Leadership Lessons from a CFO-Turned-Coach, Jeremy Earnshaw

TRANSCRIPT

Wassia Kamon: Welcome back to another episode of the Diary of a CFO, the space where you will always find real world insight to become a better leader and be better at life. I'm Wasiya Kamon, and today I'm so delighted to have with me a special guest, Jeremy Earnshaw. He's a highly academically qualified and experienced coach and mentor.

He delivers coaching and mentoring to C suite leaders, and he's a brand of coaching with purpose leveraged by over 25 years of global CFO real world experience, operating across listed venture, capital, private equity, and regulated entities. Thank you so much for being on the show, Jeremy.

Jeremy Earnshaw: Wassia, it's a pleasure to be here.

Thank you so much for the invitation. Making me feel quite old when you read out all those years of experience, but let's call it experience rather than age.

Wassia Kamon: Yes. It's experience. Yes. So yes. Why don't we start with your, your journey through now to be a coach and mentor with such experience, you were actually a CFO.

So what was your career journey like to where you are now?

Jeremy Earnshaw: You're absolutely right, Wasir. I, I've come into coaching and mentoring relatively late in the day, age wise, but really, really excitingly for me as an individual, because it's been something in my, in my makeup for a long time, but I was focusing upon the CFO role.

So, um, having Graduated from university. I did the accounting training and my 25 years as a CFO has been in a number of different roles. And for me, they gave me huge interest levels at each of my major five roles. And as you mentioned in the introduction, I've been fortunate to work in a range of different entities.

So venture capital backed private equity listed entities in the UK. And what I tried to do, and again, this is part of my, my background, I tried to do something different and challenging in each of those CFO roles. So for example, in my first role, it was actually a management buyout and I became the CFO almost by accident when somebody left.

So it was a big challenge and a big step up. But I think it was Sir Richard Branson who said once, if somebody gives you an opportunity, say yes. And think about how, and if you can do it later. And that's pretty much what I did that experience right at the start of my career was exceptional in terms of the things that happened because we did an exit and that exit was to the London stock exchange and over a very, very short period of time.

And that was a four year role, which was just filled with interest every day. And that set the standards high for me in terms of interest. My second major role was also a public company, and we got involved in mergers and acquisitions and international business. So I was able to pursue equity and debt fundraising, completion of acquisitions, we did disposals, we did a joint venture in the Republic of Korea, we did two reverse takeovers and we raised some equity.

I'm condensing nine years into 30 seconds there. But we eventually exited to a major U. S. company who wanted to have a presence in the pharmaceutical business, which was ours in Europe and the U. K. I then did a private equity backed organization going through the credit crunch, so that was quite tough.

That was very challenging and again, brought different skills as a CFO, working a lot with liquidity, working a lot with really demanding stakeholders as private equity shareholders. I then did a small turnaround. So it's a loss making business again, something different. And I actually ended my career.

We'll see her as an executive CFO in a UK regulated business. So I joined a housing organization in the UK. And for the first time in my life, I had a balance sheet with assets in it. I've spent the whole of my career before then actually raising money on future. Profit and loss account forecasts and now I have some assets.

So I spent the latter part of my career doing significant fundraising to do more development. In a housing organization with very long life assets, with a very big balance sheet and with a very big debt book as well. So that was my CFO career in a nutshell for you.

Wassia Kamon: Wow. That's very impressive. And I like how it was also challenging, right?

So you can appreciate the challenges that. CFO go through now when you're on the other side, right? As a coach and a mentor for me, I've been in my role just a couple of months and I now realize, oh my God, it takes a village.

Jeremy Earnshaw: I think that's really important what you said. And then this, this brings me on to the coaching, the mentoring, because if I look back at what I did as a CFO, I don't think there's any question that I would have benefited from having a coach or a mentor.

And what I'm trying to do as a coach and mentor is to avoid Some of the inevitable mistakes that I made and also help people through some of the more difficult challenges. And I think that the difference between being a CFO now. Then being a CFO, nearly 30 years ago is really significant. Everything is so fast.

