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Being a finance leader is no longer just about controlling costs. 2025’s CFOs are trusted business leaders and innovators that drive growth throughout the organisation. Hosted by technology reporter, presenter and consumer champion, David McClelland, The CFO Playbook features interviews with world-class CFOs, finance leaders and founders from some of the fastest growing companies. The CFO Playbook is brought to you by Soldo.
The CFO Playbook — Sara Daw
Timestamped Transcript
[0:00] Hello, and welcome back to The CFO Playbook podcast with me, David McClelland. And here on The CFO Playbook, we get under the skin of how world-class finance leaders leverage technology, set goals, make plans, manage teams, and much, much more. And in today's show, I'm joined by somebody who spent more than 20 years observing the CFO role from a unique vantage point, not from inside the seat, but from alongside it.
[0:27] As CEO of the world's largest network of fractional CFOs, she's the person both business and finance leaders turn to for unvarnished advice. Everyone off the MBA program was landing a big job, and there I was saying, "Oh, I'm going to actually do this new thing over here." We weren't even called fractional by then.
[0:45] We were, we were called part-time FDs. But entrepreneurs loved it when they saw it. Who are the types of leader, the types of CFO that will take to being a fractional CFO? You need to be really interested in other people and want to help and serve.
[1:05] Businesses increasingly access leadership rather than employ it, and I definitely see that's the future of work. 'Cause if we're going to be building agile workforces of the future, that does mean, I think, that we're gonna have a core of employees and at various levels of different types of workers non-employed.
[1:25] We will be moving to a world where eventually finance becomes autonomous. The CFO Playbook is here every month with exclusive finance leadership insights, so make sure you subscribe, browse through our back catalog, and get in touch, as many of you do.
[1:42] Your suggestions really do help to shape our show. Right. Let's meet today's guest. This episode of The CFO Playbook is brought to you by Soldo. Trusted by over 25,000 organizations across 31 countries, Soldo combines pre-programmed cards, an intuitive app, and a powerful management platform to replace manual processes with efficiency and control.
[2:07] To find out more or to book a demo, visit soldo.com. Sara Daw, Global CEO of The CFO Center and the Liberty Group, welcome to The CFO Playbook.
[2:21] Hello, and thanks for having me. Great to be here. And whereabouts are you joining us from today, Sara, and what is this work week midway through as we record, what, what's it, what's it looking like for you? Although my week is rarely spent in just one place, I'll be with our teams, our clients, uh, board meetings, and UK and overseas.
[2:41] So yes, but I'm here, here in Buckinghamshire right now. You are sharing your time across lots of different responsibilities, which y- I guess could be seen to be a bit of a theme of what we're talking about today. Uh, we'll land a little bit more on that later on, but, but f- for now, for listeners who aren't familiar with The CFO Center, give us just that very quick sense of what it does and maybe a- about the scale that you've built so far.
[3:09] Yes. So The CFO Center is a business that provides fractional CFOs to growing entrepreneurial owner-managed businesses and larger organizations. And a fractional CFO, it might help if I just define that, is someone who, um, works with a range of clients, a portfolio.
[3:29] So these are businesses that don't need, don't want to, can't afford a full-time CFO, but they recognize they need the skill set on an ongoing basis. So it might be one day a week for one business, two days a month for another, and a CFO might work full time but have five or six clients in their portfolio.
[3:46] So that's what The CFO Center does. We have around about 750, 800 CFOs globally. We have 350 here in the UK, and we work across 18 countries, and we've been around for 25 years.
[4:02] And alongside your work at The CFO Center, like you say, very well established, good scale that you operate at as well, I know that you personally have done a lot of research, a lot of deep thought, uh, uh, a, a lot of writing as well, uh, into leadership, into the different models of leadership, into access over ownership.
[4:24] I hope we can touch on some of those today as well. But really the, the big picture, Sara, uh, I'd like to start really with what that scale of observation has taught you about the CFO role, how it's changed perhaps, um, and perhaps what you can see from where you stand looking s- or having a background in but now looking somewhat on the outside, somewhat on the inside as well, what you can see that perhaps others can't see quite as clearly.
