Kevin Appleby on the challenges facing new CFOs

03/03/21 • 53 min

Kevin Appleby helps run GrowCFO, a community and development resource for finance professionals. A PwC alum-turned instructor, Kevin realized that what CFOs really needed was a support system. He joined me on The Modern CFO podcast to talk about the challenges facing CFOs today, the importance of seeking out mentors, and how to embrace imposter syndrome by conducting thoughtful self-assessment.

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Key Takeaways

Kevin’s journey: from CPA to the classroom

Kevin’s experience runs the gamut from CPA work to the chemical industry to working as a consultant for PwC. Ultimately he ended up in the classroom. When COVID hit, GrowCFO was the perfect segue.

“I became a management consultant and ended up working for PwC, mainly doing finance transformation projects, my client would typically be the finance director, the VP finance, or the CFO and often working with his team trying to find information for the project. And I found over time there are lots of stuff that I knew the answer to, but the client's own finance team didn't. I ended up spending time in the classroom teaching a lot of that stuff.”

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Creating a dedicated CFO network

Almost every industry has numerous networking and educational resources. Kevin saw that the CFO world was an exception.

“There's nothing really out there for CFOs, senior finance people to communicate with each other and to help each other solve problems. There's plenty of space here to go to the big advisory firms, but nothing really here to allow CFOs to cooperate with each other and share learning.”

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Helping CFOs break through the glass ceiling

A major challenge young CFOs face is breaking into the C-suite. GrowCFO helps prepare aspiring CFOs to succeed in the application process and beyond.

“What we found was there's a big glass ceiling. It's very difficult to break through into the C-suite...95% of the roles out there are looking for experienced CFOs, right? How do you ever get through that? So we put together the Future CFO program. We've got it accredited for 40 hours of CPD, continuing professional development, and it takes you on a nine module or a nine-step journey between being a very good, very accomplished head finance professional through to landing your first CFO job, how to move into that job. And it finishes with creating the plan for your first hundred days in your new CFO role.”

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CFOs are asked to do it all

New CFOs are often in for a rude shock. The breadth and amount of work expected can be staggering.

“Why does GrowCFO exist? One of the things that we're very definitely seeing Andrew is that the kind of breadth of skills that a CFO needs to have these days is huge. And there's no way that any one person can be expected to be rounded at absolutely everything. I think communication is one of those interesting ones that you've got a guy who's used to being in the back office, used to be behind his favorite Excel spreadsheet, he's used to running the finance team, become CFO. Suddenly, he's going to talk to customers, to suppliers, to investors, to shareholders, countless other stakeholders. He's gotta be the right hand man to the CEO. Now suddenly he's got a whole new world to play in.”

Promoting inclusion and diversity

Strong CFOs are often tactful and inclusive. Today, that means doing a quick check of your assumptions before communicating.

“The equity house looks for people like themselves. You as the CFO you're constantly thinking of communicating to yourself...one of my regular weekly tasks in GrowCFO is to write the weekly newsletter. Normally I write it. So the last few weeks I've written on a Sunday evening with a schedule set to go at about eight 30, Monday morning. And I do find myself looking back on this and suddenly realizing, Oh, Kevin, you've written this for another male CFO. Go back, take out all the references to he or him or whatever, and realize that probably 40-45% of the people that are reading this newsletter are female.”

Learn to specialize & delegate

Since you can’t possibly do it all, what’s the answer? Kevin says the solution is to learn when to dig in - and when to pull back.

“You can be weak in something. And part of it is recognizing you're weak and maybe getting somebody else to help you rather than learn the skills yourself...The CFO cannot be good at everything. But if you've got a...

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Key Takeaways

Kevin’s journey: from CPA to the classroom

Kevin’s experience runs the gamut from CPA work to the chemical industry to working as a consultant for PwC. Ultimately he ended up in the classroom. When COVID hit, GrowCFO was the perfect segue.

‍

Creating a dedicated CFO network

Almost every industry has numerous networking and educational resources. Kevin saw that the CFO world was an exception.

‍

Helping CFOs break through the glass ceiling

A major challenge young CFOs face is breaking into the C-suite. GrowCFO helps prepare aspiring CFOs to succeed in the application process and beyond.

‍

CFOs are asked to do it all

New CFOs are often in for a rude shock. The breadth and amount of work expected can be staggering.

Promoting inclusion and diversity

Strong CFOs are often tactful and inclusive. Today, that means doing a quick check of your assumptions before communicating.

Learn to specialize & delegate

Since you can’t possibly do it all, what’s the answer? Kevin says the solution is to learn when to dig in - and when to pull back.

Previous Episode

Hypertherm’s Rob Masson on navigating crisis with teamwork

Rob Masson is the CFO at Hypertherm, a 50-year-old company that is a leader in industrial cutting systems. He’s also a former Naval aviator who learned critical leadership skills firsthand. Rob joined us on the Modern CFO Podcast to share his unique perspective on management and the ways in which empowered, confident employees helped Hypertherm weather the COVID-19 crisis.

Visit Hypertherm
Connect with Rob on LinkedIn

Key Takeaways

Weathering COVID-19

The pandemic took an early toll on Hypertherm, but the company stayed true to its employee-centric values.

“We suffered, you know, over a 30% loss in sales almost overnight in April, and that caused a whole chain of events...We're an employee-owned company. We all share in the success of the company. And so we're all committed to each other. We have a no-layoff philosophy. So a lot of the normal things you do in public company settings and others, we don't do. And we have a very strong passion for that. So we will cut costs. We're very aggressive with that. But in terms of commitment to people, we don't do that. We come together as a team and solve the problem.”

Overcoming obstacles as a team

Teamwork enabled Hypertherm to bounce back from COVID-19 amid global challenges.

