Books To The Boardroom
Are you interested in how Australia’s best leaders grew into the professionals they are today? The journey from University (Books) to Leadership positions (Boardroom) can take many different forms. Listen in as we interview CEO’s, CFO’s, and Executives, on how they ascended to leadership positions, made critical career choices, and overcame adversity throughout their career. The Books To The Boardroom podcast is co-hosted by Sumith Dissanayake, a CFO turned Business Owner based in Brisbane, Australia, who is fascinated by all things leadership and career development.
Books To The Boardroom
Navigating CFO Challenges: Insights from Rowan Darling, CFO, Clemenger BBDO
In this episode of the Books in the Boardroom podcast, we kick off Season 3, CFO Catalyst, by diving into the world of Chief Financial Officers. Host Sumith explores financial leadership with Rowan Darling, CFO at Clemenger BBDO. They discuss Rowan's transition from audit to commercial operations, the impact of AI in finance, and balancing short-term results with long-term investments. Rowan shares insights on talent development, emphasizing that willingness to learn often outweighs technical skills. The conversation covers leadership growth and aligning individual career goals with organisational objectives.
00:00 Introduction: Skill vs. Will
00:12 Welcome to Season 3: CFOs in Focus
00:52 Meet Rowan Darling, CFO at Clemenger BBDO
01:16 Rowan's Journey: From Ernst Young to Clemenger
02:12 Understanding SOX Compliance
03:24 Roles and Responsibilities of a CFO
04:48 Transitioning from Audit to Commercial Operations
07:02 Mentorship and Continuous Learning
10:27 The Impact of AI and Automation
16:29 Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
23:52 Leadership and Team Development
25:35 Future Aspirations and Closing Remarks
[00:00:00] Rowan Darling: the big thing for me is if it's a choice between skill and will, I would always take the will. the skills are trainable and transferable. the will is intrinsic and it comes from the person.
[00:00:12] Sumith Dissanayake: Welcome back to Books in the Boardroom podcast. So we took a short break until we figure out what's our next season looks like. And then we came up with a marvelous idea of going into the CFOs world more deeper and understand their challenges and the strategies they use and see how they navigate through this ever changing world.
So the season three is all about CFOs and how they perform and how they go through the challenges. And today we launch our season three. And for this special occasion, for the first episode, we have a really good CFO came on board with us to discuss about the CFO challenges. my guest today is Rowan Darling.
Rowan is the Chief Financial Officer at Clemenger BBDO. Rowan, it's [00:01:00] great to have you on our first episode of Books the Boardroom CFO Catalyst Podcast.
[00:01:05] Rowan Darling: Thanks, Sumith. Great to be here.
[00:01:07] Sumith Dissanayake: So wonderful. So we have a few interesting topics to cover in our conversation. Before we go down that lane, so I would like to, get to know you more. tell me a little bit about your current role at Clementia BBDO and when did you get started and how have you progressed through the career?
[00:01:23] Rowan Darling: , absolutely. I've been in the Clemenger group for almost 12 years now. I joined the group out of, Ernst Young. I was in the audit practice there and Clemenger was one of my audit clients. after doing as many audits as I think I had in me, I had, identified Clemenger as a Great employer and a really interesting industry in advertising and marketing communications and, the Clemenger business had just been, acquired by Omnicom, which is a US listed entity.
And as a result of that acquisition, there was a lot more compliance and reporting, particularly around SOX. what that meant was an opportunity, came up to make the jump. and from there I've been within the Clemenger group. for, the best part of 12 years in various roles.
And the most [00:02:00] recent of those is, is CFO at Clemenger BVDO, the, the marketing, the brand agency.
[00:02:05] Sumith Dissanayake: , it was wonderful. I think in Australia, so we, only very few CFOs get exposed to the SOCs, Cyber SOCs, the compliance. If you can give us a bit of a briefing of how it works and what it does that would be helpful for most of our fellow CFOs.
[00:02:20] Rowan Darling: , absolutely. So I think it was off the back of the Arthur Anderson issues and the Enron accounting scandal in the U. S. They brought in some pretty onerous legislation around your control environment and that required a much larger degree of quarterly and ongoing testing and documentation of your processes and controls.
