Navigating the Modern CFO Role with David Hill

In this episode of the CFO Catalyst Podcast, host Sumith welcomes David Hill, CFO of Mosh. They delve into the unchanging fundamentals of business and the evolving tools and skills required for successful financial leadership. David shares his unique journey from childhood entertainer to top finance executive, discussing the importance of critical thought, communication, and problem-solving in the CFO role. They also explore the democratisation of finance, the impact of AI and digital transformation, and the need for a nimble organisational structure. 

Tune in for insights on how CFOs can stay ahead in a rapidly evolving business landscape.

Key takeaway from Sumith
What struck me most was his "rear-view mirror, front windscreen, and peripheral vision" approach to financial leadership. As he says, "CFOs of the future have to be engineering level digital savvy to navigate the businesses of the future."

David's non-linear career path has given him unique insights on bridging theory with practice - something I believe makes the best finance leaders.

Tune in this Sunday!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Business Fundamentals
• 0:33 Welcome to the CFO Catalyst Podcast
• 0:48 Balancing Professional and Personal Life
• 1:20 From Entertainer to CFO: David Hill's Journey
• 2:23 Lessons from Early Business Experiences
• 3:28 The Evolving Role of the CFO
• 6:02 Navigating Career Transitions
• 10:50 Operational vs. Number Crunching in Finance
• 17:59 Finance Transformation and Digitisation
• 21:07 Democratisation of Finance
• 25:34 Advice for Future CFOs
• 27:09 Conclusion and Farewell

Transcript

David Hill-CFO Podcast

David: [00:00:00] The fundamentals haven't changed. In business, the fundamentals remain the same. Why is the business doing what they're doing? They've gotta grow, they've gotta scale, they've gotta do in a safe manner. You've gotta be profitable. You've gotta look out for the risks. What do you need to be able to work in a business successfully?

David: Those have shifted over time, but there remain some fundamentals. So what are those? Those fundamentals for me are critical thought, being able to structure your thinking. Problem solve and communicate. 

Sumith: Welcome back to Books to the Boardroom, season three CFO Catalyst Podcast. My guest today is David Hill, the CFO of Mosh.

Sumith: David, it's great to have you on our podcast, 

David: Sumith Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure to speak to you. 

Sumith: So what, I've been busy these days, but in finance, we are always busy right now. So what's in particular? You are busy these days. 

David: What, what's not keeping me busy, I think is the better question.

David: Yeah. It's the usual, I think for a lot of [00:01:00] people. Trying to juggle a professional career and the family as well. I'm very much a family man, so I do like to dedicate my time to spending time with my kids and my wife and got a lot of work at the office too. Thankfully I'm in a, a business which is growing well and going strongly, so that keeps me occupied.

Sumith: That's wonderful. And you are a professional juggler anyway, right? You know, at early career. So you were, an entertainer. 

David: Yeah. So people will wonder where that comes from. Yes. I was, one of the questions you asked me before we actually started our interview was, have you got any anecdotes or stories about before your professional career and Buzz was?

David: Yes. I was a, I was an entertainer. It started out as a childhood entertainer where I learned to juggle and ride a unicycle and walk and stilts and twist balloons, et cetera. And that was my university job. So between lectures, I would be doing kids parties, and that sort of expanded. I ended up doing shopping centers and.

David: Sports stadiums and all of that thing. It was, yeah, a bit of fun in those days, but it's still some skills that I, I've gotten occasionally pull out to entertain people. [00:02:00] 

Sumith: Yeah. That's very interesting. My, the first time I come across someone coming from that kind of background and now in a top seat of finance as well, that's a very unique situation.

David: It's not a linear progression from an entertainer to A CFO. 

Sumith: Yeah. But I'm sure there are some benefits for that, like. From where you come from. So how did that experience shape your confidence or creativity in business? 

David: It's a good question actually. And I would say that there's two things that just that university job really instilled in me as a formative memory.

