Name: The New CFO Playbook: Your First 100 Days of Impact
Uploaded: 2025-08-28T15:17:59.292Z
Duration: 1 h 2 min 35 s
Description: The New CFO Playbook: Your First 100 Days of Impact

Transcript for "The New CFO Playbook: Your First 100 Days of Impact": Hello, everyone. I think we are now live, Jeremy and I. I am very happy, to see you guys. My name is Clema Moguet, and I am the cofounder of the BOB SaaS company named Agicap. I am absolutely delighted to cohost this webinar on a very hot topic for every CFO in the room. Your first one hundred days of impact. It's gonna be the topic of today. Maybe as for the organization of this webinar, quick remarks. Don't hesitate to, you will see you have a chat on the right part of the screen to raise questions. Jeremy and I will take time at the end of the webinar to answer mostly, I hope, most of them, I would say. The webinar is recorded, so no worries. If you have to escape, you'll receive it by emails, the the recording. So that's it for the logistics, for this webinar. So I'd like to start with some figures, that I think speak for themselves. One in seven CFOs left the positions in 2024, and the average tenure, has dropped from six to five years according to Russell Reynolds, global CFO annual index report, 2024. These reports also note, that the economy concern that we're all experiencing has reduced hesitation in replacing CFOs. So, yes, CFOs are crucial even more than ever in shaping strategy, managing costs, driving value. But these responsibilities come with significant performance expectations, especially in tough economic conditions. So the first one of the days are the CFO, are you probing ground? It's it's a very important time. And that's the topic of today that we will discuss about with my wonderful guest and expert that I will present in a in a second. Just before presenting him, quick word on Agicap for those who've never heard about this, about us, for understanding more our area of, expertise. Agicap is a ten years old software company, and we offer the cutting edge platform for treasury management. So our mission at Agicap is to empower any finance sanction in securing and optimizing cash flows to sustain company's development. So this is more or less what we do. We have been recognized, and we're very happy for that by g two as, as being a leader in, in these categories. And I will end it here. But But, again, just for you to come understanding where we where we come from, briefly, Agicap is an all in one unified platform that brings together all your essential financial processes. So you can view, you can plan, and you can act on your cash in one place. So the core logic is very simple. We break down silos and centralize your data. So the banking ones, the invoices, all the now the cash related data that is existing or that makes sense. And we provide you with real time visibility and and control over your cash. So I'll now go through all of the models that you can see are described here from cash management for the short term, cash forecast to build a thirteen week forecast and optimize your liquidities in the short run to a more extensive six to twelve month cash for planning, including your debt reimbursements and including some scenario modeling through AI. And, the other two models that are very known, by any CFOs, which are cash collection solution the cash collection, one that helps you manage receivables and, increase your DSO. And account payables, a model that supports spend management in general from invoices to to invoice capture, to to to payment including procurement. So in a natural, optimizing your cash performance by creating, a cash flow powerhouse. So that's more or less what we do. But, again, for the sake of this webinar, and it's more importantly, I'm very delighted to be helped, by Jeremy Earnshaw. So, Jeremy, maybe the easier would be for you to present yourself and tell us more about your background. Thanks again for for joining. Clement, thank you so much for the invitation to work with you and Agicap. So for the, for the attendees today, let me give you a little bit of background if I can as to why I hope I can bring something to the discussion. I am now a, leadership and executive coach and mentor. But before that, I actually was a twenty five year CFO. So my experience is I'm based in The UK. My experience was international across, listed organizations, PLCs in London, and also with private equity and, two venture capital backed organizations in addition to a heavily regulated, very heavily asset backed organization here in The UK as well. And my sector experience covers pharma, health care, manufacturing, distribution, and real estate. And I now do for my since I have a suite of nonexecutive director roles here in The UK, and I chair, a couple of audits and risk committees, which I'm sure some of the delegates will be familiar with. However, having said all of that and having spent twenty five years as a CFO, it might sound quite strange for me to say that my real passion is people development, and hence the reason I can offer a little bit today in terms of coaching and mentoring, and maybe there's some things that our delegates will take away. And one thing that really struck me, for to become a coach and a mentor was back in the day in The UK when I was quite a young CFO, somebody gave me a very, very big chance, a very big opportunity, and it required a lot of thinking very, very quickly. In effect, how can I make those a hundred days stick in terms of my role? And it went quite well, but the alternative could have happened. It could have gone somewhat badly. It didn't in that case. So I chose after completing my executive CFO career to try and help others be able to seize those opportunities and to make those opportunities count, particularly in that crucial phase of a hundred days. So my mantra in coaching and mentoring is to work with growing organizations, people actually not just in finance, but across the whole of the c suite spectrum, and try and help people avoid what I call the, perception of perfection. So how can we always continuously learn, and how can we we be next level ready? So thinking about those one hundred days, how can we be ready on day one as opposed to day 50 all of the