There is little doubt the past two years have had an unprecedented impact on individuals across all professions, and the finance function is no exception. The impacts range from the initial crisis response — such as leading stress testing efforts, cashflow replanning and re-budgeting — to supporting people’s mental and emotional well-being, rethinking revenue streams and driving the transformation agenda.
One thing is abundantly clear: Far from hindering organisational efforts, the pandemic has, in fact, accelerated the pace of change. Place all this upheaval against the backdrop of economic challenges and the finance leader has been thrust yet further into the spotlight.
What is astonishing is that, according to the recent Deloitte CFO survey,1 optimism among the chief financial officers has risen to the highest level in the 13-year history of the survey. This is in part driven by optimism about moving on from the shutdowns the pandemic caused, but we would argue that it also is driven by the fact that, collectively,
... finance teams have managed to deliver more during a period of extensive turmoil than in the relative order of the previous year.
Furthermore, the pandemic has accelerated the ability of finance leaders to develop the attributes, mindsets and capabilities to lead their organisations into the future. With automation, centralisation and digital solutions driving 85% of finance teams to undergo or plan a finance transformation,2 we wanted to investigate whether the attributes, capabilities and mindsets of successful finance leaders have changed as a result of the pandemic, and which of these are most critical to the future of the profession. Our findings are revealed in this white paper.
1 Deloitte CFO Survey: 2021 Q1. April 2021 2 Gartner Finance Transformation Insights, 2021