The Gordon Ramsay of Finance: Martin Gyde on Leadership and Transformation

In the latest episode of the Boardroom Podcast's CFO Catalyst series, host Sumith welcomes Martin Gyde, an experienced CFO from New Zealand who calls himself "the Gordon Ramsay of Finance." 

Martin shares his journey from aspiring policeman to senior financial professional, influenced by his father, a former retail CEO. With his competitive nature shaped by a background in high-level rugby and tennis, Martin brings a refreshingly direct approach to financial leadership. After 25 years in CFO and CEO roles, Martin now helps struggling businesses through his consultancy, focusing on turnarounds and strategic transformation. 

He discusses his five-point framework for business success, the importance of clear communication, and how the CFO role has evolved beyond numbers to become a crucial strategic partnership. Martin also provides valuable insights on navigating cultural change, implementing AI in finance operations, addressing cybersecurity challenges, and preparing for ESG reporting requirements. 

This episode delivers practical wisdom for financial leaders operating in today's complex business environment. 

Connect with Martin at Martin@succeedadvisory.com or on LinkedIn.

Proudly sponsored by Brisca Global with production and distribution by disruptX.one.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Early Aspirations
• 0:39 Welcome to the Boardroom Podcast
• 1:14 Martin's Sporting Career
• 3:43 Accidental Journey into Accounting
• 6:11 Challenges and Strategies in Business Turnarounds
• 7:20 The Importance of People and Strategy
• 21:47 Adapting to Technological Changes
• 24:12 Cybersecurity and Risk Management
• 26:27 The Role of ESG in Modern Business
• 28:12 Conclusion and Contact Information

Transcript

Martin Gyde

[00:00:00] Martin Gyde: I always wanted to be a policeman and my parents said to me, you need to do something for a couple of years. Why don't you go and do a, business degree? And I was like, okay. Sounds pretty boring. But, I actually ended up doing it and I, think in a way, my father, he was a CEO of a large retail chain and, that in the past, so business was in his blood.

And I'm quite thankful to this day that, they coerced me to go to university and. I didn't really enjoy it. I didn't really put much effort and time to it. I can honestly say that I was probably like many kids today, only going two days a week, going to the beach and really enjoying myself. 

[00:00:39] Sumith Dissanayake: Welcome back to the Boardroom Podcast , the CFO Catalyst series season three today I have a well experienced CFO from New Zealand, Martin Gyde. So Martin has been a CFO and a senior finance professional for a long time. And, funny enough, he called himself the Gordon Ramsey in Finance. I wanna explore more about [00:01:00] that.

Martin, thanks for joining us today. 

[00:01:03] Martin Gyde: Thank, you Sumith. Really, looking forward to sharing some of my, history and thoughts and, I hope everyone had a great Christmas over and New Year and, excited about 2025.

[00:01:13] Sumith Dissanayake: Perfect. I would like to start with your, sporting career. You have a very interesting sporting career. So tell me more about how you got started with, your sports and then, the key achievements, along the way.

[00:01:26] Martin Gyde: Look, I'm, always really been mad on sports and, I'm, very competitive, so if you ask any of my friends, anything on any sort of day, I'm there to win. And, I've, been very fortunate in my time. I've, played top center level rugby and tennis for, north Harbor here in, in Auckland.

And, in my junior days, I even got to play at Lancaster Park for Canterbury as a nine and a 13-year-old in front of about 50,000 people. 

[00:01:50] Sumith Dissanayake: Wow.   

[00:01:51] Martin Gyde: which at that age, the first time around, I didn't really think much of it, but when I was 13 and it was pretty awesome. The crowd was very one-eyed. And even [00:02:00] look, I think my highlight of my whole rugby career was a guy sidestepped me and I did a really bad stiff arm.

In those days, you could stiff arm people, dropped 'em down and the crowd just went absolutely wild. And, I, could still close my eyes now and hear the crowd. So that, was, one of I cool sort of moments. Not, in a good way, but it's something that's live me forever. I used to also do a lot of athletics in my junior days.