time? Plemont. Okay. Thanks, Jeremy. That's, that's that's great. And thanks a lot for help us navigating through this one hundred days. So let's get straight into the discussion and the title of this webinar, the first one hundred days of impact as a CFO. Let me ask you, therefore, a simple question, Jeremy. What are the key changes, you have to recognize as the CFO today? Yeah. A a really good question to start with. And and this comes up when when I'm coaching and mentoring, in particular, that CFO role. And and I appreciate everyone on the, on the webinar today will be at different stages in my career. So some of this may be a recap for for for people as well. But the slide that we have, on show right now, this is as much about people development in that hundred days and mindset as as it is about technical skills. And one of the things I would summarize this is that we, as CFOs, have reached our position. We, hopefully, are all quite intelligent. We've got qualifications. We have experience, and we have technical knowledge. And that is actually good and bad because some of our peers and some of our colleagues picture us as CFOs purely in that bottom box. We're an analyzer. We're a technical subject matter expert, but nothing else. And the big change, in my opinion, having worked with CFOs as a coach, having gone through my own roles, and having seen these changes is that very, very quickly in those first hundred days, we've got to start considering what these on the top layer there are considered to be extra skills as defined by the Institute of Directors in The UK. So very, very quickly, we've got to be a strategic thinker. We've also got to communicate better. And I say this as a finance person myself. We're not necessarily known as being great communicators. Sometimes, we can hide ourselves in the corner. We can speak in our own separate language. We're great at using acronyms that nobody else in the organization understands. So we have to communicate better. We also have to be the impartial decision maker And maybe one of the more difficult ones, we have to instantly become a leader. And the challenge that we've got, and I'm sure finance people will recognize this, is that we there is a caricature of the finance person. And part of the challenge of moving forward and becoming the CFO is we all of a sudden have to get rid of this caricature and become somebody different. So we have to work on that in the first hundred days. We've got to work on that transition, and we need to be ready straight away. So summarize that, what has got you to this point so far to be able to be a CFO is now not enough to be able to deliver as the CFO, to be the next level CFO. And that's a really big transition. And, again, I probably summarize it by saying, as a main board director, and I see this a lot, you've got to transition really, really quickly into becoming a director of the whole organization, but with responsibility for finance as opposed to being the director who just has commentary to make when the subject of finance comes up. Big challenge and a big change, and it's all about transition. Clement. Okay. That's that's absolutely very clear. And I think that we I used to hear the from you also when preparing this this webinar or the imposter syndrome or something like people fear they may not have the the right shoulders or be good enough to be such leaders. So this is not something that they are not. It's something that they they feel, and it's about how to build yourself to become such a leader. And that's also the objective of today is to social pass and some patterns, to help people grow as leaders and having everything in mind and having the full impact they deserve. Alright? Very, very clear. So tell us more about this. I'll try and do that. And and you you mentioned, Clem, on the, the imposter syndrome. Part part of the challenge as well, which I'm sure we all see as finance individuals, is that there's a challenge in managing people like you, Clement, because you may be different to somebody else as a CEO or a managing director or a chair of the board, you may all have your different perceptions of people in finance. So one of the first things we need to do is manage you, and that's part of the communication that we highlighted on the previous slide. This graphic here highlights the expansion in what I call the financial orbit as the CFO. And we may be making a huge leap, that huge transition from the smallest circle at the bottom, finance technical subject matter expert. And all of a sudden, we have expanding concentric circles. So we have to manage strategy and risk, and we have to be impartial on strategy, not too risk averse. Lots and lots, again, caricatures of finance are being risk averse. We have to be somewhere in the middle. We also have to manage risk from the positive perspective as well. Perception of risk is that it's all about financial controls, procedures, authority levels. Actually, risk can be an absolute fundamental foundation to the whole of the organizational strategy. Why is it on the table for CFOs? I don't think I've ever come across a chief revenue officer who's given responsibility for risk. That's gonna fall into our lap as well as part of our new role. Communication, we talked about, already on the previous slide. We've also now got to demonstrate culture. So we've gotta be part of that visible leadership team, and we work up to not necessarily last, but a very large category of external stakeholders. And this could be absolutely make or break as I'm sure many delegates on the webinar will already have realized. We're going into a whole new world of external stakeholders. So, for example, we have lenders. We have investors. We may have unions. We may have all sorts of different categories. More communication with customers, more communication with suppliers. Lenders and investors, in my view, I'll see whether anybody smiles maybe, not necessarily known for their patient approach with CFOs. So we've got to make sure that these external stakeholders, we're also managing them as well, and they can make or break. So a huge orbit that we already had. And the other thing, of course, I'm sure, again, people will recognize, we as CFOs, this is in my former life, we now get