David: So the first is that it was actually my first foreign to business in my own right, and I didn't realize it at the time. Running your own little gig like that teaches you things about. Customer service and pricing policies and operational impacts that you may have by simple things like turning up a time or doing a great job or getting customer feedback.

David: So all of those little snippets, which you look back now and was somewhat of an informal setting, they on [00:03:00] memories that that's stick with you and certainly helped me in today when I may not refer to it every day, but it certainly helps me to think back and put myself in a customer's shoes. The second thing that I, I think it taught me, and you alluded to it earlier, is confidence.

David: Being out there, performing in public, speaking to individuals, backing yourself. It does help you to have confidence in one-on-one settings, but also when you're talking to a much larger audience. This podcast is a great example. 

Sumith: No, it's interesting you mentioned about the customer service. 'cause when CFOs who come through the chartered background or in the finance career start to finish.

Sumith: I think we, we already touched that aspect. If you can do it early in your career, I think it's gotta help you shape into a better at some point. Because now CPO's job has been transformed to A to ICEO, like a business partner in role, which needs a lot of customer service and stakeholder management. Then the data and finance, I 

David: absolutely agree with that statement.

David: I think. One of the leaps that I saw in my own career was when I [00:04:00] moved away from an advisory or consulting environment, which I did for the first 10 to almost 15 years of my career, and I moved more into the corporate space and by corporate there. Some of it was still in a BU functional aspect, but there was a lot more operational involvement in the day-to-day, and that was where it really struck home for me, how what a finance function does, what A CFO does.

David: How the commerciality ties with the practicality because I think as an advisor, and I can't generalize for the industry, but certainly as myself, you one step removed and you can come up with great ideas and make great recommendations, but you don't always see the full impact as it flows down the value chain.

David: That's true, and I'm far more appreciative of in my own thoughts when other people have ideas of what they're wanting to do, being able to dissect it into the financial components and the operational components, because those both have their theory and their practical [00:05:00] implications. 

Sumith: So I couldn't agree more because even in my case, I was a typical finance trained person.

Sumith: When I come to Australia back in the days, like in 2008. While I was in my career, like I got an opportunity to run a restaurant. I bought a restaurant from one of the franchise chain that I hated, the finance and that's the opportunity, gave me that confidence even to do this podcast. I think it's coming pretty much an outcome of what I think at that time because that's the sort of different arena that you have paying for because this is not something that you get in the back office situation.

Sumith: So it having that experience helps you shape into something better. Absolute. Or shaping something more impactful. 

David: Absolutely. I think it can only do one benefit by doing that. Yeah. It gives you broader experience. It makes you a well-rounded person. It makes you a well-rounded 

Sumith: professional. That's true.

Sumith: And it's, it's funny how you got into finance as well. So you thought it is a safe career and pay the B. So tell me, I'll did that. 

David: I'm not going to lie to you or any of the [00:06:00] listeners when I say I had this long, passionate desire to move into the world of finance and accounting. Because it's simply not true.

David: Much of my professional career has been shaped by, at times just saying yes and following various opportunities rather than it being a well curated and trodden path, which is navigating with steps that I've planned in advance. How did I come into finance or how did I come into the world of accounting?

David: It was really pushed in a way post school not fully understanding or. Have a certain desire to move in one direction or another. It did seem like the safe career at the time when I was growing up in South Africa. And yeah, I sort of got nudged into that direction at university and I went through the motions.

David: I was a great student at school and at university. I was terrible. I didn't enjoy accounting. I didn't really enjoy the auditing side, but I persevered. I had a love of mathematics and a love of statistics, but I was never passionate about the accounting side. But I [00:07:00] persevered and like I got my ca designation.

David: And it was only really once I started working and understanding that what we spoke about previously where the practical meets the theory, and I could really see what an impact of was that when I did something, I could see what the impact was. That for me was when I started to enjoy what I was doing.

Sumith: That's interesting because some people just follow the finance for the sheko following and then become CFO some finance designation next to them, but. I think they're not climbing the ladder from a certain point because they don't have that passion that you have or the realization about the thing that you can do with it.