And really fortunate, my parents were really behind me and, drove me to the athletic track every day. I lived near the, Port Hills and Christchurch, which are quite a steep hills, like it's a good probably hour and a half run up there every day. the highlight of my career was, I was a sprinter and my dad used to take me down to the local high school and Australian caretaker, by all means.

 a guy called Joe would come out with these big alsation dogs that were mean, and he used to line them up behind me. And I used to run 10, 100 meters in a row with these dogs chasing me. And to this day, I, still credit to that, to, while I was probably such a good [00:03:00] rugby player because I could run so fast.

You never got in trouble with the dog. You were too scared to look around. Like they, were, yeah. Pretty mean. And, it was probably a turning point for me and it probably what I carried on to my career, I've always played things hard, trained really hard as well, as a kid I used to, get home from school and turn up about nine o'clock.

It got dark at nine in Christchurch in the summer, and just about practicing and, even probably when I went to university and that I, I was probably still more interested in doing sports and other stuff than, accounting.

[00:03:32] Sumith Dissanayake: Yeah, no, that's great. you made the, effort, right? So that you need that for anything that you do. It'll make the best effort for, you to get something, out of what you're doing.

Wonderful. And so I saw in your, notes that you wanted to become a policeman and then you accidentally become an accountant at the end.

So tell me about that story. I.

[00:03:52] Martin Gyde: Yeah. I, left school in year 12. and I was only the ripe old age of just turned 15. [00:04:00] And, in those days I had my heart and mind set on being a policeman. I was playing for the North Harbor under 16 rugby team and we used to go away on the bus with the, North Harbor senior team, and in that team was about five policemen.

And, Probably quite lucky too, because quite often when I was younger, we'd, be at the pub and get caught and, probably would've been a bit more trouble, but the guys knew me and, would say, Hey Gyde, I just had one drink and, be good. And that was really good.

But I always wanted to be a policeman and my parents said to me, you need to do something for a couple of years. Why don't you go and do a, business degree? And I was like, okay. Sounds pretty boring. But, I actually ended up doing it and I, think in a way, my father, he was a CEO of a large retail chain and, that in the past, so business was in his blood.

And I'm quite thankful to this day that, they coerced me to go to university and. I, I didn't really enjoy it. I didn't really put much effort and time to it. I can honestly say that I was [00:05:00] probably like many kids today, only going two days a week, going to the beach and really enjoying myself.

But over a period of time, I, as I got older towards 20, I, was at the rugby club and I began running into young guys who were 23, 24. All of a sudden they were driving flash cars and, they were doing really well for themselves. And all of a sudden I thought, gee, perhaps this isn't such a bad thing after all.

And, that's really how I got into their career. It probably wasn't something I was really looking forward to. and then, when I really got into it, I was very fortunate in my career, which we'll talk about soon, it actually became a real interest and real passion.  

so thankful now that I actually did go down that path.

[00:05:37] Sumith Dissanayake: Yeah, you got no regret. So you achieved what you wanted to achieve, through the finance career.

[00:05:42] Martin Gyde: yeah. No, exactly. it was funny how you know today. As a policeman, I, don't think I would've liked it. It probably would've been a bit PC and a bit too woke for me to be fair. but yeah, it's a good, it's a really good choice for the anyone young out there. it really does expand into many different options, and I think it, it [00:06:00] annoys me.

I see CFOs around the place not really delivering the service or the opportunity that the business deserves in so many occasions. It's, a really important role for business to do well. 

[00:06:11] Sumith Dissanayake: That's right. And Martin, these days, you help the most businesses in trouble to pick them or to resurrect the, business or to restructure. So tell me how you got into that and what sort of support you give to those kind of business. Is.

[00:06:24] Martin Gyde: What I, really look forward to these days. I've been doing, CFO roles, CEO roles for about 25 years. And really, the numbers are, very important, but I don't really get any excitement by doing numbers. what I really do look forward to is, challenges.

 I have my own business now and really people come to me to help with difficult business problems. Whether they need a little bit of help, the senior leadership team to direction and, assistance with that. I've done a lot of turnarounds in my time, so I've worked in probably about three or four companies that have had, major loss making results or didn't know how to [00:07:00] improve and jumped in and, helped them over time. That was over my sort of 20 year career doing senior roles. and it's just something I'm really passionate about now is actually just going in, making a short term difference, you know, three to six months here and helping people get over their problems, whether it's mergers, acquisitions, divestments, or, generally they just dunno what to do.

