present on the area they're strongest in.
So straight away the whole of that peer group gets to see the
power of the skills that are combined in the group and all
the things they can help each other with.
And then we take them through the program, they get to know
each other better as they go through by working together in
the breakout sessions and so on. And it's, it's a really, really
powerful way of forming community forming, forming
groups that are potentially lasting much longer than the the
program itself. Interesting stuff are that's
something I want to ask you and this is hinged upon our shared,
when I say background at PwC and it's something I really
appreciate that PwC empowered us with.
That's the PwC professional framework for prison
professionals. No, it starts with whole
leadership and business acumen, technical competence, global
acumen and building relationships.
So these things that you do, those CFOs speak to all of the
points, the criteria points between the PwC framework,
right? There's something that I noticed
that a lot of RBS CFOs tend to lack, which is pieces.
And you rightly tell me that's a commercial mindset.
So I'd love to speak to that. Why is that, you know very much
lacking amongst a lot of career CF OS and what have you guys
done at Co CFO to tackle this very, very important problem?
Why is it lacking? I think in general, when you're
training to be a chartered accountant or similar
qualifications, CPA, whatever, you're learning very much
technical skills around debits and credits around how to
account for the stuff that other people do.
Nobody. Now you make you feel old.
I'm going to say. Wow, focus on this hot product
and the cash channels. Absolutely.
You know, there's something I love to say.
Revenues, vanity, profit to sanity, and cash is reality.
If you wish, cash is clean. I guess you you ran into a
technical issue. It is still the reporting is
still on, but the Reaver side has this way of finding the
fluff and removing the fluff so that that's not a profile.
Did you lose your Internet connection?
I think it went flaky. Everything froze, then you
disappeared. So I then clicked the leave
button and came back in again. OK, OK.
No worries, I think you can peek back from where you stopped if
you cannot be collected. Do you collect where you
stopped? Gosh, what we were talking
about. OK.
I remember, I know it was a question that I made an improv
on. So I think I'll just proceed to
the next question. I think that.
Yeah, that's probably the best bet and see where we get to.
You might you might have to edit something out of an appropriate
stop point. So yeah, I've got a feeling I
was still talking after we'd lost the connection.
So. Oh.
OK, I think you're talking. Inside my end anyway.
You were talking about the commercial mindset.
You know, I talked about the. Yeah, that's right.
That's mindset. Business acumen, Yeah, yeah.
So do you want to add anything to it or should we proceed to
the next question? Proceed to the next question.
OK, OK, OK, let's go. So let's talk about the
technology in finance, a very, very big theme in my
broadcasters, AI in business. Again, when you look at the
subtitle of the forecast, it is growth mindset, leadership and
business insights. So you, Acro CFO, navigate the
fast changing technology landscape from AI to the digital
transformations. So like what trends should
finance leaders prioritize to see where bands are going into
the future? And of course, to me, valuable
and valuable. OK, right.
So, yeah, you're at the core of my role these days and grow CFO
and I am spending less time doing the mentoring sorts of
things and more time being head of tech partnerships.
And we're talking to a lot of tech companies in all areas of
the finance landscape, doing webinars with them and podcasts
and so on. And one of the nice things for
me is it's keeping me really up to date with what's going on.
And tech is moving at a phenomenal rate.
Yeah. But one of the interesting
things for me is that in certain areas, we're still juggling with
the same problems that I was dealing with 25 years ago in
PwC. I'm seeing in the order to cash
and the purchase to pay space, the transactional finance parts,
really significant progress with AI agents making a big
difference. But bring this back into what's
the FP and a team doing planning, budgeting,
forecasting. What about the cool reporting
team and faster close and things like that.
They are fundamentally playing with the same problems that we
were talking to them about 25 years ago when I was part of the
I Analytics practice in PwC. Back then, 25 years ago, we were
talking to one or two clients about moving away from a budget
to having a rolling forecast. Blowing up the budget was the
theme. And in the other part of the
analytics practice, we were talking to businesses about
faster clothes, particularly quoted companies that needed to
report to the Stock Exchange once 1/4 letting them understand
that reporting faster meant an awful lot in terms of their
credibility, things that the the way the market looked at them.