Sumith: So I think that's why you have more successful C ffo today versus someone just go in the accounting, they not passionate about it because of the investment that you have made. They stay in it. San cost concept that we always look at it that way, right? Because of the highest sunk cost. So you stay in it, but you're not growing into the next [00:08:00] level.

Sumith: I do agree with that, 

David: and that's part and reason why my CV is very non-linear. And historically, when I've spoken to the likes of recruits or people that are chatting to me around work roles, they look at my CV and there's big questions about why I did one move to another move. 'cause it, it doesn't appear coherent in nature and to a degree, it's not necessarily coherent, but each move I've made through my career is really driven by a, the opportunity arising.

David: B my one. Once I've dug under the surface, I identifying that the opportunity is actually interesting. Sometimes I do a 90 degree turn on. I go do something else for a while and that's why I've moved. I started my career in one of the big four hours with K-P-M-G-I. Then did that for many years and then I moved totally outta that to management consulting with BCG.

David: And people said, why did you do that? I've done enough of the finance side of things. I wanted to see what the theory of managing running business was, and it was exceptional grounding at BCG. And it gave me [00:09:00] two sides of the story. And once I'd done my time with that, then I felt it was time to go into the corporate world and I got an opportunity there.

David: And then from the corporate world then. Something happened and I ended up doing a another role in the corporate world. So nothing was necessarily by design, but each of those have given me such good life experiences and it's, to me, that's more about how I see success. It's less about the title of CFO, it's more about what have I learned in the role, what drives me?

David: Am I still interested by the problems I'm trying to solve? And as soon as the answer to those become more of a no than a yes, then it's time for me to look for. New challenges. 

Sumith: Demonstrate your character right end of the day, like the, it's, easy for the employer or the interviewers to find out like who your character is.

Sumith: Do you want someone play safe or do you want someone energetic? Can always look for the opportunities and take the challenge. 

David: And the other thing that I, I have notes over time, I do quite enjoy is [00:10:00] learning about new problems, learning about new industries, wrapping your head around the way that different things work.

David: My mind works a little bit like an engineer in that problem solving perspective. It's also great to to keep you on your toes, particularly when there's so many smart young people coming through the industry. I feel like I can learn so much from them rather than them learning from me. 

Sumith: This is the rigid that we have, right?

Sumith: Because of the seniority. We think that we know everything and the others states to just follow us because we have more experience than anyone is. 

David: That's just not true. 

Sumith: Yeah. I love your approach. My, especially the millions and the Gen Z and all these final of people. They're definitely wired. We need to learn a lot from them to make sure that we have that harmonization in the business or in the success for them and for our success as well.

Sumith: And I know that you are more, even though you are A CFO, the people's perception when you're A CFO, you do a lot of number crunching work, but you are more into the operational side of the finance. So if you can explain the difference between these two elements in finance, [00:11:00] like operational aspects and the number crunching elements or the reporting element.

Sumith: That could help some people to understand why you are focusing more on the population fight. 

David: Can we just clarify something there? Because I think when you say the number crunching aspect versus the operational these days, it's virtually impossible to separate the two because the one drives the other.

David: And so I tend to look at it more in a holistic view of what a modern CFO should be for the business. I'm generally trying to oversimplify everything, so forgive me as I go through this, but I always think about it as looking in the rear view mirror versus looking out. At the front of the car. And then the third one is what's in your peripheral vision.

David: So the rear view mirror is what you've done behind you, and that's very much the reporting and the legislative stuff. So your monthly accounts, your annual accounts, your tax submissions, all that regulatory type stuff, that's the rear view mirror. And you've gotta get those, right, because without that, you don't really know where you've come from and how you've done.

David: And it in some way guides the journey that you're on. The other part of it is what [00:12:00] is in front of you now. Looking forward. That is where a good CFO really drives value for the business because that is navigating what's in front of you. It's not just about being able to budget or forecast appropriately, but being able to read the tea leaves of where the industry is moving or where the market is moving, or how macroeconomic factors are impacting your business, et cetera.

