📬 Put Up or Shut Up: Does the business need your team's input for better decision-making?

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Last month, I asked for your honest feedback on SCFO content. And you all delivered (no surprise there!).

One of the questions I asked was how I could make this Mailbag newsletter even more valuable.

Well, our team crunched the data, and we’ve got some updates that I think you’re all going to really enjoy. Here’s what you can expect from the Mailbag going forward:

Of course, the best way for you to influence the Mailbag newsletter is and always will be submitting questions. I’d love to tackle your toughest questions. You can submit them here.

Thanks for all your input, it’s what makes the Secret CFO community the best collection of CFOs and finance professionals in the world!

We’ve got some great topics today. Here’s what’s on tap:

Now, let’s get into it.

Hunter from Canada asked:

I work as the VP of Finance (acting CFO) in a rapidly growing e-commerce Company, recently transitioned from Big 4 in M&A. At the moment, I have a voice at the table of decision-making. However, I am struggling with being more than just a "support" function. Most key business decisions that drive the P&L go through various operating departments, and I find my department reporting on their numbers, modeling their forecasts, enforcing financial compliance, etc. How do I shift into more of a news-maker role than simply a news-reporter role?

Thanks for the question, Hunter.

The question I would put back to you is this: would the business be making better decisions if you and your team were involved?

If the answer is ‘yes,’ then you need to prove it. Use your access to the data and decision-makers in the business to show how those decisions could have been better optimized. And how you can help them do that.

Do it privately with the leader of that function on a 1-to-1 basis, so they don’t feel like you are threatening or undermining them publicly. If they don’t engage, then use your line with the CEO to force the point (use signal, not noise).

But if the answer is ‘no’ (or you hesitate), then why should they listen to you? Instead, for the time being, you should stay out of their way while they run the business. And your focus right now should be on building a finance team that can materially improve decision quality. That means owning the commercial levers: pricing architecture, unit economics, margin mix, customer acquisition ROI, and cashflow dynamics. Until you have that muscle in place, forcing your way into decision-making meetings won’t create value, it’ll undermine credibility.

There’s a narrative that finance has a right to be involved in every decision. It doesn’t. Like any other function, finance has to earn its seat. And in every company, different functions sit at different points of the maturity curve. Sometimes finance leads. Sometimes it’s catching up.

Your job is to make your team’s input so commercially valuable, so insight-rich, and so action-oriented that your absence becomes unthinkable. Don’t chase the invite. Make them need you there.

G Grocer from Hertfordshire asked:

How do you manage an effective R&O so it doesn’t become a laundry list of all the exec’s potential sources of downside? And so that it actually surfaces the Os as well as the Rs?

Great question, G Grocer.

This one tells me you’re deep in it, and yes, I’ve felt this pain before.

Risks and Opportunities tracking (R&O) should be the connective tissue of the financial cycle. It’s the tool that helps track the underlying variances vs. a committed plan. But too often, it turns into a laundry list of every exec’s personal panic and none of the upside.

Here’s why that happens, and what to do about it:

1. Understand the Politics of Asymmetry

Most execs are faster to share downsides than upsides. Why?

Because flagging a risk is a subtle political move. By telling finance, they are shifting ownership. Now it is your problem too. It gets socialized and diluted.

Upsides are different. Those will get revealed in team meetings, often with an audience (and likely with their boss and your boss there). There are hero points at stake after all…

You rarely see this behavior from CEOs or divisional P&L owners. They own the total outcome, so there is no benefit to offloading problems. They are focused on solving them, and equally on delivering both the risks and the upside transparently. That is the mindset you need to push your execs toward.

If they find a problem in their area? Tough sh*t. Find a solution or an upside to offset it.

2. Push Back on Risk Dumping

If a leader flags a $5M downside, challenge it. What are they doing about it? Have they explored mitigations? What potential upside could offset it?

Make sure you understand the details yourself so you are equipped to push back.

Do not accept passive risk logging. The functional owner should own the solution or at least the next move.

Execs are paid to solve problems, not identify them.

3. Force Ownership of Communication

Do not let finance be the communication buffer. If someone wants a big risk logged, make sure they have aligned internally first. And they aren’t using you as a human shield. Has their boss seen it? Are they prepared to stand behind it?

That step alone filters out a lot of noise. If they do not tell their own boss about it (after you’ve directed that next step), that will tell you a lot about how ‘real’ the risk is.

4. Keep Your Private View Conservative

You are allowed to hold a more cautious internal view, especially if you sense over-optimism or political hedging. It’s prudent to hold a more conservative ‘finance only’ view.

But that should not distort the formal R&O rhythm, which should be a clear signal of where the business really stands.

5. Actively Drive the Os

Opportunities rarely self-report. You need to prompt them. And that is much easier if your team has a good understanding of the business.

You need to build your ‘opportunity nose’.

You can ask smarter questions. What would it take to stretch volume by 10 percent? What is the upside if conversion improves slightly? Are there cost levers that can be pulled earlier? If volumes are up, are there some cost dilution benefits we can capture?

An R&O process is only as strong as the maturity of the people involved. So ultimately, this is a political/cultural challenge, and the solution needs to be approached that way.

Hashim from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia asked:

How do top CFOs think about balancing burn vs. growth when capital is still available, but the market is punishing inefficiency? At what point does aggressive investment become irresponsible?

Thanks for the question, Hashim.

Let’s start with the core truth. The purpose of investment is to turn one dollar today into multiple dollars tomorrow. If your aggressive investment isn’t doing that reliably, efficiently, and repeatably, then it becomes irresponsible, regardless of how much capital you have access to.

Just because capital is available does not mean it is affordable or the right decision for your business. The market no longer rewards vanity metrics. Efficiency now matters more than velocity.

Here are some things to think about:

1. Clear Efficiency Metrics

You cannot manage burn without understanding its productivity. Track and steer by:

These metrics tell you whether you are building long-term value or just pulling forward expenses.

2. Path to Cashflow

Everything comes back to this: Is your burn moving you toward future cash generation? Even if not directly.

Or are you just using investor money to chase vanity metrics to get more investment.

3. Optionality Within the Burn

How much of your spend is discretionary? If you needed to extend the runway tomorrow, what could you cut without destroying the core of the business?

Optionality is strategic leverage. Smart CFOs do not just ask if they can afford to burn. They ask how quickly they can pull back if the world turns.

4. Test Before You Scale

Now more than ever, big investments need to be proven at small scale. Prove your unit economics before you go all-in. The stronger your proven return profile, the cheaper your capital becomes.

In the end, the answer to whether you are investing or just burning sits inside your unit economics and KPIs. And they do not lie.

A few of the biggest stories that every CFO is paying close attention to. This is the section you probably don’t want to see your name in.

Big 4: “AI is cutting our workload way down!”

Big 4 Client: “Great. So you are cutting your fees?”

Big 4: “……”

Fresh off a disastrous McDonald’s partnership, this is a tasty turnaround story in the making. I would do this role for payment-in-donuts.

I would do this role, also for payment-in-donuts.

ICYMI, here are some of my favorite finance/business social media posts from this week. In the words of Kendall Roy, “all bangers, all the time.”:

Let me know what you thought of today’s Mailbag. Just hit reply… I read every message.

On Saturday, we kicked off a brand-new series on organizational politics. Welcome back to the viper’s nest. Check it out now.

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.