The Truth behind Transformation

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Excellent. So I thought we'd start with, you know, a little bit of a track through your career and and kind of where did it all start for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:00

So I I started doing my charter ship in practice, in a smaller practice. Had a few years after universe what I wanted to do. Wasn't really drawn to being an accountant, but my friend qualified as a chartered accountant, and I thought, how hard can it be? Um I didn't really enjoy practice, so I sort of I moved out really quickly into internal audit for a global like for the C 100 business, did a few years there, moved to another division, did a bit sort of quite a lot of travelling for the first few years, doing audit and special projects. A lot of we did a big implementation. And then after about five or six years, I just decided I didn't really want to I really enjoyed projects and change as it was then before we used the word transformation. So yeah, that was with a really good business, Associated British Foods, and I I still look back on it really fondly that they were culturally a really lovely business. And I think I've was very privileged to work for them and I still look back on it very fondly. So culturally, I think I learned a lot from them, and again a lot of confidence, you know, from flying around the world on your own, auditing, you know, SDS of global divisions. Yeah, again, doing lots of different projects, integrations, disposals, special projects, instead of uh, you know, transformation. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

What was it about practice that you didn't like back then? What was it that kind of meant you got out super quick?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

It's just the B BAU for not for me. The knowing what jobs you were going to be doing, which you know, three years what took me a little bit longer than that, maybe three and a half years. Same jobs, same time of year, same stuff, same books and records.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Yeah, just not for you.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

No, and it's very rigorous, you know, all the schedules you have to fill in and all the sort of compliance work and just yeah, I I found that unpleasant.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

And I I'm sure there's lots of people out there that would agree with you on that one. What was the um first project that really kind of set the seed for you getting into transformation as everyone likes to call it now? What was that first project?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

So I mean, actually, the first sort of interim piece of work that I did was back with an ABF division. I'd left and was ready to go and sort of start working as an as an interim. And I did sort of six months with them for another part of the business, and it was doing a bit more sort of consultancy around governance risk and control and a division, looking at division. So that was the first one, and it obviously was still in sort of audit and controls and risk management. I guess the first major piece that I did was the only BAU permanent role I ever I held after audit was like head of finance for uh a financial services business. Okay. When I was there for nine months, and the it was a PA backed business that was divesting of an arm into one of the major schemes. So that was effectively a divestment. So the standing up of a new system, new pro like complete new suite of processes, clearing up the balance sheet, the PL, data migration, like the whole lot. And we had a really aggressive time frame to get the due diligence done, but you know, respond to due diligence and also the post-sort of the post-migration work. So I just loved that. It was the special project, you know, completely different to VAU.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Yeah, something that not everyone would get to do, actually, in fairness, you know. Particularly, you know, divestment is quite a unique thing, and doing that under PE ownership as well is is quite niche in that respect.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yeah, I was I was I guess I was lucky. I didn't feel lucky at the time, it felt like hard, like it was like very long days, weekends, but yeah, you you learn a lot.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Okay, okay. So then you kind of took that decision to kind of move away from finance as it you know in its true form, shall we say, into kind of what we now kind of term as transformation. How do you define that? Because obviously that's quite a wide varying term, isn't it? So what does that mean when you when when you hear clients say to you, we're gonna do finance transformation? What can that look like?

SPEAKER_00 5:22

So my view, per my personal view is that transformation is not it's not the same as change. So a lot of clients will talk about transformation, but what they mean is change. Okay, which obviously is a different, you know, in change, you have a specific end state, you have a fairly linear progress, you know what what you're doing, where you're going. A transformation is where you are effectively doing a paradigm shift in your organization. So, you know, you maybe are it you you're changing the people, the processes, the products, the systems, the strategy. It it's not sort of tinkering around the edges, and therefore transformation is quite organic, it's quite emergent. So in change, you can be much more prescriptive in transformation. It's you have to be much more comfortable working. So this is a phrase that I use quite a lot, it's like comfortable working in the grey. You have to be comfortable not knowing the answer, and that's not a comfy space for a lot of people who work in finance.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yes, I was gonna say, how do you find CFOs manage that? Because we love kind of black and white, we like to know the control aspect. How do you kind of find that they respond to that?