absolutely zero credit for what we used to do really well. Finance technical subject matter expert, no credit whatsoever unless it goes wrong. So all of that, we've got to plan to make sure that that carries on seamlessly and actually expand our orbit into those other areas. So one of the challenges that we've got is that there are a good number as Clement mentioned in the introduction, there are a good number of people, unfortunately, who enter the CFO role but fail to be there in eighteen months' time. Clement. I'm quite surprised. I was very surprised about the figures when I read them and making my own research, on LinkedIn, etcetera. I checked that there was, like, just in The UK, more than 1,500 new CFOs that we acquire. So I guess turnover is quite high. So can you offer your thoughts on why these appointments are not successful? What can our audience do to avoid being in this dataset? Yeah. And I think if we if we look at this slide here, and this comes up very, very regularly. And about half of my growth mindset clients as coachees and mentees are in the finance function. And a good number of people are either relatively new in post or aspirational CFOs. And here's what happens. If we look at the left hand slide, I call these the gains and the pains. And, absolutely, on the left hand side of the graphic here, I don't think there will be anybody who doesn't think about the gains of becoming a CFO and entering those first one hundred days. We will all have thought about more compensation and remuneration. We'll all have thought about the fact that we might be the number one in the organization, and we should be very pleased about that. We think about career progression. Our family, and friends are impressed when, I rang my mother and father, for example, when I got my first CFO role. And they they were very, pleased about about this. Your hard work is being rewarded. Equally, your hiring party, the people who are interviewing you to give yourself the role, they are thinking they're gonna give you a round of applause. And then they stop about thinking about delivery because they've employed you as somebody extra special. So we can fall into this category of almost believing our own news. However, and this is a big but, if we look at the right hand slide, these are some of the pains that leading into that first one hundred days, we don't think about. And Clement is absolutely right, and I cross referenced the, statistics as well. And and that fifty percent failure rate is actually quite across the c suite. The worrying thing is that the CFO role itself has the highest failure rate above other c suite roles. So why is that? Let's look at the right hand side. We got that whole new set of stakeholders, and they don't know you. They haven't appointed you, probably. They may have had a conversation with you. So they remain to be convinced. Your interviewing party, they are already convinced. Their demands of you as a CFO are different because they've got their own paymasters as well. So the demands and the accountabilities and the responsibilities are far greater, and you have that extra layer of stakeholders to work with. It's a fact. Your time scales are now shorter. You are having to be more reliant on your team, but you take full responsibility. As you know, as a CFO, it's down to you. And this is the bit where there's no textbook. So for all of the new elements, we can't refer back to our qualifications, and we can't refer back to our exams and our previous roles. We may well be entering the CFO role for the first time. So if we think about it, there's an awful lot of new challenge here, and we could be also changing company if it's not an internal promotion. We could be changing sector. We could be changing the business model. We could be changing a country. And we're all assuming, as a CFO, that we can seamlessly enter that first hundred days. And the reality is some people don't do that. Some people don't plan, and they don't plan to be able to hit the ground running on day one. So these are massive challenges, and the difference between the gains that we think about and the pains that we don't can sometimes come up quite regularly as the reasons eighteen months down the line that that CFO appointment doesn't quite work out as planned. Clement? That's, that's very interesting. It makes me think of a CFO I spoke to lately and that told me that he he wanted and he did meet all these executive committee members before he joined into a new journey. So it was part of his preparation and making sure that he was landing, in the in the right rocket ship. So it was part of his preparation, let's say. So otherwise, then is there a model to use? Are there questions, behaviors, like patterns for potential new CFO to consider before stepping up into that new role or into a new company, what would you say? I certainly think there's a model where we can derisk this. And, again, let's let's let's let's assume that we have all the credentials to be the CFO. The problem is a lot of other people have got those credentials as well. You and me on the webinar today as ex or current or aspirational CFOs, There's lots of us out there, and we've all got qualifications, and we've all got the sector experience, and we all can make a case for us being the person who's going to enter that one hundred days as a CFO. So here are here are some things that I would just add, and the critical element of this as a CFO entering those hundred days, be self aware. So and that's a critical element. As I mentioned in the introduction, I I took myself off our back actually to university to become a coach and a mentor. I didn't want to just change my LinkedIn banner and become a coach and a mentor. So I actually went off to learn about it, and to invest in my passion for people development. And this was the key critical element across any discipline. Are you self aware to make sure you know why you are being successful or why you're not being quite as successful as you would like to be? So I would I would urge people to ask just a few questions. In terms of developing your self awareness, how do we avoid this perception of perfection? Because there's always more to learn in every discipline. So question number one, and ask yourself