Mindset, Skillset, Toolset: Kevin Appleby on AI in Business & Growth CFO Leadership

0:00 You've moved from being the internal face of finance to the external face. That's a big, big shift, OK. You're then the person that's supposed to have all the answers as far as the board's concerned, as far as customers are concerned, the CEO stand to rely on you a lot. So it is a lonely place. Before we dive back into today's conversation, I want to share something important.

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1:15 If you've been thinking about it, sometimes the best investment you can make easy. Yourself Welcome to the King Dems Podcast, where we share the stories of extraordinary people and dissect hot, relevant topics that shape our world. From visionary leaders to trailblazing creatives, we uncover the mindset, strategy, and grit behind greatness.

1:38 Whether it's business, culture, or personal growth, we ask the real questions. This isn't just conversation, it's transformation. The Kingdom's podcast, Your Next Breakthrough, starts here. Licencing Reimagined. Hi, ladies and gentlemen, and once again welcome to The Kingdom's podcast and Diary of a CFO.

2:02 And today I've got one be a very important guest, Barton out of Newcastle, United Kingdom. Mcwalken, Kevin Agro, CFO Champion. Appleby, how are you today? We're jumping into a boxing ring at a mola. Yeah, with an interject like that, should I have some some inspiring music playing behind me as I walk into the ring?

2:29 Let's go, let's go. You know, I'm a martial artist, you know, as well as a fight and expert. And the interesting thing is that life is a fight. Life is actually a fight. We, we have to fight a lot of factors, you know, even business, you should know that you've been a business for years and you've had to fight a lot of wars and you know a lot of battles.

2:53 And that is why you are inspiring the world, you're inspiring the next generation of CFOs and that is why you're highly appreciated. Of course, you've fought many battles and of course, not what everything, but we've won the important ones in order to be where you are today, and you'll highly appreciate it. So I'm going to read your intro, especially curated for you. Today we are joined by Kevin Appleby, powerhouse in the financial chip space.

3:23 Kevin is the Head of Partnerships at Growth CFO, host of the Growth CFO Show Forecast and a mentor to finance leaders navigating the fast changing world of technology. A career spanning consulting, transformation coaching and fractional CFO leadership, Kevin has helped countless finance leaders move from isolation to E July, from numbers to strategy.

3:49 On this episode of Indians podcast and directors, CFO will dive into the mindset shift strategies and stories behind his journey and uncover the practical wisdom he shares with leaders around the world. Ladies and gentlemen on today Walker, Kevin, Mr Go, CFO. Adam, thank you hugely for having me as a guest on the show.

4:14 Really excited to be there. Be here today. That was a good introduction. AI wrote that very well for you. I am AI tati Mullah ICMS So what do you expect? Like trends knew the assignments. They knew what they were doing with that name. Yeah, they kept it a secret. So they just did not want, you know, to be so open. That's why they did not need me.

4:36 Artificial intelligence, they said, let's code it, let's code it. You know, in more than 30 years, people will understand. And of course I love my initials AI so. Initial AI The future is yours. The future is yours, Alamola. The future is by and of course, you know, when I see people get angry and say, oh, AI is coming for our jobs. AI, I'm not coming for your jobs guys. I am here to assist you.

5:00 AI is going to be an assistant, you know, not a not a controller, not a people's jobs. We are helping people to become more efficient so you can have a better quality of life and focus on the major things, you know, major on the major and minor on the minor. And how do you do that by achieving efficiency. What does AI come to help to achieve as a human race? Efficiency at first, that is me to the world at AI. So our let's delve into your journey and of course your mindset.

5:32 That's something I'd love to say that when you're employing a person on your team, you need to look at three things, right? You need to look at the mindset or the skill set and then the tool set. So if the mindset is right, you can train the skill sets and of course, the skill sets are right. If you provide them with the right tool set, they will definitely excel at whatever it is that they do. Or Kevin, you've had to had a fascinating caviar, you know, from TWC bullshit that PwC background right to IBM to bushel to EDF and a personnel, our growth CFO. So what mindset shifts you know have actually defined your journey from being a consultant to being a mentor, coach and a person thought leader for?

6:21 And the journey actually goes further back than that, Adam. I'd, I'd already been spent three years of BDO qualifying to be a chartered accountant, then ten years in the chemical industry before I joined PwC. But yeah, 25 years as a management consultant with PPWCIBM and Michelle and then as an independent consult by myself.

