The five levers of influential CFOs

During the following extract video, Richard Medcalf discusses the five levers of an influential CFO. Richard is a leadership strategist to C-Suite members of start-ups and scale-ups and is known as “The Impact Multiplier Coach”.  He helps successful executives to focus on their most important levers to take them and their team to a whole new level of success.

Here is a summary of Richard’s five levers to help finance leaders grow your level of C-Suite influence:

1. Overcome the ceiling of complexity: Avoid being maxed out with recurring operational tasks that prevent you from investing time in higher value activities.
2. Nail the moments of truth: Really grab the attention of your audience by bringing concise impactful relevant headlines that lead with the ‘so what’ during key presentations.
3. Manage stakeholders more than tasks: Build strong relationships and partner with the people you can add value to, rather than just delivering your job description.
4. Have a plan for finance, don’t just have a financial plan: Develop a strategic plan towards evolving your finance function and test this with your stakeholders. Invest in building capabilities with future payback and upskill your team accordingly.
5. Swap hats: Spend time wearing your cross-functional business leader hat in addition to your finance leader functional hat.  Think about the dynamics of your business, its overall health and the appropriateness of your strategy.  Consider where you are letting yourselves down, challenge what could be done differently and adopt a business leadership role by partnering with teams.

Assess your skills

Which of these five levers do you need to work on the most during the upcoming mo