I had a request to do a blog entry on developing staff. I have done a few turnarounds in my career and one of the key success factors in that is getting more out of your existing staff. I have always thought that one of the most important roles you have as a CFO is making your staff better.
I have joked in the past that the best way to develop staff is to arm them with spoons and throw them into shark infested waters. Whoever survives is developed and those that kill a shark are your next leaders. That is tongue in cheek, but there is a kernel of truth in that. You cannot make your staff members better without them gaining experience in tough tasks and they cannot get that experience if you take all the tough tasks onto yourself.
The first principle for me in developing staff is that development is not training. Training is to add or polish skills. You need a skilled workforce but you should be hiring professionals with an advanced skill set already. If you inherit a team that lacks basic finance skills, you are so far behind that development is not going to work. You probably need to fire and hire in successive waves until the base skills are competitive.
I am not saying that your should not make training available for your staff. Your accountants need continuing education and to learn new accounting pronouncements that come out. Your analysts can also use additional systems training. But that is just making sure that they can get the floor level of their job done. Your accounting staff should not be making accounting mistakes and they should be up to date in their knowledge. If you actually have to make that training available vs. allowing them to get the training, then you already have an issue as good professionals keep themselves competitive and ready without being spoon-fed. Your role as CFO should be to support training and make sure time is allocated and approved for it, but you also need to police hiring and performance reviews to make sure you have the right skills in your group to begin with.
The second principle is one I learned from taking over finance departments that I had been told were bad and where I would need to fire and rehire a lot of people. You can do some selective changing, but when you are in a turn around and there is a crisis mode in place, you are not going to be able to replace staff and give the new staff the luxury of coming up to speed in any great numbers. It is also hard to attract people to weak companies that are struggling. What I discovered the first time I needed to work with an existing staff is that no one in that group woke up every morning and went into work with the intention of doing a bad job and adding no value. No one wants to mess up and be thought poorly of by their peers. When I invested in developing them, suddenly the “bad” staff I had inherited started performing and I had the advantage of all their experience as well.
The third and perhaps most important principle is that if you do not invest the time and effort into this, then it will fail. You need to lead by example. If you don’t, then no one will take it seriously and the development plan will die via inertia and lack of real commitment from the staff. Make sure you keep the time available for this. It is a manual and relationship based exercise, so you need time. I probably spend at least 5 hours a week, every week on this. Not in meetings dedicated to “development” or performance assessments or training but in time spent with your staff helping them over hurdles, encouraging them to take on more and new tasks and in praising their successes. Development is not via a stick, it is via a carrot and the support of you and the team. Give constructive feedback. As I discussed in my blog on corporate culture, always remember that they are people, and do not allow yourself or them to be put into a box and betray yourself or allow them to betray themselves when under pressure.
This is a very hard and necessary part of your staff’s development. They need you working to remove barriers and get them resources when they need it. You need to do this while allowing them to actually do the work. You have to invest upfront. For example, if you want one of your Vice Presidents to lead a large financing, you need him on your team on a previous financing learning the ropes and seeing what works and does not work. That is a learning stage of development, but it is not doing. No one learns enough from just reading a book or a blog. It can help give you a structure and keep you from making a few simple mistakes, but you only get the knowledge and confidence from doing a task. When your staff sees you making a genuine investment of your time and effort they will know that it is important to you.
Finally, put your staff in harms way working on projects that will make a difference and don’t kill them if they fail and give them all the credit when they succeed. They should be working on projects that make a difference in the execution of your company’s strategy. If they don’t succeed, there should be large enough stakes on the line that there are consequences for failure. This means that when they do succeed, there will be even more to celebrate. Make sure the project they are working on moves them out of their comfort zone. Make them sweat, even if it is just mental sweat. I will say it again, when they win, make sure they get the credit for it. Nothing steals the thunder from someone like their boss taking credit for their work.
Giving your staff credit for their work is more than just a pat on the back and a short speech in a staff meeting (or Board meeting). You should be promoting from within wherever possible and bending over backwards to give your staff a shot at internal promotions. My rule of thumb has always been that after 2 years in a position any of my staff can move, even if outside of Finance. You cannot freeze them in position and it is your responsibility as a senior leader to replace them if they do move. If your employees believe that they are liked and valued and get first shot at internal promotions, they will have higher morale and be happier even if they do not want the opportunity.
Don’t be afraid to rotate staff from an area of their speciality to an area they are not familiar with. You want your staff to be cross functional where possible, so give them that opportunity. There is no reason why someone with a strong accounting background cannot become an analyst or a Treasury manager. They can learn on the job and the more areas of finance they know, the more useful to you they are. Help them jump outside of Finance if they want to. You’ll only benefit over time by seeding other functions with people that understand the numbers and cash flow and investment returns spread across your company. Developing staff means not being selfish. Sometimes you don’t have what someone needs in your company and they’ll leave. Trust me, the good one that appreciate and realize that your focus on their development is important will be back at some point.
This is another soft area and needs stronger people skills than pure number skills. If you don’t have good skills there, then you can develop yourself. I am an introvert by nature, so the face to face time this requires is harder on me than others. I think there is huge payback from investing time in your staff and it is worth the additional discomfort for me. You cannot win battles and wars with poor troops, so developing what you have is the most cost efficient way to multiple victories.
I sometime get asked how do I get my staff to work such long hours and really push themselves. The only answer I can really give is that they know they matter to me. I show them that by giving them opportunity. The opportunity is always beyond their job description and it means they need to commit. All I do is help to ensure that when they succeed they get the fruits of their victory. Because I honestly believe that they will succeed, they believe too. The end result is that I have a stronger team and my staff is better and we win more often. Winning is the heart of strategy and wants makes a good company great. Develop your staff. Reward them. Become great.
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