So with Omnicom, the global parent, being a top 500 listed company, they're under the auspices of that regime. And what that means is there's a. A big piece of work that goes into compliance and regulation and making sure we've got the documentation where it needs to be and also that our processes are robust and, and strong.
[00:02:55] Sumith Dissanayake: , I think a bit of a relief as well, like once you are compliant, so it means that, you [00:03:00] are reasonably, you are doing well
[00:03:02] Rowan Darling: , absolutely. In terms of risk management and, and your risk management framework, I think it's, the directors and the board can take a lot of stock from the fact that we have to go through a pretty onerous regime and all of our larger companies.
[00:03:13] Sumith Dissanayake: even though it is a bit of a painful process to implement and then of course, to make sure that you are compliant.
[00:03:18] Rowan Darling: Absolutely. , no, it's, it's a lot of work, but, an important, important housekeeping and important hygiene measure for us.
[00:03:23] Sumith Dissanayake: Wonderful. So what other things involved in your current career as a CFO, did you mention four entities under the Kilimanjaro group?
[00:03:32] Rowan Darling: , so within Clemenger Group, there's around 25 different operating companies and my purview is four of those operating companies. So,BBDO, it's a leading national creative agency. It does the, as you would have seen on TV for the likes of Meijer and Asahi CUB and HCF and TAC. from Clemenger.
There's Levo, which is a digital transformation consultancy business, so basically they'll get in and help their clients optimize customer experiences and their operations [00:04:00] and improve technology solutions. that's a business that Clemenger acquired back in 2018 and is, has been growing really strongly.
there's also Red Handed Creative, which is a specialist, full service, agency. So they, that's a B2B agency and they look at solving complex problems and everything, right the way through to connecting audiences with media, and specializing in rural and regional and also made this, they're makers.
So they do film production, studio production, creative technology. making the work that you see on air, So I think the great and interesting part of that for me is getting exposure to four different, executive leadership teams and four different, business planning cycles for different sets of reporting and books.
but, getting a breadth of, exposure to, the marketing communications landscape.
[00:04:40] Sumith Dissanayake: , your one's a bit complex than most of the, the local CFOs for sure,
, no, it's a good mix. a good mix, isn't it? what made you interested in joining this company? you're originally from EY trained accountant, and what attracted you to Clemenger?
[00:04:56] Rowan Darling: I think the EY experience and audit generally is great as a sort [00:05:00] of, place to get your start and to try out some different industries. And I think in the audit, sphere, I got to try a bit of work on, miners and property development companies and manufacturers. And, it was, moving into the communications and advertising, industry.
It was one that I found, complicated and interesting and a bit unique in terms of, pricing up and valuing ideation and creativity. it's not a natural fit with accounting. you don't want too much of a creative accountant, but I think in terms of extracting and recognising the value that is created for major brands, it's an interesting challenge.
[00:05:30] Sumith Dissanayake: and the dynamics of the industry, are interesting as well. There's a lot that happens in terms of M& A activity. There's a lot of, buying and selling and changing and investing and disinvesting in brands. So there's always something happening, and it's always been, it's been a place that has kept me interested and been able to offer different opportunities over the last decade or so, I suppose.That's wonderful I'm sure it is a bit of a transformative journey for you when you come out of auditing and start in the commercials. So how was that journey? What were your main challenges when you were when you first into [00:06:00] the commercial operation,
[00:06:02] Rowan Darling: , it's, I'm casting my mind back a little while, I suppose now, but I think coming out of that environment. I think you start to, it's really the commercial aspects of the business and the day to day running of the business. And I think looking forward, I think I found audit to be a little bit backward looking.
You've got the results and you're looking at last year, whereas as soon as you get into the business, you're extremely focused on being forward looking and helping with the next pricing negotiation, the next forecast, the next set of numbers. and. rising through the ranks, becoming a strategic partner who's able to offer some advice, help with the, capability discussions, the business planning, and the ideation, and starting to put things forward at sort of the board level in terms of where should we invest, where should we disinvest, and where are we heading, and how do we measure and track our progress, and how do we know if we're doing a really good job or not.
