How Legal & Finance Work Together

In our second episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Merley Okine, Group General Counsel of Ebiquity plc, the media investment analysis firm.

In this conversation, Merley and I cover a plethora of topics that you won’t want to miss.

Some of my favourite parts were:

✅ What legal support a business needs as it scales;

✅ Budgeting tips for Legal and other Departments as well;

✅ When to bring Legal into strategic commercial situations;

✅ How the Finance and Legal teams should best collaborate;

✅ Insights into how to manage legal and compliance across an international entity.

 
Merley's Business Book recommendation: Radical Candor by Kim Scott: https://amzn.eu/d/g73NzUJ

Where to find Merley: 

Web: https://ebiquity.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/merleyokine/

Transcript

Adam (00:01.434)
So today I'm here with Merley Okine, who is Group General Counsel at Ebiquity, the media investment analysis firm that works with 75 of the world's top 100 advertisers across 18 markets, and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Merley, welcome to the Fractional CFO Show. How are you doing?

Adam (00:23.266)
Thank you for being here. So today we're gonna dive into some of the intricacies around legal and around how legal and finance work together in marketing service companies. So Merley, to start with, would you mind giving us a bit of an overview of your career so far?

Merley Okine (00:27.767)
Really good thanks, thanks for having me on Adam.

Merley Okine (00:47.503)
Absolutely. So I started out my career as a commercial litigator in private practice. So I was working for a law firm looking after small to medium sized businesses with their commercial litigation issues and disputes. I then transitioned into working as a corporate

Merley Okine (01:18.837)
But there I transitioned to doing not just contentious matters but non-contentious matters and circumstances where businesses were in financial difficulty, some were potentially at the terminal stage about to maybe call it a day, or those that were trying to rescue the business for the sake of the staff and creditors and so on. And then part of that also involved trading businesses and administrations.

So working for administrators, liquidators who were attempting to rescue the company as a going concern or to increase the pot available to creditors if you like. So I did that for a good number of years, still in private practice, working for banks, creditors, boards, private equity firms and whatnot.

Merley Okine (02:17.477)
into in-house, into industry. And in my career in industry so far, I've had the real benefit and pleasure of having a wealth of experience within different sectors. So worked within the pharmaceutical industry, worked for manufacturing, FMCG, and then currently now in the media investment space, which brings us up to date.

Adam (02:37.818)
Excellent. And with regard to the audience of this podcast, you know, they're typically smaller businesses. So it's interesting to hear that you've got that experience of working in practice with smaller firms and obviously larger firms right now. And so I'd be interested to understand when you should start to scale up from a legal perspective. You know, when do you feel from a legal support point of view, a business might be ready to have their first internal hire and

profile I guess typically look like.

Merley Okine (03:17.919)
Yeah, I think that's a really good question and I think it will differ for different businesses and different sectors obviously. Where your business and your concern is linked with a more regulated space. So, you know, as I say, if you're within a manufacturing or a consumer facing business and then increasingly where there are privacy issues, you're clearly going to need legal advice and legal support on a

more regular basis sooner than other businesses that are not as regulated. So it's not unheard of, for example, to have a business that's been around for a while but doesn't have an in-house council, for example, because there are, you know, they're more kind of ready to go and can run on their own. But again, I think that decision will need to be made based on what kind of a business you are, where you are in the sort of regulatory matrix and how much support

Now, with marketing services, I imagine privacy, and that's becoming more of an issue increasingly, privacy is going to be something that they'll need to keep an eye on, particularly if they're consumer-facing. So I think when you're making that calculus, it's about how regularly you need that, you need a professional to be keeping an eye on horizon scanning and those policies that are coming into play, depending on how far you'll reach as jurisdictionally.

you might just be in the UK, in which case, you know, a few years ago you would have only had to worry about GDPR because we were within the EU framework, but then obviously post-Brexit you're now looking at the UK GDPR which for now is still very aligned with the EU framework but in time might change. So there's lots of, there's a need to have a professional that's keeping an eye on those, as I say, those developments that are happening on the horizon. So that's the sort of,

a consideration for your type of business and how you need to be thinking about it. Now having done that calculus you might think well you know I've kind of worked out where we sit on that framework or on that sort of matrix we need a bit more help than maybe other types of businesses but then how much help do you need? So you may not need somebody sat in your either virtually or in your office on a full-time basis but this is where there are lots of now