6:47 So lots of mind shifts have taken place along the way. Journey from consulting to mentor and thought leader for CFOs. Like most of my career, it kind of happened by accident. Wow. People, people talk about planning a career. Problem is, you can probably see what's ahead for I'll use the phrase the next 100 days because I love that phrase.

7:11 But where do you want to be in three years time? You can give some sort of vague answer, but. Do you want to know? I want to be in three years time? Yeah, I want to be in 2020. 8 That's probably a good answer. That's about as good as you get. 3 as time you've been in 2028. But that's the whole point.

7:31 No, 2019 I'd, I'd left full time consultancy. I was working independently, but working actually with a, a bunch of guys who I knew back from PwC who'd formed their own consulting practise and we're working on a pretty big project. And along came this thing called COVID. We, we were working with the British police forces doing something called transforming forensics.

8:02 It was a fascinating project. It was a huge project but I remember well my last face to face meeting with the client team. We couldn't just couldn't meet beyond one stage and for various reasons our involvement project was was tapering down anyway. But COVID was the end of it. And I remember stopping off at a branch of Costa Coffee because I had some time to go before I need to get to the next place.

8:28 And a guy called Dan Wells been stalking me on LinkedIn and the messages are going through, Oh, Kevin, I'm doing this thing called Grow CFO, give me a phone call. And I did started speaking to Dan and one thing led to another. And Grow CFO ended up being my main involvement across COVID when it couldn't do anything else. And beyond COVID now, if we'd sat down on New Year's Day 2020 and said, where do you want to be in three years time, Kevin? Well, I'd never met Dan.

8:59 I'd never heard a gross CFO. Certainly nobody got any idea what this COVID thing was coming around the corner. So how on earth can you plan for three years ahead? All that I knew as I was going to 2020 was I'd started teaching in the classroom because a big thing of mine is to to give things back to the next generation.

9:20 And I suppose that's the mindset that's key here. I, I really do want to give something back to the next generation. I'd go to 2020. I was doing things in the classroom that no, I can reach out to more people if I take some of this training and put it online. COVID coming along forced me to do that. I ended up doing it as part of gross CFO because I saw that Dan and I working together had much more power than us working separately.

9:50 But no, really all the way through, it's been this idea of I want to give back to the next generation. And a lot of the things I was doing in the classroom were all about that experience of being out on a consulting assignment and doing things for the client, asking the client's finance team for information and to answer questions and so on that they you couldn't easily answer. And then you'd go off as a consultant, You'd apply your skills that came from activity based costing, 0 based budgeting and so on to work out what things cost, where you could save money to match costs and revenues. Things that I believe should be, it should have been a natural skill to a commercial finance team, but so rarely found at the client.

10:34 So I ended up teaching folk how to do that sort of stuff in the classroom. Wow, interesting stuff. You know, it's the different level of understanding and knowledge for me to be a teacher. I did teach professional accounts and students and I think I still feel blessed by that involvement in teaching over time because he made me become a very well founded professional and not just being, well, kind of professional, having that problem solving mindset, you know, And in economics, I learned that money is a store of value.

11:14 And when you provide value to people, you won't in turn get value. So you are a very high value person, right? And the whole journey from teaching to consulting has had just one common denominator even into thought leadership, right? That is solving people's pinpoints, right? So what's your quick advice for, you know, intending CFOs, you know, junk up and coming professionals in terms of that growth mindset, I love the name of the show, growth CFO. And when you look at the name of my show, it has the title and of course the subtitle.

11:56 The subtitle is growth mindset, leadership, AI and business insights. Of course, it very much fits into my philosophy. That is the growth that the mindset, the skill set and the tool set. So from that framework, what's your advice to the young up and coming generation? What kind of mindset should they adopt? What kind of skill sets should they look at developing? And of course, what kind of tool sets should they look to utilise?

12:25 Right, Tool Sets is the easy one. Don't worry about tool sets because what works today won't work tomorrow and especially with AI coming along, you're going to have to be incredibly agile and move from tool to tool. The only advice I'd give the upcoming CFO is don't. Do not get stuck in the the past. You've got to keep looking and moving forward with the tool set.