[00:06:45] Sumith Dissanayake: that's wonderful. How did you change that mindset? Because it's a bit of a challenge and a bit of a struggle for most of us, coming from that structured or it can be the environment to come into the business management. So what was the tipping point or what strategies did you use to,[00:07:00] get you onto the right path on the business cycle?
[00:07:02] Rowan Darling: , look, I think I've been really fortunate in having some great mentors within the Clemenger group, people who brought me along who, there's, there are other people around me that,and also from, the Big Four background as well, having people externally that you're not afraid to put your hand up and say, what would you do here?
What are your thoughts? how can I do something better? How can I do something differently? So I think being able to ask those sorts of questions, but I also think some of it comes with a bit of time and experience as well, and owning your subject matter expertise, and then also owning the fact that Hey, I don't have the answer here, but I have some questions and I think they're pretty reasonable questions.
So,think as you get to a position of trust with some of the people on the exec team and that sort of thing, you're able to be a part of those conversations and, stop being a specialist and start to try and be a bit of a generalist and add value in a different way.
[00:07:44] Sumith Dissanayake: , I love what you said about that. you don't have the answers for everything, but you need to find it. So because there's good support network around these days, especially you mentioned that you had a mentors and, the exec team were helping. I think we need to open ourselves and then be flexible to go ask [00:08:00] questions and then not to afraid to, be judged.
It's no, especially that's the fear that holds us, right? Not asking the question because since you are coming from a, Okay. Accounting background with a lot of credentials, so it's too hard for you to,put your guard down and then, go ahead, go expose,
[00:08:15] Rowan Darling: , 100%. And I think, it's important, I think, for everyone in my team and for myself as well to know that you're continuously learning and that you're not expected to be the font of all knowledge, but you are expected to own what you do know and own what you don't know. And I think both of those are valuable, but you need to be able to be honest and transparent and have those sort of conversations at every level.
[00:08:33] Sumith Dissanayake: so that comes into my mind,you're talking about that,you already been through that transition. Now, you're performing at that, the business management level. And how do you help your juniors who coming through this accounting journey? For them to elevate into the next level in their career.
[00:08:49] Rowan Darling: , I think, and I was reflecting on what kind of, what do you look for? When you're hiring at those levels. And I think the big thing for me is if it's a choice between skill and will, I would always take the will. I think the skills are [00:09:00] trainable and transferable. I think the will is intrinsic and it comes from the person.
So I think,you want someone who's curious and who's interested and who wants to learn. and I think the further along you go, the more comfortable you have to start to get with a bit of ambiguity, which isn't a natural fit for, accountants by trade, and I think by training, which is totally right and natural, but I think, certainly as you're looking for people, it's those who are willing to give something a go and ask a bunch of questions.
and I think as well for the industry that I'm working in, you do need someone who is a bit of a people person and who likes to be a bit of a part of the agency because particularly in client accounting roles, you need to understand and work with the guys who are in account service and, understand what client they're working on and what that client's and how the work's going and how the business is, you know, howhow far along it is through the different departments and all those sorts of things.
So I think,a lot of the skill side of things is the teachable part, but a lot of the, And the commerciality is probably a little bit more intrinsic.
[00:09:55] Sumith Dissanayake: That is so true. Like in, for CFOs and the finance team to try. So they need [00:10:00] to see the big picture so that they're not following the steps. Rather, they will try and achieve the outcome that is required for the company.
[00:10:06] Rowan Darling: , totally. And I think also setting up finance teams and having that, for me, the kind of a pivotal person there is either the finance manager or the finance director who needs to be able to, take, here's where we need to get to go and figure out the pathway to get there. and those are the sort of people in those sort of crunch roles that's kind of the crucial border sort of identify whether you're on that pathway, I think.
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[00:10:26] Sumith Dissanayake: , that's right. So the next thing I wanted to cover is using this. Automation and AI kind of thing like, our day to day more regular task of either getting outsourced or getting automated or now AI is also in the mixture as well to learn it and get it to the next level, the automation that we have done.