[00:07:20] Sumith Dissanayake: So what are the main challenges because CFOs. In a, company that runs really well, there's not much to do. So you can do the reporting and, pretty much look after the stakeholders interest, right? But in a troubled company or a company that has that kind of a, what do you call the rollercoaster ride, what are the main challenges and, also your approach is to, help them get out of their trouble.

[00:07:42] Martin Gyde: it's, not really rocket science, but I have five sort of key areas that I really look at and encourage the senior leadership team to also look at. it's really, quite simple. It's like people is gonna be your first thing, your strategy.

your process is are they good? A customer quality focus, do we actually [00:08:00] have that? And then I've invented some things, what I call the, golden financial rules, which are sort of givens that to be a successful business you have to follow. And, in the, people front for first step, there is, Health and safety is always my number one priority no matter where I go. I've had a very strong manufacturing background and, it's appalling in New Zealand that 54 people go to work and never return home, every year in New Zealand. and that's just a, shocking statistic. So I really do encourage, I know a lot of people laugh and think that health and safety is not important, but really make it your number one priority.

And the first thing that you ever do. the other thing I, have a really strong view on and people is most people come to work to do a pretty good job. there's very few people who actually come along to do a bad job. and usually if people are struggling it, there's a reason behind it. One of my mentors has always said to me, dig, dig, dig. And I think, one of the tips is always ask questions, but keep on digging. And you find it might be a, not only a business problem, but something at [00:09:00] home. and really those people that they can be given the right resource, given a bit of mentoring, we can actually utilise them and bring them back into full engagement and being high performers.

Really be honest with yourself, and if people aren't up to it, you just gotta move 'em on. It sounds pretty ruthless, over my career and I've restructured quite a few teams and people. But the reality is, if you get into be a winning business, you, need winning team players on board.

And, again, the last thing I'd say for people is really about if you've got good people, make sure you engage with 'em. What keeps them interested? These days people have a very short term career span at businesses, so try and keep them in longer if you can. you know, upsets me when I see CVs of people less than a year moving from job to job.

If you've got a good one, let's try and keep 'em for two or three and make sure you promote them and give them that opportunity to keep on learning. That's really, important. so people is really important. I think strategy is one of the things I really love and really have a lot of [00:10:00] interest in.  

and in part of my careers there, I've worked in different businesses that have set strategy in different ways, with different success. But I'm often just even now in my own business. And, you walk into places and go, what's your one page strategy? What are you trying to achieve?  

It's, a very much a blank answer. No one actually knows. we need a business that's very clear on, on, where you play, how you play, and how you win. And that needs to be, every single person in the business needs to know, four or five really key. Simple points on how we win.

And if you haven't got that, you've just got people going off in different areas. It's a bit like throwing darts at a dart board. You hope you get the number and, nine times outta 10 you won't. Strategy is really, important and pushing that down through the whole business. every, person's important.

Every person knows what role they play. everyone's heard the one about, the guy that sweeps the, NASA floor. He's just as important as everyone else. ' cause if he didn't do that, the whole rocket doesn't work. So everyone needs to play their part and be clear on it.

[00:10:58] Sumith Dissanayake: You know, there's a communication piece [00:11:00] that is very important, right? to communicate the strategy to the, ground level people. So one of the challenges we have is sometimes they misinterpret what we are saying, how do we overcome that? it's so hard for us to, tell them everything that we do.

So we have to maintain that some kind of a hierarchy or do you have a different strategy, or different way of handling that?

[00:11:20] Martin Gyde: I've, been fortunate to transition from CFO to a CEO of a, 250 person company here in New Zealand, large manufacturing company. And one of, one of the things, we never actually had a strategy, and so we, came up with a clear strategy and for the first six months I used to, split the business into four meetings of, about 60 people.