[4:53] Also want to rewind a little bit and learn how you came here, uh, th- th- this position, what it was that maybe had sent you on this path. And then let's focus on what you've actually found, what great finance leadership looks like and what, what businesses most need from their CFO and perhaps vice versa as well.
[5:15] How does that sound for a plan for our chat today? Yeah. Sounds very comprehensive. Uh, lots to talk about there. All right. Well let- let's get stuck right into it then. From where you stand then, when a CEO or a business owner brings in a CFO for the first time, what do they usually think they're hiring for?
[5:34] And then maybe what is it that they actually end up valuing? Let's examine that gap. Yes. I think that's a really important observation, is generally we start working with businesses off the back of pain points.
[5:50] So there'll be something missing in their business or something that's not quite working, or it could be an opportunity. It doesn't have to be negative. It could be an opportunity they want to grab. They don't know how to do it. They haven't got the expertise in-house. So they'll come to an organization like ours to take on a CFO, and I think initially they think they're fixing a problem.
[6:10] They're buying that financial expertise. That could be better reporting, better cash, knowing their margins, uh, grabbing an opportunity to scale, go overseas, exit, those sorts of things. And th- that is absolutely all the things that a, a good CFO would do.
[6:26] And, you know, we're no different from full-time employed CFOs. We will do the same things, and all our people have come from that big corporate background and have plenty of expertise. It's just that those, those organizations that are growing don't need it quite, um, on such a full-time basis.
[6:44] So that's the difference. But the actual content of what they deliver would be the same. However, I think what the CEOs and business leaders that engage with us really value once they get going is, yes, we can deliver on all those CFO skills, those technical skills, if you like, that I just spoke about, but what they end up valuing is judgment, relationship, confidence, better decision-making, someone to talk to who isn't necessarily too political in their organization, someone that will appropriately challenge them, uh, so that they rethink a few things or do things slightly differently.
[7:26] So I think these are... CFOs are trusted business partners, trusted thinking partners. Um, they'll help the CEO, um, think differently of that business, and I like to think that we're wisdom makers, really.
[7:41] So there's plenty of people that can deal with the information and do a CFO job, but it's interpreting that for the business and the, and the context that we're in. I think that's where the real value comes. And I know that your research goes far beyond just the CFO a- and the CEO.
[7:59] We, we talk about that CEO/CFO relationship, that, that dynamic, uh, d- dynamic duo, if you like. But I wonder what observations you've had about how CFOs tend to work best with the rest of the C-suite. Have you seen any particularly interesting or challenging or, or useful dynamics beyond just the CFO and the CEO, but those other key stakeholders in the senior leadership w- team within an organization?
[8:24] Anything you, you've picked up on there that maybe y- you've identified as being really important, or maybe that you've seen change in recent years? So the best CFOs don't just sit in finance. They definitely sit at the intersection of all the functions and add value to all the functions.
[8:42] I think what a fractional CFO does particularly well, uh, apart from being, you know, as a CFO would, a business partner for the functions, is in these owner-managed businesses, these growing entrepreneurial SMEs, often the, the C-suite, if they have one, it might not be full, uh, because they're growing.
[9:00] They might not have the full complement, or they may have other fractional C-suites working around them. But if they have a C-suite, they're often the shareholders as well. And often what you find is having a fractional CFO can act as a bit of a communicator, a buffer sometimes between shareholders, um, in these organizations and can s- can present things in certain ways, can get people talking, communicating perhaps better than they might when there's conflict.
[9:33] So I actually think they soak up energy, and they're able to bring that external perspective to all of the C-suite to perhaps get them on the same page. And I think that's something that fractional does really well because if you're fractional, by the very nature of that, you're not embedded in any one organization.
[9:55] You're embedded in many, which means you have this unique positioning of external and internal. And I think if you're a, if you're full-time in an organization, you can get very internalized and institutionalized, and you can bring...