12:47 Skill set. Well skill set is really important. You will learn a certain set of skills to pass your exams. You learn another set of skills as you rise up through the finance function and have to do the various things that you would do within a business to to run finance. But there's there's a point where you switch from being a finance leader internally to becoming ACFO. You switch from being the internal face of finance to being the external face of finance, and that means you've got to develop the right skills to be able to do that. A lot of that's about communication. It's about a communication, it's about a commercial mindset, it's about understanding where the other person's coming from. You will probably used as as

13:41 head of finance to still having your nose in an Excel spreadsheet to producing a lot of the numbers yourself and to then be working as a a business partner with the rest of the business team. You move to CFO, you're Co pilot to the CEO, you are working with the investors, you're working with customers, you're working with suppliers, you may well have the bank to talk to. And the last thing you're probably doing is crunching the numbers yourself.

14:12 And you really are stepping outside of your comfort zone and you've got to learn to live with certain degree of discomfort as you do that. And that's when mindset, I think, becomes then very, very important. We ask CFOs to be master of so many things these days that it's almost impossible to have all the skills you need.

14:38 But having the right mindset helps you through. The biggest challenge to a new CFO is probably impostor syndrome. It's probably lack of confidence and it's probably task overwhelm because you've you've probably not gone through there that process that delegates a lot of stuff that you should delegate. You're still very hands on yourself, yet you've got to be more hands off.

15:05 So you've got thinking space and can advise the business. So mindset skill set, they're very strongly related. You've got to be in a position to constantly learn. The mindset has to be that that says I can do this, I just need to go and acquire the skills. I could do this because it just speaks to my favourite Bible verse.

15:31 Absolutely, absolutely. I can do all things. If you're open to picking up the skills, you're open to asking for help when necessary, asking for support. And one of my big things is gratitude. Be thankful for what you've got and the resources. And I'm thankful every day that I've been given all the resources I need and all the time I need to deliver my mandate. Gratitude is good attitude.

16:00 Yeah, yeah. So long answer to a simple question there. Thank you very much. You know, sometimes you need that long walk to feed up in the words of Nelson Mandela. So you talk about loneliness of a CFO seat. We often talk about how lonely the CFO world can E. Why do you think many finance leaders struggle in silence? And how can communities like Grow CFO change that pattern? You've moved from being the internal face of finance to the external face.

16:37 That's a big, big shift. OK, You're then the person that's supposed to have all the answers as far as the board's concerned, as far as customers are concerned, the CEO stand to rely on you a lot. So it is a lonely place. Chances are you've got, if you're in that position of being part of a scale up, chances are you've got a fairly small team around you. You might not have a really strong #2 you may have somebody who's very good at doing the, the financial controllership sort of things, but are they necessarily the commercial person that you need to bounce ideas off? And that's where the issue starts. Actually, it's one one of the reasons behind Gross CFO taking off in the 1st place.

17:25 Dan Wells, founder. Dan was an equity partner in KPMG and he was talking on a daily basis to KPMG clients who were CFOs of scale UPS and he was finding repeatedly that every CFO was talking to had the same problems. And one of the concepts behind Grow CFO in the 1st place was the idea that if you could just get these CFOs talking to each other, they wouldn't have help to solve each other's problems.

17:53 It's about networking, sharing experiences, sharing what works, what doesn't work, or just play, brainstorming what we've got to do. And that was born out as well in the very early days of Grow CFO, we found ourselves very quickly in lockdown, lots of CFOs wondering what to do, how do we survive, how do we claim this grant that grant, how do we replan what the business is doing?

18:20 And we started something in Grow CFO called the Situation Room. Literally, we just advertised that, hey, we're going to run this thing called the Situation Room. Friday lunchtime, we're going to switch the Zoom cameras on. Here's the here's the link to join in. Come along and let's have a chat. Literally, that's how we started networking Grow CFO.

18:41 We built a community up very quickly of people who just plain wanted to come along and talk and find out from other CFOs what on earth they were doing at the moment about all these problems that had suddenly come along out of nowhere. Wow. That's the power of community. The power of community is very, very strong.

19:01 Yeah, I come from the city, takes a village to raise a child. And of course, businesses are like our children. We are what I say our brainchild. And yeah, it takes a lot to to view them. And it's honestly to the right ecosystem of our right minded individuals, right minded individuals, individuals with a good mindset, with the right skill set. And of course, utilise the right tool sets. So our Speaking of the rules here for ecosystem, are you able to tell us you know what makes it more than just a network? Like how does it empower the CFOs through collaborations, the technology adoptions, the leadership support? Like what are the nitty features that makes you different from just the regular community that

19:53 just sits and talks, right? Because I have a very big programme with no are too much talking. See, talk is cheap and a lot of people in this age of time suffer from something alcohol paralysis by analysis, right? They absorb a lot of education, but they lack implementation. So for me, I feel like success comes when you have the execution or the implementation of the education.