And every month I'd sit down and it was called fire chat with Marty. And we're just for an hour go through and the first thing I'd do every day was just pull up the same slide. These are the five things we're working on, guys. And it got, it was boring for me, but it was just repetition, repetition.

and eventually, everyone actually got it. And you could go anywhere around the business and [00:12:00] they go, no, that's all we're doing. And so it may seem really, really, tedious, but my advice is you can't over communicate enough. Really, really keep communicating and eventually the penny will drop with most people.

And we used to run big yearly meetings twice a year and we'd go through, this is what we're doing. And it was a bit of a old, what you call the old shit sandwich, it was like, we're doing these really well, we're not doing this well. So guys, congratulations. it was that sort of conversation always.

[00:12:30] Sumith Dissanayake: No, that's an interesting point actually, because sometimes we assume too much about the people on the ground that they know. So we sometimes they don't understand the basics. So it's matter of us to reiterate the basics, what they need to do, rather than, the whole strategy or something like that.

[00:12:46] Martin Gyde: I think a lot of CFOs get confused that the numbers is their number one priority, when really it's not, we've got an accounting team that can do that. A really good CFO, like myself is I'm, actually telling stories to every person on the team every day.

About [00:13:00] what we're trying to achieve and asking them how are they going, how can we help? What do you need? And it, there's a real big part of being a, good CFO or any C-suite job is about being a storyteller. And that's a really important thing that we need to all get really good at.

[00:13:16] Sumith Dissanayake: No, that's a great point. Of course, that technicality has dropped a lot now, so we need more human skills and, your role has evolved from that number crunching into a more business partnering for CFOs these days.

[00:13:28] Martin Gyde: absolutely. As, I, said to you, the, CFO I think is probably the most important position in any business. It can actually make the difference between a one person is a CFO. They get to see everything all throughout the whole business.

If you've got a really good CFO, they can actually cover a lot of inefficiencies and weakness in the other part of the business, and the business could still be successful. But if you've actually got a weak CFO and you can have other staff performers in sales and marketing, the business can still be not a very good business.

[00:14:00] So I think the CFO is, one of the most important business and really aligning yourself with A CEO and working closely with a CEO. It's just critical and, it's actually in a way don't agree with the CEO. It's really challenge each other and quite often, you might see things differently, have a bit of an argument about it, but eventually agree what we're gonna do and then move on together.

So the CFO has a really important role in my mind that a lot of, training institutions are now trying to get the young a ccounting talent to understand more about leadership and the role they play, and I think that's really, important going forward that, the industry just keeps on evolving from, if you go out to someone and say, oh, I'm a CFO of that, they just go, oh, you do numbers.

No, we don't do numbers. We actually make businesses run efficiently and really well and profitable, so it's important.

[00:14:49] Sumith Dissanayake: You need to let your accountant go. And then of course, becoming a more of a C-suite person, so you've got some accounting background. It doesn't mean that you are there to execute your accounting [00:15:00] skills rather than, business skills. What's the third thing, that you basically look at, Marty in the, transitioning process?

[00:15:07] Martin Gyde: the first, thing when I'm looking at any transition process is really, a really good, honest look at yourself of what, where you're currently at. you can't jump from where you are at to where you wanna be unless you're really honest about where you're at.

And for some people that's quite difficult. And it, it can also be. Quite challenging as a, person coming from outside going, oh, that's not actually very good. 

[00:15:30] Sumith Dissanayake: and sometimes, you know, you have to be careful in the way you say it. The word I like to use is, this is an opportunity.

[00:15:37] Martin Gyde: rather than saying it may be poor, look, there's an opportunity to do better. And, then people see it as a, okay, it's an improvement rather than doing it wrong. I think the first thing I always do is where are we at now? What's, going wrong, but where do we need to be? and then you've got like a bridge between the two and, you work with the, the senior leadership team to really identify tactics and [00:16:00] strategy to get from there to there. that's pretty simple.

[00:16:02] Sumith Dissanayake: that's right. It's an interesting point, Marty When you, go from a service provider, like a shared CFO or an interim CFO, but you're not part of that employment cohort within the company, so you don't have that authority as much as an internal CFO. So I'm sure you some of them really struggling.  

especially the shared CFOs are struggling to implement or to push the strategy forward since you don't have that level of authority, in the company. How do you overcome that?

