.jpg)
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
From Backpacking to Boardrooms: A CFO's Journey with Christina Temme
Leadership Insights: Navigating the Modern CFO Role with Christina Temme
In this episode of the Books to the Boardroom CFO Catalyst podcast, we speak with Christina Temme, CFO at AC3 in Sydney. Christina shares her extensive experience in finance, legal, and compliance, discussing the evolving scope of the CFO role and the importance of logic, decision-making, and embracing change.
She highlights her journey through a solo backpacking adventure, her passion for mathematics, and her strategies for managing teams and implementing change. Christina also delves into critical issues like digital and finance transformation, ESG requirements, and offers valuable advice for young finance professionals.
Thanks for tuning in to Books to the Boardroom! If you enjoyed today's episode, take your leadership journey further:
🎧 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
🔔 Never miss an episode—follow us on LinkedIn and your favourite podcast platform
📱 Share your takeaways with #CFOCatalyst
Are you a CFO with insights to share or know someone who is? We're always looking for financial leaders to join us on the show—reach out at hello@ctcnow.co to discuss featuring your expertise on a future episode.
Until next week, keep reading, keep listening!
Christina: [00:00:00] As long as you've followed logic. There are different paths of logic, but as long as someone come, if someone comes back and questions you, you can go, here's the thought process that I went through and yep, oops. I might have taken a slight DT two to the left when I should have gone. Right? But there was some logic behind it.
Christina: I didn't just pull it out of thin air. I didn't make a decision purely within an emotional lens. I actually bought in everything that I knew to that scenario, and I was able to come to a conclusion. I thought was reasonable, and you gotta meet and go.
Sumith: Welcome back to the Books to the Boardroom, season three CFO Catalyst podcast.
Sumith: Today I have very special guest coming from Sydney. This is a Sydney slider. Today my guest is Christina Tammy. Chris is the CFO at AC three in Sydney. Chris, welcome to the podcast.
Christina: Thank you very much. It's lovely to be here.
Sumith: Wonderful. So straight. Privilege for me to have a conversation with you about what's happening in the CFO world.
Sumith: And [00:01:00] before we start our technical conversation, I would like to start with your current role. A C3. So what does a C3 do and what does your typical day looks like as A CFO?
Christina: Yeah, sure. I'm the CFO there at a C3 we do it managed services, and that is a range of things. It's a very broad term these days, of course, but we have a consulting arm.
Christina: We actually do managed services, so we can do that in cyber. We can host. We can look at infrastructure, all sorts of stuff. It depends what you wanna do. We've got data centers and we've got a PMO. So we've got, and we do resell. And with AWS, Azure procurement, you name it. If it's in your IT space, we can help you predominantly.
Christina: So
Sumith: yes, home, a
Christina: day-to-day for me looks very mixed. I have three key parts within my role. It's not just finance. So I have finance, I have legal, and I have compliance.
Sumith: You've got a broader score past the C four.
Christina: Quite broad, and I'm certainly not a lawyer [00:02:00] or a compliance expert. I was gonna ask you
Sumith: would be one of your biggest challenges as A CFO to work with lawyers and understanding exactly where they want to go.
Christina: Yes. The trick is to hire a good lawyer yourself. So they teach me, and I have found that that's been quite invaluable. The people that you work with, it doesn't matter that they're part of your team, they have to think about what can you learn from others? And I find that is very much the case with my compliance team and also my legal team.
Christina: You obviously have transferable skills and you've got a bit of logic, and you've got some things you might've looked at before. And I think your ability to ask good questions where you're not the subject matter expert. Is really the way to make sure that you can get the best out of the team and you can get the best outcome for the business as well.
Sumith: Completely agree, Chris. And also now the CFOs now are getting trained as the said second in command for the CEO. Right. And our scope has been born and now beyond the finance department. So I remember we were like 10, 15 years ago, so we were only confined ourselves to the finance [00:03:00] department, but now we have to pretty much run the whole show.
Christina: Well, we have to certainly act as a partner and it's not a very elegant saying, but you have to know how the sausage is made. That's very much, I think, where finance has landed. It's not just about the receiver of the data at the end of the train line. It is making sure you understand the train's journey on the way to get there.