this question. In what roles and why have you made a difference as a leader, as a finance leader, as a colleague, as a peer, or part of the c suite? What did you do? Why did it work? And then ask the question, in the areas where, and we all know we have challenging times, why didn't it work, and why didn't I make as much difference? And that's a critical question to be able to join that first hundred days knowing where you could improve or not. Here's an anecdote, from a really good human resources director I worked with, a long time ago, actually. And we've probably all been in interviews where we've been asked the question, so tell me, in my case, Jeremy, what are your weaknesses? And my HR director colleague said, I ask this question every single time. So I'm asking this question three or four times a day in interviews across any discipline. And he said to me, do you know what? I'm really not interested in your answer. I'm not interested in what you say your weaknesses are. What I am interested in, what you're doing about it. So I want you to tell me that you've understood where you can make improvements, and I'd like to know what you're doing about it. I'm not interested in your weaknesses really at all. Another question to ask, why are you moving into the new role? So this is a quite a generic question, but why are you moving the role? And let's assume that there's more to it than just earning a little bit more salary. So why are you moving? Are you get what experiences are you gaining? And this comes up time and again in coaching. What do you want to achieve by going to a new role? And in exactly the same way as you would move house, for example. If you move location, you probably make a decision Mhmm. That you would like. For example, three bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and maybe a driveway for your car. So you're very clear on what you would like. The same applies when you're thinking about your next role as a professional finance leader. What are you gonna get from it? Am I gaining international experience? Am I gaining exposure to lenders? Am I gaining exposure to private equity or venture capitalist? Am I gaining exposure to new stakeholders? Here's a really good question. Also, if I'm interviewing you, and and this is something to to add for yourself. If I don't hire you and this is your differentiator as a CFO, what am I missing out on? What do you bring to the role that nobody else can? So I apologize for a little bit of free coaching there, but, these are real coaching and mentoring considerations. Bit of a free session. Hopefully, they'll help people going forward. Clement. That's, that's very nice of you, Jeremy. And, I know you could speak a lot about this because you're you're passionate about this. So I think, it closes, I would say, the the first part of this webinar where we have discussed about how challenging and how important these 100 are, obviously. The new paradigm when it comes to what is asked, to CFO to take the most, of this exposure and of the impact, how to, what not to do and what to do, and how to prepare when thinking, considering a new journey, to select the right one, the one that fits the best, the most with our own expectations. Now maybe let's deep dive into the concrete actions. So, Jeremy, you have had five major CFO roles. I expect there have been different challenges in each, but using your experience and spending benefiting, of course, also of couching and mentoring practices now. Can you define the absolutely critical first hundred days actions that, let's say, every new CFO must do? That's a really good question, Clement. And, I call this the success ladder slide. And let let me be really clear on this. I I I come to this kind of webinar, and if I was to turn around, I would have plenty of scars on my back. And, hopefully, I would be able to use them so that other people don't have to get quite as big scars as I have. So the the the experiences I'm I'm actually gonna give you a case study for each of these seven areas. And then on the following couple of slides, say, okay. Having heard the case study, this is what we can really do to influence how we can minimize, gaining those bad experiences. But we know they're going to happen. So how can we be prepared? So this is as a result of five major CFO roles, some of which went better than others, some of which were in more challenging sectors and circumstances than others, and in those different kinds of entity between a publicly listed company and private equity as well. So each with different demands. So they're all really from my kind of mistakes or errors or challenges, and understanding what others want as well. And I I'd I'd also say right at the start, I think in each of these roles, I think I've always been told on appointment, don't worry, Jeremy. There's no problems in this organization. You're inheriting a clean organization. You'll never find any problems. And I think I've also been told on certainly most of the occasions from the CEO or the chair or the cofounder, Clement, I've always been told I'm a CEO who wants challenge. And in reality, that's not quite the case. People say things about wanting challenge from the CFO, but when you do challenge, that can be taken quite differently. And so, again, it's part about managing the CEO. So number one, and and this has been a, this is a big scar if you get it wrong. If I could just close back to to that one. Number one, liquidity, cash, and lender covenants. And and all of those topics clearly highly relevant to the Agicap business model and sector. Everything else can come later. Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. Cash is king. And if this takes five minutes, if you're in the hugely advantageous position of being cash rich, that's great. But how long will the cash last if we get to the stage of business continuity? And we also got saw that five years ago. I'll give you my case study here. I inherited an organization in private equity, which was the subject of the conclusion of the transaction only eight weeks earlier when I joined the organization. And the previous CFO had left with the exit. So I joined the organization, and within three weeks, I was able to with a bit of due diligence, I was able to say, actually, guys, I think we're going to breach our lender covenants and almost run out of cash, but not yet, in about fifteen months' time. And the way that we did that is that we stress tested the financial model in a way that hadn't been done before, and we worked out very clearly that the tolerance levels were too low. And I'll I'll raise this issue again in number seven about bad news if you've got to, seeing number seven narrative as well. But the reality was we worked out we had a problem, and we worked out in a positive way that we have fifteen months to do something about it. But we had a problem. And the other thing I would add at this stage is death by a thousand cuts. If you think you have a problem as CFO in the first hundred days, please make sure you know the extent of the problem at its worst. Nobody wants to hear as a manager or a leader or as an investor or a lender coming back with another problem in the same area time and time again. So liquidity, cash management, lender covenants, number one. For me, above all else. Number two, integrity and data and information. Go back to my earlier title, as well, earlier introduction. There are no problems here. I think in three of my five roles, maybe this is just me and the companies that I joined, there were problems within the balance sheet. There were holes in the balance sheet. My very first role as a CFO, I like to dig. I like to be intellectually curious and satisfy myself that the numbers and the data has got integrity. The alternative to that is that when it goes wrong, and, of course, when we have made decisions as leaders based on the integrity of data, and do we then go back and say, do you know what? That data was wrong. We've made poor quality decisions, and we, as CFOs, are responsible for that. I had an intercompany matrix, and this is going a little bit into the technical data, but it didn't balance. And it actually eliminated 25% of our profit in the full year. The good point, we identified it before the year end. So it wasn't as much of a shock, but it was about being intellectually curious. So dig into the data and understand how we have the data and how it's prepared. Another example here, in The US, I know there's an organized it's called Walmart. In The US, sorry. In The UK, it used to own a business called Asda. So it's a retailer. It's a supermarket. And, the challenge in dealing with revenue officers in particular is that they are usually far more optimistic than us as CFOs. And I had a regular revenue officer who would come to me with a challenge of that we're going to do $5,000,000 worth of more revenue with ASDA than we did last year. And I would say something reasonably sensible like, how are we going to do that? And I'm not really looking for an answer, which is, well, we're hoping for a good year. We're going to run faster, and we're going to work harder. That to me is not logical, and it's not scientific. So the challenge about digging into the data and saying, you tell me as a revenue officer, because I'm the CFO and I'm responsible for budgeting, I want to know what is going to change between now and next year to deliver that extra $5,000,000 worth of revenue. And if you can't justify it with something that's happening, for example, it may be that the Olympics, as an event, generates more revenue. That was actually one of the reasons that we could include more in a forecast. So overall situation there, if the data is wrong, it's your fault as the CFO, so probe it. Number three. What did the finance team do? Again, another case study. I inherited 30 people in one particular organization. And when I spoke to them upon joining about what they do, I got generic answers such as, well, we help out at the end of the at the end of the month. We're always very busy doing the audit. We're planning for the budget. We're planning for the year end. Nobody, it seemed, in this particular case study, was able to say, do you know what? I've got five objectives, and each of them is linked categorically to the objectives, the vision, and the mission of the organization. And that would be my takeaway as a case study, is that everybody in the finance team at whatever level should be doing something that links directly to what the organization is trying to do. Even if it's relatively intangible, what am I doing? If, for example, I'm collecting debts, I'm collecting accounts receivable, I'm providing the cash that generates investment opportunities for the organization. So has everybody got very clear objectives? Another thing to think about there is that and it comes on to the fourth one here. What are the real business KPIs? And, again, I I don't want to give the impression that all of my organizations have been terrible to work for, but one of them had 57 KPIs when I joined on day one. 57. So in theory, if they're real KPIs, I have to sit there at 09:00 in the morning and understand the impact of those 57 data points. Clearly, I haven't got the time or the energy to be able to do that. If you actually drilled it down, there were five key points. Another slightly humorous way of thinking about this, again, for CFOs, is what I've always found in organizations is try to correlate the performance of the business in terms of KPIs versus the performance of individuals in terms of performance against their objectives. And maybe we've all seen the bell curve whereby people are exceeding expectations if given a grading or meeting expectations. And then you suddenly look at the KPIs, and there's a massive shift towards the left hand side of the graph where the KPIs are missing their targets. So just a a a an in an intro there into making sure that what's actually happening on the KPIs is being mirrored in terms of individual and team performance. Number five, the financial reporting. This is down to you. And I I have a real interest in getting the financial reporting right now as a nonexecutive. And I see this very clearly. It needs to be understood by everybody. So it needs to be understood by the chief technical officer, the chief revenue officer, the, health and safety officer. Everyone who reads it needs to understand it and read it. And, of course, there are some templates that can be used to make sure that that is