“It was quite a dramatic response from us internally to reset for the new norm. And then there were a lot of things on the capital structure side that we thought about with the treasury group and working with our banks, just to make sure we were secure from a cash flow and keeping that going...we serve some essential end markets. So we worked very diligently to keep our supply chain open, to make sure we had raw materials, stock, etc., since we source from all over the world. So it was really a team effort.”

Crisis builds new muscles

Once you go through a crisis situation, you are better equipped to face the future.

“This year, actually, we really surprised the organization because our business came back quite strong and we really stepped forward and shared a lot of that profit back with our associates...When you go through crisis, you live through it, you gain new muscles. So I feel very confident. Hopefully we never have to face it again as a company, but we're now prepared more than we were prior. And I think we'd do even better the next time, just because of the response and teamwork of the company.”

Navel experience in action

Rob’s Naval background played a critical role in his ability to keep cool under pressure.

“There's just a different experience you get as a Naval aviator than you get in other walks of life, and that's trained into you to compartmentalize and solve the problem. ‘There's no end until it's over’ kind of thing. And excellence is that way too. You demand a lot of yourself. And anytime I flew, we briefed as a team. We flew in the mission then we came back and we assessed what we did and how we could get better the next time...so it was a very critical look and that was all part of teamwork as well. And then the last thing is tenacity, which is what I started with. When you're in a crisis situation, you're not done until you've tried everything. And you don't let yourself think of anything but solving the problem and keeping with it. And I think that's the type of unique training I had as a Naval aviator that helps me in all sorts of situations.”

The value of parallel expertise
While traditional jobs require a one-track mindset, the Navy instilled in Rob the ability to adapt to new situations.

“The Navy does that to you. They put you in and just when you're comfortable and you succeeded somewhere, they throw you in a totally different leadership situation and you learn to lead in situations where you're not the expert. Some cases you're the expert, some cases you're not the expert...I think that gives me a little bit different perspective. The normal business career is get out of college, get started as an individual contributor, prove yourself through your technical skill, and then start getting advanced into leadership situations. And I think with the Navy, it's a professional training organization and it's much more about parallel technical expertise.”

Structural versus Operational CFOs

Rob sees himself as a leader first, and an operating CFO second.

“I was an economics major in college. So the art and the science of economics always appealed to me. And I think it's more of that side of operational finance, and what does finance tell you about the operations of the business. So I'm much more of an operating CFO if you will. And those are really, if you look at CFOs, you either h...

Next Episode

How John Collins of LivePerson operates as a data-driven CFO

John Collins is the CFO at LivePerson and the very definition of a modern CFO in every way. His career journey spans a job at the New York stock exchange, grad school at MIT, inventing a fully automated trading platform that he wrote from scratch, managing the portfolio for a 10 billion AUM fund, co-founding his own company, and joining LivePerson. As CFO at LivePerson, John is passionate about the role of data in the CFO world, the possibilities of “conversational commerce,” and the vision of combining algorithms and social justice.

Show Links

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Key Takeaways

John’s journey to LivePerson

After getting introduced to LivePerson’s CEO Rob by chance, the compelling encounter led John to join the LivePerson team.

“After I met Rob, he gave me his vision for LivePerson and how the company’s innovations are changing the way that we communicate and do business. And the value proposition really resonated with me on a deep personal and professional level. I mean, who hasn't experienced frustration waiting on hold or dialing 1-800 numbers to get some intent, some need resolved with the brand? So being able to send a message and then go about your day and feel confident that your need would be taken care of without putting you on the brand or the agent’s schedule is super compelling. And then leveling that up into what we call conversational AI and specifically conversational commerce was a really compelling vision that I was pretty sold on from the beginning.”

Navigating data constraints

John describes how the data that most companies collect is inherently messy.

“I distinguish data from information. Data needs to be transformed in some way. It needs to be normalized. It needs to be cleaned in order to produce some kind of useful information for decision-making purposes. Many companies have a lot of data, but they have trouble accessing it. They have trouble reconciling. It's not clean, it's not reliable. I call these data constraints. And so there are many constraints you need to overcome in order to leverage data effectively.”

Conversational commerce

The future of commerce is conversational: two-way engagement that takes place on the customer’s terms.

“LivePerson is really a cloud-based platform that the largest brands in the world use to converse with their customers through messaging...You can, let's say, change your flight, order a burrito, arrange contactless, commerce services, like curbside pickup, all from the convenience of iMessage or WhatsApp or Facebook or any other channel that we prefer to use today. And messaging-based transactions like these I think represent a modern engagement model for brands and consumers that we call conversational commerce. The company has really evolved from synchronous web chat for customer care applications to asynchronous communications for a wide range of use cases, including two-way proactive notifications. So, no longer do you get this email that says “do not reply.” The LivePerson ethos and the essence of conversational commerce is that it's always two-way.”

LivePerson’s vision

The ability to converse with a brand in real-time will be a game changer, supplanting historical physical sales interactions.

“The vision of the company is that conversational commerce will really supplant the types of commerce that we've seen: historically brick-and-mortar, sort of physical retail sales, e-commerce where you're pointing and clicking on a website. The ability to converse with a brand to get questions answered increases confidence, increases the satisfaction of the experience. And ultimately, as the results show, it drives more sales for it for brands.”

CFO as a data scientist

John sees data transformation as the primary goal of the modern CFO - a departure from previous perceptions of the CFO as purely a financial professional.

“The CFO operates at the intersection of all the company's data flows, whether it's sales, product usage, finance. That's a vast sea of data. And fundamentally the role is to transform that data into useful information, right? As we mentioned for strategic decision making purposes, spreadsheets and traditional financial analysts are simply not capable of effectively utilizing the volume of data that's available in our increasingly quantified world. And from this perspective, the CFO sounds, I think, more like a j...