If 8:30am in a hotel conference room filled with well-dressed CFOs is the last place you’d expect to hear Metallica, then you’ve never seen Jack McCullough speak. In fact, much of a McCullough speech is…different than what one would normally see at a high-powered business conference.

To watch McCullough work the crowd during a conference is to really see him shine. At the 20th annual MIT Sloan CFO Summit in November, a conference he co-founded, McCullough moved from table to table for hours, attendees calling out to him as he moved through the room. There were over 400 CFOs and finance professionals at the one-day conference and, to an outside observer, it seemed like McCullough knew each one.

“I’m visible within that community because I’m the founder of that conference,” McCullough told CFO Brew recently. “And it was the 20th year; there’s just a comfort level that people have developed with me.”

But that’s not really surprising; one CFO who’s known McCullough for decades called him, “the consummate networker.”

“He just knows everyone…and that comes across in the work that he does. It’s a really powerful differentiator for him,” Michael Bayer, CFO of Wasabi Technologies, who met McCullough in the early 2000s, told CFO Brew. “He’s seen as the connector.”

As the founder and president of the CFO Leadership Council, a professional association with 2,000 members and 30 chapters across the US and Canada (with another opening soon in Las Vegas), author of two books, and a co-founder of the MIT Sloan CFO Summit, McCullough has been a tireless advocate for decades in helping CFOs transition from a technical, backward-looking accounting role to becoming more strategic, empathetic, and inclusive business partners and leaders.

“He really wants to build an excellent community of finance leaders that goes beyond the finance and accounting,” said Joyce Bell, CFO of JM Bell Consulting and a founding member of The CFO Leadership Council. “It’s really recognizing that the role of a CFO is very much of a leader, so you need to have emotional intelligence and need to understand what leadership and development is.” Read more here.—DA

Executives tend to keep tabs on what their industry is up to, since tasks ranging from how to get better versed in cybersecurity and how to lead through a potential downturn loom over their heads. Some surveys offer insights, but others may leave readers wondering why. In a survey released by Gartner last week saying that CFOs were actually planning to increase salaries, despite all other signals and sentiment suggesting otherwise, we thought we’d dive a little deeper.

The survey, which polled 279 CFOs in December 2022, found that 86% of CFOs “plan to increase employee compensation in 2023, despite recession fears,” as finance chiefs try recover from the difficulty of attracting top-tier talent over the past few years, according to Gartner.

“Many CFOs are still trying to shake off the negative ramifications from talent shortages since 2020, and they know they must invest in their staff to retain them,” Alexander Bant, chief of research in the Gartner Finance practice, wrote. Bant added that while finance chiefs can’t afford to keep compensation in line with inflation, thanks to the cooling labor market, they conveniently won’t need to.

How will these 279 finance chiefs be able to increase compensation even though they can’t afford to do so in a way that keeps pace with inflation? The research firm says “build leaner and faster businesses,” which has echoes of the rank-and-yank business philosophy developed by GE.

Gartner’s study comes at a time when headline after headline point to layoffs across numerous sectors, most notably in technology. Keep reading here.—KT

Coworking is a weekly segment where we talk to CFOs and others in the finance space about their experiences, their companies, and the larger economy. Let us know if you are—or you know—a CFO we should interview.

Karla Smith is the chief financial officer of Ogilvy UK, an advertising and marketing firm that works to consult other businesses on how to best market and display their product offerings.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in finance?

My role is to make sure the commercial impact of all decisions—from how we price to whether we give free breakfasts to staff—is front of mind when our leaders are making those choices. Enabling leaders to make conscious investment decisions that support growth and guiding them, but not controlling them, on the financial impact that might have.

How do you think the CFO role has changed over the past five to 10 years, both for you, and in general?

CFOs are business leaders. I guess I have always seen the role that way, but I think that has become more accepted over the last five years. The CFO adds insight and is a trusted advisor to the board, focusing on the future position. It’s not a role that is stuck in reporting and analyzing past performance, which is maybe how some viewed it before. The CFO can play a large part in business transformation, from systems and solutions through to evaluating new offerings. With a growing focus on sustainability and DE&I, the CFO also has a critical role to play here, driving the company strategy through all of the areas which the CFO has influence over, from supplier relationships to hiring and reward. Read more here.—KT

Stat: ~$1 million. That’s the amount in sanctions a US district judge ordered Facebook and its law firm to pay for allegedly sharing users’ private data without consent. Friendly reminder that Facebook parent company Meta reported revenue of $32.2 billion in the fourth quarter, and $116 billion for full year 2022. No need to start a GoFundMe. (Bloomberg)

Quote: “And I want people to know that we made them dance.”—Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, describing how he sees the renewed competition over AI-based search between Microsoft and Google. (The Verge)

Read: A Harvard Business School professor makes the argument that a “boring” CEO is ideal. No word on whether a boring CFO is preferable. We don’t know any boring CFOs, obvs. (the Wall Street Journal)

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