Merley Okine (05:47.873)
alternative legal services provision companies and individuals that you can tap into and you can do it on a more bespoke basis on an ad hoc basis. So I say you don't need to have somebody necessarily in particularly you know if you're a smaller concern or you're just starting out but you know it does help to have that regular contact that regular support even if that means you're doing it on a more bespoke basis and you might reach out to an individual

Adam (06:16.638)
Yeah, that's great advice. And I think it's often working with, bringing someone in too soon, as you say, it might be that you're covering different areas, you're not fully aware yet where you're going to need to invest that money in. So having an external sort of service that you can tap into makes a lot of sense. No, that's great.

Merley Okine (06:17.794)
you know, you have some sort of monthly retainer with that makes it more cost effective as well.

Merley Okine (06:43.111)
Absolutely and I think a lot of people will, especially if you're fairly recently set up, you will have maybe a lawyer or a consultant that helps you set up with the corporate elements that you know they can probably help you and guide you into what you need going forward. But I think as and when your business grows and you start to I guess increase in volume of

Adam (06:46.239)
Mm.

Merley Okine (07:13.945)
I guess clever, smart ways of getting that legal support. I mean, I think gone are the days where you need to have, every business needs to have somebody sat in your office for X number of hours of the week.

Adam (07:19.318)
Great. Now obviously this is a finance podcast, so I would like to understand, in your experience, of how finance and legal, when they are in-house, how that works, how it best works from your perspective as a general counsel, what are some of the examples or situations where it has worked best for you with finance?

Merley Okine (07:39.252)
Mm.

Merley Okine (07:50.643)
Yeah, absolutely. I think the key to finance and legal working well together is to keep in mind what the objectives of the business are. That will really change. That collaboration, that working partnership will change depending on what the business is trying to achieve. Obviously, all the different functions, finance, marketing, legal, want to be aligned in where

Merley Okine (08:20.557)
increase our revenue from a particular part of our offering. And these days, a lot of businesses are trying to be more profitable in the digital space, or, you know, they're trying to reduce overheads by using more technology, whatever it happens to be. The business is going to be best served by these functions if they're working in lockstep. The best practice I've seen is

legal teams that I've worked with working weekly, fortnightly, monthly with finance teams, meeting regularly, looking, horizon scanning, so both finance and legal sitting with the respective business teams, so whether it's sales or marketing, whoever it happens to be, whatever your business, wherever you go, your route to market leads within your organization,

your finance and your legal teams and horizon scanning. And again, a large amount of that work is going to revolve around the contracts and the revenue generation. So finance, in most cases are trying to increase that and trying to not only ensure onboarding of customers, but you also want to make sure once you've signed those contracts at the other end, once the work is done,

that you're collecting in money. So there's a sort of live stream of a contract that touches not just finance, but legal. So finance wants to make sure that legal is protecting the business as much as possible so that, you know, great, we've got this incredible bit of work in, we've banked it, our fee generators within the business have done the work necessary. What we don't want at the other end is to find that they haven't bound the customer in terms of payments and also in terms of payments.

terms, making sure that we're getting paid within the right level of the right period so that we are profitable within the KPIs that we're trying to set within the business. So the best practice I say is meeting regularly, making sure that finance is in lockstep Legal. Finance isn't sort of enabling fee generation work to start before we've locked in customers, before we've locked in contracts. And that conversation needs to be done, particularly

Merley Okine (10:50.237)
I'd say, and also particularly in a fast-paced business where our salespeople want to get on and get that wonderful work in. Often we in legal don't want to be the blockers that say, well, wait, let's make sure that we've got documents in. And I think the best way of achieving that is to have, I say, regular dialogue and to make sure that we're working together really well.

Adam (11:07.682)
That's great and that's a really nice segue actually because you mentioned about the live stream of the contract and that horizon scanning approach and I've always been sort of very much in line with that being a proponent of involving legal as early as possible in those strategic decisions, whether it's M&A or contracts or any other transactions. What do you think, because I'm mindful as you said about finance, sorry legal being the blocker and how much work.

Merley Okine (11:24.244)
Mmm.

Merley Okine (11:30.37)
Mmm... Yeah.