Sumith: That's the whole reason, like we are still valid in this AI era instead of still the technology automation. You get all these different things, but still. We can't, we serve our position as a CA first because our scope has broadened. Now it needs more human skills than the technical skills to run that.
Christina: Yes, I guess you're right. We have managed to make things faster and easier and more streamlined with technology, but that doesn't take away the ability to problem solve because at the end of the day, there is still a stack of problems that you need a human to facilitate solving, not just the people challenges.
Christina: Also the process challenges
Sumith: and Chris like experience [00:04:00] has always helped us to shape our career. Right. And I got a really, uh, good example here that you put in your notes saying that you touched, you're totally out of your character. So I'm referring to you went on solo backpack in adventure in Europe.
Christina: I did.
Christina: But you know, I think so many Australians went and did that in their twenties. I was not alone in that. And it was interesting. Your question I think was something around what's something unusual or interesting or that that's been unique for you. And I wouldn't say that it's been unique. I've got nothing on that.
Christina: But it was defining for me, I think, and maybe a number of finance people will resonate with this. I'm a very structured person. I like order. I like structure, I like planning. I like to be able to tick off my to-do list. I like to know what's going on. I'm not great with ambiguity and for me in my twenties, going and backpacking solo through Europe, I mean, it wasn't like I did anything crazy, but.
Christina: I did it on my own. And hilariously, I wasn't worried about getting robbed or something really bad happening to me. I was more worried that I might have to [00:05:00] eat dinner on my own. Goodness gracious. I loved that. I loved every part of that three months. It didn't matter if I missed the bus. It didn't matter if I missed the plane.
Christina: It didn't matter if I didn't have accommodation booked. And for me, that was quite liberating because I was not, that wasn't my comfort zone. If I decided I liked somewhere that I was staying, I would stay an extra couple of days and I could just get the next bus to wherever. But I did find myself in a little pickle on the way to the Czech Republic.
Christina: I thought I had all of the right documentation, I had all the things. I thought I had everything, and I was missing the address of the place that I had, that I was staying. And that was quite an important thing. Apparently, I, as a solo female traveler wick, my backpack is stand out, right? I'm also blonde, so fair skin, blonde blue eyes.
Christina: So I stood out a little bit and. Two in the morning, some guard, train guard comes through the train and hauls me out of my seat and tells me to bring my passport and my thing. So of course you don't leave your [00:06:00] backpack. So I take the whole thing and he basically bribed me, said, if you don't pay me money, your document's not valid.
Christina: I'm gonna boot you off the train. And it was towards the end of my trip, so at least I think I only had a hundred Aussie bucks left, so I was like, sure, take all my money. It's all I've got. And secretly going, hi, you only only got a hundred dollars out of me. But even that was an experience that you've gotta, you really gotta think on your feet.
Christina: You've gotta think about the environment that you're in. At the end of the day, I did not wanna be booted off the train at two in the morning. I don't know where. I just had to pay him and hope that he didn't do anything else to me
Sumith: here to work with the opportunities, circumstances. So you navigate through it
Christina: and I ended up at the Czech Republic and had a great time, drank lots of beer.
Sumith: Wonderful. Good. Great to hear that ated in that way.
Christina: Yes, it was a good outcome. In the end. I was just a hundred dollars poorer.
Sumith: I think Kim, you, I use a really good word out there. Say liberating. I think where we are Cs, which are always speed, that sometimes we are thinking too much. We are not [00:07:00] free to make decisions.
Sumith: We got too much in our head and all that. So I think that experience probably helps you in now that goes at, and then of course focus on what is more important. Is that the right kind of a thing for me to say?
Christina: Yes, I think so. But also it's about trusting your instincts when you're in a senior leadership role.
Christina: It doesn't matter whether you are a CEO, A CFO, A gm. You're not always going to have all of the information in order to make the perfect decision. It doesn't exist, right? So it is all about bringing all the pieces of information that you know together, following my old, an old SIFO that I worked for, taught me this 'cause he's the most logical human I've ever worked with or for.