20:20 Right. Then, yeah, have results. So I'll love for you to speak to that. Actually, that's sort of expanding on what we just talked about. That idea of getting folk together to brainstorm problems and sort things out for each other is something that's the kind of echoes across a lot of the stuff we do now in the gross CFO community.

20:42 We've got a membership platform and anybody come along and be a grow CFO member for free and get some resources. But if you're a paid member, you get into the learning system. A lot of it is, well, it's aimed at finance people, which makes us unusual because we've probably got more finance based training you find anywhere else that's that's the sort of self-service stuff fairly standard.

21:06 There's video on demand training, but on top of that, if you're a grow CFO member, you can attend a certain amount of live training, virtual classroom training. It's like being in the classroom, but it's over Zoom. And we've spotted the power of getting folk together in small cohorts and letting them work together and spend an extended period of time so they can get to know each other and support each other. So we've got FP and a boot camp, a finance business partnering boot camp, both of which are available to gross CFO members, part of the membership.

21:44 And the way they work, each one of them, we, we run them over a course of two months. And over those two months we do 7/2 hour workshops in small groups. So we, we wouldn't really want more than somewhere between a dozen and 20 people in a cohort. And they'll work in the classroom with a trainer, they'll go into breakout groups, they'll do case studies, and every one of those sessions will end with practical, implementable stuff you can take back to the workplace the next day.

22:17 We call it experiential learning. I love that. Or you give people practical skills they can use straight away #2 is you form peer groups that can continue and support each other. And we've got a couple of flagship programmes as well. They're the future CFO programme and the CFO programme. Now both of those work in roughly the same way, but the period's bigger. They run for a year and the two hour workshop rather than being every week is once a month.

22:52 So you take this community of a dozen people, we have an intake into once 1/4, so a dozen new people every quarter. And the only criteria for future CFO is I want to be ACFO in the next couple of years. However, I want to see how I can knock down all the obstacles that are currently stopping me getting there. So we put them into a cohort, take them through the programme by the end of 12 months working that cohort, you've formed a fairly strong networking group.

23:25 One of the things we do in the very first session, we find out what people's individual skill bases are. We've got the CFO competency framework and grocery of us, everybody on the on the programme taken that how we know what everybody's core skills are, the strengths of their weaknesses. So in the first session, each person gets to present on the area they're strongest in.

23:49 So straight away the whole of that peer group gets to see the power of the skills that are combined in the group and all the things they can help each other with. And then we take them through the programme, they get to know each other better as they go through by working together in the breakout sessions and so on. And it's it's a really, really powerful way of forming community forming, forming groups that are potentially lasting much longer than the the programme itself. Interesting stuff are that's something I want to ask you and this is hinged upon our shared, when I say background at PwC and it's something I really appreciate that PwC empowered us with.

24:38 That's the PwC professional framework for prison professionals. No, it starts with whole leadership and business acumen, technical competence, global acumen and building relationships. So these things that you do, those CFOs speak to all of the points, the criteria points between the PwC framework, right? There's something that I noticed that a lot of RBS CFOs tend to lack, which is pieces.

25:12 And you rightly tell me that's a commercial mindset. So I'd love to speak to that. Why is that, you know very much lacking amongst a lot of career CF OS and what have you guys done at Co CFO to tackle this very, very important problem? Why is it lacking? I think in general, when you're training to be a chartered accountant or similar qualifications, CPA, whatever, you're learning very much technical skills around debits and credits around how to account for the stuff that other people do.

25:53 Nobody. Now you make you feel old. I'm going to say. Wow, focus on this hot product and the cash channels. Absolutely. You know, there's something I love to say. Revenues, vanity, profit to sanity, and cash is reality. If you wish, cash is clean. I guess you you ran into a technical issue. It is still the reporting is still on, but the Reaver side has this way of finding the fluff and removing the fluff so that that's not a profile.

31:30 Did you lose your Internet connection? I think it went flaky. Everything froze, then you disappeared. So I then clicked the leave button and came back in again. OK, OK. No worries, I think you can peek back from where you stopped if you cannot be collected. Do you collect where you stopped? Gosh, what we were talking about. OK.

