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Andreas joined the board call wearing his ski jacket. That should have been the warning sign.

I always get a little nervous before a big board meeting, but this one was supposed to be a formality. We were here to sign off on some emergency funding after a horrible twelve months that had left the business in crisis. (Yes, the same situation I told you about last month.)

I'd lined up the funding with our silver-tongued loan shark, socialized it with the board, and had several discussions to get everyone comfortable. We had a solid 5-point profit improvement plan, and this funding would give us the runway to execute it.

Simple, right?

Wrong.

Andreas was joining from the ski slopes, pissed that we were interrupting his vacation for the call. He was someone I looked up to – a former CFO of a huge business. And now a public company CEO. His independent director gig with us, was intended to be light relief from his day job.

He was also an unpredictable lunatic. (I could tell a different story every week about this guy if I wanted to.)

I presented the funding package details they'd already seen and reminded them of the five big moves we were going to make over the next six months. And signed off with: “As they say… don't waste a good crisis."

That's when Andreas spoke up.

"I'm not signing off on this. You say don't waste a good crisis, but that's exactly what you're doing. Point 3 of your plan – operational restructuring – that'll save over $15 million, right? Three hundred thousand per week."

"Yes."

"But it's going to take you another eight weeks to announce that? That's $2.5 million of lost opportunity you're pissing away."

The CEO piped up: "We might be able to get there a week or two earlier, but that's it. There's still a lot to do."

Andreas: "That's okay then. I'll sign off on this new funding in eight weeks' time, when you're ready with your operational restructuring."

"What? We don't have eight weeks."

Andreas: "On that, we agree."

Fuck. He was holding us hostage with our own plan. No funding unless we pulled the trigger today on a restructuring plan that wasn’t fully baked.

We didn't technically need his vote. The other board members would get us over the finish line. But the implication was crystal clear. He'd vote against and resign from the board without losing a moment's sleep. That would be a spectacularly bad look when our funding and restructuring plan got announced.

Things got heated between Andreas and the CEO (who was adamant he needed the 8 weeks for the restructuring plan). Eventually, the chair stepped in, seeing this was going nowhere, and suggested we kill the meeting to reconvene in 48 hours.

I met with the CEO afterward, who was, as you might imagine, none too pleased. I wasn't panicking, but I was close…

Cash was very tight. Far too tight to be cute. We needed that money. And we needed the P&L to turn a corner.

So I asked the CEO: "Why couldn't we be ready in 48 hours to announce that restructuring?"

After we'd exhausted all the reasons why it wasn't possible, we started working through what would actually need to happen. How could we front-load all – and only – the things that were on the critical path to an announcement? A couple of key supplier meetings, one customer agreement, some HR things, and a few legal points. When you boiled it down, it was actually a list of about seven or eight critical items.

We cleared our diaries for the next two days, called the CHRO, COO, and Head of Legal into a war room, and got to work on that list.

Forty-eight hours later, we explained our progress to the board.

Andreas – this time literally wearing his ski goggles on his head – was pleased with what he heard. He let out a big grin and said: "That, gentlemen, is how you don't waste a good crisis."

I appreciated the lesson. He was annoying as hell, but he was also 100% correct.

A new month means a new series. This month, we are getting into the CFO’s Playbook for Crisis Management.

Let’s get cooking.

But first, what is a crisis?

A crisis is a high-stakes event that disrupts business-as-usual, forcing urgent decisions and action under uncertainty, and carrying the power to threaten survival or permanently alter the company’s course.

Let’s take each of the four highlighted terms:

In other words, the airplane engines are on fire, you forgot to pack parachutes, and you’ve fallen behind on your life insurance premiums.

What types of crises can we expect as CFOs?

If you’ve been through one crisis, you’ve been through exactly one crisis. They never repeat, but they do rhyme. Most of them fall into a few flavors:

The real danger is contagion. Crises rarely stay in one lane.

I once lived through an operational blow-up as CFO. Within weeks, it spread into a reputational mess, then - layered on top of tough macro conditions - turned into a full-blown financial squeeze. All four boxes checked…

Next week, we’ll talk about how to break a crisis down into bite-sized pieces while still keeping the links intact. Complexity doesn’t add, it multiplies.

