One Skill That Changed My Life

If you are a mid-career finance professional, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that if you are a professionally qualified accountant, meaning if you are a CPA, CA, CMA, or ACCA with 10 to 15 years of experience, you have all the necessary credentials to become a CFO.

Unfortunately, 95% of finance professionals will never reach the CFO level despite they are fully qualified.  If you are among those 95% then this is really bad news for you.

So, what are the secrets of that 5% who reach the CFO level with similar qualifications and experience?

Let's take a closer look.

Most of the mid-career finance professionals are professionally qualified and usually very hard-working spending a tremendous amount of their time at work even sacrificing their personal and family life. Despite all this hard work, they often remain stuck in their career and are not able to make much progress toward becoming CFO.

Even in my career, at one point in time, I was in a similar situation. Though, I made quite good progress in my finance career initially but at one point, I got stuck at the controller level for almost 12 years until I learned this one skill that rescued my career and helped me fast track towards the CFO role.

But before I tell you about this one skill, let me share my struggle in the early part of my life.

Let me admit, I have been a very shy person. Though I was quite good in my studies, always getting top grades but when it comes to speaking, conversations, discussions, presentations, etc. I was dumb as a rock.

Even during the early days of my career, I was working quite hard but did not have much social life or interaction with senior people around me.  Conversation was my weakness. I started to lose my confidence. But still, I was a very good student. So, leveraging my study skills, I started to read business books so I could show off my knowledge to the people around me and keep my confidence. And, you know what, surprisingly it worked.

For example, to qualify myself for a major project of implementing Activity Based Costing in six regional plants in Asia Pacific, I read 13 books on this subject and I became an ABC Guru. Later I got involved with a balanced scorecard project. Again, I read 10 books on Balanced Scorecard and Strategy and I became a strategy champion.

I realized that it was not the lack of my language skills or speaking ability; it was lack of ideas. I did not have much to talk about.

That discovery was really an aha moment for me. With building up my knowledge through reading books, my ability to talk effectively and share business ideas through formal presentations was substantially enhanced. My confidence got through the roof.

Simply by talking about business and strategy, I was able to transform my personal brand from a Controller to a Strategic CFO.  I started to see CFO-level opportunities coming my way. In the latter half of my career, I secured several CFO-level positions in global multi-billion-dollar companies in USA and Middle East.

Today I have more than 1000 books in my home library and I have transitioned my career from a Corporate CFO to becoming a successful executive coach running my own CFO Academy where I have trained and coached hundreds of finance professionals to reach the c-suite.

Now, I know, everybody is not into books and even if you want to it's not easy to find time to read lots of books. But my message here is not to force you to read books. It's about helping you develop your business and strategy knowledge so you can build your personal brand by sharing your ideas.

Remember, your one conversation with your CEO and the board of directors demonstrating your strategy knowledge and skills may give you more credentials than an executive MBA degree.

My degrees and certifications, for example, only helped me to get a good start in the profession. I built up my knowledge and expertise all along my career path through informal education that earned me the role of global strategic CFO.

I believe, if I can do it, you can do it. But you don't have to read 1000 books for this. In today's technology-rich environment, there are easier and more effective ways to build up your business and strategy knowledge.

Start talking about business and strategy, and not about Accounting and Finance. People already know that you are a finance expert. When you talk about Accounting and Finance, no big deal. They already expect this from you. But when you show your expertise in business and strategy, they are pleasantly surprised.

That is the most effective way how you can start transforming your image from an accountant to becoming a strategic business leader. It used to say, Accounting is the language of business. No more. Today, strategy is the language of business. It is the language of top business executives.

Can you speak strategy? Of course, you can even with little effort. That is going to make all the difference in your career. Hard work is essential but without a shining personal brand, you would remain stuck somewhere in the middle of your career.

So, in the end, becoming part of 5% or 95% is really a matter of choice. There is no excuse that you cannot become a CFO.**

P.S. Next week, I will be holding a 2-hour free live coaching session on “WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME A CFO”. If you are interested to attend, please register here.