31:56 I remember, I know it was a question that I made an improv on. So I think I'll just proceed to the next question. I think that. Yeah, that's probably the best bet and see where we get to. You might you might have to edit something out of an appropriate stop point. So yeah, I've got a feeling I was still talking after we'd lost the connection.

32:17 So. Oh. OK, I think you're talking. Inside my end anyway. You were talking about the commercial mindset. You know, I talked about the. Yeah, that's right. That's mindset. Business acumen, Yeah, yeah. So do you want to add anything to it or should we proceed to the next question? Proceed to the next question.

32:34 OK, OK, OK, let's go. So let's talk about the technology in finance, a very, very big theme in my broadcasters, AI in business. Again, when you look at the subtitle of the forecast, it is growth mindset, leadership and business insights. So you, Acro CFO, navigate the fast changing technology landscape from AI to the digital transformations. So like what trends should finance leaders prioritise to see where bands are going into the future? And of course, to me, valuable and valuable. OK, right.

33:17 So, yeah, you're at the core of my role these days and grow CFO and I am spending less time doing the mentoring sorts of things and more time being head of tech partnerships. And we're talking to a lot of tech companies in all areas of the finance landscape, doing webinars with them and podcasts and so on. And one of the nice things for me is it's keeping me really up to date with what's going on.

33:45 And tech is moving at a phenomenal rate. Yeah. But one of the interesting things for me is that in certain areas, we're still juggling with the same problems that I was dealing with 25 years ago in PwC. I'm seeing in the order to cash and the purchase to pay space, the transactional finance parts, really significant progress with AI agents making a big difference. But bring this back into what's the FP and a team doing planning, budgeting, forecasting. What about the cool reporting team and faster close and things like that.

34:25 They are fundamentally playing with the same problems that we were talking to them about 25 years ago when I was part of the I Analytics practise in PwC. Back then, 25 years ago, we were talking to one or two clients about moving away from a budget to having a rolling forecast. Blowing up the budget was the theme and in the other part of the analytics practise, we were talking to businesses about faster clothes, particularly quoted companies that needed to report to the Stock Exchange once 1/4 letting them understand that reporting faster meant an awful lot in terms of their credibility, things that the the way the market looked at them and no move on 25 years.

35:12 Have we seen significant change to move to rolling forecasts? No, we haven't. We still talk about it and think it's the the future. Have we seen significant change with fast lows? No, we haven't. We run a survey and grow CFO probably about 18 months ago now and found that the vast majority of companies do not close them on then before work day five. And there's a whole ramp of companies that still failed to close before work day 10.

35:43 Wow. So nothing's changed. And that that then brings me back to tech and where are we at the moment? And there's a lot happening, huge number of innovations going on, huge number of things we can take advantage of. I'm seeing a little bit of analysis paralysis in the literally so much is happening, people don't know where to start.

36:11 One of the nice things that we're doing through, through some of the things we do in gross CFO, through the web analysis, through the tech showcases, is that we are showing people the art of the possible. And we're taking away this thing that we talk about called AI into the practical. What can you do with it at the moment? That's that's really interesting. You go into those core areas, planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting.

36:38 What is it that's still stopping us all moving forward? And it's not the technology. And this is where CF OS have really got to be on their game. I think the biggest set of skills ACFO needs in the future, the change of management skills. You can have the greatest AI tools in the world, but if it's garbage in, it's garbage out. You can have the greatest set of AI agents in the world, but if there are bottlenecks in your processors caused by people you, you're not going to close the books any faster or do a better forecast.

37:11 If you've got to say, well, the reason we don't close till working day 5 is, well, we've got to wait for all of the invoices to be in from all of our suppliers and process properly so we can close the books. AI is not going to make any difference to that. This is sort your systems out so you can accrue for what you know you've ordered. Therefore, you can work on some very good estimates of what the month that monthly costs are going to be in. Close the books earlier.

37:39 It's changing people, it's changing process and it's changing mindset. At the moment again again we'll go back to mindset. What skill set? Tool set? The result of the tool set is only as good as the mindset and the skill set of the individual tool set I love. And it is in any sort of change, there are three elements. There are people, there are process, and there are systems. You change the systems without changing the people or the process, you get nowhere.

