The CFO is not a 1st String Player
Have we learned anything?
Hopefully, the corporate world has learned its lesson well regarding either letting the Chief Financial Officer take control or become a major decision-maker regarding the operations of its business. Our recent economic environment should indicate how well this strategy has performed and not very well would be very much an understatement.
The problem is we have let the scorekeeper take control of the game and they don’t know how the game is played. The skill comes from creativity, risk-taking, ingenuity and outside-the-box thinking. That is how you win the game, not from actions solely intended to improve the bottom line. It is also very hard to get the ball away from the poor player once he has it in his grasp. He simply doesn’t want to give it up because he normally doesn’t get to play with it.
Perhaps we should instruct the CFO in his primary role for participating on the corporate team. And that is to ensure that the star players are given the funding and proper tools to continuously develop a winning strategy. The bottom line will take care of itself if the business teams of the world remember what made them successful in the first place.
