The workhorse of any CFO operating system is the system of record powering the accounting function.

For my own business, I chose Campfire. Now I get my numbers at the end of first week after closing, and I reckon we can get that to working day two by Q1 next year. We used custom agents to automate revenue recognition… pretty cool!

In week one, we defined the CFO operating system and how it directs your attention.

In week two, we introduced the Four Es: Everyday, Events, Emergencies and Evolution.

In week three, we built an operating rhythm to batch the recurring work and leave space for the unexpected. 

Last week, we tackled the other capacity problem: what you need to keep in your head and what you can let go of.

This week, we're going to bring the whole thing together with a case study: ME. Specifically, how I organized myself and my time as Group CFO of a large, complex business.

But before I do that, I want to talk AI…

Throughout this series, I've referenced how the personal operating system is one area where AI can drive massive immediate value to you; the busy CFO. 

So, lets start this post by sharing some of the specific ways you can AI-up your personal CFO operating system. These are all things that are pretty easy to do and can help you without needing structured data, or any big infrastructure shifts:

These are things I'm already doing in some form today (or something very close) in my work and home life. I know it works. And it is simple to do.

Now, there is a catch. You'll need a private, data-secure environment. Because it is only really useful if AI has access to the live full context of your work. Your inbox, calendar, meeting notes, Board papers. All the juicy stuff.

But I'm not going to get into data security here (that's a whole other topic I’ve covered before.)

OK… so let’s dive into what my calendar looked like as a busy CFO.

My calendar was designed for a particular job, in a particular business, at a particular time. It wouldn't work exactly the same for anyone else. But, combined with the principles we've covered over the previous four weeks, I hope it gives you some useful ideas for building your own.

I want to focus on the Everyday operating mode: the recurring calendar I designed to keep the business running before Events, Emergencies and real life got in the way. And that means (as we said in week 3) aiming to build no more than 50% of your calendar around recurring meetings. Ideally less.

A little context before we get into the example:

Recurring weekly meetings are where good ideas, time, and attention go to die.

So I always want to keep them to a minimum. But also be very precise about protecting the commitments that really mattered.

For me, those were:

1. Sunday night: The Sunday reset. As I mentioned last week, this was how I set my priorities for the week.

2. Tuesday AM: Finance trading and priorities. Tuesday mornings were about reacting to the previous week's trading results as a finance function. We'd have a draft of the weekly trading numbers on Monday night.

This normally meant three hours divided like this:

3. Wednesday AM: The CEO's trading / exec meeting. Wednesday mornings belonged to the CEO. They wanted their executive team in a room all morning, so that's where I'd be. With the full weekly reporting pack in hand (published late Tuesday), we could course-correct performance problems and de-bottleneck crucial initiatives. That makes it sounds civilized … sometimes it was, sometimes there’d be a lot of shouting.

4. Friday AM: Deep numbers review time. I protected Friday mornings for spending time with the numbers. This might be a deep dive into a margin issue with a business unit team, or going through the details on my own. This was where I'd go low altitude, on what I felt was important, away from the heat of the week.

So, with those typical recurring weekly commitments, let’s step through the month, week–by-week.

While Week 1 of the month might seem like the start of a new cycle, for me it wasn't. It was much more like the end of the previous one.

Why? Because the teams were busy closing out the month.

The last thing I wanted to do was megadump a load of big analysis requests on the business during this week.

That made Week 1 a good time to get into the business with the CEO, spend time with the executive team, or dive into M&A and other projects.

The only fixed monthly commitments were on Thursday, both centered on cash and capital allocation.

On Thursday morning, I'd chair a session to troubleshoot performance on particular cash flow items. For example, if inventory was off plan, we'd spend the morning with the offending parts of the business figuring out how to solve it.

Even if cash flow was ahead of plan overall, something was always behind plan somewhere, so I'd focus on that. (Or maybe we were ahead of plan, but could be even better.)

By being consistently relentless about cash flow performance, that muscle was ready whenever we needed it.

That set up the afternoon nicely for the Capital Committee, where we'd approve CapEx.

By holding both on the same day, I could think about the affordability of capital in the context of what I'd seen on the rest of the cashflow in the morning. But it also helped connect the two things in the minds of the operators.