So where are you at in that journey of using the automation, outsourcing and artificial intelligence?
[00:10:49] Rowan Darling: . Look, I think, I is massive in the back office and in the productivity side of things. I'm certainly experimenting with it and I'm fortunate in that,global parent company is running a pilot [00:11:00] with one of the big I, operators and in being a part of that, I'm setting up, a couple of, I suppose different, test arenas where I can look at a AI that's specifically going to help me with business planning or one that's going to help with company secretarial work and just training and creating the right set of inputs to help drive some quality outputs.
I'm finding there's a lot of time savings there, for myself at that level. so I do think it's still a matter of testing and learning. I think there's some things it's great at. I think, it's as bad as it's ever going to be today. It'll be better tomorrow. if you haven't got it open in your browser, I think you're at risk of falling a little bit behind, so I think you need to be thinking about, is there a way that I can optimize my workflows, is there a way that I can, get it to do some of the heavy lifting and some of the more transactional things, and even if it's just basic data visualization, if you haven't got sensitive data and you're just Chuck something in there and say, help me present this.
It's pretty good at heat maps and tables and graphs and all that sort of stuff. So something that might have taken you half an hour might take you, five minutes. I think there's a lot of quick wins there. I think diving more deeply and getting more systematic. that's probably a heavier investment, but I'm certainly starting [00:12:00] to see the fruits of it myself.
[00:12:01] Sumith Dissanayake: Wonderful. And so with, the AI or this. It's automation taking care of most of the functions that we do today, right? So I'm expecting that to go really fast in the next few years, right? So how do we still be relevant in this world from the accounting perspective, the new accountants, upcoming young accountants, where do you think that they should focus on to build their skillset to compliment with this new trends in the market?
[00:12:27] Rowan Darling: , no, it's a great question and a really interesting one, the reality is we are always going to need, we're in the fortunate and privileged position that our skill set is always going to be required, I think it's going to evolve and I think it's going to be, AI is going to be a co pilot and it's going to be great at helping you do all the things a lot more quickly so that you free up more time to do more valuating things, but I suppose what are the Aspects of,your training that would become the most important.
I think it's going to be, you're still going to need to have a sound technical knowledge because you're going to need to know when it's giving you gibberish and really, you're going to need to be able to think critically and [00:13:00] craft the right prompts to get the right outputs and then interrogate it to get to a better set of solutions again.
like with every tool, it's as good as the operator. I don't think there'll ever be a time when humans will be completely supplanted. I do think the tasks that we do will become less routine and hopefully more interesting. and I think those people who flourish in that environment will be the ones who continue to succeed.
[00:13:20] Sumith Dissanayake: , does it mean that we will have more time to get involved in the real business and in real conversations than, processing the huge amount of data and the bills and invoices?
[00:13:33] Rowan Darling: Absolutely. , I think that and that's where we can actually add value. I think a lot of the making the trains run on time. Of course, we need to be rigorous and we need to do our checks and we need to make sure that everything lines up and the Rex balance and everything's in order. But I think where the rest of the business sees the value in us is being that trusted advisor and being at a higher level of strategic partner as well.
And so to the extent that it takes us out of the day to day transactional stuff and into the the nitty gritty of business planning and [00:14:00] forecasting and, really partnering with the rest of the business. I think that's where we can have more value.
[00:14:04] Sumith Dissanayake: That's so true. And also, I'm sure that, we get an opportunity to feed The information or the data in the right format to the AI or the automation. That's important, the garbage in, garbage out, right? So we make sure that,our skill set, we know where things end up and we can do the kind of reconciliation or the balancing act in the whole process, like what you alluded as well.
because it's not completely, we are irrelevant in the, in this whole, scenario. Rather we transform into something different to what you are doing. So that's the kind of scare feeling at the moment. We don't know which one that's going to be or what level.