Adam (11:35.722)
Legal departments do have, particularly in a global company, so not bringing legal in too early, but also bringing them in early enough so that they can help identify and mitigate any risks. So what, in your experience, is the best time to bring in legal into a finance and commercial conversation?

Merley Okine (12:02.955)
Yeah, I think it's funny though, when is bringing in legal to it? I don't think you can do it too early to be honest. I think there are times where I've been brought into a transaction and been told, oh in a couple of months time we're gonna win this work and it's gonna be fast-paced, we're gonna need to generate this and that before say Christmas and we're gonna need your team on board very quickly. I mean, I really appreciate that. It means I can set aside some time, I can make sure I'm keeping an eye on it.

what's going on for that so that we can jump on it as quickly as possible once that comes in. That said, it depends on how sophisticated I guess your business is and how your finance teams are versus other parts of the business because it might be that you don't actually need legal per se to recognise that okay at this point I need to contact the legal team to get the documentation

Merley Okine (13:02.449)
there needs to be consideration of the legal documents right from the outset, whether that's the legal team per se or somebody who understands that we're going to be best served as a business by binding this customer, this client to legal terms that protect us and make sure we get paid before we incur lots of time and money and resources on a bit of work and then we fall into issues. Because the...

as you know Adam, there's always that push and pull with, we want to get work done speedily and in a way that impresses the customer, we make them happy and get things done very quickly. But then the balance of that is you get the work done very quickly and you haven't honed in the terms. And at that point when you're trying to negotiate where you've already given them what they're asking for, that kind of ties your hands and it limits your ability to negotiate the best terms possible for you as a business.

really and I think keeping that dialogue open, making sure that we in legal finance and the fee generation team in the business are working together hand in glove because we're all aiming for the same thing right, we're all aiming for profitability within the business. So I always err on the side of let's all be talking together, let's all kind of keep dialogue open rather than oh this is this is a business thing or we'll talk to finance later or we'll talk to legal later.

We're all a team and it's a cross-functional team with the same aim, right? We want to get that money in and lock it in and satisfy our client as quickly as possible.

Adam (14:33.918)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think as you said, we're all working on the same objectives, whether that be the fee generating team or the support services, for want of a better expression. So it's important that that's sort of kept in mind. You touched on there about the compliance and about just thinking about the size of the organisations that you've worked in. Obviously, right now you're working for a company that's got 18 markets and so there's a large...

Merley Okine (14:46.325)
Exactly.

Merley Okine (14:51.575)
Hmm.

Adam (15:00.702)
sort of range of different legal and compliance environments that you need to be abreast of. How do you sort of like to manage the risks associated with working across all of those environments so that you can get brought in at the right time and that you're not caught out by anything that comes across your desk because of a new market or a new environment?

Merley Okine (15:29.611)
Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, that's always a bit of a challenge, particularly if you have a small team and you know, you've kind of got your hands across lots of markets and you have to, you know, spread your arms, spread your wings a bit of a tentacle approach. I think the key there is to recognise that as a global organisation, having sort of different standards of compliance across the different markets is going to be quite unwieldy and challenging to achieve.

Merley Okine (16:01.466)
as a matter of principle, having a unified approach. So often we will, and I have taken this approach in our organization is having the highest standard of compliance and applying that across the organization. So it might mean that in one particular jurisdiction, we are meeting their requirements at a higher standard that we need to.

there's nothing wrong with that, that's even better right. That saves you from being caught out if you're saying well over here we only need to worry about this level of compliance, you know privacy is a really good example. You know for many years GDPR was you know the highest standard and there are various variants in other parts of Europe, you know Germany for example might have a slightly higher standard but if you're applying that across your organization

it's, you know, US or wherever else it might be, it means that you're working as smartly as you can with limited resourcing and you're not having to sort of have multiple different standards across your organisation for compliance.

Adam (17:08.47)
Interesting and just a thought there because you mentioned the word unwieldy earlier and I wondered how if you've got 18 markets of differing sizes but you're always aiming to be the most compliant across the board, how does that translate into not being too unwieldy? Are there any occasions where that has meant that you've had to sort of, you're slowing down on things or things are taking longer than you'd have liked?

Merley Okine (17:28.776)
Mmm.