For example, imagine a VP of Operations asking for $5m in CapEx in the afternoon, after spending the morning explaining why their inventory was $2m out of whack: 

Oh shit. Better get my inventory in line.

It created a nice tension and helped maintain the golden thread of accountability.

So, my typical week 1 routine would look like this (if it looks a little bare, remember this doesn’t yet include any non-routine work or meetings; events, emergencies, etc.)

The trading results and divisional numbers for the previous month would start emerging at the beginning of the week.

While the numbers for the whole Group didn't formally close until the end of Wednesday, that was largely a function of the complexity of consolidating so many businesses.

But by then, sales and margin rarely held big surprises. The interesting swings tended to come further down the P&L and in cash, often forcing us to revisit the forecast or outlook.

So I'd need to build a clear understanding of what happened during the month, and what it meant for our outlook (and potentially investor guidance). Because… the Board papers were due on Thursday, just one day after the books formally closed.

That was tight.

The key recurring monthly commitments in a week 2 looked like this:

1. Wednesday PM: Management accounts sign off. A call with my senior team to formally sign off on the management accounts. This was mostly about reviewing the numbers for accuracy and understanding, clarifying the story, and working through any accounting quirks that had cropped up during the month.

2. Thursday AM: My board commentary. The next morning, I'd prepare my own management accounts commentary for the Board, focusing on what they cared about. I could have delegated this, but I liked doing it myself. I saw it as the anchor moment of the month. The point at which I forced myself to get absolutely clear on what happened, what it meant, and what I thought we should do about it. I used it as an accountability forcing function. And having the ‘power of the pen’ was a good way to get to get the attention of that divisional president not taking margin erosion seriously. It meant I could be direct in the commentary, and protect my team from any blowback

3. Thursday: Board paper preparation. The rest of Thursday would be spent preparing, reviewing, and signing off Board papers before the submission deadline. There would be my finance update, but also any number of M&A, financing, project, operational or other functional updates. Sometimes it might be just two papers… other months, seven or eight. Although much of this was solo work, the CEO would be doing their own Board preparation at the same time, so we'd be speaking throughout the day, making sure our understanding and messages lined up.

4. Friday PM: Finance function performance review. Finally, on Friday, I'd run the monthly functional review with my accounting and reporting team. Problems with the close, processing efficiency, overdue debtors, blocked invoices, balance sheet issues. All the finance-only stuff that needed attention but could easily get lost in the noise of running the business.

Here's what the regular week 2 looked like:

The first half of the week was about the business unit management teams being on show. The second half was about me, the CEO, and various members of the Group executive team being on show in the Board meeting.

The goal was always to make sure there was real stretch and tension around performance in the right places. By now, there should be no new news. We'd already been fixing 90% of the performance issues in flight during the month through the weekly executive rhythm.

But this was the moment we stepped back and took sight of the bigger picture and the more persistent issues.

1. Monday and Tuesday: Business unit performance reviews. These were packed full of back-to-back business unit reviews, typically around two hours each, depending on the business unit. The format would be the business unit management team presenting performance (and what they were doing about it) to the CEO and myself. They might be held on location in the business or at HQ, but always in person. They served two crucial purposes:

These meetings could be anything from somewhat relaxed to extremely tense, with the CEO and I performing our alternating good cop/bad cop routine. You can read more on how I see a good monthly performance review here.

2. Wednesday PM: Board preparation. With the board papers having been circulated the previous week, by now I’d have picked up informal feedback on any contentious content (there was always something contentious.) So, if I needed to secure support from that stubborn Board member on an M&A deal before the Board meeting, investment approval, or thorny compensation matter, this was when I'd put that work in. I'd leave the end of Wednesday well prepared to deliver my own sessions, but also having read all the papers I hadn't prepared myself. Particularly where I'd need to contribute or vote as a director.

3. Thursday: Board day. Full board meeting and everything that comes with that. Plus once a quarter, I'd also have the pleasure of an Audit Committee meeting immediately beforehand, (signing off the quarterly earnings release for the following week.)

Done well, this week would leave me, the CEO, the executive team, the business unit management teams and the Board members with alignment and searing clarity on the priorities and issues we needed to tackle.

