How to become a Finance Director: JasperRose’s Aspiring FDs RoundTable 

What are the traits of a successful finance director? What are the challenges that finance directors face? What does it take to stand out? These are the questions that accomplished finance professionals Joel Stephens, Gemma Craddock, and Stuart Gunning set about answering at our “Aspiring FDs” Round Table Event last week, hosted by one of our Recruitment Associates, Jordan Dyer. 

At JasperRose we specialise in recruiting Finance Leaders across the Consumer sectors and we are very proud to present this event. We will be hosting our next event at the end of January 2023 so if you would like to attend, please register your interest here. Please note that the below write up is paraphrased from the event, but all of our speakers are happy to talk more about their topics if contacted. 

The contents of this blog include: 

• The Traits of a Successful FD – Joel Stephens 
• The Key Challenges Faced When Becoming FD – Gemma Craddock 
• How to Stand out When the Current FD is Succession Planning – Stuart Gunning 

Traits of a Successful FD– Joel Stephens, CFO at FitXR  

Joel started his finance career in practice, spending 5 years at KPMG before moving into industry. His advice comes from a start-up perspective, and offers an interesting angle on the traits of a successful FD.  

1. Be on top of your role. 

“To move up a level, you have to be great at what you do.” 

Joel stresses that to become FD you must have strong skills within your role, whether it is being incredibly technically strong, organised in developing the team, or good at coding.  

According to Joel, your career growth must come from within, your own skills and your own autonomy. Extending your sphere of influence is important (if not essential) but speaking to and networking with the right people won’t guarantee that you will move up in the business. For Joel, knowing who you are and what your capabilities are is the key to becoming a Finance Director. He then went on to explain how beneficial it can be to ‘worry about what your manager is worrying about’- there might be tasks that wouldn’t usually be your responsibility, but taking the initiative to complete them will show your reliability to more senior managers. He used the analogy ‘if you fall into a pothole, be the person that fills it in so no one else falls rather than waiting for someone else to fill it.’ 

2. Own the relationships that you have outside of business 

In order to get money and funding, you must learn from people who do that for a living. You must engage with other people outside of your business to acquire skills from many different places. Joel also recommends events as an opportunity to tell someone who has never heard about your company exactly what it is and to use that chance to your advantage.  

3. Work outside of your function 

“If you see things that are broken, don’t expect somebody else to fix it.” 

At this stage, Joel explains that your position is no longer just about Finance, but about planning and moving the business forwards. You must keep your eyes open to other businesses and then look at your own. Here, it is crucial to start inquiring about the structure of your company and what isn’t working. If changes are being made, you must ask the right questions about why that is and how the team feels about it.  

To Joel, to demonstrate the traits of a successful Finance Director, you must admit where you are letting yourself down and you must work above and beyond your role. By doing this, you will become invaluable to your manager, which is invaluable to you, too. 

4. Accept Plateaus 

Joel admits that plateaus are the hardest part of the journey for a Financial Director. But he also says that you must learn to accept them. The analogy that he uses is one of fitness, and it’s highly appropriate for his message:  

To train muscles in the gym, increasing weights quickly might lead to fast progress, but in the long run you may inhibit your results by moving too fast for your body, or injuring yourself. If instead you increase weights by small percentages at a time, you can build up and reinforce your skills. You can hone in the foundation of your strength. Your results are going to be better, and you will ultimately become stronger.  

This mentality can be applied to getting through plateaus, by using that time to build your skills and accepting that things can take time. For Joel, to build up your FD skills, you must play for the long game. 

He recommends Impact Players by Liz Wiseman to help build the traits for a successful FD.  

The Key Challenges Faced when becoming FD, Gemma Craddock – Finance Director at Mouth Group 

Gemma’s experience is different. She obtained her qualifications while working in industry rather than practice, and has worked her way up to becoming Head of Finance- the first finance hire in her company. She spoke about four key challenges that she faced when becoming a Finance Director, and the best ways to overcome them. 

1. Business Size 

The Finance Director role can vary hugely depending on this. In a smaller company, your responsibilities as FD may extend into more areas of the company. There may be more roles needing to be managed, and less departments in place to support you. On the other hand, a struggle that a Finance Director may face is the scale at which a business is growing: there may be a lot to keep up with, such as changing budgets and managerial requirements.  

To deal with this Gemma recommends going “back to basics” and remembering the core of your role and skillset. Focus on the primary things that needs to be done. 

2. Partnering with the Senior Leadership Team 

“You’re forming a team together to execute a finance strategy, but not everyone may understand finance.” 