SPEAKER_00 6:37

It I I kind of I was having a conversation with a friend a couple of a few months ago, and I just suddenly realized it's no wonder that I'm grossly generalizing, and I say this as somebody who did do an economics degree and trained as a chartered accountant, so it's no slight, but we are trained to do things a certain way. You pass the exams by getting it right, you have to do the certain workings. There is, you know, there's a lot of law around it, you know, accounting standards. So it's drilled into us from a very early phone you know, very early stage that there's a right way to do it. And I do think doing something like transformation, where there's you know, we don't know what the right way is, we know we want to get to. Maybe we have a strategy as an organization. How do we deliver that strategy? Oh, well, let's have a look at digital, let's have a look at our op model, let's have a look at like, you know, uh MA, let's have a look at you know, that sort of stuff. And that's quite it's very different. So I think if you are working, so for me, if I'm working with clients that have never been through that before, it's quite a learning curve because you know, people are maybe looking to you to tell them exactly what to do, and you can present clients with a load of options, you can do some analysis, you can sort of do some blue sky thinking, which again doesn't necessarily feel super comfy.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

So yeah, transformation is taking people out of their comfort zone. It always it always is, it's never comfy.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Okay. How did you get how do you get comfortable with that? You know, you said yourself you trained, you know, economics degree, you trained as an accountant, you know, chartered accountant, you've done all of that. Is it just something innate in you that likes that ambiguity of things that you just are more comfortable with that? Or do you think it's a skill set that if you want to get into this field that you really have to hone and and work on?

SPEAKER_00 8:25

I think it's a bit of both, right? You know, let's you know, if we can pass chartered exams or other types of finite exams, you know, you we can learn a lot of it, but a lot of it is innate. So I I innately prefer to work in peaks and troughs. I don't like my work to be laid out. I'm, you know, I don't I don't want to know what I'm doing, January, February, March, April, May. So part of it's character, personality-wise. Some of it is, you know, I I did the first set of exams I did were chartered, my charter exams. Since then, I've done lots of other stuff. So, like, for example, I've done a charter management consultant, chartered manager, Dean Six Sigma Black Belt, which looks at process, so risk management, some NLP. So all of the stuff that you do, it gives you, you know, it gives you much more viewpoints of the finance function as a whole. So when you kind of layer those things together, I think maybe that helps to give you different perspectives.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Okay, because it's interesting, you know, at the moment, you know, we see this changing shift actually about what the CFO actually is. You know, historically it was we need to get make sure there's a set of accounts that go out, we need to make sure the bookkeeping's right. But actually now we see CFOs almost having to take on that IT, they're taking on HR and all of those other things. So is that you know, is there any, you know, what are you seeing when you're going out to market, you know, with that with that kind of shift in in focus?

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Yeah, I mean, I so it I think it depends on client size to set to start with. So I've got some very good friends who work in the third sector, and they definitely, you know, one of my closest friends, he he kind of the CFO, but has has taken on people, IT, etc. So definitely much broader. I think in um maybe in the bigger businesses like the FTS, like PLCs, that there's still some delineation, but obviously finance is fundamentally finance is responsible for the numbers, but there's also process in that. There's also technology in that, you know, finance get involved a lot in, you know, frequently a transformation, not always, but a transformation in finance will frequently include a system. So you have to be conversant with fusion, Oracle, SAP, Web Day, or at least technology. You know, AI now in finance is sort of of course. So I think and and digital, right? So everything we do is digital now. It's we don't use paper and pen anymore. Thank God.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Thank God.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

You know, and when you do transformation, you're looking at not always, but frequently looking at your your OD and your target operating model. So you might be looking at what locations are you using, what capabilities does your team need, not just the costs, but like really what skills do we need for the future.

