To become a value-adding CFO, one needs to adopt integrative thinking, said ACCA recently.
CFOs need to change their mode of operation to successfully navigate complex multi-dimensional problems, according to the accountancy body’s latest research.
According to ACCA, CFOs have an immense responsibility and career-defining challenge in helping their organisations navigate complex multi-dimensional problems.
Businesses and other organisations face significant challenges in introducing sustainability into their business models and strategies, ACCA pointed out, adding that they also face increased sustainability reporting and assurance requirements.
Their processes and systems will need to be updated and transformed to manage these, ACCA said.
These challenges arise against a backdrop of limited financial resources as well as human and natural resources, ACCA observed.
The long-term survival and success of business can no longer be assured with a narrow focus on financial return alone, the accountancy body added.
As a result, CFOs and senior business professionals today need a combination of skills, behaviours and mindset, described as ‘integrative thinking capabilities’, according to ACCA’s research report “Integrative thinking: the guide to becoming a value-adding CFO”.
CFOs and professionals who are ultimately accountable for well-informed decision making must be integrative in their own thinking, said report author Sharon Machado, head of sustainable business at ACCA said.
“They need to consider the balance across the resources and meeting of differing stakeholder needs. Often, this will be in the face of incomplete, complex, uncertain or ambiguous information,” Machado noted. “CFOs need to act without being able to reliably predict the outcomes. In a fast-changing world, the organisation’s purpose and strategy may need to change, either incrementally, or sometimes, fundamentally.”
The five integrative thinking capabilities of a value-adding CFO
According to ACCA, there are five must-have integrative thinking capabilities of a value-adding CFO:
- Continually becoming – constantly evolving through nurturing personal capabilities,
- Empathising – understanding other viewpoints and perspectives,
- Exploring – searching out unfamiliar territory,
- Co-creating – seizing the opportunities that arise from collaborating with others, and
- Empowering – enabling colleagues and stakeholders to take actions.
Being a successful CFO is not a static end-state, ACCA said.
Continual learning, reflection and engagement with other people, are key to being the value-adding CFO that the organisation and the world needs, ACCA advised.
