5 difficult steps to becoming a Great CFO

CFOs get lots of good advice about their career. They hear things like:  

• Build your Personal Brand 
• Always be Networking 
• Learn to be more Strategic 
• Acquire Operational Experience

These tidbits are important for a CFOs success.

However, as good a CFO as you may be, to become a Great CFO you must have a great team.

Having a great team gives you the bench strength you need to spend the time necessary to be strategic and add value to the business, rather than getting lost in the day to day functional realities and firefighting.

Whether you are the newly hired CFO or have been the CFO for a while, the steps necessary are the same. You need to:

1) Design what your team should look like to support your vision

2) Look critically at your current team and allocate people based on their strengths

3) Dismiss those whose strengths do not align with the vision of what your team should look like

4) Hire right to fill the gaps, and

5) Create a succession plan for your team and for yourself.

Sounds simple. It's not. But you already knew that. However, putting in the time and the effort to doing these steps will put you on track to becoming a Great CFO. 

 

I urge you to make this effort. It will be worth the time.

Let me know how it goes.

 

LinkedIn Connections – What is your Policy?

LinkedIn has certainly become the online place for business people to connect and stay in touch. While it is a very powerful tool, it is only as powerful as you make it.

 

Networking is more effective when you use it to give to your network as well as receive from it. The same applies on LinkedIn. If you want LinkedIn to work for you when you need it (i.e., when you are looking for work), you need to work with, assist and engage your network when you don’t need your network.

 

As someone who uses LinkedIn on a daily basis to connect and add value to my network, I regularly get LinkedIn requests. Many times, it is from individuals I do not know. Yet.

 

I am interested in making genuine connections with people. It is my business to know people and meet people - LinkedIn is a great tool for this. I’m not interested in the game of “How many Connections do you have?”

 

So how do I choose who to connect with?

 

I connect with people that:

 

• I know
• I have met in person
• I have spoken with
• I have engaged with online

 

When I get a request from someone I do not know it is my policy to reply to them and ask questions that will help me get to know them better before I actually connect.

 

I categorize networkers on LinkedIn into the following categories:

 

1) LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers). These people have a policy to connect with anyone and anybody. They call themselves “Open Networkers” but in my opinion are not real networkers – they are just looking for leads to move their agenda forward and have access to names they may not otherwise have.

 

2) Real Networkers. These people use LinkedIn to support their in-person networking activities, not to replace their in-person networking. These people are meeting people in person and using LinkedIn to stay connected and engaged with their network when they are not in front of them. Real Networkers do develop relationships on LinkedIn, but only as part of an engagement strategy with their network, groups and questions to build real relationships, even if they start them online.

 

3) Passive Networkers. This is how I would categorize the majority of people on LinkedIn. Passive LinkedIn Networkers connect with some people they know on LinkedIn, but really don’t go out of their way to connect or engage their network. These people are generally passive networkers in their day to day lives. While I am an avid evangelist of the powers of networking, I am aware that most people don’t love networking, and feel more comfortable not networking. For them, just being on LinkedIn and passively being involved is certainly a step up to those that do no networking at all.

 

4) I’m here, but leave me alone. There are people who have a profile on LinkedIn because someone they respect asked them to be a part of it, but have no desire to put an effort into networking at all. I respect the choice these people have made, but I feel for them – they are missing out on a revolution that is positively affecting the careers and personal lives of everyone around them.

 
I categorize myself as a Real Networker. What kind of LinkedIn Networker are you? What is your LinkedIn Connection Policy?

 

5 Reasons why CFOs don't Tweet (and 5 Reasons why they should)

In leading our firm's activity over the past year on Twitter, I have noticed that many Chief Financial Officers aren't active on Twitter. And I wondered why. So I spoke with CFOs and asked them “Why aren’t you on Twitter?”

These are reasons CFOs are NOT active on Twitter:

1) Twitter is complicated. Yes, it is complicated. It takes a long time to get the feel of the rules of the game. In a way, it is like learning a new language. You have to speak less, spell different, say things in shorthand, do things like @, #, RT, DM, and bit.ly.

2) Who cares what I have to say? Who will listen? Why should anyone care if you went to a concert, or what you ate for breakfast? It is not intuitive for people (born before 1985) to share this kind of information in public.

3) What am I going to tweet about? Your job? Your life? Your interest in collecting little spoons from around the world?

4) Regulatory concerns. A CFO of a public company is restricted up the regulatory Ying-yang of what they can say in public about the Company they work for.

5) Perception is that people who tweet aren’t very busy. CFOs are supposed to be busy people. If a CFO is tweeting, it shows that they are doing something other than work.

