This is CFO Secrets. Your personal guide to the finance top job.

5 Minute Read Time

In Today’s Email:

• 🤔 What to do first in a new CFO job

• 😹 Meme of the week

• 👨‍🍳 The best book on cooking the books

THE DEEP DIVE

The First 90 Days as a CFO

I knew that I knew my stuff.

But still, I was nervous. This was my first high profile Group CFO role.

I had all the pieces of the puzzle, I’d done my time in every corner of finance. And I was confident I could put it all together. But this was no ordinary CFO role. It was a deep turnaround.

Time was of the essence. That meant it wasn’t enough to do the right things. Things must happen in the right order.

I had 2 weeks until I was due to start.

I was going to uncover some skeletons from the closet. But, I didn’t know what, where and how much.

The Company was over leveraged and would be dead in 12 months without open heart surgery. And if the Company failed, 20,000+ people would lose their jobs.

It was like building a 1,000 piece puzzle, but the pieces needed to be placed in a certain sequence. All against the clock.

I needed help. I needed a mentor. One who had walked my shoes before.

I got lucky. Through a former boss I met Adam (not his real name). Adam had been CFO for one of the most successful companies in the world for 10 years. A rockstar. He was now winding down into a ‘plural’ career as Chair of several public companies.

I met him in Starbucks. We sat for 2 hours and together wrote a plan for my first 90 days.

That plan became my North Star for the first 3 months in my new role. It worked. So I used it as a template for every role since.

And now I’m going to share it with you, my crispy buddies…

Let’s start by breaking the first 90 days into 4 phases

1. Before First Day

2. First 7 Days

3. First 30 Days

4. First 90 Days

1. Before First Day

Objective: Immersion in the facts

To Do List: READING!! (Sample document list below)

• Board Paper for last 18 months (including sub-committees)

• Latest financial plans (Strategic / Multi Year Plans, Annual Budget, Latest Forecast)

• Latest performance (Management Accounts, Rolling Monthly Cashflow Forecast, 13 Week Cashflow Forecast)

• Capital structure (Summary of all Debt & Equity Instruments including terms, covenants, etc)

• Finance department (Org Chart, Functional KPIs, Reporting Calendar)

• Reward (Top X Salary List, Bonus Structure)

• Review your induction plan

Outcomes:

• Identify any burning platforms. Things that need addressing inside your first 90 days. I.e. those that need managing alongside your induction.

• Build a master list of business issues (nested bullet point format)

• Identify the most important contacts (internal and external)

• Maps the issues to the stakeholders and build out a list of questions for each stakeholder.

• Feed the above back into the induction plan

2. First 7 Days

Objective: See the business up close, but on your agenda

To Do List:

• Have an introductory call / town hall with your -1 and -2 reports.

• Work in the business for a minimum of 2 days. Get your ass in the operations. No better way to feel the texture of the business.

• Spend a day with the CEO. Build rapport. Understand their vision.

• 1 on 1s with all your direct reports. Get to know them and what motivates them. Try and hold off from sharing any observations at this stage. Listening mode.

Outcomes:

• Understand the business

• Build a common understanding with your closest 5-6 contacts (CEO, and direct reports)

3. First 30 Days

Objective: Listen and hear all relevant points of view. Surface ALL issues.

To Do List:

• Give your direct reports,all cross function peers, and CEO the opportunity to ‘bring out the dead’. One time only offer.

• Meet all the key internal contacts, including board members, department heads, -2 reports

• Observe the monthly reporting and performance management cycle. Attend all business review meetings, etc.

• Attend the board meeting. Verbally communicate initial observations. Set them up to expect your full findings in first meeting after your 90 days finish

• Put a call into all key external stakeholders

• Build a business wide balance sheet risk and opportunities list

• Build a view of the likely performance range for current year profitability and cash delivery. Is this in line with current Board understanding?

• Risk assess the ‘bring out the dead’ list. Often the issues aren’t as bad as the person thought. Occasionally they are much worse

• Watch cashflow forecast accuracy. What is the root cause of forecast variances. You will learn lots from this.

Outcomes:

• Write a memo to yourself covering; top 5 issues facing the business, and facing finance

• Current Year out-turn review (Revenue, EBIT, Cashflow). Where do you think performance will be against the budget you have inherited?

• Identify if there are any skeletons in the finance closet to brief the board on. A one-time opportunity to reset your start point in the new role.

4. First 90 Days

Objective: Make judgments and build execution plan

To Do List:

• Get into the day to day of the day job

• Build your 90 day review document. This should synthesize everything you have discovered so far that is important. The format, content and tone really does depend on the issues. But as a minimum you should cover; Initial expectations vs reality, Key issues and how to address, What’s working and whats not in finance, a reality check on the numbers / performance

• Communicate your 90 day plan to; Board (making sure you don’t blindside the CEO), your team, and the business.

• Define your meeting and reporting cadence

• Meet all key external contacts face to face; banks / lenders, shareholders, credit insurers / agencies, auditors, key advisors, appointed counsel. Reset their expectations on the business if necessary

• Meet all finance in small groups. Let them put a face to your name.

You will need to tailor the above for your specific situation. Especially if there are burning platforms to deal with (i.e. turnaround)

But you can use this as a framework to build the plan for the first 90 days.

MEME OF THE WEEK

We’ve all been there …

BOOK CLUB

Enron, Madoff, Theranos & now FTX. At the heart of every big fraud is a terrible / corrupt / non-existent CFO.

Everyday finance is much more boring of course … but even then we have judgments to make every single day. Sometimes the lines are blurred (cue Robin Thicke). Knowing how to stay on the right side of those lines is important. Hopefully that isn’t a controversial statement : )

In Financial Shenanigans the “Sherlock Holmes of Accounting” lays bare the tactics used and abused by corporates to manipulate performance reporting.

A must read for the budding CFO.

FEEDBACK TIME

Last Saturday morning, I woke up to over 150 reviews like the one below. Kinda overwhelming. Thank you.

POACHED GREG

Remember that time Cousin Greg tried to resign? Made me wish my name was Greg, so I could say ‘negotiate a bit of a Gregxit.’

That’s it for this week. If you want more, be sure to follow my Twitter @secretcfo

Please help me spread the word and forward this to your finance friends!

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 to make the right decisions.