When Melissa Ballenger stepped into a deputy CFO role for TD Bank’s U.S. subsidiary back in 2011, she did so knowing that she had been recruited to be a change agent.

Having recently generated business headlines from acquiring two sizable banks in the U.S., TD Bank had U.S. expansion plans that were hardly a secret.

“A lot of competitor banks in the U.S. were still back on their heels at the time from credit concerns, capital considerations, and other things like that, and TD had the opportunity to take share profitably from competitors,” recalls Ballenger, whose new role at first involved interfacing with the different management groupings and teams of executives who were expected to help to drive a finance transformation designed to position’s TD Bank’s U.S. subsidiary for the coming decade.   

“We had a very interesting mix of people. Some were from the parent company in Canada, others were from the legacy organizations in the U.S., and still others were executives who were available to be brought in from the industry because they had been displaced by the financial crisis,” continues Ballenger, as she draws our attention to what she credits as being a primary lever for helping to put the transformation in motion.

“I was resolved to listen to all of the key finance leaders and talk to the executive committee in the U.S. and understand what their business needs were. It sounds pretty basic, but I don’t think that I could have gotten things started otherwise, because I needed to know what their business needs were. They were each kind of uniquely different, and their personalities were different as well,” reports Ballenger.

What began as a listening campaign helped to lead to a broadening consensus around the adoption of a new management structure involving the appointment of business unit CFOs who would report to Ballenger but at the same time partner with leaders for each of the lines of business inside the new U.S. entity.

Next came the technology platforms and communication processes.

“We built analytics that were needed for timely, informed decision-making, and, being a public company, we knew that our forecasting capabilities and our communication with our parent would be critically important,” comments Ballenger, who says that while the finance transformation provided many leadership lessons along the way her biggest takeaway arrived early in the process .

Says Ballenger: “Begin by listening” –Jack Sweeney

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