And no move on 25 years. Have we seen significant change
to move to rolling forecasts? No, we haven't.
We still talk about it and think it's the the future.
Have we seen significant change with fast lows?
No, we haven't. We run a survey and grow CFO
probably about 18 months ago now and found that the vast majority
of companies do not close them on then before work day five.
And there's a whole ramp of companies that still failed to
close before work day 10. Wow.
So nothing's changed. And that that then brings me
back to tech and where are we at the moment?
And there's a lot happening, huge number of innovations going
on, huge number of things we can take advantage of.
I'm seeing a little bit of analysis paralysis in the
literally so much is happening, people don't know where to
start. One of the nice things that
we're doing through, through some of the things we do in
gross CFO, through the web analysis, through the tech
showcases, is that we are showing people the art of the
possible. And we're taking away this thing
that we talk about called AI into the practical.
What can you do with it at the moment?
That's that's really interesting.
You go into those core areas, planning, budgeting,
forecasting, reporting. What is it that's still stopping
us all moving forward? And it's not the technology.
And this is where CF OS have really got to be on their game.
I think the biggest set of skills ACFO needs in the future,
the change of management skills. You can have the greatest AI
tools in the world, but if it's garbage in, it's garbage out.
You can have the greatest set of AI agents in the world, but if
there are bottlenecks in your processors caused by people you,
you're not going to close the books any faster or do a better
forecast. If you've got to say, well, the
reason we don't close till working day 5 is, well, we've
got to wait for all of the invoices to be in from all of
our suppliers and process properly so we can close the
books. AI is not going to make any
difference to that. This is sort your systems out so
you can accrue for what you know you've ordered.
Therefore, you can work on some very good estimates of what the
month that monthly costs are going to be in. close the books
earlier. It's changing people, it's
changing process and it's changing mindset.
At the moment again again we'll go back to mindset.
What skill set? Tool set?
The result of the tool set is only as good as the mindset and
the skill set of the individual tool set I love.
And it is in any sort of change, there are three elements.
There are people, there are process, and there are systems.
You change the systems without changing the people or the
process, you get nowhere. So the great CFO will know how
to work with their people, how to get the best out of their
people, how to get their people really involved in the change,
looking at how do we make things work better around here, getting
them involved in the solution, working together as a team.
The technology by itself will not get you anywhere.
It's also two sets. Yeah.
And you know when you look at this from your own experience,
what have been the major bottlenecks in the cut off
procedure and the cut off process for organizations?
Gosh, it always tends to be around waiting for bits of
information in that cut off. Accrawls.
Yeah, it's accruals. It's waiting for somebody to
approve something. And really when you're you're
looking at that close process, I think you've got to go back to
the basics. You're going to get that huge,
huge roll of brown paper out. You've got a blue tacket to the
wall and you then go to attack it with post it notes and start
saying what happens, what's the process here, who does what and
when? And until you understand that
whole process and where all the handoffs are, you aren't going
to get anywhere in terms of changing it.
It's always handoffs that could have been done simpler or
easier, and bits of the process that have been put in because we
needed it three years ago. Nobody.
Once you put something into a process because it was dealing
with some peculiarity, historically, nobody ever
challenges taking it back out again.
So processes tend to get a little bit top heavy, a little
bit clumsy. We never go back and really
review them and simplify them. Interesting stuff.
You know you also run app will be consulting and coaching
supporting businesses as both the coach and fractional CFO.
So why do you think this blended model is so powerful for SM, ES
or stack UPS or scale UPS? Yeah, I don't do much of that
these days. I am pretty much tied up with
doing things with gross CFO and any ages of such that I would
have more time outside of that to myself.
