I’ve been thinking a lot about how to tailor Mostly metrics content to my “ICP” (Ideal Customer Profile). Many content creators fall into the trap of making stuff for a theoretical person they “think” is out there.
And after some soul searching (that’s assuming us finance people do have souls), I realized exactly who my ICP is… it’s ME.
That’s genesis of Sunday Soundbites. Each weekend I sit down and go through the latest Run the Numbers transcript for my own education, picking out the best nuggets and writing them in my journal. I’m on the prowl for stuff that I can put in my tool kit for later. It’s one of the highlights of my week (yep, I’m a super dork.)
I figured if it’s something that I get immense value from, others might as well.
So whether it’s through your ears 🙉 or your eyes 🙈, enjoy these bangerz.
Reporting to a non-CFO for the first time
When you're a first time CFO, you're reporting to someone who's not a CFO.
And that's a big change, right? When you grow up in other functions like accounting or legal or FP&A, you report to someone who's a [finance] subject matter expert. And so it was a big change for me to adjust how I communicated with the CEO because she's not a CFO.
And so having to cater to someone who's not a subject matter expert in finance, but has tremendous expertise elsewhere, that was one thing that I think in the first few months in the job I was adjusting to.
The DACI Framework for Decision Making
D is the Driver, A is the Approver, C are the Contributors, and I are the Informed.
We don't try to do this on the day to day, like if I'm asking you to do something very simple, like run a model.
But if we're talking about who's making the final call on our CROs variable compensation model, I'll quickly do a pulse check with our CEO being like “Hey, DACI check. Who am I? The Approver, or are you the Approver?
And I sat down with our CRO when the CRO started and it's being like, let's just do a quick DACI check because we come from different backgrounds, different companies, and if we need to get the CEO involved, we’ll do what’s called a “Clean Escalate.”
If we can't agree to something with full earnest and in trying to resolve it between the two of us in a couple of days, then we'll clean escalate to the CEO. And so it's a framework that has helped us. You don't call it in every situation. You call them the really big situations. And just saying, “Hey, let's do a quick daisy on this, and we can identify roles.”
There’s no Wizard of Oz behind the curtain
CJ: To zoom in on being strategic, someone described it to me as changing the altitude that you fly at. So you, as a CFO, need to be able to fly 40, 000 feet above and see long term of what's going to happen in the business, but also be able to zoom down into the operational level, to, to get into the weeds of what's coming around the corner, or what's going on day to day.
Something that I struggle with in my mind, and I'm curious to get your point of view on, is how visible to be as a CFO out in the business?
Do you ever think about that? A lot of people think CFOs are behind a closed door operating, almost like there's this Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. How do you think about being visible within and out in the business as a CFO?
Jenny: I call it playing Eagle and then playing mouse. You have to be an eagle because you are the only one with that bird's eye view of the company. You have to be numbers driven and data driven, but then you also have to be a mouse…
You also have to play mouse and help break down your team’s blockers and really just the issues you run into internally in terms of not being the wizard of Oz and being behind the curtain.
In essence, you're the face of the company, alongside your CEO.
And when you're working inside the business, I do think it's important for the company to understand your point of view, your philosophy as CFO, how you view the business.
I think it's important for employees to see you and really understand that your point of view is so much more than approving expenses or being a naysayer, but that you are thinking about where we're headed in the next six months, 12 months, 18 months, etc.
The top qualities of great CFOs
I think if you were to ask me, you know, what are the top three most important skills, I would say storytelling is absolutely in that list.
And if I were to hazard what the other two are, it's probably influencing cross functionally and then hiring.
Warming up candidates in the background
Jenny: Even if I'm not hiring, one thing that I have found, is in my role you need to be warming up candidates in the background. Even if they're not looking.
For example, one of my best hires, I pinged him every quarter for six quarters before he agreed to join front.
CJ: Wait, a year and a half? You pinged him every quarter?
Jenny: I pinged him every quarter just to check in to see if he was progressing as he wanted to at his current company. And some quarters it was like, great, great to hear from you. Nothing here, nothing new. And then in the sixth quarter, he was like, do you want to jump on a call?
Parental leave for men
It’s not just the amount of time you give, it's making sure people actually set an example and take it. If you have a generous paternity paternity leave, but nobody takes it, it’s actually not in service of any mother.
You need to be able to show and demonstrate that you can take a pause, have a child, and come back, ramp back in and still continue to rise in your career.
So generally speaking, it's not the number of weeks of maternity leave, it's the length of paternity leave and how many men are actually taking it.