38:12 So the great CFO will know how to work with their people, how to get the best out of their people, how to get their people really involved in the change, looking at how do we make things work better around here, getting them involved in the solution, working together as a team. The technology by itself will not get you anywhere. It's also two sets.

38:46 Yeah. And you know when you look at this from your own experience, what have been the major bottlenecks in the cut off procedure and the cut off process for organisations? Gosh, it always tends to be around waiting for bits of information in that cut off. Accrawls. Yeah, it's accruals. It's waiting for somebody to approve something.

39:18 And really when you're you're looking at that close process, I think you've got to go back to the basics. You're going to get that huge, huge roll of brown paper out. You've got a blue tacket to the wall and you then go to attack it with post it notes and start saying what happens, what's the process here, who does what and when?

39:41 And until you understand that whole process and where all the handoffs are, you aren't going to get anywhere in terms of changing it. It's always handoffs that could have been done simpler or easier, and bits of the process that have been put in because we needed it three years ago. Nobody. Once you put something into a process because it was dealing with some peculiarity, historically, nobody ever challenges taking it back out again. So processes tend to get a little bit top heavy, a little bit clumsy.

40:18 We never go back and really review them and simplify them. Interesting stuff. You know you also run app will be consulting and coaching supporting businesses as both the coach and fractional CFO. So why do you think this blended model is so powerful for SM, ES or stack UPS or scale UPS? Yeah, I don't do much of that these days.

40:45 I am pretty much tied up with doing things with gross CFO and any ages of such that I would have more time outside of that to myself. So I'm I'm not actually actively going around looking for those other clients. But if people come to me and I like what they're doing and think I can help, but great, we'll do something.

41:08 What makes that a great combination? I think if you say that you've got that skill yourself of having taken a business from nowhere to somewhere and Dan and I've done that with Bruce CFO over the last six years, helped my daughter put her business together, help wife put her business together. There's something of a sweet spot of how do you get a small business off the ground and actually turn it into something. And then to be able to do that with a finance mindset as well. I don't know.

41:41 That adds a much an extra layer. You know, there are there's lots and lots and lots of coaches out there. Most coaches will take the approach of talking to you about a problem and asking you questions to to the way that you they try to get you to solve your own problem. Yes, it's an approach, but I think a mentor is something different. A mentor is somebody who's been there, done that, built the T-shirt.

42:04 And if you've done that, you have the financial skill set on top. You understand the money, you understand that you've got to have revenue to pay the costs. You've got to be able to understand what costs are necessary, what costs are not necessary, be able to give the sensible forecast when it's necessary.

42:25 If you can join those coaching skills with the mentoring skills, with the finance skills, I think it's a very powerful package for the small business. Absolutely, yeah, personal. That's why the fractional model is very, very powerful. You know these small businesses cannot afford a full time finance experts are once you dedicate that time, you know, fractionally to them, it goes along where you're helping them to start up, scale up and sell out.

42:57 So let's talk about the. It's the sort of business I like working with, even before that scale, where they'd want a fractional you. We've probably got to the stage you want a fractional CFO because you're going through some sort of fundraise or something like that. You suddenly realise you need more than the bookkeeper.

43:15 I think something appeals to me about the stage before you even get there and you're trying to put that business together. You're trying to make your first sales, you're trying to figure out what your customers want. I love that bit of the journey. Yeah, that's a foundation. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Either foundation that destroyed what kind of writers do. So it's an essential to get the foundation right. If you put some finance skills into that, that very early piece that's that's pretty unique because most fractionals are looking at the companies probably 7 figures already. Yeah, in that group phase, the only one to accelerate what is already in motion, I can understand, you know, but different strokes and different

43:59 folks. What I want to delve into the Next 100 Days, It's something you're very passionate about you, you love the terminology. And of course, you've got the Next 100 Days podcast. You always emphasised on 100 Days springs for transformation. So how can finance leaders and entrepreneurs apply this to accelerate results without burnout? That's it without burnout.

44:25 Well, that's why it is 100 days, because if it's longer than 100 days, you do burnout. OK. I think it's looking back over at a career where I've done lots of projects. And if you've got a project that's got a reasonably big scope and you start going, you get to a point where you you kind of run out of steam or you do burnout or you lose the reason why you did this in the 1st place. And quite often that point that you run out of steam is around about the 1900 day mark.