Christina: And he said, as long as you've followed logic. There are different paths of logic, but as long as someone come, if someone comes back and questions you, you can go, here's the thought process that I went through and yep, oops. I might have taken a slight detour to the left when I should have gone. Right? But there was some logic behind it.
Christina: I didn't just pull it out of thin air. I didn't make a decision [00:08:00] purely within an emotional lens. I actually bought in everything that I knew to that scenario, and I was able to come to a conclusion that I thought was reasonable, and you gotta meet and go.
Sumith: True. Hence why we are still relevant, right? So if all the information is available, they, I could make a better decision that he can make.
Sumith: Yeah. Since it's always incomplete. So someone has to use their personal judgment and experience to
Christina: Yes.
Sumith: Make a decision.
Christina: And I think as you are coming up through your career, that's actually a key thing to learn, is to trust your judgment. And again, maybe I'm stereotyping a little bit, pulling in how I built.
Christina: Is, it's not always easy to do that. You know, there are a number of us who are probably permission seekers rather than forgiveness askers. And for me it's been definitely a journey to ensure that I fall more on the ask for forgiveness. 'cause I'm a natural seeker of permission. So it is about challenging your own norms and making sure that you are doing the things that make you uncomfortable.
Christina: You've gotta be [00:09:00] comfortable being uncomfortable. That's life, right? Yes. So it's how you turn up and you and you work with that on a daily basis and what you do with that within your role.
Sumith: And so your journey to accounting happened because you had with a strong passion. For Matt, I think it's good for us to tell our audience your story of how you fall into the accounting.
Christina: Okay. No judgment. Don't judge me here. You know, people say, oh, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I stumbled into this and I was good at this subject. I liked maths from when I was really little. My mum was a bookkeeper, my grandmother was a bookkeeper. I had cousins who were bookkeepers. It's probably just in my blood.
Christina: And I knew very early on before I even started high school that this is what I wanted to. So adding to that, I did have a couple of absolutely fabulous maths teachers and they made it fun and I guess for me was naturally the way my brain worked anyway, very logically, and I like patterns. So it was just an extension of that.
Christina: They fed off something that I already [00:10:00] had there, but they certainly, both in primary school and in high school, they made a massive difference as to cementing that thing that I already realized that I liked.
Sumith: That's wonderful. And also, so I think at your early stage in the career, so trying to see the gray spot in finance and trying to sort of, you know.
Christina: Yeah. Again, if you come back to, you know how you naturally built, what are you building? Blocks, I'm, you know, I'm black and white. You know, there was right and wrong and that's why I liked maths. And I quickly learned that the life is gray. It's not black and white at all. And even though finance and accounting is a very logically based discipline, it's still a lot of gray in there.
Christina: And then as you do less technical work. You move more into leading a team, or you more move more into being an advisor within your organization for various people, you learn that there's almost nothing gray. And so how do you become comfortable with the ambiguity? I. As I said before, [00:11:00] coming back to your making a judgment call and trusting your gut and bringing in your transferred knowledge in order to come to a logical conclusion.
Sumith: That's an interesting point that we say that there's gray areas, but we never go deep and find out that how you pertained to that gray. I. We as the youngest young account, has no understanding the standards and know that structured learning, we are expecting the same thing. And it's all about negotiation.
Sumith: It's all about, we come to a concern that, okay, we know this is the way to go, but here because of the diplomacy that you have to show to make things happen, end of the day, you can't just hit the wall. Right? So you have to somehow get us moving. So that way you definitely see the gray and then make judgment ade
Christina: Exactly right.
Sumith: That's the good thing for the young, young upcoming accountants and the finance professionals to understand because I also had that problem in my early career trying to find that black and white, but never found it.
Christina: I'll tell you a story. My very first job, I won't mention where I worked, was in a very small chartered accounting firm, [00:12:00] and the gentleman who owned it came to me with a shoebox of receipts.
Christina: I was like 21, and he said, so I've got this bill mate. He needs to get a loan, but he doesn't wanna pay any tax. Can you please put together some financial statements? And even I knew that those two things don't go together, right? You, you can't show that your business is profitable and liquid for a bank and pay no tax.
