Steve McNally has served on the Institute of Management Accountants’ (IMA’s) global board of directors for nearly 14 years, and recently finished his term as chair. He’s had decades of experience in management accounting, and is now CFO, secretary, and treasurer of Plastic Technologies Inc. At the IMA23 Annual Accounting & Finance Conference in mid-June, he spoke with CFO Brew about how management accounting has evolved, and shared his best advice for career success.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How has the role of the management accountant changed during your tenure with IMA?
Data analytics is more important. DEI is more relevant. Risk management is more important. Although the basics have been consistent… our goal is to create economic value for our organizations…the nature of the work has changed quite a bit.
What’s one trend that will change the role going forward?
Sustainable business management. To me, the role of finance should be, we’re in that perfect seat to really see the full organization and to see the opportunities and the risks, and to…seize those opportunities that are win-win…think about the return on investment of sustainability initiatives, whether they’re the big initiatives—a solar field, a wind farm, a biogas facility—or whether they’re the smaller investments that add up, like changing over to LED lighting, or in the manufacturing industry, recapturing water, recapturing heat. Yes, we now talk about sustainability. But before, we were simply talking about it as good business—becoming more efficient, effective, more productive.
What skills do you need to succeed as a CFO?
The number one thing is, you need a business partner mentality. You need to really understand your business, understand the industry, understand the broader economy. You need strategic agility. You need those table stakes in terms of technical skills, financial, accounting. You need to understand the technology. And, of course, it’s finance—you’d better be results-oriented.
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You’re definitely the member of the cross-functional team that sometimes has to ask those really tough questions. So it’s also having that courage as well.
What’s the best advice you ever got for excelling at your job?
When you take on a new job, learn everything you can about it.
As an example, when I became the finance director for Chunky Soup [at the Campbell Soup Company], I was working with the marketers and learned all about the marketing plans and the budgets. I was working with the R&D team and learning about product development. And I was working with our sales liaison and went into stores and was meeting customers. And it was a really good thing that I did that, because [later] we had an entirely new marketing team come on board. I became the glue to what the Chunky teams’ marketing plans and programs were all about.
But more importantly, by learning the business, I’m not just giving financial insights. I’m able to sit there as equally as any other partner at the table to make suggestions and help make sure we make the best decisions.
What would you say to a management accountant whose goal is to become a CFO?
If you aspire to be a CFO, absolutely, you should go for it. Because in my opinion, being a CFO, it’s dynamic, it’s challenging, it’s exciting. It may well be the greatest job in the world.