unknown 11:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

When you're doing a transformation program, you're kind of designing for 10 or 15 years' time, not for now or 18 months.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Okay. So do you think that's what kind of differentiates that, you know, what you were saying earlier around change versus transformation? Change is going to be happening in the next, you know, year to two years tarps, transformation is something much more bigger than that, much more longer term.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Yeah, I think so. It's it's it's yeah, I mean, transformation because you are it's a paradigm shift, is gonna take longer because you know you have to sort of to start with, unless you've got a very specific driver for transformation, so that might be some MA activity, it might be some legislative activity where you know, particularly in the financial services or you know energies and whatever. But again, that's not really gonna be transformation, that will be change because you're gonna know what you've got to do and when. So you've got a very specific roadmap. So with transformation, you know, it's a much longer tale because it's you know, what what is that what is the corporate strategy that we're trying to deliver? What's the vision, what's the mission? Then what part does finance play? What part does technology play? What part does you know the the the the procurement play, etc.? So you've got all that sort of moving parts of the C-suite in the board, and then you get into sort of planning, okay, now how do we operationalize the transformation? And that, you know, good discovery of what is your existing systems landscape, existing capabilities, existing data structures, all that sort of stuff, and and then you can plan the delivery. So just by its very nature, it it does take a lot longer. I mean, so I don't I wouldn't say that's the definition of transformation that it takes longer, but it definitely will do.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Could you walk us through what a good transformation looks like? You know, you've obviously seen the good, the bad, and everything in between. What does good look like? So if we're sat here, you know, there's a finance leader sat there who's about to embark on on a major change or a transformation, depending on how we define it. What does good look like?

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Gosh, there's quite a few things that I would say, what does good look like? So let's start with a least sexy one is governance. But it's like really good governance. People, you know, transformation is a paradigm shift, but it's not like willy-nilly everyone having a crack. Let's just go over that way. Yeah, I'll have a look over it when I'll just have a fiddle with that. In order to get stuff delivered on time, on budget, on spec, you need to, you know, know what you're doing, you need to have clear decision-making parameters, clear reporting. So, you know, working with the CFO, they they want to know what the risks are, the raids, they want to know progress. So I liken the governance and transformation to a bit like audit, like you kind of have it there. You don't pay once you've built it, you don't have to pay too much attention to it, but without it, you're kind of house of cards. Um that's not super sexy.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

No, not the most exciting part of it, but a necessary evil.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

The second bit that people forget, I think, because people focus on delivery of something, is what are we trying to achieve? And I've kind of said, What's the strategy? What's the corporate strategy? Where are we wanting to be in five or ten years' time? Because if what you're gonna spend all that money on isn't delivering that, why are we doing it? Like, what are the benefits? So tying it back to the benefits in the business case. And the business case can be financial or it can be you know quantifiable and qu or qualifiable. Like, so you might not it it might be, you know, you're really keen to sort of make people's work lives better, you might I don't know, whatever, move into new markets. So always being able to tie your transformation back to your purpose, your business case, your benefits, because at that point you you know, when decisions come up and do we use this system or that system, do we have a shared service center? Do we keep do we remain local? Do we whatever? You will be able to make sure that the decisions you're making still serve your strategy to always tie you back to what you're trying to achieve. There's a couple more things. One I would say is however much change and comms you think you need, double or triple or quadruple it.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

You can design a system and a process and an org design, but you've got to take people on the journey and you know, humans hate change.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

What what advice have you got for people? You know, change, you've you've mentioned it there is people hate it, even the smallest thing can send people off. So how do you, you know, with that comms piece, how do you make sure those people are on that journey with you at all times and you, you know, and don't lose them on the way?