[00:14:40] Rowan Darling: , and I think, there's absolutely some ambiguity in that and you could look at it as it's a bit scary or you could look at it as it's a bit exciting. I think what it is, the only thing we know for sure is it'll be different. And, I reflect back on, when I started at EY and, ticking and bashing sets of accounts and manually calculating things on a calculator as I looked at it. piece of paper that had a financial statement on it, [00:15:00] that was just a really inefficient way to do it and maybe doing it the first few times taught me the value of a pretty dull job, but doing it, 100 times in my first year wasn't a great use of anyone's time. if we can take that task away and give that grad a more interesting task and get them to spend a bit more time on, looking at why is there a variance in the, in the P& L lines or in the balance sheet and starting to think more critically, then I think that's a more interesting, more interesting job design.
[00:15:23] Sumith Dissanayake: That's so true. And I remember in my own experience as well, we used to do the bookkeeping in the books,it's a different experience. And the thing is, it takes time and it's a gradual process. And, you get there if you are willing. So what you said in the previous conversation, if you are willing, then you can learn.
So you said it's your choice end of the day, right? To whether you want to go with the flow and then of course, get on with the new technology or you stay there and then of course, extinct it.
[00:15:49] Rowan Darling: , and look, I think the other part of it that's interesting is, different companies are going to have different risk appetites and they're going to have a different level of willingness to, have pretty, pretty sound reservations around. [00:16:00] intellectual property around what the model's been trained on around confidentiality.
So I think there are still some big questions out there to be resolved. And there's some big cases that have, there's some big chips to fall and that will, I would imagine, impact the timeline. But I think the direction of travel is one of, ongoing productivity gains through automation and through, new tools through AI.
[00:16:17] Sumith Dissanayake: that's a great,inside about, how we should not be scared about it. We should get on and, we do what we can do. of course, the life will be different for sure, but we don't know where, but it's exciting. That's scary. Oh, wonderful. I'm going to change the gear a little bit, right?
And I saw in your note that you mentioned that balancing short term performance versus long term investment and capacity is one of the biggest challenges in the operation maintenance. Talk to me about that.
[00:16:44] Rowan Darling: , I think as I reflect on that, I think a lot of it's to do with alignment. So we have a business planning cycle that sort of. Um, and then we haveboard meetings that are on a quarterly basis. And then we obviously have management running the day to day. So I think the tension that can arise [00:17:00] is overlaying all of that.
our parent company reports on a quarterly basis. there are just some metrics and some measures that you need to be hitting on a really regular basis. and that means you can think short term, but you need to be able to find a way to think medium and long term as well. So I think there's a bit of a tension there.
but. within that constraint is the challenge and the interesting part of what is core capability and what is flex, what are the things that We must retain is, absolutely essential versus one of the nice to haves. And I think in a pretty challenging, overall economy, but particularly media and advertising this year, it's been quite challenging.
I think,almost universally, everyone's having to cut their cloth accordingly and make some challenging decisions. So when you're in that phase of the cycle, how do you make those decisions and how do you relate those decisions back to your longer term thinking? I think it's an ongoing tension, but something that is particularly at the forefront of a lot of our minds now as we think about here comes 2025 and it's got a federal election in it and we're not sure about where interest rates are going and we're not sure where media spend's going, so [00:18:00] there's still a lot of uncertainty out there, but I suppose within that, what do we prioritize?
Where do we place our bets for want of a better phrase? where are we investing and where are we disinvesting to succeed in this phase of the cycle? Thank you.
[00:18:11] Sumith Dissanayake: , I think that's where the CFOs are way more effective or way more important in running businesses because now we forecast the results, we forecast the macros, and we understand how the macro variables affect our own budgets and things like that. I think it's a great skill set for the youngsters to look more broadly about accounting than just only the technicalities within the accounting system or, double entries.
So we, suggest that they go into the macro level and see all the macro variables connected to the micro variables within the business.
[00:18:43] Rowan Darling: absolutely. And I think, again, a great opportunity if you're starting out and you're wanting to know, how to pull apart a set of financials, stick them in ChatGPT and ask it a few questions. what are the key risk factors? What are the things I should be thinking about? get it to do some legwork for you and start to use it as that copilot to help you interrogate and think about how you get from the [00:19:00] big to the little and how it all makes sense.
