Thanks Steve! Insightful comments!

Hi CFO – Every single column comes from a real life scenario. I honestly can’t make these up….

The shuffling of HR to Marketing is an odd one. I have not seen this alignment before, however have seen similar moves when a CEO has felt that combining enabling functions together creates some sort of synergy or improvement. A flawed concept and failure point in reality. Units such as HR, Marketing, Compliance and similar function best when there is autonomy and points of separation from the organisation. However, this also assumes that the leaders of each of these functions are competent and confident enough to create their own space and opportunities within the senior leadership team and within their own teams. This is often not the case without the politics and fears driving behaviours, rather than effective business inputs and decision-making.

The other point is that accounting and finances are often referred to as the core and language of business. This may well be the case, however this implies that the leader of these functions i.e. the CFO is then naturally placed to become the CEO. In my experience, this is flawed…not always, but often. Similarly, the SME in a role does not make the best leader of the team performing these roles in many cases.

A tough situation for ‘Wits-end’ however as you pointed out, it is time for clarity and ensuring the CFO is crystal clear what impact this is having.

Steve.