Christina: And then one of the lovely senior accountants who's been working with them for a long time, I went to her and I said, what do I do? She says, all right, honey, I'll visit you in jail with a nail file. It's fine. So, you know, what do you do there? You, you know, it's a very tricky situation and that was sort of straight outta the block.
Sumith: I can relate to. I have been through many times in many occasions what you were discussing or talking about, but you know, end of the day sometimes you had to make a call. So whether you want to get involved or not, then there's a limitation within, and this, I think some people went straight into that and then got caught.
Christina: Yes.
Sumith: Wasted. So you as the professionals, you would make the call. [00:13:00]
Christina: You do, and you know, and that's where you, where you are starting out your career. You don't always have to make those decisions on your own. It is about the network and people that you trust and mentors that you choose, and people that you bring into your inner circle to help you, guide you with the, with those types of things.
Christina: It's not easy.
Sumith: That's a great advice. Yeah, of course. We sometimes we're trying to make decision on our own, rather, you know how it's easier than before. All connected to network, right? You can get the experience from someone who has been through the exactly the same experience with this. And Chris, you have managed number of the shared services or corporate services.
Sumith: So in corporate services, I think we had this conversation before we start recording that finance only gets the limit resources, but the work is always increasing, always the volume's going up and always something new comes up. So how do you navigate through these challenges of you optimize your resources and still cope off with the, you know, extra workload
Christina: work as a team?
Christina: That's the biggest thing, right? And I think it can, again, it can be difficult at times if you're not great at. [00:14:00] Delegating's a little bit of a, it's the word, but it, it sort of suggests that you, but it, it sort of suggests that you tell someone what to do. I like to think of it more as by delegating, I'm offering an opportunity for someone else to learn something, so even if they're not quite there, the amount of effort you have to put in order to get that person there.
Christina: Assuming you've chosen the right person, it's important to choose the right person to go with the right task. So assuming you've chosen the right person is massive benefits to making sure that you're all working as a team and that you don't have an uneven distribution of work. And that comes from trust.
Christina: Your team need to trust you, that you've got their best interests at heart and you're gonna look out for them and you're gonna develop them. You're gonna grow them, and you're going to look after them, and you need to trust that they're gonna hit the deadlines, that they're gonna do what you need them to do.
Christina: They understand the gravitas of it, that they're going to follow the technical rules. More importantly, they're gonna ask for help if they're not sure you are gonna check in. So I think making sure you've got really good [00:15:00] utilization of the resources that you have at hand, and if you don't have the right team, you're gonna struggle.
Christina: So it's important to have the right. Also, one of the things I mentioned, I think, and I dunno if we're gonna get to this later, we might do actually, is about transformation. So that might be a bit different. But communication lots and lots and lots of communication, I think in terms of getting everyone on the same page.
Christina: That said, you can do all of that and there can just be too much work. And when I've hit the wall, I have a pretty good work ethic and that has not always served me well for my health, to be honest. Mm-hmm. I think we can all have said that at one point or another, but I, again, I have learned it's all a journey and I've learned now what my limits are and what's okay and what's not, and what I can do for a short time, what I can do for a long time.
Christina: I think it's important to know your limits and when you reach those to make sure that you've got someone who can help you. Or give you permission almost to go, it's okay that you don't do that, or, let's have a look at him and let's decide what is important. Because [00:16:00] sometimes even as the CFO, that's not your decision to make.
Christina: It's your CEOs or it's your boards. So who are those people again, who's in your trust circle that you can be vulnerable enough with? It's not a reflection on me. I'm not failing. But the reality is we don't have enough to do all of this. So what is most important to you for your business boards? The CEO, and I think as long as you don't do that often, and on repeat, I try to go in with hey.
Christina: I could do these. I've sort of thought this might be the priority for these reasons to demonstrate that I've thought about it. I've tried to solution it. I just wanna check that I haven't missed anything that's critical for my CEO in the way that I've made that decision around my prioritization.
Sumith: That's true.
