Does your finance department contribute strategic direction to your
firm’s business? Or are you satisfied if they just have accounts-receivable
buttoned-down?
According to this
survey by Accenture, 79% of executives polled viewed "strategic financial
thinking" as one of the three most important qualities in a CFO, but barely
one-third felt their finance departments actually made a contribution to
executive decision support. If it’s true that finance is merely "how
you keep score," then I suppose it’s OK if the umpires can’t coach. But
if you envision finance—and if your CFO envisions finance—as
a critical ingredient in your team’s performance, then this survey, while
anecdotal, is alarming.
To be sure, the trains must run on time, but that’s scarcely an aspirational
vision. If your CFO is not fully engaged with the management team,
whose fault is it?