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Uh there's a few sort of tricks and technologics. You know, first of all, make sure you have like a multi-channel comm strategy. So you make sure you've got a stakeholder map, who are the people you need to talk to. C-suite, middle management, more sort of junior careers. You've probably got you might have people in in work in in factories or workshops, you might have people in finance IT. So map out all your stakeholders, work out how you want to communicate with them, deliver the communication in multiple different ways, because some people will want a town hall to hear it, some people will want a webpage to read their own time, some people might want emails, uh you know, videos, whatever. So you you've got to make sure that you provide the information in in in ways that encourages people to read it. And something that I kind of I kind of do in innately because I um sort of have some you know neurodiversity in myself and my family is that and I've been talking about this with a lot of transformation leaders recently. What you say and what people hear are not necessarily the same things. So for some people, you know, people hear oh, transformation, it's exciting, but but when you you say that, but they will hear my whole world is changing. Who am I going to sit next to? What to expect me to do? Where is it gonna be? So that's something that I I've started to talk about quite a lot. It's like one in seven people are neurodiverse in the workforce. So if you're doing a transformation program, so you you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot if you don't consider how people receive your message as well as how you deliver it.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

And that's a really interesting skill to have. You know, that as a statistic is you know quite surprising. And you kind of go, these are the people that we've, you know, we've got they're in our workforce, we've got to make sure they understand what we're, you know, and our message is getting through. How many of the leaders that are running these projects do you think have those soft skills currently to be enabled to do that comms in that in that way?

SPEAKER_00 18:04

I guess I need to be careful here, but I would say on the basis of I've been operating in this sort of world for most of my you know career, 20 or 20 million years. I don't think it's super common. I think people can either focus on delivery, you know, you there are lots of people who will look at what's the program plan, when's this been done, when's the data migrated, when we've designed the processes. So particularly, and again, I'm making a sweep in generalization, but there are some functions which tend to have slightly more neurodiv high neurodiverse people, IT finance. So if you are very much focused on delivery and not on qualms and not understanding how you know what I can say blue and you can hear red, right? And not having that active listening and understanding that that's that's uh it's reasonably rare. I I actually think it's reasonably rare. I was having a conversation with a I won't drop any names, but a friend, a friend of mine who is a very experienced person working for a huge global organization, and they're responsible for a huge transformation, moving people from one part of the country to another, whole you know, whole departments. And and they were really sort of struggling with people from sort of um technology and engineering, and they were like, Well, I I'd given them all this information, I've told them what's happening, we've talked about being excited, and they're just resisting all the time, and I don't know what to do. So we had a conversation, had some tips and tricks about there's while we're listening to that. It sounds like there's some neurodiverse people in that cohort. When you say change is happening, we'll tell you more about it soon, they're hearing, oh my god, what's happening? I don't know what where am I going to be sitting? And when the when my friend sort of had these conversations and she hadn't really realized that and started to address them in the way that we, you know, we we talked about, she said it was transform like it was transformational for her. And everybody that was impacted by it, so she was kind of doing this more of an active listening, she was kind of being empathetic. Not that she wasn't empathetic to start with.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

No, of course, of course. Is it yeah? It's interesting. Yeah, people sometimes forget that comms piece full stop in in change. It feels like it's happening within that particular group, that particular team that are delivering it, and actually there's a whole business that's looking for that guidance and that reassurance that change isn't necessarily a bad thing.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Yeah, and and people forget that comms is a skill, right? Comms isn't change management, they're two different things. Like change management might include comms, but actually to have somebody who's really skilled at creating an impactful, simple, understandable message, you you know, you need someone who knows how to do comms. Like I know how to drive a car, but I don't know how to service an engine. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Like get the right people in the right places to support.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

You mentioned that there was an so we sorry, we we digress there briefly on on comms because I think that's really important. But you mentioned there was another thing about what good transformation looks like. You said there was a couple of things, and you said comms was one of them. Do as much comms, more comms than you think you need. What was the other?

SPEAKER_00 21:24

So I always try to bring in OD really early as well.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

So OD, what's that for the uninitiated?