So I'm I'm not actually actively going around looking for those
other clients. But if people come to me and I
like what they're doing and think I can help, but great,
we'll do something. What makes that a great
combination? I think if you say that you've
got that skill yourself of having taken a business from
nowhere to somewhere and Dan and I've done that with Bruce CFO
over the last six years, helped my daughter put her business
together, help wife put her business together.
There's something of a sweet spot of how do you get a small
business off the ground and actually turn it into something.
And then to be able to do that with a finance mindset as well.
I don't know. That adds a much an extra layer.
You know, there are there's lots and lots and lots of coaches out
there. Most coaches will take the
approach of talking to you about a problem and asking you
questions to to the way that you they try to get you to solve
your own problem. Yes, it's an approach, but I
think a mentor is something different.
A mentor is somebody who's been there, done that, built the
T-shirt. And if you've done that, you
have the financial skill set on top.
You understand the money, you understand that you've got to
have revenue to pay the costs. You've got to be able to
understand what costs are necessary, what costs are not
necessary, be able to give the sensible forecast when it's
necessary. If you can join those coaching
skills with the mentoring skills, with the finance skills,
I think it's a very powerful package for the small business.
Absolutely, yeah, personal. That's why the fractional model
is very, very powerful. You know these small businesses
cannot afford a full time finance experts are once you
dedicate that time, you know, fractionally to them, it goes
along where you're helping them to start up, scale up and sell
out. So let's talk about the.
It's the sort of business I like working with even before that
scale, where they'd want a fractional you.
We've probably got to the stage you want a fractional CFO
because you're going through some sort of fundraise or
something like that. You suddenly realize you need
more than the bookkeeper. I think something appeals to me
about the stage before you even get there, and you're trying to
put that business together. You're trying to make your first
sales. You're trying to figure out what
your customers want. I love that bit of the journey.
Yeah, that's a foundation. Yeah, of course.
Yeah. Either foundation that destroyed
what kind of writers do. So it's an essential to get the
foundation right. If you put some finance skills
into that, that very early piece that's that's pretty unique
because most fractionals are looking at the companies
probably 7 figures already. Yeah, in that group phase, the
only one to accelerate what is already in motion, I can
understand, you know, but different strokes and different
folks. What I want to delve into the
Next 100 Days, It's something you're very passionate about
you, you love the terminology. And of course, you've got the
Next 100 Days podcast. You always emphasized on 100
Days springs for transformation. So how can finance leaders and
entrepreneurs apply this to accelerate results without
burnout? That's it without burnout.
Well, that's why it is 100 days, because if it's longer than 100
days, you do burnout. OK.
I think it's looking back over at a career where I've done lots
of projects. And if you've got a project
that's got a reasonably big scope and you start going, you
get to a point where you you kind of run out of steam or you
do burnout or you lose the reason why you did this in the
1st place. And quite often that point that
you run out of steam is around about the 1900 day mark.
So I've developed my own philosophy that says you pick up
a scope for whatever it is you want to do.
You don't put too much in it, but you put enough in it to be
able to go at it for about 90 days.
You get to the end of that, you look at what you've achieved,
you review and you plan again for another 9000 days, OK?
So it comes down to biting things off into manageable
chunks. So you don't start getting at
the end of, if you go to 100 days, 110 days, 120 days, you
don't get the diminishing returns going after the same
goals, objectives you've replanned.
So you can focus on something else.
There's also a little bit of something we talked about
earlier. You don't know what you don't
know. I took us back into 2020.
We didn't know lockdown was going to hit.
I didn't know I was going to meet Dan Wells.
I didn't know gross CFO was coming along.
I don't think you can plan for two years, for three years.
So you don't what's out there. But you do know if I asked you,
Adam Ola, what's the one thing if you could do it would make a
difference in the next 100 days, you could probably give me a
very good answer. Absolutely.
You know, what is that one thing?
There's another thing I'll add to 90 days is you can go 100 an
inch in 100 directions or you can go 100 miles in One
Direction. So don't think of five things of
10 things that you want to happen in the next 100 days.