[10:12] the fractional can bring learnings and can bring these outside perspectives and a bit of balance, actually. So I think that's what we do really, really well over and above working, um, at the intersection of all businesses and being, being a business partner.
[10:28] It is not as common all over the world. It's not a... may- maybe not as common in, in certain markets. We can touch on that in a moment. But in terms of the, the challenges with that, m- maybe not the arguments against, but, but certainly valid questions that those who aren't familiar with, with working with, with fractional staff might have, um, you've mentioned a few times here about owner entrepreneurs, about SMEs, for example, about that being, well, you tell me, a sweet spot for a fractional CFO.
[10:58] At what point does fractional make sense? And then at what point does fractional stop being the answer? There must be a stage in, in kind of growth or complexity where a business, it needs someone fully embedded and not fractional. What would, what would you say to that?
[11:14] You've summarized it really well. So growing businesses don't need and don't want, can't afford that full CFO, uh, five days a week. And quite frankly, um, when you've got a really strong CFO with a lot of experience, they can cover an awful lot of ground, um, and build the right team within the business and design that team and orchestrate that team and make sure you've got the right people sitting in the right seats.
[11:42] You can go a long way on fractional. And also, with those smaller businesses, you've gotta think of it also from the CFO's point of view. If you have a really, um, you know, a, a really strong and experienced CFO, there just wouldn't be enough for them to do full time.
[12:01] So I think you can go a long way on building the team, but eventually, you're right in that- It will be a mixture of scale and complexity that forces or demands more and more time of that leader, even when they've designed out the function properly.
[12:18] And that's when you might move into a more committed, um, full-time CFO, and that transition, um, needs, you know, needs to happen at that point. Um, what we do find is, though, that, um, organizations then when they start moving into...
[12:37] You know, they're scaling, they're s- they're small corporates, that sort of thing, and then they're moving into the mid and large corporate space. What we also find then is that the CFOs that are running those businesses, um, actually have more than enough to do, and that there's a lot of them saying, "There must be...
[12:56] You know, I need another one of me to get everything I need to do," 'cause the demands on the CFO are so big at the moment with all the changes in the world. And quite frankly, they're not good at everything. No one is. So then you can use fractional again, we call it fractional twinning, where you bring in, um, on demand and on projects the specialist to do all the things that you don't have the time to do or the skills to do yourself, and then you get a very agile finance function which can expand, um, and grow with the challenges and hopefully accelerate growth.
[13:32] And I think this comes back to there being a very, uh, frank, uh, conversation, relationship between the CFO and the business owner, the CEO le- let's call them, about when that right time is because, you know, CFO can say, "I think you need somebody who isn't me." That's a, that, that, that could be a challenging conversation to have, but at the same time, the business owner who is kind of stalling and stalling maybe for controlling costs or whatever else, getting a full-time CFO in, that could be holding back the company if they're not investing in the finance function for their organization to see it through the next three, four, five or so, or so years.
[14:12] Um, that's fascinating. And again, well, I, I wanna come onto s- some more of that in just a moment. But I also wanna make sure that we understand your own route into this world because it's perhaps different to some of the CFOs who we speak with, who, who you work with.
[14:28] Uh, and looking at your career history, Sara, you've got a chemistry degree from Oxford, a CA from Deloitte, a MBA from London Business School. And at, at that stage in your career when you've built up these, th- these qualifications, so this great professional foundation, what was the next obvious career move for you?
[14:49] And then my question is, why on earth did you choose not to take it? Yes. Um, so it's interesting because I came out of my MBA, and I was a CA with an MBA, um, and I'd worked in, you know, finance roles, and the, the, the, the people that wanted to hire me were the investment banks.
[15:08] I was perfect for them. Um, but I knew I didn't want to go into, um, that corporate world, and that was particularly because I had started... I'd got married by that point, and I had started having a family. And I just could not work out how I could balance my life, be mum and look after my girls, and also, uh, carry on with my career.