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[00:19:02] Sumith Dissanayake: , that's a really good use of,the chat VBT and AI, because previously I think we had to do that whole research and, turning pages and pages of browsing the internet for, ages to. Find the right answer here. they just present it to you. You just need to consume it and then make the right decision
[00:19:16] Rowan Darling: absolutely.
[00:19:17] Sumith Dissanayake: we have gifted from that perspective, you know,from where we were 10 years back.
And, we are now when it comes to understanding the variables and how they are connecting our own dots within the company.
[00:19:28] Rowan Darling: , absolutely. I think the whole, the desktop research that would have taken you days and days, you can now really crunch that down and learn, the fundamentals of an industry, or you can ask some pretty, penetrative questions a lot more easily, which is a great resource to have at your fingertips.
[00:19:42] Sumith Dissanayake: , I'm sure. Once again, I think you already mentioned that in the previous conversation. Conversation as well. Like you again, should know how to ask the question and how to get your answer That's a skill set that we need to develop now to deal with the ai.
[00:19:55] Rowan Darling: Absolutely. I think, , prompt engineering is for people who are very sophisticated, but just, prompt [00:20:00] design Basically everyone is going to be how do you tailor it so you're thinking about the right way to ask the right question and then how do you take whatever you get and challenge it and make sure that it's meaningful to you.
[00:20:09] Sumith Dissanayake: . So the same way like, we got another battle bit, short term,incentive or short term performance was a long term. the other side of the same thing is like. People's objective and the company's objective I'm only talking about your finance department's perspective, you know,the objective versus your objective and the company's objective.
How do you balance, these,propositions from different people
[00:20:29] Rowan Darling: so look, I think it's a combination of kind of having in your head a structure of, what people's kind of performance pathway can look like and what a learning and development plan can look like over time. But also then.
Understanding that everyone's an individual and that you need to tailor that for their phase of life and their level of experience and their goals. And I think it's being able to have those,pretty honest and transparent conversations in terms of, what are you looking to do? Where do you want to be in a year's time?
are we in a position to be able to help you with that? what does growth look like? And I think for us, if I think of the sort of the [00:21:00] talent funnel, if we get people in at the sort of junior level and get them into being a client accountant, I think through there, we can be, training people up.
They can start to learn the industry. They start to learn how the clients and the teams work, how the industry works. It's a great way to understand the mechanics of how it all goes together. And then as you're doing that, you've got. the CPA or the CA, which is great to bolster your technical foundations.
And then once you get through that, I think we're in the fortunate position being a larger group where there's a number of operating companies and, hopefully opportunities arise for people to move at different points in their career. And we try and identify our stars and grow people.
But I suppose in terms of that alignment point, how do we make sure that The team is aligned with the organizational goals. I think everyone wants to be part of a successful business and they want that feeling and they want to know that they're contributing to it as well. So I think making sure that our team is in the office and is present and is a part of the agency and isn't a back office function, but is integral to the running of the business.
whereas, we're not doing the same things as the creative department or the production guys or the [00:22:00] strategy guys, but what we're doing is absolutely key to the business meeting its objectives. And I think I'm pretty keen to reiterate that to the team when we have our sort of weekly whips and when we have our sort of monthly catch ups as well.
[00:22:12] Rowan Darling: But I think if you can't see yourself as being part of something bigger, then you could feel like you're pretty interchangeable and work anywhere. So I do think that company culture plays a massive part in that, which is much bigger than just the finance team, but making sure that the finance team does feel like they're a part of it.
[00:22:27] Sumith Dissanayake: , that's looks wonderful for, people to try because. I see, happens in smaller businesses than, you're more of a corporate, like in the smaller businesses, the biggest problem is that communication between the teams and the, the communication panel from the top to the bottom for them to know the big picture of the company.
So it looks like you have covered that and there's a transparency so that they know what's happening and then we are there. Opportunities arises for them so that they can stay on or to grab those opportunities when they get presented.