Everything is visible. The CFO role is a really clear number two role to the CEO. You have to be. What I call a director or a C suite officer as part of the board with responsibility for finance, as opposed to just the person who deals with finance. So quite a big step up. So I think as a coach and a mentor, I'd begun to get involved last year in working with some of the leadership development, younger people, putting them through programs.

It was something I'd wanted to do. I actually did some training in my first professional role in 1991. And I did two to three weeks of training some of the younger people. And I really, really loved it. And it was stayed latent until then. So I began to think, how can I be, let's call it a proper coach and a mentor.

And I thought it's not, it's not enough for me to just say. I'm a coach. I wanted to do it properly. So I took myself off to one university in the UK, did a qualification there, and then I did a master's degree at another university and completed that master's degree in coaching and mentoring as well. And as you said in the In the introduction, there's lots of really good coaches who are academic, but just academic.

And I think those kind of people like me, I call it coaching with purpose, powered by real world experience. And that's what it is. It's recognizing the fact that actually. I've walked in your shoes, not just as a CFO, at least 50 percent of my clients are general management anyway. But when they talk to me about real world problems, the team, the board of directors, the C suite team, working with investors, working with lenders, I can genuinely say, you know what, I've actually been there.

I've been in your shoes and I know some of the challenges that you are facing right now. And it really helps them, I think.

Wassia Kamon: Oh, yeah, it has to be helpful because I started working with an executive coach prior to becoming a CFO. And prior to that, I, I've never felt the need of, Oh, you need a coach or a mentor.

You hear that and you're like, Eh, maybe I don't, but he helped me so much. But then I'm wondering for you, when you said back in 1981, you started, you had a program was three weeks. Well, I'm finding out in the role, as you also said earlier, it's a lot. So I don't know, three weeks of one training can really help.

What is your experience

Jeremy Earnshaw: with that? Yeah, my, my training there, it was more a case of what I got, what I, at that time, what I got out of it, because we were training the new recruits in an organization called Arthur Anderson, which was an American organization. And since disappeared in. Different circumstances, but we were training the younger people in that organization from all over Europe.

And I really enjoyed it. I really got value personally about delivering it. It was exciting. It was, it was fun. And I saw a Great deal coming from the delegates, the newer recruits joining an organization, because this is done within the first eight weeks of their training. And it just sparked a fire that became latent and going back to your point there around, do we need a coach?

I. Turn that round and ask people, it's entirely up to you, because if somebody doesn't want to be coached, and you will know this, if somebody doesn't want to be coached, it's not going to work. They have to want that. But I generally turn it around and say, I'm very happy to understand. Why you would not want a coach because I think sometimes this I call it this perception of perfection.

I don't need a coach because I've just been promoted to a new job. I've just been given a salary increase. I'm working with some people who've just hired me into a role and therefore I must be good. But. My coaching works with perhaps some of those areas where it's not in the textbook. It's not available to be learned.

So when you're faced with credit crunch, credit challenges, when you're faced with really demanding private equity stakeholders who have very impatient timelines to be there and say, I think I know what you're facing and just allow. The coach e and the mentee to benefit from some of those experiences down to them.

This is about them growing as an individual and then making their own challenges and improvements themselves and helping them be able to do that. And that's hopefully where. It really does help to have that blend of real world experience and academic qualifications as well.

Wassia Kamon: But then when you were going through it yourself, right, when you were in that credit crunch, or when you, you went into a different business model with the, with the housing organization, were you working with a coach?

Were you working with mentors? You have a community. What got you through? Cause the role of the CFO, whether it was 20 years ago, now it's not a joke. It's a lot of work.

Jeremy Earnshaw: What gets you through? I think he's having a good team, and I think the danger for a lot of CFOs, I think, but maybe this is specific to a CFO, is that the CFO has probably been able to do a lot of the things in a, in a department.