[00:16:31] Martin Gyde: I, think it, goes back to, storytelling. I'll, give you a really good example. Just like today we're running a stock clearance here at Smith and C is a fantastic premium department store, dating way back to 1880. So it's got a real heritage, an icon on New Zealand retail , and today. I think it needs to be the way it's presented, particularly the information. So I've sat around in meetings previously where we have had boring slides and things, and it doesn't really [00:17:00] generate any interest. Where today I, I said, I want to run the show. And we basically had some pretty pictures.

We had a big number 17 because we've got 17 days to go. And it was just telling the story in a totally different way. And all of a sudden the guys were energised in the room, not falling asleep. We had the best probably, 15 minute conversation we've ever had. And it really just came down to sometimes if things aren't working, just have a look about the way you're trying to communicate stuff and change it up.

Make it interesting, make it short. Don't make it boring. I, think that's, really one of the key things. Just think about if, you were them, how would they perceive what I'm presenting to them? And, I think that's really the way that these CFOs that if you are struggling and, my second thing would be, go, and have a chat to guys like myself or anyone else you come across at any events who might go, gee, I can get on well this guy and have a chat and just learn and try a few things.  

[00:17:55] Sumith Dissanayake: it's really important for you to look at it from their lens and then, get [00:18:00] your message very clear to them. It's like from their own language, how they can interpret it on their own way.  

where they can be decode it and then understand it.

[00:18:07] Martin Gyde: Absolutely. You gotta, make it simple so people can understand it. A lot of people don't understand numbers and, you just gotta leave the story, like today I had a number here, our average sales we need to go. And I had a big cheetah jumping across the screen and it was just sitting it so people can visualise it, see it in a different way.

Yeah, so very important.

[00:18:27] Sumith Dissanayake: That's so true. So, when you are getting, along with the cultures, like especially the company that you are helping right now, so it has a long history, so 140 years old. So how do you break into that culture and because it looks like for you to turn it around, you're do things differently.

[00:18:44] Martin Gyde: I think it's quite funny the role I sort of go into when you're looking to, transform businesses. it's pretty rare that you walk in there and there's a good culture. just, being pretty, pretty blunt. I've, been in companies that have been winning and it's a totally different environment.

once a company's [00:19:00] winning, everyone's on a high winning becomes really simple. It's, a bit like the All Blacks, playing Australia and rugby. We keep winning all the time. It's easy. and it's the same in business. If you keep winning, you just get on a roll. and businesses that, are struggling traditionally.

I walk into and like this one here, I think the first week I would've had a million dollars for a dollar every time I've heard, we've always done it this way. And I think that's probably one of the key things that you come across is people. People are frightened to change.  

and you need to support them on that, journey. But at the same time, culture can change pretty quickly. usually in the past I've done that when I am running finance teams of that. Usually the easiest way to change culture is actually to make a couple of changes within your team.

might sound a bit ruthless, but, quite often you can bring a new blood, new excitement, new ways of thinking, and, it can actually change things up very, quickly. I, don't, think, culture is something you can change fairly quickly. but it does require a team effort and.

It usually starts with a slow build and there's certain points you'll see different people within the organisation switch on and [00:20:00] change and it's a really cool thing to see when it happens.

[00:20:02] Sumith Dissanayake: 

It needs time to see the progress. But the, problem we have is the pressure that we get from the top management, you know,managing the expectation. So how do you handle that? I know they need, these kind of, changes to happen.

[00:20:15] Sumith Dissanayake: It takes time, but. There's a timeframe that we have to work with him. So how do you have that conversation with them and then, manage the expectation?

[00:20:23] Martin Gyde: 

At times you gotta be pretty tough. You gotta be pretty firm and, hard. I have a saying, I don't go to work to make friends. I have plenty of friends at home and, from school with everything else, It's great going to work to, have a nice group of people, but I'm not, 

[00:20:37] Martin Gyde: Scared to, stand on people's feet if you like. at the end of the day, we're all there to do a really good job. We all get paid well, so let's, do what we're paid to do and let's make sure the shareholders who have put their valuable money up to, to support the enterprise are actually getting a return.

