FP&A Today

IBM CFO’s powerful lessons for getting FP&A into Owner Mode

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Forget “Founder Mode”. For those in FP&A your CFO expects Owner Mode. “In rugby, if you observe, a player often clings on to the ball, not letting it go out of his hands until the goal is scored. That’s how we need to handle things. Own it — cling onto it — achieve the goal,” says former IBM India CFO Ravikumar Ramanan, author of the brilliant book: The CFO Lens, how to Thrive in the Fast Changing World of Finance


He tells Glenn Hopper: “The expectation of a finance partner is not to stop at the sign off and say, okay, I have now committed $10m in company money. You then need to get  involved in the execution of the strategy. I changed my role from just being the person who signed off and asked for periodic reports to actually going out into the field and starting to talk and feel like an owner.”

In this masterclass episode Ravikumar reveals

  • The Bigger business context we are living through that finance cannot ignore
  • The failures when strategy projects are not being tracked by finance 
  • How to feel really that the results are yours
  • Storytelling and  influencing secrets from the finance seat 
  • Good and bad costs 
  • Balancing short term and long term in your finance role
  • My biggest advice for people to succeed in a finance role at any stage of their career 
  • My favorite Excel Function (even corporate legends get asked)

    • Further reading

    Ravikumar Ramanan: The CFO Lens: How to Thrive in the Fast-Changing World of Finance

    Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath:
    Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

    ...more
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    FP&A TodayBy Glenn Hopper
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