[15:32] I knew that in a big investment bank, I, my time would just be totally focused on work and I wouldn't have any family time. And so, you know, that may have changed now. I'm not sure whether it has, but it certainly wasn't the case back then.
[15:48] And so I chose not to take it, which, oh, gosh, was actually a big, uh, was actually hard because all my contemporaries were having big jobs.
[16:03] Everyone off the MBA program was landing a big job. All the people that had come, I'd come out of, um, Deloitte from had, had big roles and were group CFOs everywhere. And there I was saying, "Oh, I'm going to actually do this new thing over here," which is about fractional... We weren't even called fractional by then.
[16:19] We were, we were called part-time FDs. Um, and hardly anyone knew what I was talking about. In fact, really no one did. But entrepreneurs loved it when they saw it. Um, but it definitely felt like I didn't have a proper job, and quite a few people told me that I didn't at the time as well .
[16:36] But it worked, you know? I was enjoying myself. I got to work with SME business owners, and I love working with them. They're remarkable people that start businesses against all the odds and with no f- not a lot of finance backing, and they still create remarkable organizations.
[16:54] So it's incredibly rewarding. Um, and it just scaled from there really. So, yes, it was a bit of a gamble, but it paid off. That was challenging.
[17:57] Um, and I wouldn't say that I cracked it at all. But I, but I did it. I got through, I suppose. I mean- There's a couple of things there. So firstly, the great thing about working with SMEs or, or some of them, I mean, not all of them, but the great thing about the businesses that I work with is that they...
[18:18] It's real lives, real money, real cash with entrepreneurs. They have families working in the business. They have kids. They have mother-in-laws and father-in-laws, and people get sick, and they s- and they run their business alongside that. That's much more normal in the SME world than the corporate world.
[18:35] So when I had, um, my third daughter, actually, when I had my whole portfolio of clients, my, uh, my clients came to my house and worked from there and held my newborn while I was on the phone to the bank because we have that relationship, and that it didn't matter that that was the way we did it because that was how they would do it.
[18:58] So I... That's why I felt totally at home working with the SMEs. That's why I love working in this environment. So, um, and I say not every business is like that, but my, the businesses I work with were, and it was, and it was really, really good. The, the other side of it though is I would also say that growing, um, a global organization, and we went global quite quickly back in 2008, and, um, I would say that the sort of years 2010 to 2020 were a bit of a blur for me because s- chaotic, um, scaling a business, putting on a country a year at least, and I was traveling a lot.
[19:37] So the reason starting this career was to have more flexibility, variety, and control and be at home more. But actually, I ended up probably working even harder, I think, than I would have in, in that corporate role. But the difference, what it was, was it was my choice, and I had the flexibility.
[19:54] Even though I was working full time, I could still be there on a Wednesday afternoon for my children when I needed to be, and that was my decision, not someone else's. On the parenthood thing, you know, you say maybe you didn't crack it. I'm not sure any of us as parents, we crack it.
[20:09] We do the best we can in the circumstances that, that we have, and that is absolutely good enough. You mentioned about scaling, uh, and about, uh, you know, obviously growing particularly over 2010 to 2020 or so. What was the moment then when you realized that fractional CFO thing could be something that was much bigger than just your own portfolio?
[20:31] Because there's quite a leap, isn't there, from building your own set of clients to going, "Hang on, I can build a much bigger business out of this." What was that moment about? Because we saw... And, and, you know, Colin Mills, our original founder, had this vision as well right from the start.
[20:48] I think we saw early on that there were lots and lots of growing SMEs that, and that's globally in every country with the same issues. So they did not have access to the strategic financial skills and someone to sit along them to give them the confidence in decision-making expertise and someone to speak to and confide in who was a business person as well as a finance person.
[21:13] That just didn't exist. I mean, the entrepreneurial world has exploded since, in the last 25 years. But wind back 25 years, and there just wasn't this, um, availability of skills for people at all, and being an entrepreneur was pretty lonely.
