The Heart Posture of a CFO (Pt. 3)
For the last two weeks I have been writing about being a CFO...Chief Figure it Out-er. It is a somewhat vague, squishy term so I have been trying to break down the CFO's behaviors and attributes.
I am breaking these up into three categories
- The Mind
- The Action
- The Heart.
Click the links to read Part 1 (The Mind) and Part 2 (The Actions).
This week I end with the Heart. Our heart (attitude) will direct our thinking and actions. Get the heart right and you usually get everything else right.
The three elements of the Heart are...
- Humble
- Adaptive and Flexible
- Optimistic
Humble
CS Lewis once said that humility is "Not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less."
I love that definition but when I am thinking of humility regarding being a CFO it is a humility that says "I don't have things figured out. I have to keep learning. I need to have the posture of a novice." Or as Bernie Holliday said on my podcast "Black belt skills with a white belt mentality."
To be clear this is not a "I am stupid, and I suck" posture of the heart.
This is a humble recognition that I need to keep learning, and avoid the "this is how I have always done things" attitude. It is simply an open heart and mind that I need to keep learning.
You can be supremely confident AND have this mindset. Confidence doesn't contradict humility...it actually comes along side humility and forms a great 'team'.
Humility is the building block of The Heart when it comes to being a CFO.
Adaptable & Flexible
Next, CFOs must be adaptable and flexible. In the book Canoeing the Mountains, Tod Bolsinger walks through the Lewis and Clark expedition from the eastern part of our country to the west.
To give you a quick history lesson or reminder, Lewis and Clark's expedition aimed to find a water route across the continent so they could settle the west. They prepared extensively for river travel, but there was one huge problem...the Rocky Mountains.
This presented a completely different challenge that required them to adapt their plans drastically.
They had two choices, keep carrying the canoes through the Rockies hoping to find a waterway that would dump them into the Pacific... or dump the canoes and adapt to the new challenges.
Leaders too often keep 'carrying their canoes' even in light of change and challenges.
One quote that hits this point home is “If you don’t like change, you’ll like irrelevance even less.”
PS. One massive hindrance to being adaptable and flexible is success. When we do it one way and have success, it becomes harder to have an open mind. This is where the "This is how we have always done it" gets deep into our bones.
Optimistic
And lastly, a CFO must be optimistic. In Jim Collins's book "Good to Great" he introduces the "Stockdale Paradox."
Which is: "You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."
So, this optimism is not blind or ignorant. This is simply having belief in the midst of challenges.
The number 1 killer of optimism is victimhood. There is nothing more energy draining or defeating to those around you when you play the victim.
We have all been there and also been witness to this heart posture. Great ideas are flying and the victim shoots everything down, with no hope or optimism.
I see this when a leader has been in an organization for a period of time and slowly, over time, becomes a victim (or succumbs to 'learned helplessness).
CFOs have a magnetic optimism!
I saved The Heart for last in this series because I think this is most important. I said this at the outset of this email but it bears worth repeating...our heart (attitude) will direct our thinking and actions. Get the heart right and you usually get everything else right.
In short, if we are stubborn, arrogant, unwilling to change, and become the victim, we will NEVER be a CFO.
I'll end with this...Tennesse won the NCAA D1 College World Series last week.
John Currie, who is currently the AD at Wake Forrest, hired Tony Vitello at Tennessee when he was the AD there. Here is what John Currie said to The Athletic after the Vols won the CWS “Great head coaches, legendary head coaches, adapt as those dynamics (NIL, Transfer Portal, etc) change.”
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One of my weekly disciplines is scouring the internet for articles/tweets I can learn from and/or use with those I work with. Below are two that I hope help encourage and equip you.
Article 1- 6 Types of Meetings
Article 2- The conflict solving tree
Podcast: Scott Carr- Florida International AD- great human, great connector.
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