In a function in a company themselves, but a really good team is based around multidisciplinary skills and recognizing that not everybody is going to be 10 out of 10 in everything, but you might want somebody who's nine and a half out of 10. In one particular area, whether it be, I don't know, it based technology controls, procedures, statutory accounting, maybe all of those areas.

So I think I didn't have a coach and a mentor, so I had to do it myself and you make mistakes doing that. So if I talked a little bit there about doing lots of mergers and acquisitions, I think I did 25. Transactions in my career as an executive leading things internally. I think there's at least four of those transactions, which we really, really should not have done.

And I think the warning signs were there. We were fortunate in that it didn't really give the group a problem, but we got things wrong. And I think that's what coaching and mentoring can really help with. It opens up that discussion for people to understand the challenges. and see what's in front of them clearly so that they can make their own decisions, but with the benefit of a little bit of mentoring that says, I've been there with you.

And here are some of the mistakes that maybe you don't wish to make. So if I was to turn around and show you my back, there'd be a few scars on there. And my mentoring in particular, he's aimed really at making sure that people. don't have to get those scars. They can see them and try not to have them themselves.

Wassia Kamon: I love that analogy because it's so hard to learn the hard way. It's easier to learn from others and accelerate your learning in those areas, right? Then going through it, you know, the hard way and learning it. Yes, you're learning, but it was, like you said, you left some, some scars. And I love that approach of helping others not do that.

But then in your experience, what are some of those core skills, knowing all the challenges a CFO would face? What are those core skills that will help anyone trying to step into a global CFO role?

Jeremy Earnshaw: I think if I was mentoring a particular CFO, maybe in my particular audience is maybe relatively new in post CFO or maybe an aspirational CFO as well.

I probably say there's a few things to master. I think there's a few areas. So liquidity and cash. I can't remember ever hearing about CFO who got fired for having too much liquidity. And too much cash. I always like to work with a liquidity buffer, having stress tested the business plan so that I always know I'm not going to run out of cash.

And I know sometimes it's really difficult to do that. But in raising money, for example, I always try to raise a bit too much. And I always had some liquidity spare. I think the other thing when, when becoming a CFO in particular, you are responsible ultimately for the integrity of the data and the information.

So I think attesting to that. Challenging that, whether it be through internal audit, external audit, challenging the data yourself, making sure that the monthly information, the quarterly information is sufficiently solid to be able to make business decisions based on that. Because if your data as the CFO is mistaken, or it needs amendment subsequently, that's on you as the CFO.

So I think integrity of data. I think understanding and working with those roles of a finance team, who does what, who's got the relevant skills and making sure you've got all of the bases covered around controls, procedures, transaction processing, some of it can be done through technology now and you can spend more time on the strategy.

The key KPIs and the metrics, how are you going to measure how successful the business is? That's probably going to be generated from the finance department. So you're going to be responsible as the FD or the CFO for the KPI balanced scorecard suite. I think that's down to you. And then see if there's any financial reporting and this I'm thinking more around the reporting.

I can tell you Wasir that I, I actually have a five year old grandson.

Wassia Kamon: Oh, nice. He can,

Jeremy Earnshaw: the reason I mentioned that is that, and this is one of the other skills to master, and I'll give you the headline and then explain it. The other skill to master as a CFO is the delivery. Of bad or unwelcome news because my five year old grandson can turn up to a board meeting with private equity shareholders with the results ahead of target business plan ahead of schedule loads of cash in the bank, and he can sit there as a five year old and deliver good news.

It's a little bit different when the budget isn't being met. The cash is not quite as good. The business plan is falling behind schedule and the investment is underwater compared to the original investment. That's the part where the good CFO. Starts to work, whatever magic they've got. That's when they start to come with strategic solutions to problems.

Anyone can deliver good news. A good CFO learns to master the bad news as well. So that quality of reporting, particularly when it's unwelcome news. And let's face it. 50 percent of the time we're going to be dealing with unwelcome news, the law of averages. So that skill about financial reporting, making sure that you metaphorically send off other members of the board, other members of.