Merley Okine (17:44.179)
Yeah, I think so. I mean, we've just done a compliance project on privacy, which is why it's sort of front of my mind at the moment. And yeah, you do get that where it slows you down because maybe one organisation, one jurisdiction has just brought out, you know, China is a good example, they're just bringing out and have brought out recently their own GDPR equivalent, PIPL. And that has meant that if you want to do something across the board, you're having

out and interpret what the requirement is there. And yeah, that's a good way of making it less unwieldy. You might have to segment in some areas and, you know, in terms of achieving what the business wants to achieve as quickly as possible and as smartly and as efficiently as possible, you might have to segment some of your requirements as it were. But as I

Merley Okine (18:43.953)
standard, applying that across your board because that keeps the day-to-day business as usual horizon scanning and reviewing of our performance as against what's required of us easier to achieve. But then that doesn't mean you stick with that, you might have to flex for different organisations, different jurisdictions, different parts of the business, particularly if your business does different, you know, has a different offering and, you know, different product in different areas.

as well. So that there's any number of things that you're thinking of at any one time and that will impact your horizon scanning.

Adam (19:14.582)
You mentioned there about sort of the different products and also dealing with China, obviously, the complexities of international environments and with a small team, as you say, you have, is it always necessary to partner with external experts in market or do you try and manage as much as you can internally to ensure that you're maintaining those sort of quality levels?

Merley Okine (19:46.495)
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think for me, it's a really, it's a risk based approach, right? So looking at the exposure to the business, again, I was talking at the top about understanding where your kind of regulatory requirements are, right? If I think if you're manufacturing, for example, there are, there's going to be a different profile to what we do, which is, you know, not a sort of

Merley Okine (20:17.91)
a paper review and audit or a qualitative review of some services, it's a different kind of requirement. But yeah, I think it is important to have a risk-based approach and it might be that looking at whatever it is that you're trying to mitigate against, it might not be as high a risk, so then it requires, you know, a little bit more or a

less of a legal kind of approach, do you know what I mean? And I think the key is also to make sure that you're constantly educating your business and your client facing...

colleagues and stakeholders that they are aware of what's coming up so that even if they're not sure, that they always know they can pick up the phone and come and talk to the team and work out actually should we be doing this, should we not be doing that. I think the key is trying as much as possible to horizon scan and doing, and our response being a sort of risk-based approach to, you know, how really important is this thing versus

is actually this is a major risk to us because of what we do, because of this particular product therefore we're going to apply a bit more of our resourcing to this and I think resourcing in line with that risk profile.

Adam (21:37.458)
Okay, great. And you mentioned they're about different products and obviously, you know, businesses need to be nimble these days and they're always moving into different areas. And how important is it to have that, I guess, industry specific knowledge of the products that you're working on or the areas of the business? And I speak to you as someone who's worked in manufacturing and then moved across to marketing services. So that...

And it's something that we deal with in finance as well. Do you hire someone who's an expert in marketing or media or do you go for someone who's technically the best? What's your view on that?

Merley Okine (22:03.831)
Mmm...

Merley Okine (22:17.151)
It's a good question. I think it's one that different in-house teams grapple with and probably land on slightly different approaches depending on, again, I think it's really got to be business specific and objective specific, right? I think I would, we generally go with a generalist approach. We won't hire, you know, for example, a specialist.

an IP lawyer or a specialist employment lawyer within our teams. Because for our business and the needs, we think it's important to have a more generalist approach, people who are aware of these areas. And then as and when we need, we will flex with potentially external experts for a specific thing. Again, where that is necessary and where the risk is great enough to warrant going external.

and getting that specialist's help. I think...

The key for us is having technically astute lawyers who recognise issues and can scan issues very quickly, but also lawyers who understand the business and can get under the skin of the business very quickly and are able to understand what it is the business is trying to achieve. We spend quite a lot of time in our team, meeting with stakeholders within the business to understand what the new products are, what the current product, where are we headed with this,

really understand what it is that we're trying to sell or what innovations we're trying to add to our existing product portfolio. I think that's really key because that's what differentiates the external advisor from the internal advisor. We are, as we were talking about earlier, part of this one team and trying to achieve the same objective. So I think as finance or marketing or legal people within our organization,

Adam (24:15.818)
Okay, and that takes me on actually to more the team related questions, because I'm interested to understand about, as you say, if you're working as an internal support function, whether that's finance or legal, you know, your differentiating factor is your knowledge and your knowledge of the organization. And so what's key is therefore onboarding you people, you know, very quickly. How do you manage that when you change a member out of the legal department? What are some of the key tips from your point of view of getting team members up to speed?