critically important. And it's about language and consistency. This may sound a little bit odd, but I asked for all of my reports now to be in exactly the same order. So number one, who's authoring it? Number two, what's the title? Number three, tell me why I'm reading this report as the CFO. Is it for governance? Is it for information? Am I making a decision as a result of having read the financial reporting? And here's something which I probably wouldn't recommend, but it's really, really worthwhile doing. If you don't think as the CFO that your information is coming across and being read and understood, again, don't recommend this too many times. As a CFO, you could, for example, deliberately send out the wrong report. So where are we now? We're in August, and I might be just about to send out the monthly performance report for July. As an example, again, don't try this at home too often, send out the report for January 2025 and see if you get a raft of emails back saying you sent out the wrong report. And I guarantee that you'll get very few emails if the reporting is not understood by everybody. They're not reading it. And they'll absolutely ignore the fact that you have sent out the wrong, report. Your excuse, of course, is that you just clicked on the wrong file. Again, not to be recommended too often. Number six, who are your stakeholders, and how are you managing them in the mid in the middle of the month, not just the end of the month and at the board meetings. Who are the stakeholders? How do they want to be communicated with? And manage them. And I had a great role model as a chair of audit and risk once, CFO. Great relationship with him in the middle of the month as well. I used to have at least two to three conversations with him with him about how we could get the best information to the whole of the board. And he gave me some great advice as a nonexec. And he said, if you've done a great job in writing your report and presenting the information, I will give you my questions upfront before the board. And therefore, you can be seen to be right and intelligent by responding because I've given you the questions already. If you don't invest effort and energy into treating the board as a real forum for decision making, if I don't think you've done a great job, I might not give you that opportunity for the questions upfront. So it's about working out who would like to be updated, who are the people who can make decisions, do the lenders, do the investors want a completely different aspect to the reporting that you're making. And number seven, learn how to do bad news. 50% of the time, as we all know, as CFOs and leaders in finance, not every day is gonna be a great day. So let's plan for the not so good days, and let's learn how to deliver the bad news. I I'm in my home office at the moment, and, downstairs, I have a six year old grandson. And do you know what? If revenues are ahead of budget, if cash is ahead of budget, if we're sat on cash and we are struggling to invest it, and everything is going really well, I could ask my six year old grandson to come up here and deliver a board report. That's easy. It's a different game when the news is bad. Let's go back to my first example, my case study in number one, where we had to go back to the bankers within three weeks of me joining and say, you just lent us the best part of a $100,000,000. However, here's a problem. We're gonna breach our covenants in fifteen months' time. That was a real challenge. The the output from that was ultimately we got a lot of credibility by being able to forecast the problem, deal with the problem, and actually manage the people who had the problem at the banker end as well. So managing the bad news actually turned out to be a positive, and we gained an awful lot of credibility. So I think a key element for the CFO, learn to deliver the bad news because it's going to happen 15% of the time. Let's how we let's see how we actually deliver this in practice. So these, following off from the case studies, are the things which it's a bit of a takeaway and a cut out and keep and have it as your screensaver if you wish. What can we do? So in liquidity, let's talk about the forecasting. Let's prepare forecasts which are at least eighteen months ahead, and many people will be familiar with stress testing. All of those areas can influence your base case and an optimal case. And I have clients, and I follow this, where we effectively have two forecasts. We have one which is called a 50% probability and one which is a 90% probability. And we run all of our cash flow forecasts off the 50%. So I'm planning my cash flow and my liquidity where I already have an element of headroom. And something which, of course, our peers in non finance roles find interesting is that they can find out the level of tolerance in pounds and pence. Number two, in terms of integrity and data information, how do you know that it's accurate, It's on you. Look out for the single flags of failure points, particularly if you're changing job into a new sector, into a new company. Late information, single points of failure equals problems sometime down the line. Challenge the validity of the balance sheet. Is it all credible? Number three, let's think about those objectives for the finance team. How did they justify their salary? What worked for me? Not necessarily everywhere, but in most of the cases was, I'd like everybody to think they're justifying their salary. Because us as finance people, we all know how we're seen as CFOs and leaders in finance. We are seen as an overhead. We just have to accept that. Number three, determine the real KPIs, and let's focus on be individually. Have yourself, potentially, some golden rules. So for example, do I set myself a liquidity and cash buffer? Is there a level below which I never ever go? And that might be something like, I need to maintain either facility headroom or cash of six months of payroll, as an example. What's your liquidity buffer is my question. What if I have banking facilities? What percentage of facilities are expiring within less than three years? And I might not want that to be a very high percentage. Already giving me a golden rule. The last thing you want as a CFO is to know about the