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Influencers wield remarkable power. At the peak of her cultural influence, Oprah Winfrey could send book sales skyrocketing with her endorsement. Today, social media influencers use their platform to advance social causes or earn commissions through paid partnerships (Olivia Tiedemann will have you sold on stainless steel pans).
Modern CFOs, who’ve moved from being tactical number-crunchers to more strategic thinkers, can serve as influencers in their organizations. But CFOs didn’t dive into strategy waters immediately. Years ago, they got their feet wet by “reporting out progress against strategic initiatives,” Myles Corson, EY’s global and Americas strategy and markets leader, said during a recent CFO Brew virtual event.
“Increasingly, CFOs had a seat at the table,” Corson said. “Now, that seat at the table is much more in helping to set and define strategy.”
Speak up. In assuming the role of organizational influencer, CFOs need to effectively communicate, according to Corson.
“Whether that’s internally within your finance organization, whether it’s across your organization, or it’s externally to investors and broader stakeholder communities, you have to be able to tell stories,” he said.
CFOs also need to be able to explain the value of and push for additional investment in the finance function, he added. The key to doing that: Show leaders the return on investment from better insights and business decision-making.
“I think many CFOs see themselves as needing…not to be hypocritical in terms of making investments in their own function when they’re expecting others to take cuts and to be very fiscally responsible,” Corson said. “But at the same time, clearly finance is in a unique position to be able to articulate that value story. I think one of the things that is really important for successful CFOs is to be positive in articulating what that value story is.”
Get it together. As an influencer, the CFO is in a position to help build consensus on a path forward among organizational leaders, Corson said.
A key to that is relationship-building. While the CEO/CFO relationship is generally strong, the CFO’s relationship with other C-suite leaders traditionally “hasn’t been as strong,” Corson said. He added that two-thirds of CFOs in an EY survey indicated that challenges between meeting their short- and long-term goals were due to “disagreements within the C-suite.”
“The CFO, I think, is in a unique position of being able to help drive commitment around what the path forward is,” Corson said.