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Oh, I'm sorry, organizational design. So looking at your structures.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

If you are doing true transformation and you are really changing the how you do things, where you do things, with whom, if you wait until the last minute, for example, if you're implementing a system, you think, oh, it's all right now system will sort it, and you wait until the last minute, you've got whole teams of people that you might want to move to different locations, you might change their reporting line, their capability matrices. Might be different, what their job requires them to do, because you've maybe you've got AI in, maybe you've got a new system, you know what I mean? So you have to think about that really early, and often it's left to the last minute, as is change management. So, you know, if you get your governance in place from the start, if you get change and cons in place from the start, if you get your AD in place from the start. And the last one, actually, thinking about oh, talk about strategy and finally data.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Like it's undoes all of the best systems that I've seen. Yeah.

unknown 22:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Absolutely. Start working on your data right from day one, data governance framework. Okay. Have a look at what you've got. See if you can source it, where is it? Did the lineage, what can you do to simplify, dedupe, cleanse. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Okay. A lot. Yeah, there's a lot to think about in doing change. And I guess then on the flip side, a bad transformation doesn't do any of those things. Or is there anything specific that can undo all of that good work?

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Yeah, I mean, a bad one, a bad transformation can be you don't do change and comms and you've got the best system, super slick processes, but people just dig their heels in and deliver and work around it. People, you know, the half-life of a good system or good process is dates, but with people, right, they can dig their heels in.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

And I think we've all been that where we've put in a system, and everyone has this idea, you know, you're sold the dream from a systems provider who says this will be the silver bullet that will solve all of your problems, and you put it in, and you've got exactly the same problem you had before.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Yeah, just with a different colour screen.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Exactly that. Yeah, it just looks a bit more snazzy.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Do you know what's well actually is knowing when to pivot as well. So, you know, you might have had a dis at the start of your transformation, you might have said, we're going there, we're doing this. As if, you know, information's emergent, you know, like as we get to strategies now kind of emergent, we're not doing five years strategy plans with realizing this black swan events, is stuff is changing around us so fast. If you blindly follow a plan you might have put in place 24 months ago or 36 months ago or 18 months ago, and you do not continually horizon scan and continue to reassess what are we doing, does that make the boat go faster? So that can end up being a bad one because you're you're you're putting something in that no longer serves.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

So how how relevant is that in today's world with the with the emergence of AI? We've touched on it briefly, but you know, AI, every it's the buzzword now, everyone's you know, getting things in. How you know how impactful is that lack of horizon scanning and how kind of close do we need to be on things with these the fast-paced nature of things at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Well, I mean, I I'd say if you if you think back to when we first started, I say collective we first started maybe talking about ChatGPT, only I like I can remember only a couple of years ago when I first was like, what is this and started using it.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

And and now it's everywhere. Like it any pe businesses or or or people were, you know, if we were not if we didn't have that on our radar, like the disruption has been insane. So it's I think if you aren't doing horizon scanning in your internal environment, your external environment, your competitive environment, you'd be blindsided because the pace of change is so rapid.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

And are you finding clients coming to you now when they're they're talking about change and transformation? Is AI part of that opening conversation now?

SPEAKER_00 25:31

A lot of people will talk about it, you know, like because as you said, you know, uh and a software vendor might say, Oh, it's all got AI and it's superb, it'll make you cup of tea. I was again, I was chatting to a friend of mine who is an engineer, like a software engineer, and he works, he he's a an architect for a very large sort of he works on a very large system. And he was sort of saying how frustrated he was. They go to these sort of the annual events and and the the the system banger is like talking about AI, he was just saying, but it's rubbish, it doesn't do anything. I've got better stuff because I know my organization, I know my data. The AI in the system is next to useless. It's like putting a prompt in ChatGPT or Claude without giving it it's the context and the role and the guardrail. So it's you have if you haven't got your data in the right place, owned, governed, and you're not getting people to use it correctly. I actually think it's a it's a bit of the imprisoned clothes unless you have trained people on it and how to use it and what it can and what it can't do. And you know, having humans in the loop is really important because you know work is moving from, I'd say the work is moving from kind of the doing, and now we are the doing, but we have to do the reviewing much more than we used to have to do. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Yeah, and I think it always comes with a health warning, doesn't it, at the minute? Always double check and triple check what comes out. So, you know, we've talked a lot about change and transformation. As a CFO, I'm sat here going, that sounds expensive. There's a lot going on in that, there's a huge amount of things to cover. How does someone even start that process?

SPEAKER_00 27:10

What from as a CFO who's thinking, oh my goodness, I've got to start having I've got to do some transformation. Where do I start?