Often, a difficulty in a Finance Director’s role can be building a relationship from scratch with the CEO. 

Although this may not be an issue in all company sizes, the CEO may have different ways of working to the Finance Director, and may not completely understand Finance.  One of the difficulties of the role may be the task of adjusting the way that you work to complement how that individual works. 

As advice for working with the CEO (and other members of the senior leadership team), Gemma says that the core thing that she does is help the CEO understand the importance of finance. For example, she helps the CEOs that she works with understand cashflow, and how positive cashflow is key to the success and profitability of the business. 

3. The Challenge Of Building Strategy  

Building a strategy as a Finance Director can be hard. As a FD, you may have many ideas that you want to implement, but you must also “think about how your strategy ideas may impact the rest of the team.” It may place additional pressures on other team members, or conflict with existing procedures. You need to work out the best way to manage your expectations- work out a way that the finance department can run as smoothly as possible, so what functions can be outsourced, what functions need to be brought in house etc. 

You may also become the backbone of many areas in the company. So you may also encounter difficulties implementing your ideas and strategies to move the company forwards whilst simultaneously having many key operational roles. A key part of this is hiring the team to work with you- if you’re coming into a small finance team this is easier, as you’re able to build the team with people that work how you work, but it can be very difficult to do this if you join a company that already has a well-established finance function. 

4. Imposter Syndrome 

“The more responsibility you hold, the more it will be looming over your head” 

Gemma makes it clear that imposter syndrome is a very real thing that many Finance Directors feel. As your role increases in scope, the more you may feel that you are underqualified or unworthy of the position that you are in.  

But she does offer a glimmer of hope and reassures that there are ways to overcome imposter syndrome. Namely, coaching or mentoring can help to affirm your validity in the role. She also highlights the importance of experience, and as you overcome challenges during your career, you will then start to affirm the idea that you are meant to be doing what you’re doing. 

As Gemma puts it, all of these struggles are “the hard thing about hard things.” She recommends The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner to help to overcome the key challenges faced when becoming a Finance Director. 

How to Stand Out When the Current FD is Succession Planning, Stuart Gunning – Finance Director at Millennium Hotels 

During his distinguished career in hospitality, Stuart has progressed to a company with over 400 hotels and is now Finance Director at one of the largest managed hotel companies in the world. His focus is the importance of learning from people. 

1. The ability to execute and take responsibility 

“The key thing I take away is execution in decision making.” 

Stuart stresses the importance of bringing plans into the day-to-day life of the business. Discussing strategy is a start, but the sustained execution of that strategy is what brings a business forward. He states that “that there is too much reliance on creating reports rather than using the data.” 

Stuart claims that on two occasions in the past he has fired his own managers in order to move a business forward. To him, becoming FD is about making yourself intrinsic to the business, and by involving yourself in decision making you can achieve this. If you sell yourself to the business, and make yourself intrinsic, then the relationship with senior management that you will need to progress will come to you. 

2. Don’t constrain yourself 

“Push the boundaries.” 

Stuart’s biggest advice is not to constrain yourself and to find opportunities where you can. He tells aspiring FDs to focus on how they fit into the rest of the business, and to never shy away from being exposed to many aspects of it. There is nothing too small that you shouldn’t get involved in or that is beneath you. 

Likewise, though, he warns never to pretend to know everything. The further up you go and the more your role expands, the less possible that is. What’s important is knowing who to go to in order to find the answers that you need. He advises never to be afraid of saying “no, just hold on” and checking. 

3. Keep moving forwards 

“A lot can be solved with a blank piece of paper, a pencil and an eraser.” 

Stuart offers some words of reassurance and stoicism to aspiring FDs. You’re not always going to make the right decision, but you will need to carry on. He recommends returning to state zero, like a blank piece of paper, and then moving forwards. 

He affirms that you will learn until the day you finish, and that this will only happen through experience, and through continuing to challenge yourself 

4. Think about your personal brand 

“Don’t ever try to change too much to fit a box you think people are looking for. The box will find you. 

Sell yourself to the rest of the business and the CEO will come to you, Stuart advises. But over everything else he stresses one thing: in thinking about your personal brand, whether that be integrity or professionalism, remain true to your core principles- don’t change yourself to fit in with the crowd. 

The team at JasperRose would like to offer a huge thank you to all of our speakers and event attendees. If you would like to ask us any questions about the event, the speakers, or would like register your interest in future JasperRose events please contact us here. 

JasperRose: Recruiting Finance Leaders at all levels across the Consumer sectors.