Sumith: I think you mentioned few good things out there. One is delegation. So delegation with a real purpose, like not delegation, because it's a hierarchy.
Christina: Yes. Perfectly put. Thank you.
Sumith: For the right person. That's very important as a, I mean, end of the [00:17:00] day, they're not capable of doing what we are asking them to do.
Sumith: It's not their fault. It's our fault of getting them into the something that they don't know. And also you mentioned about the communication. I think that's a very interesting phenomena because in prioritization, what I find is the communication probably the key in prioritization because what I see as the priority, probably not the user or the receiver's priority.
Sumith: But if we come to a concern somewhere, like is this the priority? Yes, this is a priority from the perspective and the receiver's perspective. Yes. So we, we can avoid those complexities.
Christina: Yeah. And we can't always assume that people above us are good communicators. Sometimes we have to help them communicate well.
Christina: Yes,
Sumith: as well. That's a very valid point.
Christina: Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Sumith: yeah. No, it's because they might go there, but other reasons, they might have different expertise for them to be at that level. Not necessarily that there's someone, but they introverted. Some of them extroverted them, are trained for communication. Some of them don't know what the real requirement [00:18:00] for it, because they pretty much got a, an opportunity to get to the next level for some way.
Sumith: We don't know what it is now.
Christina: Yeah, yeah. That's very true.
Sumith: That's an interesting point. And also I think it comes with the other thing that you probably, you have mentioned that in your notes as well, so people are resistance to change. They always say yes because we have always done it that way. So tell me how you take them on the journey, especially in the change manager.
Sumith: That's probably a bigger part in what you do right now with the acquisition mergers and you know, new productivity, how you navigate through these challenges.
Christina: Look, I don't always get it right. Again. I've done a fair bit of growth in this scenario and that has come from, I like working with people. I think people are fascinating how people tick, how you can get your relationship working with people.
Christina: And as a leader, I'm a very big believer that you have to, instead of having a vanilla style, I've gotta be all the ice cream flavors, right? There's all me at the bottom. I might start with vanilla, but then I've gotta [00:19:00] add a little bit of boys and berry to be boys and berry. Gotta add a chocolate chip to be chocolate
Sumith: chip.
Christina: So I think of that not just with my team, but with my colleagues and also the people that I report to or work with at a more senior level. It is important to take people on a journey, and I like to try to get them to have the aha themselves. So that comes from asking questions rather than telling. Now it's my preference to tell, I'll be honest, because it's quicker.
Christina: I'm very direct. I just wanna get it done. And sometimes you do need to tell, but I back it up with the why, but if I'm really trying to get someone on board with it. I try to ask questions or I try to demonstrate the value, whether it is by drawing it, whether it is by showing a p and l, whether it is by costing it out, whether it is by, uh, headcount changes, whatever it might be, to try and demonstrate the value of what you're trying to do.
Christina: I had a situation at one point in my career where someone said, oh no, we can't change that because [00:20:00] of this particular reason. And I'm like, oh, but that reason. Doesn't actually drive the outcome that they're looking for. So I went in and I said, this particular thing that we do, what do you expect the benefit of it is?
Christina: Oh, it's. But this doesn't get you X, it's just a waste. I said, so cut that out and then repurpose it over here. Oh, I get it. So it was a little bit of on a journey and I didn't have to say, Hey, don't do that because, right. So
Sumith: yeah,
Christina: it was more they came to the realization that they weren't getting the ROI that they thought by following the process that they had,
Sumith: because end of the day, like it's too hard for us to change anyone.
Sumith: They have to change themselves. So we can ate or help them to change or to absorb the new world, whether you're right. That's an interesting point. I'm taking a bit of a segue here to some other technicality in CFO challenges these days. That's is the digital transformation finance transformation. I'm sure because of [00:21:00] where you work, you got a IT background, your companies provide solutions as well.
Sumith: Do you embrace this? Finance transformation in your finance as department or the company as a whole?
Christina: It always starts with ROI. Doesn't it? The CEO wants to see the ROI. So, which is important, and you sometimes it's not easy to demonstrate that in pure dollars because you're asking for a system, for example, or a changing methodology.