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yeah, kind of. You know, yeah, I sit here and I go, if we, you know, we're we're going on, you know, we've got a strategy, we want to do this, that's gonna be a real shift change. Actually, we've there's lots of things we've got to get right, we've got to get governance right, we've got to get data right, we've got to get comms right. Where do where do we begin? What kind of support is out there to, you know, and how do you in your business help support businesses in that way?

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Right. Yeah, so there's a few ways. I mean, obviously, if you're coming from a big PLC, you know, the the the the the the the usual players will be able to come and do a diagnostic and of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Um and sometimes those look, you know, being realistic, sometimes those are really valuable because they allow you to open the door to the board, for example, or investors, for example. You know, something with a big four logo on might get taken more seriously. What I would definitely say is where I've seen transformations be most successful is where CFOs or C, you know, work sometimes with COOs, CEOs, have taken external advice, not from one player who's got a massive commercial interest, but get somebody who's your trusted advisor, like your your you know, your trusted friend, a critical friend. So if you are thinking about undergoing a transformation, I would suggest reaching out and speaking to people, transformation directors, program directors who've done it, who can give you the watch out. So, you know, if you've never done it before, or all of these, there's there'll be loads of things that they can just say everything, but this, this, this, this, this, watch out for this, don't listen to that, and that's nonsense. So I think if you take you can take a matrix approach, but I would always advise this is gonna sound like I've got a vested interest, but I would always go and ask maybe some in it's some interims or some independent individuals who can give you just ask for an hour. There's I you know, I I frequently speak to people for an hour or a couple of hours or have a few meetings just to give them advice. Doesn't it doesn't cost me anything to do that? Doesn't you know you can have a conversation. But you know, I'm always happy to talk to anybody. If any CFOs out there or CEOs or COOs are thinking about doing this, uh like it's part of my you know landscape is I'm I'm more I'm always more than happy to talk to anybody. In fact, I'd much rather somebody came and talked to me and said, I'm thinking about doing this. Can we have a chat? And even if they don't engage me, I'd much rather give them some real help and tips to get it right because so often it's got wrong and it's painful for everybody, it's painful for the teams, it's painful for the organization. Yeah. It doesn't need to be that hard. You can do it right first time.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

And that brings us really nicely actually on to you know what you do, actually, Catherine, which is help businesses through this journey. What can that look like? You know, if someone's thinking actually, you know, they've listened to your UI on the podcast and go would love to kind of work with her. What does that look like in practice, or how can that look? And how can you kind of support in in some of those conversations?

SPEAKER_00 30:09

So I mean so again, there's a few ways. If if you've got a CFO who's super busy in a complicated business and they're like, I need to make this happen, I don't have the time and the headspace, you know, someone like me can come in, be that right-hand person, be the counterpart who delivers a transformation, while the CFO focuses on BAU, get you know, strategy, commercial stuff, whatever. So you can come in and do a full-time program, start to finish, where you do the discovery, the design, build, deploy. Frequently, what you can also do is support if an organization wants to kind of do it a bit more light touch, you could kind of maybe come in and do some discovery sessions and say, right, let's let's let's sit with you, let's talk about what is it you want to achieve, what's your time scales, and do some initial discovery about what where do we think your pitfalls are. And that could be done either in maybe chunks of time, so a couple of sessions, and come back with a report or some findings, then maybe sort of pick up every few weeks or a few months as you progress, or fractionally, where if if you've got, for example, uh quite a lot of capability in the organization to maybe do you maybe you've got project managers, change managers comms, I can kind of do fractional stuff and sort of have an oversight, come and sit, sort of, and make sure that you know that the plan is created, that the activities are being taking place, be kind of like a critical review to this for the CFO. So there's you know, there's there's those three sort of engagement models, and also I mean, there's another way which, if you think you've got capability internally, but you want some assurance on actually is my program director or my internal team or my consultancy that I've hired, are they doing the right thing? You can kind of I can come and do some maybe like uh an assurance, an independent assurance for you kind of kick the tires, you know, like turn over a few rocks, ask after you know 20 25 years of doing it, I know what to look for.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Yeah, yeah, look for the red flags that we might have missed.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Yeah, ask the pokey questions because it's better that you know now that you know, waiting until it's definitely say having an independent person will pay dividends if you if you're just thinking about it from a financial perspective. You know, it's it feels like a lot of money, so transformation is expensive. Getting a good transformation consultant, whether that's fractionally, whether that's full-time, whether that's in chunks at stage gates, they'll pay for their day rate. If they're a good person, they'll pay for their day rate by holding everyone else to account, making sure you get what you've asked for and it's delivered. So it's think about value, not cost.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Interesting. A lot of stuff at the minute that says actually you know, CFOs are not CFOs now, they are CVOs. It is about the value of delivery, not necessarily the cost of it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