Think of one thing. What is the one thing that's
going to be the game changer for you?
And focus on that. Work on it for 100 days and
you'll get somewhere. I love that 100 days is up.
Review plan again, ask that same question.
What's the one thing that's going to get me somewhere in the
next 100 days? Go work on it.
Interesting stuff. It works the planning and it
works from business planning and it works in the pro world.
Project management is essentially in that process.
What's your favorite project management tool?
Piece of paper. Well, for me it's it's my
calendar. I love calendar so much.
I think that's the most important subscription I've ever
had. What do I use in terms of tools?
I've used Trello in the past as a project management tool.
I've used back in bigger project world to use Microsoft projects.
Was absolutely hated and currently I use Notion.
Yeah. Notion, but OK.
There's a difference between managing tasks and managing
activities and thinking about what needs to be done.
Thinking about what needs to be done.
Big piece of paper posted notes? Stick them on, move them around
till you've got a plan. Can't be this?
I think you like us. Have you heard of Asana?
Then yes, our marketing team uses uses Asana.
Yeah, yeah, I think you've got to have that freedom of just
being able to think when you're in the planning phase, what do
you use to plan the project versus what do you use to task
manage the project. And they're two different
things. Absolutely.
And of course, I hope our audience are taking a very,
very, very bad notes. Let's let's talk about, you
know, beyond the spreadsheets, beyond the tools, what are the
personal qualities or the leadership traits, skills and
mindset that separate an average CFO from a successful and
transformational CFO? It's the ability to lead a team.
For leadership, no wonder PwC put it right at the top.
Yeah, it is. It's the ability to lead A-Team.
The the CF OS success I believe isn't just down to them, it's
down to the people they have around them.
It's down to taking those people on a journey and achieving
something together. So you have to be able to lead.
That's a very difficult question.
That's all depends. So the answer is going to be
different for virtually everybody.
It's going to depend on business circumstances, what's necessary
and understanding the needs. And I think it comes down to and
I believe strategies just down to one thing.
It's stop, start, continue. What are you going to stop
doing? What are you going to start
doing? What are you going to continue
doing? But I'd flip that question
around if I was giving practical advice to ACFO today as to what
should they be doing personally to augment where they are.
We've got in gross CFO something called the CFO competency
framework mentioned it earlier and you can go to our website
and take the competency framework and it's you you self
assess yourself across 40. Some of them are the commercial
acumen that we talked about earlier.
Some of them are the change skills, some of them are the
mergers, acquisitions, fundraising skills.
And what you can get is a profile of yourself across 45
skills. And you can start working out
where your own personal strengths and gaps are a great
way of deciding how do I want to get better skills wise in the
next 12 months. Have a look at that assessment
and see where you where you're falling short versus where you
think you should be or where your peers are.
Who mentored you on your own way up and how has?
You mentored. You mentoring others also shift
your legacy in finance leadership.
I would say I don't know I've ever had a formal mentor, but a
lot go back to PwC days. In PwC consulting.
Back when I was there, you had a line manager and you had a
mentor. Your line manager may well
change frequently depending what you're doing.
And on top of that, you might have a project manager as well
that you're working too. But your mentor stayed with you.
So you're always talking about skills development, career
progression and so on with your mentor.
And actually I got into the position of really liking that,
and that's when I started mentoring more junior people
within PwC. So that's really sold me on the
power of that relationship. But I guess I've always had
people around that I've been able to talk to about things and
bounce ideas off. So looking into the future, what
was the vision for not just the next 100 days, but maybe the
next 100 weeks and maybe 10/10/10 years?
Like what exact you, you know, what role do you see for CFO
playing in the global landscape, the global finance landscape in
the years to come? What really excites you about
the future? Gross CFO is the easy bit
because I can see where we're going.