David: All of that together helps you drive the metaphorical car that we're talking about and then. The third part of it for me is what's in upper referral vision, and this is more a bit of a strategic lens where you need to understand what's going on in the macro environment, what your competitors are doing, and what the rest of the business is doing, because all of those things together make you a well-rounded CFO, and that's where you need to contribute to the business.

David: So they all take number crunchy. They all take lateral thinking. They all take the ability to structure your thoughts to communicate that messaging, right? It's just the lens that you [00:13:00] apply to which data set you're looking at, 

Sumith: you connected dots really well. So basically, yeah, number hunt is part of it, but it's, it's the holistically we have to do everything.

Sumith: Plus looking after our stakeholders internally and externally as well. Numbers is our language, so we have some correct people come to us because no one else can do it. It's us to for to put them in the right order to present it nicely. For decision making and for the compliance purposes. 

David: Correct.

David: Correct. You've actually mentioned something there, which I'd like to challenge you on because you said something there that they come to us as CFO because nobody else can do it. Yeah. I think that is something which is genuinely changing. Industry, you're right, because with more information being readily available to more people, there's definitely, in the business that I've been involved in there, there is definitely a lens that people have and they're aware of what the commerciality of what they're doing, how it impacts their own function and the rest of the business.

David: I think people these days are far more aware of the [00:14:00] top line, the bottom line, how their actions impact the business from a financial perspective even in my own business, I'm trying to give more financial access to the various function leads so that they can drive their own destiny. They have control over their own purse to a degree, and they have ownership over that.

David: If everything needs to default back to the finance functional to the CFO, that in many ways can slow down the business. I think we do need to be it at times the voice of reason. We've gotta pull people back at times, but we can't. Constrain the business that they can't move forward, or you become a, you become a bottleneck.

Sumith: You're right. We had the solar authority before, but we don't have the solar authority anymore. But for the only, for the certain amount of data, we have the solar authority still, but far from that lot of data out there, lot of information out there for people to use and for them to make use of the data, to make decisions.

David: And the reverse is true too, Simon, because from a finance function perspective, I'm seeing a lot more operational data, which comes into being. Gone are [00:15:00] the days where I think you, you take the numbers that you've seen for the last 12 months and you roll them forward by applying a 5% uplift. Now, when you're looking in that forward view, which I spoke about earlier, you've gotta be building in the macroeconomic variables that impact your business.

David: You've gotta be building in detailed variables about the operations of your business because they can have big swings in what impact your margins or your revenue drivers. So all of those operational aspects and those data points are feeding. Up to finance and the corollary is true where the finance data only needs to feed back to the operational ticket.

Sumith: True. You had to build a story and then tell them story through the numbers. And you believe people learn from experience or by doing it. So how do the finance education could better prepare people for them to make proper decisions? 

David: What do you refer to? There is the way I learn. I said to you before we start a call, the way that I found I learn best is.

David: Not necessarily by reading or listening, but by actually doing, bumping my head a few times and [00:16:00] working out what's right. But that doesn't work for everybody. So I think there, there's gotta be a reasonable effort made by whoever it is, and in this case, it's finance. Trying to teach others about what their expectations are and how to do it from a monetary perspective.

David: You've gotta give people enough information and in enough formats so that they can understand it in their own right. Set very clear boundaries and then get that feedback going. It's not gonna happen overnight, but it's, I think it's important to get right because with, without that, it goes back to the point where finance becomes a bottleneck and you don't meet the expectations of your teams and they don't meet yours.

David: But you also can't expect it to happen instantaneously because there is a learning curve associated with all of this. 

Sumith: When I was in the finance role in my previous career, so one of the challenges to manage key between the teams, how to best communicate to them because especially with the marketing and sales team, they're the biggest qualtric in the finance.

Sumith: Always try to push out something and they don't understand or they don't take it in the way [00:17:00] that we proceed. So we got a responsibility to make sure that they, to print the data in the right way so that we are all on the same page. 

