Strategies for advancing to the C-suite
Finance professionals seeking a pathway to the C-suite will have a better chance of success if they strategically manage their careers and craft the building blocks needed to lift themselves to the ranks of top leadership.
Along the way, they will need to master essential skills that will enable them to lead diverse workforces. Those skills include becoming more proficient in their technical abilities, developing essential leadership skills, and practising strategic thinking, said Kenny Lee, FCMA, CGMA, vice-president of finance at Cyan Renewables in Singapore.
“It can be both a challenging and rewarding journey that takeſ passion, determination, and vision,” Lee said.
Lee, along with Rebecca Morland, co-lead of the global financial officers practice at organisational consulting firm Korn Ferry in London, mapped pathways for aspiring leaders to advance to the C-suite and described the steps along the way.
Explore diverse leadership opportunities
Because of the prevalence of global business and shared services arrangements today, it is increasingly challenging for finance leaders in business units to experience responsibility for a large headcount, Morland said.
“Today, CFOs are so much more than the finance leader alone,” she said. “In many companies, they are also the deputy CEO, the owner of transformation, responsible for ESG elements, and a key representative to external stakeholders, including investors.”
To prepare for the breadth of the role, aspiring CFOs need to obtain many different experiences and expand and test themselves outside of their comfort zone.
“This could mean taking general management roles, taking overseas assignments to test their cultural agility and get exposure to emerging market economics, or moving into other finance sub-functions such as treasury or investor relations where they have not yet had experience,” Morland said.
Opportunities like these, as well as secondments and job-share opportunities, will provide a broad knowledge base, even if the upward trajectory is not obvious.
Lee added that often, a series of lateral moves designed to gain proficiency may be more valuable than a vertical progression. He recommended being open to taking on cross-functional projects that, in the end, work out to be valuable learning experiences.
He described his personal career advancement as more “organised chaos” than steady, continuous progress. He added: “The knowledge I gained in my lateral roles played a key role in preparing me for vertical progression to my corporate role as a top leader.”
Seek out mentors
Lee advised finance professionals to connect with mentors and follow the examples they set during their journey to the C-suite. He emphasised spending quality time with them and focusing on building whole relationships rather than simply professional ones.
“I am blessed to have had a few mentors who were very open towards sharing their experience and knowledge,” he said. “Over the years, I have developed a strong relationship with my mentors, both past and present, and I view them as friends.”
It often helps to tap into more than one mentor.
Morland said having many mentors can be regarded as having a personal board of directors who can offer different perspectives and skillsets.
“Developing a kind of mentoring council around your professional needs gives you a wealth of resources for specific issues by providing someone to go to if you have a stakeholder issue, and someone else to go to if you have a finance problem to solve,” she said.
Whether you have one or two mentors or an entire circle of them, it is important to think carefully about what you want out of your mentoring relationships and focus on how best to gain value from those relationships.
Be comfortable with taking risks
As finance leaders, it is vital that we take on business risk while protecting our shareholders’ assets and ensuring compliance, Lee said.
“Be willing to step out of your comfort zone,” he advised. “As a member of the leadership team, you are expected to do your part and lead by example, and sometimes that means delivering outcomes that are outside your usual functional capabilities.”
Often, those outcomes lead to transforming your organisation’s business model.
“Leaders today are valued when they can demonstrate their capabilities as a change agent,” Lee said.
“We multiply our value when we motivate our stakeholders to work towards a common goal, creating synergy whereby the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts.”
Keep an open mind
Sometimes, aspiring CFOs believe they must leave their current place of employment to advance their careers, but that’s not always the case.
Morland advises finance managers to continuously examine opportunities for internal promotions as well as external ones, as organisations are often keen to promote from within rather than seek outside leaders.
“I think companies have gotten so much better around succession planning,” she said. “And companies work on those plans quite diligently.”
If you receive an opportunity you haven’t considered before, it might pay to at least explore how that might help you grow within your organisation, she said.
Across the course of a career, what appear to be surefire opportunities may not materialise because of changes beyond your control, Morland added.
And that’s why ongoing self-evaluation and understanding what fulfils you as a leader will help keep you on the path to accomplish your goals.
“Overall, in your journey to the C-suite, it helps to keep an open mind and remember to seek leadership roles that give you satisfaction because people tend to perform at their best when they do what they really enjoy,” Morland said. “Always keep your eyes open for something you might never have thought of before, because it could be exciting and lead to great things.”
Teri Saylor is a freelance writer based in the US. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Oliver Rowe at Oliver.Rowe@aicpa-cima.com.
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