The investment community, they need to walk away from those meetings and the discussions that you have with them as a CFO, knowing exactly the conclusion that you've given them. So being crystal clear on what the problem is, if there's a problem. What the extent of that problem is what the range of solutions are and a recommended solution working with the rest of your C suite team and don't leave anybody to form their conclusion.

I work as a non executive director now as well and the last thing that we want as non executives of which there may be three or four of us is that I turn to my right and my left and say what conclusion did you take from that CFO report or that CEO report and they have a different view to me. When they've listened to the same information, that's a recipe for danger.

So I think working with CFOs to be really tight on that information, financial reporting and narratives, it's not about justifying the last month's work with demonstrating how much data there is, how much work I've done, how long my report can be. Too much can be just too much. And it's about the conclusions and the strategy.

And the key critical conclusions you want to send people away in order to run the business. So those would be my takeaways for CFOs.

Wassia Kamon: Nice. Love it. Especially the part about bad news. I like how you said everybody can deliver bad news, but it's usually in those moments where. So what are some blind spots or common mistakes you see CFOs doing in that area?

Jeremy Earnshaw: I think in general, CFOs need to have that balanced approach on risk and reward. And I think sometimes, even having said that the challenge is dealing with bad news, I think the CFO needs to be seen as an enabler rather than somebody who frustrates things. So all the reasons why not to do an investment, all the reasons not to acquire a business.

And I was probably the glass half full in my CFO role. And I think you have to be that as a CFO. Otherwise, if you're constantly looking for problems, yes, you have to be perhaps the risk manager. But if you've already worked with your colleagues to determine. The risk thresholds, the risk appetite as well, having a real discussion, how aggressive are we, or how risk averse are we, and then pitching your.

investment strategy, your growth strategy in line with your appetite and making sure they're not misaligned and you're not as a CFO being too negative all of the time. At some point you're going to have to make decisions and the other thing I think maybe CFOs sometimes fall into the trap of doing waiting for perfect information.

It doesn't happen. We don't get perfect information. So if we're waiting and waiting for, well, we just need to land that next big customer, we need to make sure that we've got another supplier in line. We don't have perfect information. So I think. We need to get used to working on 50 to 75 percent probability levels to make decisions as opposed to 90 to 100.

And that is sometimes a challenge.

Wassia Kamon: It is, at least it was for me. So I'm from an accounting background and I transitioned into FP& A, then leading both functions. So coming from an accounting background, it's all about guidance, the math, everything has to balance. You almost need the number to tie perfectly to say that, yes, I checked the box.

My schedule is ready. But then when you move into corporate finance and FPNA, and you have to do a forecast, there is no way you will know a hundred percent. This is how things are going to be. So how do you learn to let go of knowing the 90 to 100%?

Jeremy Earnshaw: Let me give you an example. Hopefully it's a good example to share with listeners as well in that I was working with a retail marketing company in the UK.

I was the CFO and we had a very big retail customer. And the name of this customer will be familiar to people in the US as well. And this business was doing 20 million pounds revenue in a year. And you would speak to salespeople, you speak to business development colleagues and say, What about next year?

We had a very, very short order book as well. So you had no more than two weeks, eight days in fact, of an order book. So you were in effect guessing the future. I couldn't allow myself to be guessing all of the time. So one of the techniques we used was to try and get some data, not to prove what was going to happen, but to put a scientific framework around it.

What we did is we said, let's look at the sales at the last 12 months sales at every month end for the last 24 months and plot the last 12 months. Then let's literally draw a line through that graph, a line graph from those metric points and see where. The revenue is heading in the next 12 months. I literally got a ruler out and put it like that and said, if we project it like that, it's going to go to, instead of 20 million, it's going to go to 23 million pounds.

My business development and sales professionals are saying, we're going to do 26. My question was how? Because my maths, my graph, I'm, I am happy to project 23. Because I've got some history. I've got a graph. It's logical. You can't tell me at the moment how to get from 23 to 26. If you can, I am very happy to project 26.