[21:30] So firstly, that was, um, in many countries, and the backbone of many countries are SMEs. That's what the global economies are often about, so there's a lot of them. So that's on the demand side if you like.
[21:45] But on the supply side, there are also lots of people like me and like Colin, our founder. I mean, he was disillusioned with corporate life. I wanted balance. Other people want to get back some control over their lives. They want... They're fed up of traveling 24/7, not, not seeing their family, sleeping in a different bed.
[22:04] There's all sorts of reasons why that sort of 24/7 corporate agenda doesn't work, or you've done it, and you've decided there's something else. And I think that was the case right back when we started and has been completely turbocharged since COVID came along because a couple of things happened there.
[22:25] One was that, um, our business model was normalized really because we weren't the only people not going into the office every day. Um, and two, the technological change. Suddenly, people realized that you could communicate.
[22:42] You didn't have to be sat next to each other to do the work, and there were technolog- technological tools that you could use. Now, we'd been using them for years, but that was the case, and that really turbocharged and brought more, more people into this, into this world. Who are the types of leader, the types of CFO that will take to being a fractional CFO like a duck to water, or, you know, th- that they've got the right attributes, the right professional and personal attributes that it will work for them?
[23:10] Because I appreciate it might not work for everybody. So firstly, you need to have done the function many times over and be a seasoned veteran, know how to be, um, that CFO and held the position many times before. That's a given. That's the table stakes, and you've got the technical skills that go along with that.
[23:28] No one has every skill, and, and that's the beauty of having a team. Over and above that, being fractional is very different because you need to be curious. You need to be really interested in other people and want to help and serve.
[23:44] Particularly be good at context shifting because you might be working across a day or even hou- an hour with different businesses and be able to hold the space for each business and be able to shift really quickly and get on their page quickly You need to be interested in people.
[24:04] I can't tell you, this is a relationship game. It is not, um, a numbers game. The numbers are the vehicle. It's all about relationships, especially in the SME space. These people buy on emotions, and their business is part of them, part of their identity.
[24:22] So it's about being able to get on the page of the entrepreneur and be able to, um, challenge but not be a no, a no person. You ha- It's a yes, and let's try it this way, and have you thought about that? Because entrepreneurs don't want to be told no.
[24:39] Um, so it's relationships. It's lack of self-interest, as in low self-interest. Um, it's about wanting to serve, and it's about emotional intelligence and being humble, um, and being a networker 'cause the other side of it is, is building your portfolio.
[24:57] That's all about relationships, finding, winning, and keeping work. 'Cause what I see happen is people come into this world, uh, they might find one or two businesses, but they can't... They don't devote time to building their network to find the next business to work with, and then they either dumb down in a business and start doing lower level work, which isn't valuable, or they give up completely and go back into employment because it's not for them.
[25:22] What, what were the most difficult parts of building and scaling The CFO Center to what it is now? It's all, it's culture. So it's about maintaining the culture across a distributed, um, and disparate team sat around the globe, and that then goes back to relationships.
[25:43] So we, we took a relationship strategy approach. I guess we, you know, that's how, what I would call it now. It was just natural to do that at the time. I don't think we were consciously thinking about that. But it was about finding individuals in a country that wanted to start a business with us, um, and that we would work together to do that, and we got to know them really well.
[26:07] And the, the way we got to know them, interestingly, was a bit by, by default really in that we didn't have much money in those days. And so we went to these countries, and instead of staying in hotels, we stayed with that country leader in their house, uh, with their family and got to know them really well, their partners, their children, uh, their relationships.
[26:31] And then that, from that we built a trusted relationship, which helped to scale the business off the back of that relationship because it meant that we could talk to each other when things weren't going well. And, and it wasn't plain sailing at all. You know, we did have some failures along the way. But what it did was it, it gave us, um, a relationship as a platform to work through that.
[26:54] And, um, it meant that we could attract people, um, to our business by having these country leaders in each of the countries, which enabled us to scale more quickly because we were doing it through other people, and that's how we managed to put on all those countries in that 10-year period up to COVID, um, which, which worked really well for us.