Merley Okine (24:16.681)
we have to be really close to the product and what it is that we're trying to achieve as a business.

Merley Okine (24:36.353)
Mmm.

Mm.

Merley Okine (24:48.183)
Mmm.

Adam (24:48.405)
Cough cough

Merley Okine (24:53.023)
Yeah, I mean, we try and we have a sort of information bank.

We have an information bank of data on products. So as and when we work on contracts with our stakeholders, we'll always try and improve that knowledge corporately. So it's not just one person having worked on a contract, but we try and share that knowledge within the team. And having done that, the key is to constantly be improving our understanding of the business and getting under the skin of the product. And as part of doing that,

have regular meetings to understand the legal issues that are involved with what's coming up, what we're currently working on. And so yeah, it's really important, I think, to make sure that we are keeping abreast of what the business is doing. In terms of onboarding, that bank of information that we collect, that is part of the onboarding kind of manuals and materials that we ensure that

Merley Okine (26:00.254)
We spend quite a lot of time actually with presentations. We've got stakeholders in the business who are really passionate about the work that they do and love donating their time and dedicating their time to helping us grow in that understanding. It's all quite technical in our organisation. And you wouldn't necessarily expect a finance individual or a legal individual to have that knowledge. So it's about a sort of growth mindset.

of always wanting to learn, of always wanting to understand where we're headed as a business, what it is that we're selling and wanting to put into the market.

Adam (26:31.958)
And you talk about educating your team, but you've also mentioned about educating the wider business And I know from personal experience you like to run sort of seminars and courses for the wider team So you need to tell me a little bit about the benefits of doing that to you as a legal organization that kind of educating the wider firm

Merley Okine (26:45.733)
Hmm.

Merley Okine (26:58.699)
Yeah, I think it's really important that, again, it goes to singing to the same hymn sheet that the organisation. It also helps where you have limited resourcing to make sure that your wider team are aware of our legal obligations. They're sort of a bit more sort of contract, more sophisticated in their understanding of contracting and how to approach it. In an ideal world, you don't want every contract.

that every sales or business individual has to sign to be run through legal. Yes, we are the legal team, but I'm really against over-lawyering a business. It really is about empowering the business to be able to understand how to navigate some of these documents themselves. Now, that doesn't mean that we're saying to the business, off you go, you review everything and do it yourself.

back on that in some organisations as well. But the key is that you're empowering and enabling your business stakeholders to understand what they're doing. It's not unheard of and not wanting to put anybody on blast. But there are some stakeholders who would just sign a document that they have no authority to sign. I'm sure you're not shocked by that,

Adam (28:16.517)
You surprise me, honestly.

Merley Okine (28:28.453)
sort of signed a document that they don't have authority to sign on behalf of the business and you know that sort of contracting one on one. So there's about there's a benefit to them being empowered to know what I can sign, what I can't sign, where do my responsibilities to the business end, where do they start, what should I know and I think that when you do that it helps us to spend more of our time doing that horizon scanning, spending more

a bit more dynamic in the way that we provide advice to the business and not on the basics, the one on one. So there's a benefit to the business as a whole in terms of resourcing where everybody can be empowered to navigate their way around basic contracts basically. So that's the rationale behind it I think.

Adam (29:13.63)
Okay, and that's sort of a nice segue onto a slightly more technical element of the pod, just in terms of how finance and legal work together on budgeting, because obviously that's something that works with all departments, you know, in most organizations there's a budget that's set at the beginning of the year for revenue, cost of sales and the sort of departmental expenses, and finance Legal can work closely together on setting the legal budget.

or revising it at a forecast stage or any ad hoc charges that need to come in that are outside of the scope of budget. What do you like to see from a department head point of view, if you're leading your legal department, how much involvement do you like to have in that kind of process? Is it something that you prefer top down to be given so it doesn't take too much of your time and you know, it's a number, you understand the rationale but you're not really involved in setting it? Or do you prefer a bottom up?

forecasting or budgeting approach where you look at every input with your finance partner and help set that for the year ahead.