Take operational disruption as an example: the short-term cashflow hit can be brutal. That makes forecasting harder, which makes sizing and mitigating the impact much harder still.

Crisis as usual?

Throughout my career, I’ve witnessed and survived many a crisis. Not without battle scars. Each comes with its own set of learnings and takeaways.

But there’s a fine balance you hope to strike between “wartimes” and “peace times.” Working in a business that is always in crisis mode can make it feel like you are sprinting a marathon. But … getting used to being on your back heel isn't a bad thing, as I learned in March 2020.

Like everyone else, we were rewiring the business overnight to deal with the pandemic. In the coming quarter, we moved faster, executed better, and posted stronger financials than any of our competitors.

Why?

Because we were already battle-hardened. The years before had been a grind of restructurings, severe weather shocks, and every other variety of crisis. Management was permanently on a war footing. It was exhausting and unsustainable, but it turned out to be the perfect warm-up for the chaos of COVID.

The opportunity in a crisis

As you heard in the opening story, a crisis isn’t all bad. It can be the forest fire that clears the field for new growth. Normal rules stop working. Speed replaces consensus. Narratives reset, and inertia gets smashed.

I’ve seen changes that had sat in committees for months, sometimes years, sail through in days once a crisis hit.

Don’t waste a good crisis: Airbnb Case Study

In March 2020, Airbnb saw bookings collapse by 80% in eight weeks. Most companies would have gone into hibernation. Instead, Brian Chesky went to war. The company raised $2B in emergency financing, slashed marketing to near zero, froze hiring, and then cut 25% of staff (about 1,900 people). It was brutal, but it bought time and runway.

That time wasn’t wasted.

Chesky used the crisis to tear down a bloated org chart. Transportation, Studios, Hotels, Luxe - all got mothballed. What had been ten semi-autonomous fiefdoms was collapsed into a single, functional organization.

“We turned what had been the equivalent of a ten-division company into a single-division functional organization,” he told McKinsey in 2021. Every function rolled back under his direct oversight. The sprawl was gone.

The result was a company that could move faster and with less noise. “We decided, let’s go back to being a functional organization… The entire company was on one roadmap… There is very little bureaucracy,” Chesky said later (The Verge, 2023).

In practice, it meant he was directly involved in every key product decision and treated VPs as direct reports. The clean lines gave Airbnb a clarity of execution it had lacked during its hyper-growth phase.

By the time the IPO landed in December 2020, the business wasn’t just alive, it was leaner, sharper, and more resilient. Chesky has been open that COVID forced his hand on changes he might never have made otherwise. “We shuttered most of the divisions,” he reflected. “It was the perfect warm-up.”

In stripping back to the core, Airbnb didn’t just survive a crisis that destroyed their demand overnight… it came out healthier, with the bloat of bureaucracy eliminated, and the founder back in the cockpit.

None of this is new. Corporate history is full of crisis-forced pivots:

A note of caution: While chaos always creates opportunity, that doesn’t mean it will end in an HBS Case Study for every business. Individuals will seize it, well-motivated or not. Nobody said it better than Littlefinger:

The CFO in a Crisis

The CFO’s role tracks the problem. If it’s finance first, you lead. If it’s operational or reputational, you support. Either way, you’re responsible for time, truth, and trust. 

But here are some things you can do every time:

Setting Up the Series

So, how are we going to structure this month’s Playbook?

Careers can be made or broken in a crisis. I’ve seen execs on their last legs, one meeting from getting the bullet, who rise to the moment in a crisis, and earn a second wind that lasts years.

I’ve also seen execs in seemingly safe seats get wiped out in a few weeks when the tide went out and showed they weren’t wearing a bathing suit.

It’s all about how well you prevent, prepare for, and react to crises. And we’ll get into that next week.

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Disclaimer: I am not your accountant, tax advisor, lawyer, CFO, director, or friend. Well, maybe I’m your friend, but I am not any of those other things. Everything I publish represents my opinions only, not advice. Running the finances for a company is serious business, and you should take the proper advice you need.