[27:15] And then what we did was also we've always made sure and carved out a lot of time to be together physically. So we have a couple of conferences a year. We have team meetings for our, in each region every month, and we were really deliberate about that because we knew that the reason why individuals want to work on our model is 'cause doing it on your own is lonely, and you need to belong to something.
[27:40] You mentioned culture there, Sara, and obviously nurturing that internal culture is one thing. But then also the model that you've got and the fact that you put so much importance in person-to-person, uh, in-person relationships is that that helps you to understand the culture in which your colleagues are operating because it's gonna be a very different business culture in, for example, UAE to somewhere in Africa to the United States to, to, to Europe perhaps.
[28:11] So having an understanding of the context in which th- your workforce are operating is also vitally important. Sounds like you've got that ticked off. Alongside all of that, not after it, alongside all of that, you've decided to go back into academia.
[28:26] You know, we mentioned, um, all of the work that you've done so far, uh, at the kind of platform building stage, but a master's at Oxford and HEC Paris and now a DBA, a doctorate of business administration, at Warwick.
[28:43] What's pulled you, someone who's built this successful global business, back into the classroom, and, and what is the, if there is one, what is the question that you're trying to answer? Businesses increasingly access leadership rather than employ it, and I definitely see that's the future of work.
[29:00] We're definitely going down that non-standard business model. And yet I think in the main we still focus on leadership through an employment lens, and I want to really study that difference. So can people develop ownership, commitment, and belonging without employment?
[29:24] And that's what I'm really, really interested in, and I've developed, you know, various theories around that. And I'm particularly looking at something called psychological ownership at the moment, which is, um, feelings of ownership and belonging and attachment and identity without, um, a legal framework around it.
[29:42] And I believe that there's something there that holds these relationships together, and there's behaviors that we can all do to enhance that or detract from that. So that's what I'm particularly interested in because if we're going to be building agile workforces of the future, we are...
[29:59] That does mean, I think, that we're gonna have a core of employees and the various levels of different types of workers non-employed. So we need to understand how to build those teams, get them to work together, and how to lead that blended workforce.
[30:14] That piece on psychological ownership that you mentioned there, I think that's really interesting, and I mentioned earlier on perhaps those leaders, those organizations that haven't worked with a fractional model before, there might be some, some challenges, some concerns, so some pushback with, with fractional workforce.
[30:32] I guess another one of those actually could hook onto the psychological ownership piece in as much as if I've got somebody who's showing up for one day, two days a week or something- And there's a crisis or th- uh, uh, bad things happen.
[30:48] If they're not at... If it's not their only job, if they're balancing lots of other jobs at the same time, how much ownership do they have to show up in the way that if they were a full-time member of staff, we would want them to?
[31:04] H- how do you bridge that gap, that, that kind of psychological ownership piece between what the perceptions of someone who's part-time versus someone who's established within an organization? That mastery is where individuals who do it really well, and I see this, is that they enable the business owner and the people they work with in each of their businesses that they work with to feel secure.
[31:31] And they've got really good communication skills, and they make themselves available so that that worry of, "You're not going to be there when I need you," isn't there because they deliberately show that day in, day out, and they show up when they should.
[31:48] They show up when they haven't been invited to as well, and they give that comfort that they are always there even though they're not physically there. These individuals are seeing what's coming down the line and anticipating, and therefore that puts them in a really good position to not get caught off guard.
[32:06] And obviously, occasionally, things happen where, you know, something out of the blue happens, and if they can drop everything to be there just like a full-time employee could. I think it's more the worry of it than the, the actual happening of it that, um, you need to tackle because it probably doesn't happen very, very often, those, those sort of, um, black swan moments.
[32:30] It's more- Yeah ... around, um, being able to give everyone the feeling that you're the only business that you work with, and that's where fractional masters, um, do that really, really well.