Merley Okine (30:27.599)
Yeah, I think collaboration is key for this sort of thing. And actually, if you're setting budgets and we want to be, you know, fiscally responsible and keep within it during the year, it's important that as a head, I'm working together with finance and we'll be led by the business in terms of where our objectives are and how much we want to spend where. So I think it's a symbiotic thing. And I prefer to be part of that conversation.

Merley Okine (30:57.713)
my department as well because obviously it's legal, we're a cost centre and you know, yes we want to be achieving lots with...

the resources that we have. But I think part of the success of doing that is having that really close relationship with finance and the executive board and understanding the rationale for those decisions, those budgeting decisions. And it might be that there's a rationale that they haven't really understood why, particularly in legal, why this spend is necessary or why we think it's important. It might not be necessary, but maybe it's important depending on where we want to go.

end up. So I think a symbiotic conversation is important. It's inevitable that kind of thing takes time. It's inevitable that, but I don't see the benefits in having a top down approach where you're just kind of told a number and you get on with it. Because again, I think part of success of...

the support functions and the business working well together and achieving those objectives is collaboration. I think it's really important that we're all swimming in this, you know, in downstream or upstream, whatever, in the same direction, however the analogy goes. It's important that we're aligned in how we're approaching.

particularly budgeting because again you can flex it as and when and that will be led by where we want to end up and what our financial objectives are for the year or the quarter or whatever it happens to be.

Adam (32:30.91)
Yeah, no, I think 100% agree. I think it's always better to do it bottom up, something that I'm sort of quite keen on doing with the businesses that I work with. And as you say, it's often a more collaborative approach takes time at the outset, but then through the year can be more open to adjustment as required. And that sort of brings me on to the next question because obviously.

Merley Okine (32:48.644)
Mm.

Merley Okine (32:54.063)
Mm.

Adam (32:57.35)
in the current economic climate, things do change. Clients fall off, you know, we might be doing better or we might be doing worse. How do you see the sort of change of budgets through the year? You know, do you find that something that's acceptable if we need to take it sort of up or down, you know, through the year? What's your view if your finance director comes to you and asks you to adjust your budget?

Merley Okine (33:00.8)
Mmm.

Merley Okine (33:08.091)
Mmm.

Absolutely.

Merley Okine (33:30.639)
I think absolutely.

you know, you've got to be able to flex, haven't you? And I think that it's fully understandable that, you know, especially looking at the macroeconomic climate at the moment and the years that we've just come through, right, you know, nothing is fixed, nothing is set in stone. And I think it's important that as a business, we're able to flex and look at where we are. And, you know, it's not unheard of for finance directors to come and say, right, you know, the figures of this,

have to adjust and I think that's absolutely fine but to the point we were just making before if you haven't had those helpful collaborative conversations at the beginning and you've just been given a number at the top you know being given a revised number somewhere in the middle of the year isn't the most I don't think it's the most efficient way of doing it I think it's helpful that you're always having that dialogue and as things change you're

teams to adjust where you need to and every department you know should be able to flex its numbers and you know that as in life there are going to be lean times and times where you need to focus more here or shift there as resources and the climate demands you know.

Adam (34:45.578)
Yeah, absolutely. And I guess sort of segue onto the last section around people and talking about targets. How do you like to have your teams aligned from an incentive point of view with the company sort of financial targets and objectives? Do you like to have a bonus pool for your teams? Do you prefer it to be purely salary-based? What works best for you in your experience?

Merley Okine (35:22.447)
I've worked in organisations where it's been a mixture of different options. I think I've seen fixed bonuses for everybody at the same level, you know, in an organisation that doesn't really change. And I've seen it incentivised, incentivised linked with your objectives for the year. So a percentage of your bonus is linked with, you know, you having said at the start of the year that you would.

you know, bringing X, you know, so just example off the top of my head, but bringing X contract or a reduction through your hard work and negotiation with, you know, on a particular contract. So say that's linked to, I don't know, 10% of your bonus, if you were able to achieve that objective, then, you know, you're essentially at that level. I think that's worked quite well, because then you that whole collaboration, that joint effort

it really encourages working together with a business. So all our fates are tied together and it's a nicer way to work. I think people are more incentivized. It helps with the engagement piece as well where people feel like what they do on a day to day, even though they're a support function is having a meaningful impact on the business and its profitability and its growth.