On the other hand, since we started our Twitter activity, I have also come across Chief Financial Officers that are active on Twitter. And I wondered why. So I spoke with CFOs and asked them “Why are you on Twitter?”

These are reasons why CFOs ARE active on Twitter:

1) Personal Branding. Tweeting allows you to communicate your ideas and influence what others think about you. [If you don’t know why personal branding is important, read these: How Important is Your Personal Brand by Santhie Goundar and You are So Much More Than a Job Title by Cindy Kraft.]

2) Following interesting people. There are many interesting people in the world, and they have something to say and articles to share. A progressive Senior Financial Executive wants to learn more from people with different points of view. Twitter is a great place to find others to learn from.

3) Network with people you never would have connected with. As CFO, there are people you can follow that you would never have connected with personally. You can use Twitter to listen to and interact with Investors, Industry thought leaders and Customers. Those CFOs that use Twitter regularly find it very powerful.

4) Add value to my employer. Not only do you add to your personal brand as a CFO who Tweets, but you add value to your employer as well. If you look good, they look good too.

5) Share interests with others. Whether your interests are work related, such as being an Excel Guru or a GAAP Master, or life related like your passion for skiing, golf or Barbequing, people who follow you will know about it. It makes for interesting conversations and better connections when you do meet with them in person.

If you are a CFO who Tweets, go ahead and tweet the following: I’m a #CFOwhoTweets

If you are a CFO who doesn't tweet yet, what are you waiting for?

You’re on LinkedIn. Now what?

You’ve heard your colleagues talk about LinkedIn. You’ve heard that it is indispensable to your professional career to be on LinkedIn. So you gave it a shot, signed up, put your profile up and connected with some people you know.

Now you’re sitting back and asking yourself - “Is that all there is to this? I don’t understand. There must be more.”

There is more.

However, the most important question you need to ask yourself is: What do I want to accomplish on LinkedIn? If you only want to be on LinkedIn just to be able to say that you are on LinkedIn - Stop Here - you’ve done all you need to do. However, if you want to build your personal brand, there are other things you can do to make the most out of your LinkedIn experience.

Seek out those you know.

Who you work with: LinkedIn works well in keeping in front of the people you know and want to stay connected to professionally. In your career, you deal with people inside and outside your organization - these people are ideal to request that they Link In with you.

Who you used to work with: There are people that you used to work with that remember you in a positive light, and would happy to reconnect.

How to find them: You can:

• import your contacts from your Microsoft Outlook email program,
• download the Outlook Toolbar to integrate into your Outlook,
• manually add people by searching for them, and requesting to connect,
• look at the connections of the people you are connected to see who you know.

Who you know says a lot about you. You can read our previous blog on this topic here.

Complete your profile.

If you haven’t added all your previous work and volunteer experiences, you should. This will allow others who used to work with you to find you. There is an indicator on your profile page provided by LinkedIn that lets you know how complete your profile is. This indicator should not be less then 90%.

Join Groups.

We all have areas of interest at work. LinkedIn has thousands of groups. There most certainly are groups that may be of interest to you. You can browse around the groups, or even click on the “Groups You May Like” tab in the Groups section.

Add Applications.

There are many applications you can add to your profile page that allow you to interact with others. My favorite applications are:

• Reading List by Amazon - allows you to share with others the books you have read, whether you like them or not, and you can review them as well. Others knowing what you are reading gives them a sense of what your interests are. Knowing what others are reading allows you to have conversations with them about their interests, or find something that might be interesting to read.
• Slideshare - if you have presented on topics that you think others would be interested in, this tool will share your brilliance with others.
• Events - this lets others see what events you will be attending, and allows you to see events being attended by others that might interest you too.

You can look for other applications that will allow you to enrich your profile.

Differentiate yourself.

If you want to differentiate yourself on LinkedIn and stand out in a positive way, it is highly recommended that you contribute to the conversations on LinkedIn.

You can do this by:

• Updating your Status - this is where you ask a question, share a thought, or post an article. It allows your connections to know what you’re thinking of, and keeps you top of mind.
• Comment on other people’s Status updates - by “Liking” someones update, or adding your comment to it, you are engaging others and adding value to them and to yourself.
• Discuss topics of interest in your Group - sharing an article, asking a question or commenting on other people’s discussions allows you to ‘speak’ with people you are not currently connected with and share your point of view.

Continue coming back.

Setting up your LinkedIn profile and forgetting about it will not bring you value. Coming back on a regular basis to check out what is happening with your network, adding to the conversations and updating your profile for regular changes will help you get the best out of LinkedIn.