It was painful, but important.

After the back-to-back chaos of Week 3, the final week of a typical month was intentionally kept clear of monthly recurring commitments.

This was where the capacity I'd deliberately created in the calendar came into its own.

It was time to get stuck into the live issues in the business. Whether that meant diving further into a business unit with a big performance problem, steering a system implementation, getting in the weeds on a live M&A deal, or one million other things…

I won't share the calendar for this week, because apart from the usual weekly routines, it's pretty bare of recurring commitments.

BUT… there was one big exception.

Once a quarter, this week was typically earnings week.

That meant preparing the earnings report, finalizing the accounts, getting the analyst presentation ready, rehearsing the messages, and preparing for the earnings call itself.

Now, if you've worked in a business with a 4-4-5 reporting calendar, you'll know what I mean by Magic Week.

For those who haven't, it’s the special treat of a five-week month following two consecutive four-week months.

And the beauty was that by designing my monthly operating rhythm around four weeks, that fifth week came without all the usual monthly commitments.

Always reminds me of Spinal Tap.

Most months go to four. This one goes to five.

For me, magic week meant:

The calendar would look something like this:

Magic week … the perfect home for your once per quarter responsibilities.

So, as I said at the start, these are merely the recurring commitments. My Everyday calendar. Designed to leave plenty of time to tackle whatever fresh hell the week would throw up.

Inevitably, these things would arise at the least convenient moments. So a real Week 3 would look more like this:

The week starts on Sunday, with travel out to visit a Business Unit on location, followed by dinner with the local executive team.

Then, after a full day of business performance reviews on Monday, one of those reviews doesn't go well. The CEO declares an 'emergency turnaround session'. Kinda like being held in detention for the evening to thrash-out more drastic interventions over pizza.

At the same time, I've got a few jumpy investors to deal with, which I've had to schedule for Tuesday afternoon so I have a little preparation time. Meaning Tuesday's performance reviews get crammed into a short morning window (fortunately, we saved the best performing units until last).

I’ve left the normal Tuesday weekly festivities to my team, with my VP of Finance deputizing for me. That gives me time to prep for the investor and bank 1:1 calls, ahead of a Restructuring Plan Review in the afternoon, which came out of the previous night's turnaround session. The CEO and I decide we need to get that plan in front of the Board and approved on Thursday.

Unfortunately, it's too late for the Board pack. So I schedule calls with four of the more 'delicate' Board directors to apologize for the late paper, explain the background, and why it needs their support. I decide handling these 1:1 makes the most sense.

That pushes some critical things I'd planned for Wednesday afternoon into Wednesday morning, including a 1:1 with one of my key lieutenants who is thinking of leaving. The Weekly Trading Meeting still happens, but I'm in and out, trying to prepare for those director calls.

Meanwhile, the Board Chair is 'in town earlier than planned' and calls a Board dinner for Wednesday evening.

And among all of this, my scheduled plans for Board prep are torpedoed, meaning I have a 5 AM start at my desk on Thursday to get through everything before the Audit Committee and Board meeting.

So for Friday, I ask my assistant to nuke everything else in my calendar to get some headspace and take stock of a busy week.

Chaos? Yes. But manageable, as long as (a) this happens a couple of weeks per month at most, not every week, and (b) there was calendar capacity to start with.

And we have come to the end of this series on the CFO Operating System.

But before we sign off, a word of reassurance. CFO jobs are intense, demanding and chaotic… at least if you are doing them right, they are. This is not a science, and certainly no one-size-fits-all job. But you can make big leaps by being even just a little more intentional about the way you want to run your role. If you aren’t sure where to start, focus on getting a disciplined but light recurring weekly and monthly calendar. And build up from there. Good luck!

Next week, we start a brand new Playbook on… Treasury!

It’s not too late to participate in the Great Big Budget Survey:

With your help, we're going to build a proper picture of how companies actually run their budgeting processes. Real experiences from real finance leaders.

The idea is to give us all something we've never really had: a way to benchmark our own budgeting processes against everyone else's. And hopefully steal a few good ideas along the way.

So, if you've been anywhere near a budget process this year, I'd love you to take part.

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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.