[32:45] And like you say, that, that mastery of the CFO role, they maybe have already seen this before. They can see the red flags, so they're anticipating the crunch point, whatever it might be, before it actually happens. What have you found business owners most consistently get wrong about how best to use a CFO, whether that's a fractional CFO or whether that's someone who is established leading the, uh, finance function in an organization?
[33:12] I think the best way to use them is obviously to, you know, get everything done that you need to do. But I would use these people to challenge you in an organization because these people are the ones that see things in a, in a different perspective, in a broader light than perhaps anyone in- inside the business would.
[33:32] And they can bring so much more than just what you want them to do in the organization. They give very different perspectives. So I would feel that, that that would be the best way to use them, is to make sure you've got a relationship where feedback is exchanged, and that's all feedback.
[33:51] Good feedback, bad feedback. Whatever it is, it's not off the table, and to create that psychologically safe space where you can be open with each other and really allow, um, a healthy relationship.
[34:08] Because often fear gets in the way, and the beauty here is that fractional CFOs are not working for one business. They do have more license and more freedom to challenge because if they don't wor- end up working with one of the businesses going forward, well, they've got four or five others.
[34:24] It's not like your life depends on it and your paycheck depends on that one business every month. And I think that psychologically brings, um, some safety to the relationship and enables people to challenge more appropriately, which then I think helps push the boundaries and pushes organizations on.
[34:41] Actually, that thing that we spoke about a moment ago as a potential challenge, that, uh, with a fractional CFO, they are working for other organizations at the same time. Yes, that could be seen as, as a risk, but actually, you flip that coin, you turn that frown upside down.
[34:57] That's a benefit. You've got somebody who has got that outside in view, who's got experience, who's got other views on whether it's the economic climate, whether it's sim- similar market or so on. As a business owner, make the most of that opportunity for goodness' sake.
[35:14] People who work in different organizations, think of it like a bee pollinating flowers. Everyone benefits. So the host organization benefits, the organization that they're moving to benefits, and the individual benefits, and there's quite a lot of research to show that's a very positive cycle.
[35:34] Um, but psychological ownership interestingly has a negative side to it, where people can become quite territorial and don't want to share. So I, you know, I have heard business owners say, "Well, it's okay if you can't work for me on a Tuesday, um, if you're on holiday, but I don't want it to be that you're working for another business that day." So, you know, it's interesting.
[35:59] Hu- we're human, right? And I think, um, it's a dyadic human-human relationship that helps build that trust and can see that, um, working for other businesses, non-competing, um, where there's no conflict, is actually a benefit.
[36:19] And talk about it where it gets a little bit difficult as well. The listenership that we have to CFO Playbook covers the whole gamut from people who are, uh, es- aspiring towards careers in finance, uh, those who maybe have just taken on their first CFO role, to those who I, you know, we use the word master, uh, have a mastery of the CFO role, who are already very experienced in what they do.
[36:44] Uh, I- Having spent 20 years observing the CFO role from the, sort of the outside, a kind of le- le- foot in both camps perhaps, Sara, what do you think they most need to understand about this world in which they're stepping into right now?
[37:01] We're moving more to a model of access versus ownership just generally in the economy. And I think at the C-suite it could work really well and for CFOs and for finance leaders. The Gen Z coming through now are already gigging and already holding portfolios because even if they've got an employee day job, and let's hope they have, I mean, that's quite tricky at the moment, even if they have in finance, they might even be, um, having a side hustle that they, um, work on in the evenings, and it's more natural for them.
[37:34] So I actually think that the future is going to be more of that because you've got that generation already in that space. Um, and then you've also got, um, where we're going to, that organizations need to have an agile workforce, and I think access over ownership, um, sort of moves us that way.
[37:56] But what I think is we need in organizations is that I think we need to understand that people aren't gonna retire so early. The 100-year life is gonna, is gonna be with us soon. And, um, what we need is to realize that we're gonna be working for a lot longer, and we need to blend these cohorts, and we need to do reverse mentoring, and we can all learn from each other.