And there were some things that influenced that. As an example, If it was an Olympic year, this customer did more business with us in an Olympic year, that might be one million pounds. So it was a question of saying, I can't, I can't predict the future, but I'm giving myself a framework that says, when people come back to me.

And say, how did you forecast 24 million? I could say, well, our, our direction of travels 23, there's the science behind it. We had a million pounds extra due to Olympic year. We forecast 24. It's not perfect, but it provided a framework that you could use and use variations of that to say, I'm using something tangible, but I still only had an eight day order book.

Wassia Kamon: Nice. I love it. So using that regression analysis or trend analysis, whatever it is, but having a framework that allows you to let go of knowing 100 percent and keep questioning because at the end of the day, you have deadlines to submit your budget, right? You can't just keep going around.

Jeremy Earnshaw: X in year one, Y in year two, Z in year three.

And that business was forecast at the same margin as the existing business. So my challenge as the CFO was, what do you think that our competitors are going to do when they decide, when we go in and to a customer and say, We'd like your business in our business. Do you think they're going to just allow us to take their business at the same margin as our existing business?

I don't think that's going to happen. I think our competitor will fight for that business. So if anything, I think we should be looking at maybe gaining revenue, but maybe at a lower margin than we've had, and then build the margin up higher as we do, as we get more into a relationship with that customer.

So just. Challenging that from a commercial sense, and I think that's what maybe people are looking for from a CFO, they're not looking, even though I've said it's really important to have integrity of data, that's really something that is going to be assumed. What they really, I think, want you to demonstrate is those commercial skills as well.

How am I going to help the business as the CFO?

Wassia Kamon: Yes, it's all those non finance and accounting is things sometimes outside that you need to bring back in with your financial lenses. But it brings me to a, to another point about how you deal with your internal and external stakeholders at a CFO, right?

You were talking on the sales team and then he was a commercial team. Like how do you manage those relationships, right? Because not everybody first have a finance and accounting background, but then also they have different interests. They get paid differently. They have different incentive structures that have different motives.

Like how do you effectively manage those relationships?

Jeremy Earnshaw: And that's the other one besides delivering bad news, dealing with stakeholders is the other one I would put right up there as a CFO and managing those stakeholders outside of the regular framework as well, because the thing I think we have to realize.

As executives, and this is why I think coaching and mentoring can help it as well, is that these people may only see you once a month if they're an external stakeholder, they may turn up to a C suite officer meeting to a business strategy presentation to a board meeting. And they see you for half an hour in operation.

That's 30 minutes, that 30 minutes has got to count. So that needs to be prepared, rehearsed. I had a great piece of advice at university once, which I still use today, which was, it happened to be with exams at that point. Always assume you're going to get the most awkward question that you don't really want to come up.

Always have an answer for it. Make sure you're prepared for that. Eight times out of ten, it might not come up. When that awkward question comes up, you're ready for it. And that's when you can really demonstrate it. So, how do you do that? Working with them outside of a board relationship. Having a cup of coffee with them.

Finding out what they're worried about. Maybe how they have had successes or, Failures before. What are they, what are they concerned about? What do they want from you? How do they want the presentations prepared? Do people want visual presentation? Do they want written presentation? And I think also, this sounds quite cynical as well, Waseer, work out who the high powered, high interested external stakeholders are.

So that might be, for example, your lenders, your private equity stakeholders as well, your shareholders, they have a lot of power and they're very interested in your performance. There are other kinds of stakeholders that might not be in both of those boxes. So work out who's important. Find out how they want the information presented, work with them outside of the board meetings, and with internal stakeholders, I think it's again about demonstrating that you are a rounded commercial colleague, not just somebody who, as an example, and we've probably all seen people like this, those finance people who sit in the corner, they don't speak to anybody commercially, they speak this different language called accounting, yes.