David: There's so many decisions that one function makes, which impacts so many other functions.

David: The example that you gave is great, right? If you think about a marketing team, the decisions that a marketing team makes doesn't just impact them. It impacts finance because clearly there's a spend associated with it. There's a return on investment associated with it, but it also impacts the sides of the business, like product development.

David: So what they're pushing is product ready to actually deliver on that. It pushes things like. Supply chain and other operational aspects of the business. It's that full lifecycle way of thinking, again, which becomes so critical for the modern organization to be able to effectively manage. 

Sumith: Couldn't agree more.

Sumith: I'm gonna take a bit of a segue now to one of my favorite topics. That's the finance transformation. So you say it is mandatory, but it varies for different businesses. [00:18:00] So what's the biggest misconception companies have about the pina transformation? 

David: What's the biggest misconception? I think finance, transformation, finance, digitization, they all mean different things for different people.

David: Because if you wanna take the two bookends of what this could possibly look like, you go back, I dunno, 50 to a hundred years, and you're talking paper ledgers and information sits with one person, right? That's the worst bookend. And you go to the other bookend where we either are now or in the not too distant future where there's.

David: Serious AI overlay technology and you run an ultra lean finance function with information that's readily available to everybody in the business, right? So I think where you are on that journey is important, but before you can even decide that, you've gotta decide where you want to be and what you designing for as an outcome.

David: Otherwise, you're just doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff. You don't really have a journey in mind. So I think for me, there's. [00:19:00] As there has been for many years, there's a lot of buzzwords around transformation. Digitization, automation. AI is the new buzzword, right? And it's got genuine value.

David: I do believe it's got genuine value, but it has a playback to the past where we've heard all these other buzzwords and you can just see what's gonna happen with AI short, certainly in the short term, but we've got to embrace it. I don't think we have, we don't have a choice to roll the clock back. But again, it goes, do people actually understand what they want, what they're trying to build?

David: Because without that, I don't think you can continue on that journey, because each of the stepping stones and the building blocks are pretty fundamental. So you've gotta have that end state in mind as to what you're trying to achieve. Before you can talk about AI integration and digitization and all those other things.

Sumith: I love what you said about that. Identifying where you are. That's the first thing that you need to do about this particular topic. And then map the plan, but at the SI at the same time. Have the end in mind, which is important for us as well. And without doing it for [00:20:00] the shakeup, doing, because this is the buzz word, like everyone's talking about it, and you get the extra push from the market internally and externally to do something about it.

Sumith: Sometimes you don't need it because you know where you are. It's pretty much doing the job for the size and the scale, so the size and the requirement of the business. But we don't need to just in build something that we engineer the process for just because of the pressure. 

David: I think the fundamentals always stay the same.

David: So what are you trying to achieve? You're trying to, you're trying to grow, you're trying to continue scaling, and you're trying to do that in the most efficient manner possible. And each time a new technology comes to market, you need to look at it, embrace it, see how it fits in, and if it works for you, then bring a report.

David: It's not one size fits all. 

Sumith: Great advice. Great advice. I want to talk about one other topic that I saw that was like pretty cashy for me. Yeah. So you talk about the democratization of finance. So I think it's better for us [00:21:00] to give a bit of a definition or explain a little bit before we go deeper into that, if you can tell me what it is and how it's going to impact the business.

David: So democratization of finance goes back to one of the earlier topics we spoke about where it's essentially giving more information to more people. Across the business. So where I've seen this play out is over say the last 20 to 25 years. When I started business, you know, first started working, it was non democratized information.

David: The internet had only been around for a few years. I came from sa, which was a few years back. Laptops had just started to come out. So we were very early on in the technological advancement. There was very little readily available information and you had to work hard to go and find it. And once you had it, it was somewhat limited in what you could find, and then you had to sort it.

David: Now, as information has been become more readily available, [00:22:00] and this is where things like digitization fits in, right? There's more information, more data. People are drowning in data these days that has been spread far and wide, and that's true outside your own business. I'm just gonna search anything on the internet.