That's always a nicer way of doing it so that it's linked with what I do. Okay, I'm looking at contracts. I'm not necessarily client facing. I'm not winning in the work into the business, but the work haven't been won. I'm doing my part to make sure that it works best for us because the business has set X, Y and Z objective. So I think that usually works really well by way of incentivization.

Adam (37:06.164)
Yeah.

Adam (37:10.378)
No, I agree, I think it improves the culture of the organization if everyone's working towards that same target and if the targets top down are aligned on a department by department basis, whether you're sort of business facing or not, whether you're revenue generating or not, yeah.

Merley Okine (37:27.998)
Mmm.

Merley Okine (37:31.344)
Mmm. And the good thing about that as well is, to your point earlier, if...

things don't go as well if there is a downturn, if something has happened that's meant that the money hasn't been able to be generated, then we all kind of, we're in it together. There's a sort of, everyone's got skin in the game, so that the downturn, and there's an understanding, there's not a difficult conversation to be had to say, we'd all wanted to achieve X percentage, or I've seen it done in, when I've done quite a lot of work for procurement teams, we're trying to reduce our overheads,

Adam (37:40.236)
Yeah.

Merley Okine (38:06.577)
spend by X percent this year and we, in legal, key stakeholder for that objective, if we're trying to reduce spend and there's a rule that all spend has to go through legal, we're hugely incentivized to helping to achieve that as a wider business. So that's just one example.

Adam (38:34.686)
And I guess final question, just on the same topic around options or shares, like how do you view that as, I guess there's a senior management view and then there's a, what do you think about share options or share issues for senior, mid-level, more junior staff?

Merley Okine (38:36.898)
the wins together and we kind of understand the losses together as well.

Merley Okine (39:04.763)
Yeah, I've seen it with, in my experience, it's mainly senior staff that have that. And I don't think I've seen it with maybe one organisation I worked with, it was more across the board, but again, at different levels of share options, depending on how senior you went. Again, it's linked to the earlier point about bonuses and tied in with...

objectives and achieving objectives. I think if you can incentivise people to be part of the organisation, again sharing the wins and sharing the highs of...

you know, if the business does well, you do well. I think that's always helpful. And one organization I worked in, where the wider employee pool had chairs and were kind of tied into success of the business in that way, I remember I was working on a particular contract and one employee said to me, oh, how's, you know, contract X going? You know, are we gonna, and I said, oh, you know, we're still going on

it, you know, it's still happening and he sort of said to me, oh, you know, I really want my, you know, I really want to do well on my shares this time, you've got to, and it was a sort of joint effort. He wasn't working on the contract, but he was aware of what's happening and was encouraging me to make sure that we, you know, we did really well on it because he was incentivised in that way. I mean, make of that what you will, but I think there is, again, to your point about culture, it really helps where there is that sort of joint effort and people feel that.

Adam (40:43.914)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, as you say, aligning those priorities, having a sort of a share option view, for example, where you're three years, four years, five years down the line, you're working for the long-term benefit of the company rather than just short-term gain. So I think it helps align those priorities, absolutely. Okay, great. And just shifting gears now for a section I'm calling our Business Book Bonus section, where we're asking our guests to provide us with a recommendation for our audience of a business book.

Merley Okine (40:46.68)
But we're working shoulder to shoulder to achieve growth in the business.

Merley Okine (41:08.841)
Mm-mm.

Adam (41:13.742)
or any business content to make it a little bit easier, that's helped during their business career and they want to recommend to the audience. So from your point of view, Merley, what business book or other content would you like to recommend?

Merley Okine (41:37.035)
Um, sorry, I did read about this business book and I don't think I made a note of that, sorry. Let me just have a quick... I meant to... What was it that you said?

Adam (41:38.018)
That's alright, no problem.

Adam (41:47.346)
Just anything that you read or consume from a business point of view that helps you that you think would be useful for, you know, for other members listening to this pod. So it could be like, you know, the Financial Times or a YouTube video or a book that you've read. So we've had all of those and others advice wise for the audience.

Merley Okine (42:16.055)
Ah okay, okay so when you say business book do you mean, sorry I did mean to ask you this at the beginning, did you mean, I'm not sure what you mean by business book, is that a term of art or? An actual book, okay, I'm with you, I'm with you.

Adam (42:18.954)
Also, no, just like a book about business, an actual book. But it doesn't have to be a book. It could be a YouTube video, it could be a blog, anything that you have used to help you in your career that might be useful for the audience.