[38:19] So I actually think that organizations that really focus on mentoring, um, both from the young to the old, older workforce, and then vice versa, uh, more experienced to the inexperienced, I think that's the future. I think more blended, more mentoring, um, and perhaps if we can possibly sort of consider other ways of working with people than employing them because employment does not mean that we've got their full commitment or full eng- full engagement.
[38:50] If you look at the Gallup polls, they're quite sad. Um, people are not engaged at work. There are other models, like access models, that can enable them to, um, fulfill their lives, their working lives and their personal lives better. Of course, we've seen the role that AI has had to play, uh, over the last 25 years or so.
[39:11] Mobile, the internet, cloud, all of these things have enabled entrepreneurs and these SMEs that you've been working so extensively with to do things that beforehand just wouldn't have been possible. So I just wonder if y- if you have any insights on how a technology and AI-empowered world will also change the reality of work for this next generation of finance leaders.
[39:34] We will be moving to a world where eventually finance becomes autonomous and will run in the business the, the engine, if you like. And that means that the individuals that work in finance are going to be more interpretation, more judgment, more ethics, uh, hugely important for finance, um, so that we can see the audit trails and it's not a black box.
[40:01] I think that is where we will be spending our time, relationships, the ve- the, the very human element and that oversight. So I do think we're, we're on a, a definite path at the moment where we need to...
[40:17] everyone in finance needs to embrace the technological tools. And I think that's the break that we're seeing all at the moment is the technology's there and can go fast, but the human element hasn't quite got, got on the same path. We're all a bit skeptical, and we're all learning together.
[40:35] And so my view is that obviously it's here to stay. Obviously it can be really, really helpful and change our roles. We need to embrace it. Uh, we need to work with it, and we need to devote time to it.
[40:50] So spending time working with the tools and investing in learning and development has to be the way forward. It really does. Um, the bit I worry about is that we, we sort of lose the ability to learn because the answers are given to us by AI, and I do worry about that because I think that sitting with a problem, that reflection, that messiness is, um, very helpful to us as human beings to retain our judgment, um, and our experience, um, going forwards.
[41:25] And I don't think... You know, I don't have an answer for that, but, um, I do feel that we need to r- to still sit with problems and not get the answers given, given up to us. Yes, I've thought long and hard about exactly that point as well, and I'm pleased you bring it up.
[41:43] Maybe some of the decisions that we make as leaders now with these things in mind, uh, will help set a more firm foundation for, for what happens in the future. Sara, fascinating, fascinating to hear your insights, your experiences, what it is that you've been building a- and how you see the future.
[42:02] We are almost out of time, but before we let you go, there are some quick-fire questions that we put to all of our guests on CFO Playbook. Are you ready? Yep. Good. That's the first one. The second quick-fire question is this. Uh, if you could automate one part of your role tomorrow, what would that be?
[42:19] Uh, it's all the low value admin, uh, piece that just steals time, um, from thinking and relationships. What emerging tool or habit or idea do you think every CFO should be pay, paying attention to right now? Realize that AI is obviously the tool and technology that we need to be embracing, but what I would say is that it's...
[42:45] we also should be paying attention to what AI cannot do, the human side. And which finance leader, past or present, would you most like to see having a seat in the CFO Playbook Podcast hot seat? A CFO that's currently running a finance function in a very fast-growing SME.
[43:07] I think I'd like to hear from them. And finally, Sara, here on CFO Playbook, we are building an actual playbook, a collection of top advice from finance leaders that we plan on turning into a resource for the community. So my question is, what top piece of advice for a finance leader would you like me to enter in on your behalf to our CFO Playbook?
[43:30] Invest in relationships, human relationships as deliberately as you invest in the financial performance. Great. Great advice. It's been great, great to speak to you today, Sara. Thank you so much for joining us here on the CFO Playbook.
[43:47] Thanks for having me. And thank you all for joining us too. Don't forget to join us every month here on the CFO Playbook for more insights from our great, great finance leaders. But for now, from me, David McClelland, and all the team here, bye-bye.