Course Description
Finance Directors frequently progress from being a controller and a good accountant or treasurer into a new role where they are expected to participate in developing strategy, manage a group and exercise leadership as well as keeping on top of the numbers. The CFO Leadership Programme has been designed by a former Finance Director with global responsibility as well as considerable management development expertise for Finance Directors and aspiring Finance Directors to address those issues that move from technical expertise to the less structured issues of strategic development as well as leadership. A key aspect is the use of two professional psychometric tools which allow participants to understand their leadership style and how to understand the preferences of their teams and senior colleagues.
A range of strategic models are introduced, using a number of cases and then supported by debate using the real life experience of those on the course. You will understand how to choose performance measures and communicate them to non-financial colleagues to guide your organization in a transformation program that creates value through the alignment of finance capabilities with corporate strategy.
What Do Participants Learn?
The CFO Leadership Programme is designed to develop the leadership and wider business expertise required of today’s and tomorrow’s high-performing CFOs.
Who Should Attend?
- Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
- Finance – Head of the department
What Will the Learning Experience Include?
Phase: 1
Introduce
- Comprehensive pre-program activities include:
- Web-based information forms & surveys completed by attendee.
- Direct consultation with the attendee about the expectations.
- During the training, participants engage in data, activities, and conversations that lead to insight and knowledge.
- Participants learn from expert trainers who have both academic and business experiences.
- Highly applicable training content & instructive activities for adding depth to training topics.
- **A half-day site visit for integrating the experience & plan next steps. Opportunities to provide connections, ideas & support.
Phase: 2
Explore & Practice
Phase: 3
Apply
- Apply & sustain the learning experience by using this ongoing support:
- To ensure participant has new skills or behavior progress.
- Optional, fee-based mentoring & coaching with the trainer.
- Training materials & additional documents (e-books, pdf files, presentations and articles)
- Evaluate your training experience by giving us feedbacks and help us to reach our organizational goals.
- Participant's Evaluation
- Trainer's Evaluation
Phase: 4
EVALUATE
Section 1: The CFO as a Leader – Setting the Parameters
- The scope of the CFO responsibilities
- Your strategic and leadership skill sets
- Your career aspirations as a CFO
What does the Modern CFO Do How Spend Time?
- Controller
- Strategic consideration
- Setting the tone
- Governance
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Investor relations
- What are the issues?
- Case Study: Home Depot
“Exploring the issues that CFOs face during a time of change”
Setting Financial Objectives– Key Financial Issues
- Shareholder value
- Setting financial objectives
- Capital structure
- Economic value added
- Need for growth
- Organisational issues
Section 2: Financial Measures, Behavioral finance and Personal Bias
- Using the Performance Prism
- Shareholder Value metrics
- Using the balanced scorecard
- Understanding bias in financial data
- The risks of believing the numbers
- The risks of sales forecasts
- The problem of too much cost control
The Strategic Context – What are the Organisation’s Objectives?
- Where does strategy come from?
- The purpose of the firm
- Levels of strategy – corporate, business unit and operational
- Determinants of strategy
- Sources of data
Section 3: Designing and Implementing Strategy
- Analytic tools and techniques to design and build the strategy
- Integrating financial strategy into current operational plans and priorities
- Influencing, formulating and implementing strategy
Designing Strategy – Strategy from the Outside
- Introduction to industrial economic value of strategy
- PESTEL analysis
- Porter’s five force model
- Supply chain analysis
Case Study: The European Brewery Industry
“Applying the tools of competitive strategy to an industry”
Designing Strategy – Strategy from the Inside
- Resource based theory
- VRIN model
- Strategic assets
- Implications for strategy
Aligning Strategies
- Introduction to value drivers
- Need for sustainable competitive advantage
- Identifying sources of competitive advantage
Public Share Markets and Share Prices
- Linking financial performance to share prices
- Understanding fundamental value
- The difference between firm performance and share price performance
- The role of stock market analysts
Case Study: Royal Mail Group:
“Reviewing share price and analyst report to determine strategy”
Section 4: Personal Style, Leadership and Culture
- Who am I?
- Decision Profile analysis – understanding the dimensions of risk, luck, decisiveness and intuition
Personal Style and Managing Others
- The Myers-Briggs type indicator and managing different styles
- The Transformational CFO: Leading Change
The Transformational CFO
- Building sustainable leadership
- Building individual leadership capacity through self- awareness
- Becoming more reflective about leadership and how it works
- Changing the way the organisation thinks about leadership
- Culture web
Building and Leading a High-Performing Finance Team
- Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your team
- Developing, influencing and motivating individuals
- Managing dynamics to ensure that your team is working at their peak performance
Section 5: The CFO as a Leader and Business Partner
Leading through Successful Change
- Analysing the impact of change on people and the organisation
- How your personal change style impacts your approach to leadership of change
- Supporting people through change
- Overcoming conflicts and chaos situations
Strategic Communication
- Investor relations strategy
- Designing the message externally and internally
- Managing internal messages
- Preparation for own personal strategic plan
- Final Discussion and Notes
- Training Evaluation