Christina: Your calculations are worked out by saving people hours, but that's not. Always easy to validate or to quantify. That's where your influencing skills are really important. How can I get this person to see the value in what I'm doing? Look, digital transformation, it's been around since my career started and people older than me will say it's been around since their career started.
Christina: It just changes. The type of transformation changes and I think we're at a an era now where it's faster than it ever has been, and my kids will be in some crazy type of speed of things that the way things change. We have a significant number of [00:22:00] government customers, so it is important for us to be very security conscious more than anything.
Christina: In my previous life, I worked in a company that was a little bit freer to be a little bit more innovative and a little bit more build and fly. We'll see how it goes. We'll chuck it in, we'll give it a crack, and they worked at that pace to be honest. AC three. We need to be a little bit more cautious. We need to be very deliberate in the steps that we take, and we need to be very customer focused around that.
Christina: So if I translate that to finance transformation, I'm a big believer that you embed the concept and the idea of in continual improvement in your finance team. So any new job I've started, I start with the Oh my God list. And that is the list that. Just because you have fresh eyes doesn't mean that what was done before you was wrong.
Christina: It was probably fit for purpose, but you're coming in with fresh eyes and you don't know anything really. I came, I always go into new industries because I find that interesting. So I'm learning from scratch. And so I have lots of questions. A [00:23:00] lot of is, why do we do it that way? What's the purpose of that?
Christina: What does that report give us? How does this system work? And so you end up with a really long spreadsheet of 50, 60, a hundred things. Some little, some big, some just too big to even contemplate. You get your team to contribute to it because they will have had these ideas and not potentially not done anything with them.
Christina: And then collectively, you work out how can we tick these off? And you get to two years down the track and you might have only got through half of them, but you managed to capture them at the time that it was fresh and you had the time to be honest, to actually try to unpick some of these things. So when you embed that into your finance team, then you create a culture where they're not scared to say, Hey, this isn't working.
Christina: We could do this better. What if I got this person to help me automate that? Great. Go for it. And then when they do come up with the ideas, yes, go get that resource. Scope it out, not, oh yeah, I'll go do that for you. No, you go do it. I'm gonna scaffold you. Away you go. So you get a lot of benefits from that.
Christina: And then of [00:24:00] course, you've got your massive, big transformations that are needed at times. It depends on the size of the organization, what the strategy looks like. What that will require from a finance team or broader, whether it is just a new FP and a system you're putting in, or whether you're doing a full reorg versus for courses,
Sumith: that's wonderful.
Sumith: And the end goal is, anyway, to simplify the process. The whole architecture may be complex by the end of the day. We do that way to sort of get the simplified input from the users so that users. Don't need to worry about it. So we do the heavy lifting behind the scenes.
Christina: It's interesting. A team I worked with previously, they weren't in the finance space.
Christina: I had an operations team that's reporting to me and they were outside Australia. And for them the idea of automation culturally was incredibly scary because the only thing they saw was it, well, how will I add value now if I don't move this piece of paper from point A to point B and put some pen on it in the middle?
Christina: And it initially, it blew my mind. That's immediately where they went to, because for my mind it was like, we are gonna get you to do all these other [00:25:00] fun things that add far more value. It wasn't necessarily about reducing head count, it was about ROI and it was about consistency of process from one country to another where the outcome required was the same.
Christina: So it was really interesting. Different people think about process improvement or transformation with a different lens.
Sumith: Yeah, it's true what you said about the overseas, like the outsourcing offshoring, sometimes we do it for the wrong purpose. Maybe the the imminent cost benefit. That's probably the should be the least thing or the last thing that you should consider.
Sumith: But there should be other stuff that you know to do. Why you do that is for the continuity light park, you said the innovative place or sort of get new talents. So there's so many other reasons. There are more. Bigger than the cost saving that you get. Absolutely right. And I think now in our finance world, now, the new requirement has come in from the ESG perspective.
Sumith: So it's ESG is mandatory for the large businesses now, but it's going to come to the small businesses like stage three. So how can the CEO [00:26:00] get themselves ready? So especially the CAFOs, not in the large ones, but the semi sector because it's gonna hit them at some point. So how do they should go and get some knowledge or explore and what are your thoughts around this?
