"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational." - Stephen Hawking

I have recently been working with businesses to elevate their financial officers into a role I call the Truly Strategic CFO. This distinction is important because financial department professionals, who do a lot of accounting and financial modeling, primarily use the left hemisphere of the brain, which is typically oriented for that kind of number crunching work. Meanwhile the “right brain” provides the creative, interpersonal and strategic skills required in management, visioning and problem solving, and making colorful and meaningful presentations.

The true CFO is on the cusp of these two, capable of balanced, dual-hemisphere thinking, crunching and organizing numbers representing revenue, costs, cash flows and trends, while creating visual high level presentations and conversations so the Chief Executive Office, Chief Operating Officer and other management executives readily understand what the numbers mean to make decisions from that information.

A problem is that most CFO’s have come up through the financial operations of an organization and therefore are more left brain oriented. They get frustrated when they try and fail to communicate the cautionary trends or opportunities that they see in the numbers. They desire having, and are called on to be, a more respected voice in strategic, high level management meetings, but they spend too much time bogged down in managing the functions rather than delegating effectively and therefore don’t make enough time to provide powerful, clarifying presentations.

Building this capacity is like building a muscle – it takes planning, exercise and practice. Here are the top five things for a financial officer explore in developing the right side of his or her brain and become the well-rounded CFO needed by all businesses:

1. Recognize the functions of the two hemispheres of the brain and get familiar with the two different thinking styles so that you are able to move between them.

2. Identify what are the most important dashboard metrics to the CEO and COO, and how these senior executives want to access more detail if needed, rather than producing overwhelming pages of data.

3. Instead of using what some CFOs use to make a point, i.e. providing all the details that lead to a conclusion at the bottom of a page, communicate the message like newspaper report with the headline at the top and the details deeper down for reference as needed.

4. Have the right people with strong left-brain functioning to do the financial work that needs to be done in a timely fashion, and ensure that they have the tools they need to gather and synchronize the data.

5. As a manager, don’t just tell people what to do, or stop at just showing them how to do it. Go the extra mile to develop them as self-reliant leaders themselves capable of producing great results, and empowered to collaborate with outstanding team work to get the work done. That way you, the CFO, are freed up to engage in higher level, strategic thinking.

6. Do use that freed up time as the CFO to turn financial data into strategic advice that clearly represents what the numbers are pointing to and how these affect the company’s future.

So how about you? How will you start using these steps to enhance your value as your organization’s financial officer?