In some organizations, Finance is still considered as a function responsible for carrying out basic maintenance roles – for example being responsible for the books of accounts, completing the annual accounts and ensuring filings within the stipulated dates.
Over the years there has been a perceptible change towards the finance function in large corporations. Finance is now recognized as an all pervading function working closely with the head of the business in creating the long term vision, setting up the building blocks and working on implementing the plan to action. From being consigned to the back offices, the function has now positioned itself as a very visible and value adding face of the organization. And how did the metamorphosis of the function take place – one of the possible explanation is the exposure provided by large body corporate, especially multinational companies to the finance employees in their organization – to get them responsible and accountable along with the business managers for business results. Multinationals were the breeding ground for finance talents - to broaden their role and their activity from being merely accountants to being business finance managers.
I am going to discuss about one such manager – his name is Ravi – and he impacted the lives of a number of his finance colleagues with his functional knowledge, leadership skills and wisdom. Ravi took over the reigns as the Chief Financial officer and one of his immediate and important decisions thereafter was to convene a forum called the Finance Leadership Team (FLT) – the FLT consisted of all the region finance heads and the finance specialists at the Corporate office. The team met every 3 months and the manager ensured that there was complete independence and transparency in the discussions within the team. And, why would I glorify Ravi’s initiatives, because of the following traits that he exhibited….
Trust – Ravi came across as a very straight forward and transparent person, with no personal interest in his decision making process. He expected similar reciprocation from his team. Truth, candor and integrity formed very high on his agenda – and he spread this message pretty clearly with the team.
Participation – Democracy as is ideally defined actually got reflected in these meetings. Ravi allowed the team to be transparent in their thoughts, allowed complete independence, and sought feedback from the team on his views, considered the team’s views constructively while arriving at a decision. Through these meetings, important decision on people and processes were arrived and implemented.
Delegation – A good leader as they say is identified through his ability to delegate work effectively to his team members. Delegation isn’t easy unless, the leader is entirely confident about his team member and their ability to get the work done. Truthfulness, confidence, participation and integrity of the team member determine the level of delegation – and Ravi was able to assess his team members and use them well in his endeavor to build a world class finance organization.
Passion to promote – The business leanings of the leader tend to rub off fairly well on the team members – and Ravi’s ability to remodel the finance manager role as a business planner did wonders to the finance professionals working with him. It actually opened up and broad based the thinking skills of the finance professional – moving him from an accounting role to a business finance role. Having said so, a fair amount of balance was maintained between working with the business and retaining accounting credibility.
Over the years there has been a perceptible change towards the finance function in large corporations. Finance is now recognized as an all pervading function working closely with the head of the business in creating the long term vision, setting up the building blocks and working on implementing the plan to action. From being consigned to the back offices, the function has now positioned itself as a very visible and value adding face of the organization. And how did the metamorphosis of the function take place – one of the possible explanation is the exposure provided by large body corporate, especially multinational companies to the finance employees in their organization – to get them responsible and accountable along with the business managers for business results. Multinationals were the breeding ground for finance talents - to broaden their role and their activity from being merely accountants to being business finance managers.
I am going to discuss about one such manager – his name is Ravi – and he impacted the lives of a number of his finance colleagues with his functional knowledge, leadership skills and wisdom. Ravi took over the reigns as the Chief Financial officer and one of his immediate and important decisions thereafter was to convene a forum called the Finance Leadership Team (FLT) – the FLT consisted of all the region finance heads and the finance specialists at the Corporate office. The team met every 3 months and the manager ensured that there was complete independence and transparency in the discussions within the team. And, why would I glorify Ravi’s initiatives, because of the following traits that he exhibited….
Trust – Ravi came across as a very straight forward and transparent person, with no personal interest in his decision making process. He expected similar reciprocation from his team. Truth, candor and integrity formed very high on his agenda – and he spread this message pretty clearly with the team.
Participation – Democracy as is ideally defined actually got reflected in these meetings. Ravi allowed the team to be transparent in their thoughts, allowed complete independence, and sought feedback from the team on his views, considered the team’s views constructively while arriving at a decision. Through these meetings, important decision on people and processes were arrived and implemented.
Delegation – A good leader as they say is identified through his ability to delegate work effectively to his team members. Delegation isn’t easy unless, the leader is entirely confident about his team member and their ability to get the work done. Truthfulness, confidence, participation and integrity of the team member determine the level of delegation – and Ravi was able to assess his team members and use them well in his endeavor to build a world class finance organization.
Passion to promote – The business leanings of the leader tend to rub off fairly well on the team members – and Ravi’s ability to remodel the finance manager role as a business planner did wonders to the finance professionals working with him. It actually opened up and broad based the thinking skills of the finance professional – moving him from an accounting role to a business finance role. Having said so, a fair amount of balance was maintained between working with the business and retaining accounting credibility.
Defend and Protect – While Turf wars were not common or heard of, it is important for a leader to keep his folks united and insulated from difficult and unreasonable expectation from other functions. A finance professional was expected to stand up and be heard in intense discussions – and at times be the messenger to carry the bad news. And as they say, you gather the strength and the courage to speak and be assertive - when you are confident of being backed well by your leader. In our own experience, Ravi did rule by example and at times had to take difficult decisions impacting his own fraternity.
Grow – Leaders are identified with their ability to spot and judge the performance of their team members and develop a career plan that suits them. In the process the leader is able to build a long lasting finance organization with natural succession and growth plan for the team. Ravi used his networking skills across the global organization and successfully placed a number of deserving team members in international assignments – speaks of his ability to spread the talent across geographies and markets.
And personally, I must mention atleast one incident that impacted me directly - we relate and seek support from our immediate manager when we are being tested in difficult waters and circumstances. We were at the receiving end in one such phase in our business - dramatically revisiting our business model with the changing market construct. The business model had a number of sweeping changes in the way we did business – impacting the sales and operations organization significantly. Finance led the charge towards formulating and implementing these changes and the support here from Ravi was critical – and he backed us through the change process both at the regional level and at the corporate level.
I am not sure whether in the past finance managers displayed assertiveness towards the businesses and their people in the same manner. The birth of the finance clan (let me call them) “the Class of 80s” has changed the rules of the game and has laid a solid foundation inspiring the current lot of finance managers.
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