44:54 So I've developed my own philosophy that says you pick up a scope for whatever it is you want to do. You don't put too much in it, but you put enough in it to be able to go at it for about 90 days. You get to the end of that, you look at what you've achieved, you review and you plan again for another 9000 days, OK?

45:20 So it comes down to biting things off into manageable chunks. So you don't start getting at the end of, if you go to 100 days, 110 days, 120 days, you don't get the diminishing returns going after the same goals, objectives you've replanned. So you can focus on something else. There's also a little bit of something we talked about earlier. You don't know what you don't know. I took us back into 2020.

45:48 We didn't know lockdown was going to hit. I didn't know I was going to meet Dan Wells. I didn't know gross CFO was coming along. I don't think you can plan for two years, for three years. So you don't what's out there. But you do know if I asked you, Adam Ola, what's the one thing if you could do it would make a difference in the next 100 days, you could probably give me a very good answer. Absolutely.

46:18 You know, what is that one thing? There's another thing I'll add to 90 days is you can go 100 an inch in 100 directions or you can go 100 miles in One Direction. So don't think of five things of 10 things that you want to happen in the next 100 days. Think of one thing. What is the one thing that's going to be the game changer for you?

46:43 And focus on that. Work on it for 100 days and you'll get somewhere. I love that 100 days is up. Review plan again, ask that same question. What's the one thing that's going to get me somewhere in the next 100 days? Go work on it. Interesting stuff. It works the planning and it works from business planning and it works in the pro world.

47:08 Project management is essentially in that process. What's your favourite project management tool? Piece of paper. Well, for me it's it's my calendar. I love calendar so much. I think that's the most important subscription I've ever had. What do I use in terms of tools? I've used Trello in the past as a project management tool.

47:33 I've used back in bigger project world to use Microsoft projects. Was absolutely hated and currently I use Notion. Yeah. Notion, but OK. There's a difference between managing tasks and managing activities and thinking about what needs to be done. Thinking about what needs to be done. Big piece of paper posted notes? Stick them on, move them around till you've got a plan. Can't be this?

48:01 I think you like us. Have you heard of Asana? Then yes, our marketing team uses uses Asana. Yeah, yeah, I think you've got to have that freedom of just being able to think when you're in the planning phase, what do you use to plan the project versus what do you use to task manage the project. And they're two different things. Absolutely.

48:25 And of course, I hope our audience are taking a very, very, very bad notes. Let's let's talk about, you know, beyond the spreadsheets, beyond the tools, what are the personal qualities or the leadership traits, skills and mindset that separate an average CFO from a successful and transformational CFO? It's the ability to lead a team.

48:56 For leadership, no wonder PwC put it right at the top. Yeah, it is. It's the ability to lead A-Team. The the CF OS success I believe isn't just down to them, it's down to the people they have around them. It's down to taking those people on a journey and achieving something together. So you have to be able to lead.

49:19 That's a very difficult question. That's all depends. So the answer is going to be different for virtually everybody. It's going to depend on business circumstances, what's necessary and understanding the needs. And I think it comes down to and I believe strategies just down to one thing. It's stop, start, continue. What are you going to stop doing? What are you going to start doing? What are you going to continue doing? But I'd flip that question around if I was giving practical advice to ACFO today as to what should they be doing personally to augment where they are.

49:58 We've got in gross CFO something called the CFO competency framework mentioned it earlier and you can go to our website and take the competency framework and it's you you self assess yourself across 40. Some of them are the commercial acumen that we talked about earlier. Some of them are the change skills, some of them are the mergers, acquisitions, fundraising skills.

50:22 And what you can get is a profile of yourself across 45 skills. And you can start working out where your own personal strengths and gaps are a great way of deciding how do I want to get better skills wise in the next 12 months. Have a look at that assessment and see where you where you're falling short versus where you think you should be or where your peers are.

50:49 Who mentored you on your own way up and how has? You mentored. You mentoring others also shift your legacy in finance leadership. I would say I don't know I've ever had a formal mentor, but a lot go back to PwC days. In PwC consulting. Back when I was there, you had a line manager and you had a mentor. Your line manager may well change frequently depending what you're doing.

51:24 And on top of that, you might have a project manager as well that you're working too. But your mentor stayed with you. So you're always talking about skills development, career progression and so on with your mentor. And actually I got into the position of really liking that, and that's when I started mentoring more junior people within PwC. So that's really sold me on the power of that relationship. But I guess I've always had people around that I've been able to talk to about things and bounce ideas off. So looking into the future, what was the vision for not just the next 100 days, but maybe the next 100 weeks and maybe 10/10/10 years?