problem on the day it becomes the problem and becomes out of your control, I. E. You run out of cash. So things that fall into that category, percentage EBITDA cash conversion. What's your minimum level? Can you spot the trends? What's the maximum and the minimum working capital metrics that you are prepared to put up with? And then you have a template and a structure about which you can manage your golden rules and other people can understand it outside of finance. So four sets of categories there. Let's look at number five. Upgrade the financial reporting and the other disciplines. Less is more. And on the next slide, I've got one particular example. I actually had, an organization once that I was doing some advisory work for, and they actually had a video. They worked out that they actually didn't want to read lots and lots of data. They have the CFO or the fractional CFO, in their case, do a two minute video about what they needed to understand. Less is more. Consistency of information, consistency of format. And as we said earlier, is it governance? Is it information? Is it decision? Why am I reading this report? Why are we, working out what our high power, high interest stakeholders do? One size does not fit all. Each of my CFOs wanted me to communicate with them in a different manner. Not already not always at the same time in the same way. Only one chance to make a great first impression in that. And it's a real, real challenge to make sure. And I give you one particular example of a case study. One of my nonexecs came to one of my board meetings while I was a CFO, and we wheeled in one of the operations executives who did a really quite decent presentation. And at lunch over a sandwich, my non exec said, all I took away from that presentation was that he used clipart graphics, and he had keys jangling from his belt. So only one chance, odd example, but one chance to make a great first impression. They are seeing you potentially as nonexecutives, lenders, and investors. They may only be seeing you once a quarter in your boardroom situation. That once a quarter, if it's a half an hour, an hour, two hours, or a morning, that needs to count. Metaphorically, we as CFOs need to send those people away, your high power, high interest stakeholders, way into the car park thinking, I've got a great CFO in this business. And I understood what they told me. And number seven, the bad news. 50% of the time, it's up to us, provide the solutions, but don't underestimate the impact plan for the work to be done. So seven first definitive hundred day actions. Hopefully, some of those are relevant to the delegates on the call. Clement. No. Thanks thanks a lot, for this very extensive and very deep analysis of what could be a road map of actions. So I think the audience will appreciate you have so much details in in a structural way. I think we are already running out of time or we still have ten minutes. So could you give us some, like, what are how do you evidence this in practice concretely? Okay. Yeah. Appreciate the time as well. So a magnificent seven here. And, again, I can skip through these relatively quickly. So in practice, this slide is about how we evidence this. So this something perhaps to review in detail after the webinar. So less is more. You can get a lot of information of financial, financial data on one page. And looking at it later, you'll see that there is an awful lot of information just on one page. All CFO all CEOs and boards love value creating CFOs. So let's think about the value. Let's be consistent in our return on investment threshold levels and not who shouts loudest. Key question and one that we'll all be familiar with. How do we scale up without the business without scaling up the overhead? Ask yourself the following question, and this goes back to the automation and the Agicap business model as well. Would I do the same things in terms of the business model and my controls and my procedures and my automation? If I was five times the size, would I do it the same way? If the answer is no, time to think about the structure and the process and the transformation program that might exist to get you to a different level. Let's use automation, AI. Let's use ICT. The I c when I started, the Agicap business model was something which I poured over for days in terms of spreadsheets, and you can be the hero that delivers all of this. So here's my concluding slide. What can you do to make the transition to finance leader? And many people will have done that already. So how can we enhance it? How can we get ready to be next level ready for that next CFO role or indeed a new CFO role. And this is demonstrating the first hundred days activity. Your job is added value. It goes without saying now. Now I would say this, point number two, get yourself a coach and a mentor. And quite seriously, if it's any of your choices, I can't really see a downside in doing that. And it would have protected and helped me avoid some of the scars on my back. Identify the skills and experience gaps. There's never a point where we need to stop learning, and let's do something about it. And here's the real great one, as I'm sure people will recognize. Search for the problems that no one knows exists apart from you, solve them, and then deliver that to the board as this is how I've created value for the organization. Continually ask yourself, what am I missing? What am I learning? What do I hope to gain from new experiences? And my final point, best of luck in a CFO role? For me, not quite. Of course, we all have bad luck in our life experiences. But hopefully, the last fifty minutes or so has been about creating the conditions for success. And I absolutely guarantee that it won't always go to plan. But this has all been about giving yourself in that first hundred days the best opportunity to make it count, to create that first impression, and to derisk the next position of the next hundred days and the next eighteen months to make sure that you're still in post and delivering fantastic value as the CFO. So give yourself the highest probability of being a fantastic CFO, and everybody benefits, including your organization. Clemon, thank you very much for the opportunity to, to talk people through a few of my