David: And it's true within your business, there's so much, so many of these data pools that you now have access to. You're collecting data on every point, and that data is democratized, meaning that there are a lot of people that can have readily available information at their fingertips. Now, where I see the next wave coming, this is where the power of AI for me will become apparent is.

David: Previously when we've had that information, it takes a lot of time and effort and thought from often a human interface to sort through that and come up with a logical answer. AI can do that almost instantaneously if you point it in the right direction. So we've gone from having no readily available information to having huge [00:23:00] amounts of really available data that we're drowning in to now where AI for me is going to create.

David: On demand curated information that's relevant to you. It's that next phase of, let's call it democracy for me, of information where it comes of age, and what does that mean? Businesses will now have information much quicker and hopefully better, richer information that they can make decisions on. So it'll speed up the rate of change People feel already.

David: There's so much change happening and it's so quick, it's gonna happen faster. So as a business, you've gotta remain agile. You've gotta embrace this technology. Otherwise you're gonna be left behind and you are going to have that information very quickly. But simultaneously, you are also gonna have to change the structure of your organizations.

David: Now why? Because in my eyes, with things that are rapidly changing, you need a nimble organizational structure. 'cause if the people and the bricks and the mortar and the technology doesn't keep up with all the decisions, [00:24:00] it's great that you've got AI overlays for everything else, but the rest of the business is not gonna keep up.

David: So you've gotta take everybody along for that journey. 

Sumith: Yeah, no, that's a great point. Nimble of the organization, because now it's too hard for us to maintain the hierarchies because information's democratized and is available to everyone. So now it's a matter of the C four to transform themselves to become that.

Sumith: Facilitator than the gatekeeper, I would say, 

David: but then in its own right brings interesting challenges as the CFO. Often have a retaught that I'm employed to be the negative person in the business, or I'm employed to be the one that holds people back from the hopes and dreams, which is not necessarily true, but it's a bit of tongue cheek.

David: But I think I, I do see the risk associated with that. There's huge opportunity, but the risks are there, but they change. With all that readily available information, one of the most obvious risks is who gets their hands on it? What do they do with that information? So cybersecurity has been critical in previous years, right?

David: It's gonna be [00:25:00] exponentially more critical that we safeguard what we have because it's way too easy for somebody now to download a database from their business and load that onto an AI tool, which then it gets pushed out into the ether. People start getting access to that. 

Sumith: Yeah, it's true. So the challenges have shifted to very different challenges, what we had 10 years ago.

Sumith: What do you think going forward or moving forward, but CFOs like if someone's starting their accounting career now, so if they're going to better fit into a CFO profile in 10 years, what sort of advice do you have for them? 

David: It's a good question. I still think I'd need to take my own advice, right? Because hopefully I'm still around in 10 years and I'm still in business.

David: If I had to give somebody advice, now I would say the fundamentals haven't changed. In business, the fundamentals remain the same. Why is the business doing what they're doing? They've gotta grow, they've gotta scale, they've gotta do in a safe manner. You've gotta be profitable, you've gotta look out for the risks.

David: [00:26:00] What do you need to be able to work in a business successfully? Those have shifted over time, but there remain some fundamentals. So what are those? Those fundamentals for me are. Critical thought, being able to structure your thinking, problem, solve, and communicate. What has changed, I think, is how you do that.

David: The tools at your disposal are the things that are changing rapidly. So it's an expansion, I think, of the C F's toolkit, which will become more useful. So the CFOs of the future have to be. Tech savvy, digital savvy, like they've gotta be a engineering level digital savvy now to be able to navigate the businesses of the future.

David: Because if you don't understand the risks of your own business and all businesses are moving to a way more digital, technical nature, if you don't understand those, you've missed the vote. 

Sumith: That's a wonderful thought and I think we will wrap up with that. [00:27:00] Maya's a great advice for young and upcoming accounting professionals.

Sumith: Thank you very much, David for being on our podcast. 

David: Thank you, Sumith I really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me. 

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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.

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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 [00:28:00] one.