We need to be seen as business enablers, so internal communication, I, I encourage people in CFO world. Even when I was in that world as an executive, but now as a coach, trying to do a presentation financially without using any numbers. It can really work with what is going to be the majority of your colleagues don't really understand numbers, but they might understand graphs.

They might understand targets and how far away we are in visual form. They might even want to receive a short video. As an example, I have people who I work with who they don't do financial board reports, they do a five minute video and they send it along with the management accounts for them. It works for others.

It might not. So I think demonstrating that you're not just somebody who's an accountant, your. A commercial colleague that can enable lots of things to happen in your business.

Wassia Kamon: Love it. Love it. And how do you develop that commercial? awareness, that commercial knowledge, right? Because traditional path, we just do accounting, finance, guidance, and all that, but how do you grow those skills?

And what will be your advice, especially to the next generation of finance leaders, how can they open their perspective, broaden their perspective and get to see that bigger picture that will help them to do some of the things you just said?

Jeremy Earnshaw: I think there's a couple of things we'll see you there. Uh, number one, put yourself.

In the position of being exposed to those areas and if I, if I go back to a certain extent around me doing different roles as a CFO, because I wanted to do something different each time, there was a logical progression for doing that. I wanted to join an organization that we discussed. in the recruitment process was going to do mergers and acquisitions.

So I was going to be involved in that.

Wassia Kamon: Okay.

Jeremy Earnshaw: Putting yourself in the position of being exposed to those, and this is why I think coaching and mentoring is important because you're going into a role where you're not the finished article. And that's when a good coach and mentor can say, I know you're not the finished article.

Let's work on those gaps so that you can still be part of the solution in your organization whilst learning on the role. Wow. That's my philosophy, which is I like to allow people to learn on the role. Might not be everybody. Yes. But for good reason. You might not have the time. I really liked to always recruit somebody who I thought was the potential to be a 10 out of 10, but might only be a six or a seven now.

But could get there with some support in that as well. So I think that's really important. The other thing is don't stop learning when you've finished your qualifications and your exams. And I don't take any credit for this, but there's a reasonably well known corporate executive in the UK happens to have a business and sport background.

And I recount a phrase that he used, which is all of a sudden in any role, not just finance, people. Who up to that point in their careers have been a sponge for information. They want more information. They want more experience. They're happy to take on challenges. And then in a lot of cases they stop and they become a rock.

This is what I know. This is what I am. This is how I perform. I am now a rock. And his recommendation is. continue to be the sponge and put yourself in the position of doing, for example, more executive education. I deliver courses now to executives on, I do a course on mergers and acquisitions. You can do a course with me that won't tell you everything, but it tells you an awful lot about what can go wrong and can go right.

That's better than nothing. I do courses around finance for non finance people. Why would you not want to learn a little bit about finance. It's not about being an accountant. So just learning, learning how to be a non executive, learning how to work within a board, all of those things you can still continue to do in whatever format you wish and continue to be that receptacle of more knowledge as opposed to saying I've done my learning.

I just want to carry on and do my job now. I think I'm still learning now and I'm a lot older than I was.

Wassia Kamon: That is awesome. I love it. Being, making sure you're being exposed, making sure you stay a sponge and not a rock, making sure that you get to work with an executive coach. But now there's a lot of coaches out there.

That was the case for me. I was like, okay. When I was like, oh, I, I knew I needed the coach, do I found the right one. There was a lot. So what are some of your tips to find people like you, people that have that experience, have that skillset? Because with AI, really, anybody can be an expert at anything today, I feel like.

What are some of the things that someone should look for when they're trying to work with a coach?

Jeremy Earnshaw: I think a key thing is rapport with the coach and being able to work with somebody who will challenge you, who will ask the questions what's stopping you and then challenge some of the reasons you come up with.

I can't do it because, well, what are you doing about it? I digress slightly. Learning and Development Director once said to me, we all do this question in interviews. What are your weaknesses? And we all prepare for those questions. He said, I've no interest in what your weaknesses are. You could come up with anything.