52:14 Like what exact you, you know, what role do you see for CFO playing in the global landscape, the global finance landscape in the years to come? What really excites you about the future? Gross CFO is the easy bit because I can see where we're going. I can see working with bigger finance teams, a lot more finance teams. We're going to have a bigger footprint outside of the UK. We've already got a reasonable footprint in the US, but that's where there's a huge, huge opportunity for growth. So I see gross CFO growing quite rapidly. Where do I see me in the next couple of years? Well, I'm coming to that age where I've got to make a very interesting decision of who I retire moment. The one thing that's stopping me

53:04 from saying yes, I'll retire is so much tech change going on and. I. Don't. It's exciting and I don't want to lose where things are. I really enjoy being head of partnerships and having the opportunity to go and talk to these tech companies every day of the week. They'll run a webinar every couple of weeks to see the latest things that they're they're up to.

53:27 And certainly in the next couple of years, I think there's going to be so much change going on, but I want to stay with that. Interesting stuff. So you talk about gratitude. Gratitude is also close to my heart. And of course for me to use a very big thank you for being on the show today. But I will not let you go without putting you through the Pacific Ring of Fire.

53:50 I have 5 big fireground questions for you. OK, let's go. OK, so. That's from 2 good Geordie lads from our neck of the woods and deck. Number one, one book every CFO chicky. Well, to your Geordie's somebody who I would regard regard as a little bit of a mentor, Michael Heppel. Michael Heppel, How to Be Brilliant. The best personal development book ever written. Interesting stuff.

54:23 So the next one is the biggest financial mistake businesses make in their first one. Quantity. Are probably spending too much money and waiting till they've got something they think is perfect before they try to sell it. Minimum viable product. Get it out there and find if anybody wants to buy it.

54:47 Nice coffee, tea, or something stronger when you punch in the numbers. Coffee OK, preferably freshly ground from the beans. Ha ha ha, a guided coffee one underrated soft skill every finance leader must master. Underrated soft skill? Gosh. Thing is, these days I don't think there are any underrated soft skills left, but storytelling is certainly the big one. It's getting away from talking numbers and talking language that only accountants understand to talk in the language of the rest of the business.

55:31 I love that I I leave for that. It's on my LinkedIn profile, Storytelling for impact, so proud of that. It's very important in this ageing time and I appreciate what one of my guests told me, she said. I am a modern day business philosopher, so picking that title and rather did Martin Davis a philosopher.

55:50 Wow. And I've heard the very last question is, if you could give your younger self one piece of advice when starting at PwC, what would? That advice? Enjoy the journey, enjoy the journey. It comes back to you don't know what's around the corner, you don't know what's you can't plan beyond 100 days. I'd say lots of my bits of my career have happened as much by accident, certainly about being in the right place at the right time.

56:20 And yet we spend so much time thinking about oh, when, if only this would happen, then everything be all right. Well now enjoy the journey, enjoy what you've got now and what's happening and be in the moment. Don't be always thinking, oh, it'll be great when we've got to this goal or that goal or the other goal.

56:42 I think that's fantastic piece of advice. And of course with that I come to my line that I love so much. When a person shares their time with you, they share their life with you. The course, the SI uniform measure in life this time. And of course, an attitude of gratitude is good attitude. So for me, it is love and respect to you for being on the show today, The King Games podcast and Diary of the CFOI do not take your time for granted.

57:11 I very much appreciate you know, you spending that fraction of the life with us to be sharing insights, educating and motivating. This means a lot. You're highly, highly appreciated and of course, looking forward to teacher collaborations and the first guys I did feature on Kevin, Apple forecast those CFO guys.

57:32 I'm going to put it in the description. Go watch it and press the meet. You as always conceive the stratified and actually always go for something in your life right across your meet. It's goodbye, Akron. Kevin, I don't know if you want to leave a shout out to anybody or if you want to, you know, if you've any closer remarks, but a press for me it's goodbye. I think just thank you hugely for having me on your podcast today.

57:59 It's been a really great experience. Really enjoyed chatting to you and talking about stuff that I hope is of value to the audience. Thank you once again. Wow. And of course, you're welcome once again. You're honest welcome actually, and it's not goodbye, but it is. See you guys again for me and from AI and KA.