Good to Great: How to Scale With an Outsourced CFO

Creating a culture of performance is critical to your organisation’s success, but the path toward this goal isn’t always clear. The executive team can sit around the boardroom table and discuss performance strategies and goals, but it can seem difficult, if not impossible, to extend that discussion to the organisation at large.

That’s where a strategic CFO can be invaluable. With their knowledge of systems, decision-making, and analytics, CFOs are in a great position to be the strategists and catalysts for building a culture of performance within your organisation.

In this post, we’ll outline some of the tools CFOs are using in their quest for improved overall performance. You’ll see that competent and inspiring CFOs are positioned to be the game-changers when it comes to company culture.

 

Productivity

CFOs can help to improve the productivity of their organisations by defining performance accountability and designing a support framework for that accountability. When employees are unclear about who is accountable for key decisions and productivity, things fall through the cracks, deadlines are missed and performance declines.

A competent CFO can put in play the frameworks and definitions necessary for employees to know and understand their expectations regarding productivity. By using realistic benchmarks and holding employees accountable, CFOs can encourage, measure and improve productivity across the business.

Finding and training the right talent for particular positions is another important aspect of improving productivity. As your organisation’s culture improves, top talent will find your company more attractive. Your CFO should be highly involved in seeking out and hiring the best people for your finance department and beyond.

 

Project Management

Simply put, project management is a structured approach to driving business success using the strategic use of your organisation’s most important initiatives. It’s not often, however, that CFOs see project management as one of their key responsibilities. 

In reality, CFOs can use project management strategies to formalise their organisations’ capabilities and keep everyone focused on high performance.

 

Incentives

Any time you’re trying to implement organisation-wide changes, incentives are a powerful tool. This is especially true when the changes you want to institute are as broad and as lasting as transforming company culture.

CFOs can begin by reviewing existing incentives and evaluating how effective they are. You may need to consider a different compensation structure, at least for a time, in order to encourage employees to reach the performance indicators you’re aiming for.

In most cases, simply changing financial incentives will not be enough to promote lasting cultural changes. Team members also need frequent reminders about expectations, behaviours, and reasons for change.

 

Leading from the Top

If there’s one thing a CFO needs to be, it’s a strong, capable leader. Big cultural changes require a motivating narrative, and the CFO needs to own that narrative. He or she needs to live that narrative so that everyone else has a model to look up to. 

When the CFO is instilled with the habits, demeanour and skills that promote high-quality performance, other people will have an example to look up to. They’ll be inspired to adopt the same optimism and confidence in their ability to change for the better and improve not only the organisation’s results but their own careers as well.

Through improving productivity, reconsidering the role of project management, evaluating incentives, and leading from the top, your CFO can lead the way and take your organisation in a new, more successful direction. 

For more information about how outsourced CFO services can transform your business, download our free eGuide below.