thoughts. Thanks, Jeremy. Very invaluable. I think, it looks both very exciting and enthusiastic. I think this position becomes more and more critical, so taking into account everything related to tech and IT and and how to get data, data more automated, more more analytics with AI, etcetera. So the CFO ends up to have more and more on the plates, to enlight executive comedy with the right figures, the right analysis, the right risk analysis. You spoke about a lot about the risks, when joining into a new journey. And I think this is first while the CFO has to make sure, it can control, the next three, six, nine, twelve months, risks and the one rated to cash are the ones that are more important. Reason why we also agree and say that to have impact kind of rapidly, and the CEO expect their CFO make contribution to the company strategy and have impact rapidly. We we we suggest CFOs to explore immediately, first, collecting and paying invoices and, by extension, reducing CEOs and eliminating expenses to save money. So I think it comes with being strategist, very strong auditor first, but also very pragmatic in fulfilling some impact and not being afraid of just, like, making sure that they they even get to know the product, what the company sell, like, get at ease and comfortable with the do the overall business model from an underground perspective. And I know it's hard because, CFOs, you have a lot on the plate and you need to choose your battles. But the more comfortable we feel with what the company has to the reason why the company is running, I think the more CFO can be could could extend, and become a leader. So it was it was very enlightening. Thanks a lot, Jeremy. Maybe to end this webinar, and I want to thank, all the audience for having stayed for this hour with us. Quick word with this QR code. You can, use your phone, but you will receive it in the end by email. We have, produced a playbook on this very topic so that you will we get a summary of what have been said today and even more when it comes to templates, stories about CFOs that you may identify to, so don't hesitate to to download it and maybe, take the time to to read what is what resonates to you. If not everything, some should. So it's for you to lose the day to to read. And we love, comments, so don't hesitate to give us feedbacks. Is it useful? Was it insightful? So we do this kind of stuff for helping CFOs in first place. So we like to have feedbacks or potential wishes of what are your questions, what do you dub off, what you would like to have some information, comments, or precisions on. This is very about, you to tell us. Quick word and evens because digital is great, but physical is is better. We, try to gather, see if a community, either in UK and London, in The US and Austin. So two dates, October 16 for The UK, October 28, in The US where we have offices now. So don't hesitate again to if you are interested to meet the Agicap team and and gather with the community of CFOs that may have, similar topics or challenges of you to to come, and we'll be very glad to to meet you guys. We have a couple of minutes left. So this is the end of this webinar. If you have any questions, things that you would like some comments, maybe Jeremy is here to answer it. So don't hesitate to just write. We have two minutes left. Write them on on the right part of the screen. You see you have a message, window. So may I let you think about it? Is there anything that pops your mind or you would like some comments from Jeremy and I, please do. Alright. So I don't think there are. Thanks for telling that. Thank you. Will you again, you will receive the the presentation by email, the record also if you want to digest because I think there's from Agda to to to more theoretical components, it's it's, it's digestible. And I think that you are on top of many of those topics, but still, it was very dense. And thanks a lot, Jeremy, for for the great content. You'll receive everything by email. So, my dear Jeremy, I suggest, we can end here. I am very happy to have done this with you. I hope we'll have a new opportunities to come up discussing about this kind of topic because things change very, very, very fast. If we look at our the environment that we all operating into from a micro and microeconomic, standpoint, but also from a technological and standpoint. So, any just check there's one question. And inside of managing a family businesses as a CFO, so I guess you have The answer to that is is yes. But, like, could could I could I suggest? Because it's it's quite a it's quite a challenge. My my my takeaway headline for that having done that is that it's quite difficult to stay within the tram lines and focus upon the business case. And the challenge in managing a family business is that, and and I'd say this in the best way possible, sometimes the decisions get taken over the weekend over Sunday dinner. And that's always been a challenge for the CFO. And I'm I'm thinking of one particular instance where literally things change between Friday evening and Monday morning because the family were together over the weekend. The the the answer to that, the solution is for me to also try to bring it back to the business case and to try and be aware of anything that could affect what I'm doing. In my case, it impacted the treasury, structure that I was putting in place, and that actually made me have a bit of a problem with my bankers. The other thing I would say is, in answer to Scott who's answered the question, I'm quite easily findable on LinkedIn. So drop me a line on there. If we're not LinkedIn already, type in my name. You'll find me very, very quickly. I think there's there seem to be very limited people with my name, if not anybody else at all. So happy to expand on that going forward. And you can you can find me on my coaching website as well, which is clarendoncoaching.com. Right. I don't see any other questions, so I think we'll end it here. Thanks a lot for all CFOs or people in in top management or anyone that have attended this, this webinar altogether. Thanks a lot. Again, Jeremy, I wish you I wish you all a great end of day or beginning of day for those who are or midday for those being in The US. Thanks a lot. Enjoy your day. Bye. Bye bye.