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If you want to be secure in your position as the "financial sheriff," you must be able to document your worth to the company's leaders by exhibiting the critical, advanced skills that help you add value and contribute to the success of the organization. Learn how to translate your firm's strategies with key performance. Improve your skills in the five key areas needed for success. Employ the balanced performance measuring scorecard. Align your firm's strategies with your internal reporting system. Become an advocate and develop into a powerful agent of change.
Objectives:
Prerequisite: Basic or Beginning Controllers course in lieu of experience
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Chapter 1 - Step 1: Improve Your Change Leader Effectiveness by Looking Ahead
"The pain of change comes from within – your need to face your own ego and self-imposed limitations!" - Ron Rael, CPA and Leadership Coach
Learning Objectives
In our role as the head of the accounting function, we often are so focused on our to-do lists, tasks, and deadlines that we fail to take the time to look at the Big Picture. This first step is designed to give you a global view of where the role of the CFO, and by extension, the Controller is heading. You will quickly discover that the role we play must change or we will be left behind. The reasons for this are many and mostly because we are now in the global economy where speed, flexibility, and innovation are the coin of the realm.
After completing this chapter you should be able to
• Redefine the role you must play to benefit your employer.
• See our evolving profession through the eyes of some very accomplished CFOs.
• Find some critical skills that we will need to be effective by the year 2010.
• Find some key attitudes that will benefit us to be ready for the year 2010.
• With your peers, hone in on what are the most important changes in accounting that we must begin to address today.
The Rapidly Changing World of the Accounting Leader
Whether we like it or not, the profession that we work for is changing rapidly and significantly. What will this mean for you? This will depend on how you view your role and what the organization needs you to do. Despite that, there are some clear indications that the role of the Controller will change, because the CFO's role is changing as well.
Included in this chapter is a summary of some recent thoughts about the role of the CFO in the year 2010. We are focusing on the CFO for three reasons: first, in smaller organizations the Controller serves in the capacity of the CFO; second, many Controllers report to a CFO in larger organizations; and third, if you wish to grow out of your job, the logical place to move is into the seat of the CFO.
The essence of the significant changes predicted is that the role of the CFO in the year 2010 would be shaped by their position on a global corporate stage. Here are some experts' thoughts on the CFO evolution.
Listen to the Experts
John Connors is the CFO of Microsoft. "People will have access to information in a way that they never had in the past," he said in a recent interview, "which means the premium on communicating financial information will be enormous."
Jan Hommen is the global CFO of the electronic giant Philips. "The speed at which you will have to do things will be mind-boggling," he warns us.
Norman Lyle, Group Finance Director of Jardine Matheson in Hong Kong, summed up the way CFOs will change. "The CFO," he said, "needs to guard the information. The CFO is now often seen as the automatic deputy CEO and is the person who deals with the outside world. The CFO will need the courage and conviction to stand up to their business colleagues."
John Schmoll, CFO of Coles Myer, Australia's largest retail group, thought the CFOs by the year 2010 "will have to be experts at interpreting the information and communicating it to the organization."
Excerpts from CFO 2010: The CFO and the Role of Information by Robert Bruce.
The Pain in Internal Accounting Today
These are four significant realities that are impacting the internal accounting function today and most significantly affecting the responsibilities and duties of the Controller. These will be covered in more detail in Chapter 7.
1. Accounting will always be thought of as a necessary evil (until we prove that it is a core function that adds measurable profits).
2. Accounting departments will be smaller and smaller as executives strive to lower the costs of doing business.
3. The Controller's job description will continue to be "all responsibilities not assigned to others!"
4. The Controller's team spends far too much time doing meaningless work – processing transactions – and not enough time adding value. This is why accountants are viewed as a commodity subject to the desire for executives to pay the lowest price possible for accounting.
The Solution to These Pains and the Change
Controllers need to redefine their role and become the
Key Financial Strategist
This title describes what the Controller needs to be.
Key
Refers to the fact that you must always take the lead and use your power and influence for good.
Financial
We are still the financial watchdog of the organization.
Strategist
We have to constantly think globally and stay three steps ahead.
I strongly urge you to go back and redefine your formal job description and put this title in it. This will remind you how you can best serve as the financial-minded change agent and conscience in the organization that you work for.
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