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CFO’s Role in

Mentoring the F&A Team

and

Improving the F&A Team

Effectiveness

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By Mr. Koushik Krishnan, Regional Manager,

accounting & control, A-PAC, Tetra Pak Mentoring –

building great teams to manage the madness

I handle a somewhat large role in a somewhat large

organization. My work spans 6 time-zones, 9 markets and

a billion euro in turnover.

Last week, I got laid up

with a slip disc. With Q3 close

and the budget season in full

swing, this was not exactly

the best time to be laid up.

So, here I was, trying to

juggle decision making, tactical overseeing, putting out

team fights, participate in corporate future gazing, get the

team ready for an upcoming audit, and the list goes on.

And also, squeeze some time for rest and therapy when

the body gave way.

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And when I was resting, I realized my company hadn’t

shut down just because I wasn’t around and I would shut

down if I kept up this madness.

This brought home two very vital truths. One, work is

getting more and more complex and a person in a

leadership role; be it finance, marketing or production, just

can’t pull the cart alone. Second, teams today are more

willing to pick up the ball and start running, when the

captain gets injured and is not giving a 100%.

It is in this context that it becomes not just important,

but also necessary to have strong teams in place who

deliver superior performance in a consistent manner.

Finance & Accounting (F&A) has changed beyond

recognition in the last twenty years. A slew of local and

international accounting standards, each competing with

the other in complexity have been promulgated. Every

economic legislation comes with a compendium of rules

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and procedures with grave warnings that more changes

are imminent. Businesses are venturing into new markets,

new areas, new arrangements which bring in their share of

complexity. If all this was not enough, the people we work

with – shareholders, customers, vendors, employees,

banks, regulatory authorities, are smarter, better informed

and more demanding.

I have never seen a stronger case for change, a

stronger need to empower our F&A teams.

We need a F&A team that has subject matter

expertise, speed in implementing decisions, can run

along-with the business and provide solutions even before

they become issues. They need to do this day in and day

out on a sustainable basis. And all along, they need to be

assured that they are well rewarded in managing this

madness.

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How to find, mould and retain such a team should be

in the front and center of any CFOs agenda. If it isn’t

there, then he is probably in jail or making some very

tough presentations to the board, or plain out of job.

Now, the unfortunate thing about mentoring or

building world class competent teams is that,

organizations have basically made this whole process so

crappy, full of nonsensical mumbo jumbo, that most

realists wrinkle their nose when you talk about mentoring,

coaching. I don’t blame them. When you make a group of

sensible middle managers stand on a blanket in the hot

sun and another group try and yank it from under them, all

the while trying to get them to see a lesson on teamwork, I

would run a mile away too. Neither do you need complex

performance management forms, nor fancy workshops to

be a good mentor.

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Building and sustaining world class teams is all about

loving your team. When I say love, I mean complete,

genuine, deep love. It goes beyond taking them out for

lunch once a month and saying you care for them. It is that

love, which will lead you; to listen to their problems without

thinking “he is such a moron”, recognize what guy in your

team likes or is good at and assign him work accordingly,

give them all an equal opportunity to grow without feeling

insecure that they may shortly leave your team and go

someplace else to one day build great teams themselves.

It is amazing how you can practice this love without

being mawkish or academic. This is a laundry list of things

you could do:

− Sign up as a team for webinars run by the big 4

accounting teams on emerging issues in finance

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− Encourage your team to have lunch with marketing

guys once a while, to understand which customers/

products/ markets are growing and why

− Show them it is safe to challenge anyone, including

you, if it means better quality of reporting, accounting,

compliance

− Challenge them to pick one person in the team they

cannot stand (could be yourself) and learn to develop

a working relationship

All this sounds familiar? Of course it does! This is

exactly what you would do with your kids, right? And don’t

you feel happy when they grow up, succeed and start

driving the car while you sit behind and enjoy the view?

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