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Communication skills key to going from FD to CEO, says Hind

Finance | Tania Mason | 22 Oct 2008

There are fewer chief executives that could be good finance directors than finance directors that could be good CEOs, Charity Commission chief Andrew Hind told an audience of senior finance professionals last week.

In his plenary speech at the inaugural Charity Finance Live event, Hind explored the issue of making the transition from finance director (FD) to chief executive, but said it was not necessarily an inevitable move for everyone.

He said FDs need to be experts at a technical level, but the best ones are also great communicators, brilliant at turning figures into facts. “Those that are really good at this can make it seem like alchemy,” he said. “Those ones are the ones most likely to make the transition to a CEO role.

Logical career conclusion

“I don’t think every FD is cut out to be a chief executive but for those outstanding ones who have the ability to communicate, the journey to CEO can be a relatively short one, it can be a logical conclusion to your career.”

Hind added that FDs perform a valuable role as an “organisational shock absorber; a neutral corner for the CEO and board to run strategies by and run personal priorities by and with. The FD doesn’t have personal axes to grind like the fundraising and operations departments do.

“Effective FDs are arbiters of the possible, while effective CEOs change what is possible.”

FDs need to have a close relationship with their CEO, and “if as a CEO you can’t take your senior management team with you, your tenure is over pretty soon”.

“Relying on self-reference only has severe limitations,” he advised. “You can’t hijack a subject or define it. You must really listen to what others tell you and your credibility depends on that.”

Tribute to great CEOs

He paid special tribute to two CEOs he had worked with in the past – Rip Hodson at ActionAid and Sir Roger Singleton at Barnardo’s. Singleton, he said, had a “lot of USPs, one of which was his deep unrivalled knowledge of his subject matter and complete commitment to it”.

However, Singleton did have a reluctance to “crack heads together”, Hind said. “He was not always comfortable reminding people to stay in line to agreed corporate postions, whereas most finance directors have to develop that ability early in their careers.”

In the end, he concluded, no CEO is stronger than the senior management team, so it is vital to build robust relationships with them in order to “collectively strive to reach optimum outcomes in any circumstances”.

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