What I'm really interested in is what you're doing about it. So if you think you've got a challenge or a weakness, all I want to hear is, are you doing something about it? I thought it was great advice from him. If you're choosing a coach, my personal view, have a rapport with somebody that you're, you're going to be working with, with some maybe challenging conversations.

My personal view again, is that the academic and real world experience gives you everything that you need. I would say that wouldn't I, because I have that background. Some more perhaps statutory. obligations. Uh, there's a lot of coaches and mentors who become coaches and mentors just by changing their LinkedIn banner.

I would encourage people to review those coaches and mentors. Are they a member, for example, of a professional body? The coaching and mentoring industry is still reasonably unregulated worldwide. But being a member of a professional body. So for example, I'm a member of the European mentoring and coaching council.

One point about that is that I abide by a global code of ethics. So I have my own boundaries, but there's certain places I can't go as a coach. If it borders on psychology and psychotherapy, I have to go, I have to stop, and I also have my own, what's called a coach supervisor as well. I get into any situations which might not be anybody's fault.

I can go and speak to a supervisor who has a higher coaching qualification just in supervision and say anonymously, I'm just a bit concerned about what I'm talking about. How can you help me? Nice. So I think there's the regulatory side of it. And then there's the, am I working with somebody who is going to challenge me in a series of conversations and ultimately allow me as a coachee to make.

good decisions about some issues and am I going to be working as a mentee where I'm growing and maturing as an individual and being able to prepare myself for the future. So do some research if you were buying a mobile phone you'd do lots of research to get the right mobile phone. You wouldn't necessarily Buy the first one in the same kind of approach with a coach.

Wassia Kamon: Yes. Thank you so much. I love it. I'll have one last, last, last, last question. Seeing how things were in your CFO to now, when you coach CFO, what do you think will be things that will be critical as we look ahead in the next 10, 20, 30 years, what do you think would be more important? What are some of those skills or areas that.

We should be like, Oh, we should really be thinking about this versus that.

Jeremy Earnshaw: I think you almost touched on it there with AI and technology. Then technology, even when I started, seems to have taken a good deal of the old fashioned skills of the CFO and the FD away. So the manual processing, for example, has moved.

To a certain extent to automated processing, the controls and procedures. So you might have a, a standard threshold level of authorities and responsibilities. Three people have to sign a check. Over a hundred thousand dollars, for example, a system can now do that. So you can have a, an ERP system set up, do all of your controls and procedures.

So it feels to me, we'll see that there's a good deal of things that are going to become automated. Therefore. The role of the CFO in the future is going to become more and more what you do with the information rather than the preparation and the integrity of the information. So it feels like we're on that sliding scale towards.

Becoming more commercial, more decision making, more use to other people around the organization as a skilled business person. And I think we still see to a certain extent, some of those challenges when I'm delivering executive education to non finance people, to be fair to them, they don't really know in a lot of cases what a good finance person can do.

Because nobody's ever helped them understand that. So when you talk to them and help them to learn that, well, actually this person can be a real business asset to you. They can manage your risk reward investment proposals. They can advise you how to look good in front of a board when you're presenting information.

I think we're, I think we're moving towards the skills of the commercial colleague rather than the controls. And the procedures and the data processor of the past.

Wassia Kamon: Wow. Very well said. Well, thank you so much, Jeremy, for your time on the show. Thank you so much. Was such a joy to hear. I was taking notes, so I'm sure this episode will help so many.

Thank you for being here.

Jeremy Earnshaw: Thank you Usia for the invitation. Really, it has been my pleasure.

Wassia Kamon: That's it for today's episode of The Diary of the CFO. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any topic you would like me to cover in the future, please send it to ask at the diary of the cfo.com. Again, send an email to ask at the diary of the cfo.com.

If you connect on LinkedIn, you can just send me a d. The reason I need it is because I want to make sure I bring you the insight you need to be a better leader and be better at life. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave a review, subscribe, and share it. And I will see you next in another episode of the Diary of a CFO. Cheers.