I can see working with bigger finance teams, a lot more
finance teams. We're going to have a bigger
footprint outside of the UK. We've already got a reasonable
footprint in the US, but that's where there's a huge, huge
opportunity for growth. So I see gross CFO growing quite
rapidly. Where do I see me in the next
couple of years? Well, I'm coming to that age
where I've got to make a very interesting decision of who I
retire moment. The one thing that's stopping me
from saying yes, I'll retire is so much tech change going on
and. I.
Don't. It's exciting and I don't want
to lose where things are. I really enjoy being head of
partnerships and having the opportunity to go and talk to
these tech companies every day of the week.
They'll run a webinar every couple of weeks to see the
latest things that they're they're up to.
And certainly in the next couple of years, I think there's going
to be so much change going on, but I want to stay with that.
Interesting stuff. So you talk about gratitude.
Gratitude is also close to my heart.
And of course for me to use a very big thank you for being on
the show today. But I will not let you go
without putting you through the Pacific Ring of Fire.
I have 5 big fireground questions for you.
OK, let's go. OK, so.
That's from 2 good Geordie lads from our neck of the woods and
deck. Number one, one book every CFO
chicky. Well, to your Geordie's somebody
who I would regard regard as a little bit of a mentor, Michael
Heppel. Michael Heppel, How to Be
Brilliant. The best personal development
book ever written. Interesting stuff.
So the next one is the biggest financial mistake businesses
make in their first one. Quantity.
Are probably spending too much money and waiting till they've
got something they think is perfect before they try to sell
it. Minimum viable product.
Get it out there and find if anybody wants to buy it.
Nice coffee, tea, or something stronger when you punch in the
numbers. Coffee OK, preferably freshly
ground from the beans. Ha ha ha, a guided coffee one
underrated soft skill every finance leader must master.
Underrated soft skill? Gosh.
Thing is, these days I don't think there are any underrated
soft skills left, but storytelling is certainly the
big one. It's getting away from talking
numbers and talking language that only accountants understand
to talk in the language of the rest of the business.
I love that I I leave for that. It's on my LinkedIn profile,
Storytelling for impact, so proud of that.
It's very important in this ageing time and I appreciate
what one of my guests told me, she said.
I am a modern day business philosopher, so picking that
title and rather did Martin Davis a philosopher.
Wow. And I've heard the very last
question is, if you could give your younger self one piece of
advice when starting at PwC, what would?
That advice? Enjoy the journey, enjoy the
journey. It comes back to you don't know
what's around the corner, you don't know what's you can't plan
beyond 100 days. I'd say lots of my bits of my
career have happened as much by accident, certainly about being
in the right place at the right time.
And yet we spend so much time thinking about oh, when, if only
this would happen, then everything be all right.
Well now enjoy the journey, enjoy what you've got now and
what's happening and be in the moment.
Don't be always thinking, oh, it'll be great when we've got to
this goal or that goal or the other goal.
I think that's fantastic piece of advice.
And of course with that I come to my line that I love so much.
When a person shares their time with you, they share their life
with you. The course, the SI uniform
measure in life this time. And of course, an attitude of
gratitude is good attitude. So for me, it is love and
respect to you for being on the show today, The King Games
podcast and Diary of the CFOI do not take your time for granted.
I very much appreciate you know, you spending that fraction of
the life with us to be sharing insights, educating and
motivating. This means a lot.
You're highly, highly appreciated and of course,
looking forward to teacher collaborations and the first
guys I did feature on Kevin, Apple forecast those CFO guys.
I'm going to put it in the description.
Go watch it and press the meet. You as always conceive the
stratified and actually always go for something in your life
right across your meet. It's goodbye, Akron.
Kevin, I don't know if you want to leave a shout out to anybody
or if you want to, you know, if you've any closer remarks, but a
press for me it's goodbye. I think just thank you hugely
for having me on your podcast today.
It's been a really great experience.
Really enjoyed chatting to you and talking about stuff that I
hope is of value to the audience.
Thank you once again. Wow.
And of course, you're welcome once again.
You're honest welcome actually, and it's not goodbye, but it is.
See you guys again for me and from AI and KA.