And a lot of people, I think forget that there are people that have actually fronted up and expect to return for their money and, it's, one of the [00:21:00] conversations I have with a lot of people. not only do we have a very strict timeline on when things have to happen, but I really do drill hard into people about cash is king, and it's very easy to have a conversation like, why, did you do that?

If that was your own money? Would have you put that in? And they'd go, no. And you go, so why did you do it? it's, tough. It's tough being at the top sometimes. It's also can be lonely at, the top at times. But, you're there to do a really good job. And usually, as I said, once you get on a winning role, life becomes really great. you feel energised, you feel really excited. And you know when things are going well, you go, gee, the day's ending, that's a bugger.

'cause I'm really enjoying this. I want, I wanna get back there. 

[00:21:41] Sumith Dissanayake: interesting. So Marty, I want to quickly ask few, more, questions about different areas as well before we wrap up. So one of the areas is you know, as you know now, you've been in the industry for, in a long time and you've seen the trends and you've seen the transformation within the industry.

So now we are more in the more discussed about AI and [00:22:00] the automation kind of thing. How do you think the, finance landscape's going to change in the next five, 10 years 

[00:22:06] Martin Gyde: I, think it's gonna change remarkably. I'm, an older guy. I'm probably a bit of a slow adopter of technology, but I'm surrounded by really cool young guys and ladies in the team who are adopting this technology and going, geez, why don't we do this?

at our business we have a big online sales platform currently that's very specific. You know, AI's doing some really smart things in that space, identifying who the customer is when they log on, what they last looked at, all that sort of stuff. one of the things I do use it for AI currently is.

[00:22:36] Martin Gyde: previously I used to troll the internet for hours and hours trying to get industry information or even the best way to do stuff. And, now I can just type it in really quickly and within five seconds I've got a.an answer that 95% of the time's pretty well spot on. and so that, that's, I'm finding that sort of stuff very useful.

we're, in conversation at the moment that within the next six months we'll be using AI [00:23:00] to do all our, stock purchasing within the business. it's taking away that boring, repetitive jobs. That, that people do actually get bored and they make mistakes. so I think there's a real opportunity within that.

And if you look at the whole finance area, there's a lot of everyday tasks that are repetitive tasks that I think a lot of this sort of technology will take away. So it's really important that as a person you look back and go. I, need to actually start adding value.

How can I create value? Because the days of actually doing repetitive chores are, gonna be gone pretty soon. 

[00:23:36] Sumith Dissanayake: Now it's getting easier for us, and then we can spend more quality time on the more strategies and developments for the business rather than, doing the mundane day-to-day routine tasks.

[00:23:46] Martin Gyde: Absolutely. and, roles are just gonna evolve. you look at an legal profession, lots of those sort of positions are gonna change substantially as well. So I think it's society going forward. It's gonna be interesting. I think, jobs that are [00:24:00] currently quite well paid and, that prestigious are probably gonna disappear.

New sort of jobs are gonna come. So adaptability. And a bit of resilience is gonna be really quite, important I think, going forward.

[00:24:12] Sumith Dissanayake: And one of the challenges, that we will have is because of us going cloud and more into the automation and the internet, era is the cybersecurity. So how important is it for a CFO to be vigilant about cybersecurity or anything on top of that?

[00:24:26] Martin Gyde: at Smith and Caughey's here, I wasn't here, but in the end of March they announced they were actually gonna close their business down. And on that same afternoon, they, were cyber attacked. So, it was actually an unbelievable thing. But apparently a large Russian organisation had been in the background in the business for a month or two and actually.

We were unaware of that and they'd obviously heard that the business was closing down. So they triggered, a cyber attack, which more or less blew away all our inventory systems, all our accounting [00:25:00] systems left the business only with some emails, some items in their emails. CFOs quite often look after the IT, and it can be a bit of an afterthought. I can honestly say I've, looked after IT and it's always been a bit of an afterthought, but after this, it's actually really important to make sure, one, your internal team has got the skills and got the money and budget behind it to do, the right stuff.