That's all right.

Merley Okine (42:42.64)
I'm with you, I'm with you. Sorry, I read that last night and I remember thinking, is this like a term that I'm not familiar with? Got you. I'm ready to answer the question now.

Adam (42:46.314)
No problem. I'll do it again just so for the edit. So, okay, take two. And now for our business book bonus section where we're asking our guests to provide us with a recommendation for the audience of a business book or any business content that helped them during their business career and they would like to recommend to the audience. So, Merley, from your point of view, do you have anything that you'd like to recommend for the audience?

Merley Okine (42:56.903)
Yeah, okay.

Merley Okine (43:19.551)
I'm not, I don't have one specific book that I'd like to recommend but I've definitely been reading quite a bit about empathy and...

the sort of leadership and leading with empathy. And I think in an organization, it's really important and really key that business relationships are, you know, empowered with a real kind of like empathy led approach. So that's something that I've been reading a lot about. There's multiple articles that I've been reading. So it's probably not as helpful, but certainly I think that is something that,

empathetic approach, the sort of principled approach in terms of getting to improve relationships within the business, to grow and build strong relationships. We talked a lot today about collaboration and working really well together across the functions and across the business. These are things that aren't necessarily taught and so I think anything that we as colleagues and individuals can do to improve those would be super helpful.

There is there is a book that I have read recently I'm just gonna stop you Adam because I just realized I do know I just thought I read this that's it I just saw it yes I read it last year I can I can actually recommend

Adam (44:40.998)
Excellent. Do you want to give us the, give us the, have you got the name to hand or? Yeah.

Merley Okine (44:52.655)
Yeah, yeah, I have got it. I can see it on my shelf, actually. So one book that I think is really helpful on that leading and managing people with empathy and yeah, I guess really conscious interpersonal skills is a book called Radical Canda by Kim Scott. I think that is such a great book. She gives a lot of examples of her time managing people and

having really honest conversations, difficult conversations with people in your organisation. And it's done, she has some funny content in there as well and she kind of gives you some examples of where she's done it badly or where it's worked really well. And I think it's a really easy read, it's a page turner, really helpful. I think it's really important for us to keep building those strong relationships within our organisations.

Adam (45:40.322)
Definitely, and I couldn't agree more on the importance of empathy and it's something as a finance director and finance professional doesn't always come So naturally to us that sort of emotional intelligence and it's something I've certainly been developing through my career So I think very useful to recommend so I'll we'll put a link to Radical candor by Kim Scott in the show notes for anyone who wants to listen So thanks for that. And is there anything merely that we haven't covered that you'd like to say before we wrap up?

Merley Okine (46:02.107)
Mm.

Merley Okine (46:18.428)
Um, I think-

I think one thing we probably didn't touch upon was tech and the growth of tech in in-house legal teams and how that I think could be used more and more to help improve collaboration. Actually there's lots and lots of tools. We've been working quite a bit in the last year on how to improve our processes using technologies and more kind of automated processes and that's something that I think could really help

and the sort of increased communication, increased engagement. So it's really important to be thinking about and tech tools on that.

Adam (46:52.854)
And are there any tools that you would like to shout out, any tools that you're using to help day to day that might be useful for the audience?

Merley Okine (47:08.939)
Yeah, I absolutely love Asana as a project management tool, but it does a bit more than just project manage. It's quite intuitive. It has a real kind of configurable element to it, and you can use it to do lots of different things. I always recommend Asana. I think that is, it's also quite,

Merley Okine (47:37.359)
cost-effective in terms of price. And using it, I think, is a really good way of connecting your teams very quickly. And intuitively, it's not that difficult. I'm not the techiest of people, so it works well for me. So I think if you're somebody who, you know, you're looking for something productivity-wise and something that's gonna help connect your team, especially in these days of hybrid working, I'd really recommend that. I really love using it.

Adam (47:58.054)
Excellent. Now I've used Asana before and yeah, 100% agree. So well, thank you for that. Thank you so much for joining me on the Fractional CFO show. I really appreciate your insight, your perspective and your time.

Merley Okine (48:14.563)
Thank you.

Adam (48:15.106)
Thanks.

Merley Okine (48:19.043)
Thank you so much, Adam. It's been real fun. Nice to talk to you.