In our first blog in the 'Lessons from the lab' series, we looked at how the CFO can builder a stronger relationship with the CEO. In this blog, we feature an interview with Ajit Kambil, Ph.D., Global Research Director for Deloitte's CFO Program, where he draws on his experience designing and leading the Deloitte CFO Transition Lab" to discuss how incoming CFOs can build effective finance teams and establish relationships with key business leaders.

Q: What would you name as priorities or challenges that most incoming CFOs encounter regardless of their distinct organisation and industry?

That depends on the situation you're coming into. However, both our Transition Labs and Deloitte's CFO Signals" surveys consistently point to talent as a top priority for CFOs. What skills are needed, where are there gaps and where is the CFO most vulnerable in terms of the talent in his or her organisation?  Number two is establishing relationships internally and externally, relationships that will help support your vision and build a following for you as CFO. These are two areas of challenges that come up over and over again in our CFO transition labs.

Q: How can incoming CFOs tackle their talent challenges?

An incoming CFO should ask "Who do I need to replace or reskill?" or "How should I restructure my organisation to fulfil my priorities?" And "my priorities" are the key words.

You want to avoid the organisation theories and create the organisation that can best deliver on your priorities in the next few years. But keep in mind: there is no permanent, magic bullet design. It is likely your organisation will change more than once during your tenure to adapt to shifting conditions. It's rare that I work with a CFO who at the end of a transition lab says, "I am not going to change anything in my finance team." Even when you inherit a fabulous team, you have to worry about people retiring, succession planning issues and building a structure for the future.

Typically, a CFO comes into a situation in which something is not working quite right within finance—not that it's all broken, but there are parts that are broken, which the CFO should want to repair.  They might be issues like a long close process, or an FP&A group that fails to deliver actionable data and insights to the business leaders. Addressing these issues often requires assessing whether the talent in your organisation is capable of getting the right things done.

Q: Where do incoming CFOs start when it comes to establishing relationships?

It's important to reach out to and listen to the finance leadership team and, more importantly, to the finance organisation's internal clients. You want to understand what they need from you and from finance, what worked well previously and what didn't work so well under your predecessor.

Often, finance is not viewed as a good partner to the business. Trying to understand where finance is not being an effective partner helps start you on the way to achieving the kind of partnership you desire. One of our transition lab CFOs referred to this process as "unpacking the old issues," and that captures it very well—unpacking the old issues is about looking at how finance is working within the organisation and beginning the process of resetting the working relationship between you and your peer leaders of the various business units.

It's also important to identify those areas where the internal client needs to make changes, so you can clearly communicate to other business leaders what finance needs from them in order to build an effective partnership.

Continue reading the full interview with Ajit here: http://deloitte.wsj.com/cfo/2012/10/16/lessons-from-the-lab-the-importance-of-talent-assessment-and-relationship-building-to-new-cfos/

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