[00:22:56] Rowan Darling: , absolutely. I think you need to have that fun on that plan in place and look, it doesn't always [00:23:00] work out perfectly. It can't always and at different times, people will find different opportunities that work really well for them. And then I think you have to put yourself in the mode of, we're feeding the industry here.
we're developing some really talented people and if they wind up working somewhere else, I'd hope they'd be an advocate of having worked And learn while they were with us as well. So I think, it's hard to do that in the day to day when you don't want to lose someone and you don't want to have to deal with handover notes and recruiters and all that sort of stuff.
But I do think that's part of, that's certainly part of the big four business model. I think it's also larger companies need to think in those terms as well. that, there's a,there's a bigger factor at play in terms of developing people and, taking them as far as that they would like to go and helping them on their journey and then understanding that the next phase of their journey might be somewhere else as well.
[00:23:38] Sumith Dissanayake: , no, it's wonderful. I'd really love to go deeper on this because you are giving really good golden nuggets for people to you know, consume and understand. But since we have time limitations and I'm, I really need to ask you a few more questions before we wrap up. So one is I'm very big in, leadership for CFOs.
I feel. That is something that you do put a lot of effort and investment [00:24:00] into it. So what do you do in, in terms of developing your leadership skills and,how you, work with the teams and the cross cultural teams and broaden out the leadership.
So what do you do from that perspective?
[00:24:12] Rowan Darling: I think there's a couple of different aspects to it. I think, and the move from finance director a little while ago to CFO was one where at that point you're really engaging with the executive leadership team. And I think at that point, you're really, at a level of kind of, subject matter expertise, but also generalist, management expertise.
And so that gives you a pretty. wide net of people that you didn't have as much access to beforehand, who were just really experienced, interesting people and just great resources to bounce stuff off. And, whether their domain is,the creative side of the business or the strategy side or the people and culture side or the CEO, I think it's the in person opportunity to leverage that directly.
I think through the formal channels. I've done the CA myself and then, did the MBA and I found both of those illuminating, particularly the MBA and applying different kind of lenses from,leadership and [00:25:00] different ways of thinking. But I think at this point, it's much more kind of, who can I, talk to and who can I learn from one on one and have a, have an insightful discussion with and get a bit of a value exchange out of both ways.
I think that's been, that's been interesting development, .
[00:25:14] Sumith Dissanayake: it's a great advice because knowledge is everywhere and there's a lot of people. Are willing to help so if you ask, you know the help of course, it's all about us going Out of our shell and then ask the question from others, right? So they are more than happy to contribute and more than happy to support us in our journey. That's wonderful So we are so wrapping up shortly and then i'll ask you the final question. So what is the future hold for you?
[00:25:37] Rowan Darling: look, I'm playing each ball as it comes. To be honest, I'm enjoying the role. I'm enjoying the challenge. there's, as I say, it is a really dynamic environment that we're faced with. We're just going through our planning cycle now, and that's always a bit of a moment for reflection as you get towards the end of the year and you think about what have you done in the last year and what are you gonna do in the next year?
But I think on the professional front, I'm really relishing the role and the challenge, and finding that pretty fulfilling. [00:26:00] so I can't, I don't have a lot of complaints there. And on the home front, I've got. two young boys at six and two, so they keep me pretty busy away from work in the office as well.
I suppose the things I'd love to do is to continue to progress and develop, to start to get involved a little bit in the not for profit space, I think would be a good use of, my skills. So that's something I'm looking at getting into a little bit, but I think professionally, it's continuing to grow and add value and find different ways to grow the people in my team, but also contribute.
[00:26:27] Rowan Darling: to the various ELTs.
[00:26:29] Sumith Dissanayake: Wonderful. So and thank you very much for being on the books in the boardroom. Season three, CFO catalyst and all the best with your, career and your family.
[00:26:39] Rowan Darling: Thanks, Sumith. Great to have a chat.
[00:26:41] Karine: Thanks for joining us on Books to the Boardroom, Season 3, CFO Catalyst. We appreciate our guests insights on CFO strategies and our host, Sumith. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you enjoyed today's discussion, share it with others. Join us next time for more financial leadership [00:27:00] insights.
This episode was brought to you by Brisca Global and produced by DisruptX.one