Or if they haven't. Please run out and get external help and straight away. This business, we were down for a couple of days. We couldn't sell anything. We restored some systems so we could start selling, but all our records were incorrect.

The pricing was all up, up the wazoo and it probably has taken us five months. To get back to a semi stable position and we're not even stable yet. so take cyber attacks really, seriously. but, yeah, make sure you've got your IT team and kit. really secure.

[00:25:52] Sumith Dissanayake: Is it right to say that, the CFOs needs to be assessing the risk associated with the cyber crime rather than trying [00:26:00] to run the IT team? So you pretty much bringing the right people into the fixtures for them to manage it and then give them the support.

[00:26:06] Martin Gyde: what we've done at Smith and Caughey is it used to be internally performed. and so what happened is we got some experts in pretty quickly to resolve the issue. And, we are now running a, full outsource model, mainly because these guys are super experienced. they're up with the latest trends, and it might be more expensive, but as, I say, it's, totally, worth it.

yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:26] Sumith Dissanayake: That's just true. And one last question, around ESG reporting. So for especially effecting the bigger companies at the moment, but I'm sure it's going to go to the smaller companies at some point. So how it's going to help, the industry or what kind of repercussions that we can see, because of us.

Adapting the ESG reporting in the future.

[00:26:47] Martin Gyde: I, think it's gonna be really important. In New Zealand here, I was part of the biggest sort of personal care manufacturing business in New Zealand, and the, society's now demanding that we, use recycle bottles. We [00:27:00] use recycle pumps.

We use, paper, we use all the right things. We cut out all the, bad nasties in products we don't use, palm oil, all that sort of stuff is really, important, I think, for the consumer. And so it's really important for businesses too, to actually make sure. That we are doing that, and, then take it a step further.

look at your office, look at your lighting, look at the heating. How can you do that better? And I think it's really is up to everyone to make, an environmental difference. and, I think previously I probably didn't really care too much about it, but more and more now, I am taking it a bit more seriously.

I think, as leaders, we will lose sales if we don't actually meet that sort of consumer expectation. you know, and I think, the social aspect as well, looking after people doing the right thing. Where's your product being sourced from? where are your parts coming from is really, important.  

also as part of, I used to look after pharmaceutical industry, we used to do yearly audits, not only on the plants, but also on, the people there, are they being looked after? Are they being paid fairly? are they being [00:28:00] the staff welfare good. So I think as a really good business person, you have to really go outta your way and make sure all those things, slavery and all that sort of stuff's not happening and you have a moral obligation to do that right. 

[00:28:12] Sumith Dissanayake: 

So Marty, it's very insightful conversation and I got a lot I can learn from you and then of course we can go for another episode at some point. but before we wrap up, so if any of our listeners wants to get in touch with you, what would be the best way to do so. 

[00:28:25] Martin Gyde: 

Probably best you could send me an email to Martin@succeedadvisory.com. Or look up me on LinkedIn, Martin Gyde, which is GYDE, and just send me a message there. More than happy to have a, chat to anyone, if you've got a problem. Yep. If you're in New Zealand, come around, have a beer and we can talk it through.

[00:28:44] Martin Gyde: Otherwise more, we can just have a chat. And more than happy if you're a young person looking for some advice, what you need to do. Yeah, by all means, keep in touch.

[00:28:52] Sumith Dissanayake: Thank you very much. Thank you again, and thanks for being part of the Books of the Boardroom podcast.

[00:28:57] Martin Gyde: Okay. Thank you. everyone have a great [00:29:00] 2025.   

[00:29:02] Sumith Dissanayake: Thanks for joining us on this episode of the CFO Catalyst Podcast season three. If you enjoyed our discussion on CFO leadership, please subscribe on your preferred platform. When you share with fellow CFOs and business leaders, you're helping us build this community of strategic financial thinkers together, we'd love to hear your thoughts.

Connect with us on social media and join the conversation as we explore how the CFO role continues to evolve in today's dynamic business landscape. Until next time, keep innovating in your financial leadership and stay tuned for more forward-thinking discussions in our CFO Catalyst series. Join us next time. Proudly sponsored by Brisca Global with production and distribution by Disrupt X one.