Christina: Well, of course you actually have to make sure you understand the requirement, and I think a number of organizations are probably already doing stuff that feeds into it, right? So step one is a gap analysis. What do we need to do and what do we have? Because it's not about reinventing the wheel in most cases.
Christina: I think it's going to be some tweaks. And then some things are gonna be some big gaps. So how do you fill those big gaps? And again, if you've got a team, bring everyone on the journey. I think as well, prepping the CEO or the board. For what is required. You can't lob it over the fence. When you've gotta have the report done and have all of your compliance done in a month, that's not going to work.
Christina: You've really gotta have a bit of a timeline and give it a project, right? It can't just be done piecemeal last minute. Gotta really [00:27:00] approach it in a structured manner so that you can easily identify the gaps. Gaps and away we go.
Sumith: Chris, what's your best advice for a young and upcoming financial professionals?
Sumith: They're going into an era like what you alluded before, like into a world that we don't know what it is and it's gotta be very fast paced. So what's your advice for them? What should they, they should do now or think about doing for them to be best fitting into the world that we are sort of anticipating?
Christina: Don't assume you know everything. Lean on the people that you work with because. You'll be surprised where you get good advice from. It's not always necessarily who you think. So we are in a, a situation now where we've got a lot of remote working and that's being paired back a fair bit by a number of large organizations.
Christina: But you know, the old water cooler conversations are still really important. I think it's important to get yourself a medal, and that might feel a little bit scary, but put yourself out there if there's [00:28:00] someone that you've met in some capacity that you think. Could offer some value and some help to you ask.
Christina: All they're gonna say is no. And most likely they're gonna feel quite chuffed that you think enough of them to have asked. And it doesn't matter that you haven't mentored before or you haven't been a mentee before. Figure it out as you go. It's all about making it work for you. So I think that's step one.
Christina: You are not on the journey on your own. If you have a choice, choose a really good boss. It sounds a bit silly, but when you are interviewing, it's not just you. That is being interviewed. It is a two-way interview, right? That human that you're gonna work with, that you're entrusting the next part of your career to not just your immediate manager, but you're a manager.
Christina: Above that, they're gonna influence you the next bit of your journey. So are they people that you want to influence the next bit of your journey? Do they have the same values or enough of the same values? Do they care about you and your career and how you progress and what you get exposure to? All of those things [00:29:00] are really important.
Christina: So when you are actually going in those interviews, ask the questions of the people who are gonna manage you. You know, I think that's important. I also think putting your hand up. Putting your hand up to do things. Don't be afraid to ask to be involved. Don't wait to be asked. Managers are humans. They're not always gonna get it right.
Christina: They're not always gonna think, oh, this person would be great to help me with this. So if you can see a gap, ask. So, can I be involved? I'd love to learn this or do a little bit of pre-work. I've done a little bit of reading 'cause I'd like to be involved. Would that be okay? If you see something in some data that you're looking at in a p and l, whether you're doing some analysis, if it looks a bit weird or it looks strange, or it tells what you think is an interesting story.
Christina: Tell someone, don't go, oh, that's interesting, and move along because you never know. And being a little bit brazen and being a little bit willing to open yourself up is where you'll get true growth and you'll get true opportunities. So don't be scared. All people can do is say no and you come back another day.
Sumith: Great [00:30:00] advice. I wish I heard this on 15 fair 20 years before. Because especially the part that you said choose your boss or the superior carefully, what you say is a two way conversation or a two way thing, not a one way thing in an interview. So both parties needs to justify or of their worthiness to work together.
Christina: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Sumith: I love what you said that I missed that one. Unfortunate, but. Thank you very much for being on the podcast. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Christina: Thank you. I had a lovely time. Thanks again.
VO: 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.
VO: 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. [00:31:00] Until next time, keep innovating in your financial leadership and stay tuned for more forward thinking discussions.
VO: In our CFO Catalyst series, join us next time. Proudly sponsored by Brisca Global with production and distribution by Disrupt X one.