And it's you know, yeah, frequently with clients, you can it we can do it cheaper with internal people. Okay, have these internal people have they ever done this before? No. Okay, right. Can we upskill them? Well, who's gonna upskill them? Are you gonna backfill them from their day jobs? Well, no. Okay, right. So you're gonna do a really cheap program and it's gonna rumble on for 18 months and you're gonna get nowhere, and then you're gonna have to parachute in a load of so I mean so it's it's thinking yeah like that.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Thinking like that, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Opportunity cost of not doing it right the first time around is gonna be a lot more than Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

And I think a lot of us have been in businesses where we've started a program on not backfilled and then been trying to run it, you know, and try and do it, and it does just doesn't work, actually. You just don't get what you really want out of it at the end.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

So and it and it is exhausting. So this is probably one of the things is it's a you know, change is hard on everybody. It's it's change, it's hard on someone like myself who does it all the time. It's emotionally exhausting, it's not a 40-hour week thing, it's 60, 70, you know, I mean your brain's always on it. So you've got to build in time for people to have a bit of a you've got to build in time to give people time to decompress as well. So, you know, that's really important.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

And I guess that comes out of that organizational design set piece, does it? Like in terms of that, it's not just how you design for the future, but actually how do we design through that change process as well.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Yeah. If you assume, you know, you backfill people, give people time to process that change is happening, you need people to people to need to have time to do training. Because it's challenging and difficult and there's lots of pivots, people get emotionally and physically exhausted because of it, you know. So you kind of need to build that in and you need to build in time for people to like decompress in psychologically safe spaces and have some team time, have some sort of like bit of a bit of a cup of tea and a hug kind of time, you know.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

How do we, you know, we we've we've joked that you know some of the big software companies will come in and and sell you the world, you know. How do we kind of you know test that and make sure that we're getting value for money, that it's gonna deliver what we think it's going to, that it's actually gonna answer and solve the problems we think it's going to?

SPEAKER_00 35:10

I mean, there's a few ways. So, first of all, it's making sure you're really, like I said, what's your strategy, what do you want to do, what do you want to deliver? There's no point buying one of the top, you know, tier one products if you're not a kind of size of business. So get your requirements. This is kind of getting a bit more into delivery, but decide what you're you know, get gather your requirements. And I don't mean for the CFO to do that, but for your program team, your heads of finance, your finance process lead, your IT guys, what do you want the system to do? And then go out and run an RFI and RFP and be really open and say we want it to do, we want it to deliver this, not in this way. So you're not saying we want it to do what we currently do today, but actually, as a CFO, I want the accounts to be produced on working day three, for example, and then let the various players demonstrate to you how they would deliver that. I would always say you will benefit from having somebody manage that relationship tightly from your side, so it's always worth getting procurement involved. But also, again, I would say you know the value of a transformation consultant or a PD, someone like myself who's independent, is that you can manage that relationship with those third parties because you know what to look for. You know aspirational promises that can be made, you know, like I said, which rocks to turn over, you know, you want your statement of work to be nailed down, you want your sort of your contra your contracts to be quite watertight and then be able to hold people to quality and and and timescales.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Okay, one final question. What do you think transformation will mean in the future?

SPEAKER_00 36:45

It's definitely it's definitely going to be much more rapid. And instead of having, you know, over the last 20 or 30 years, you could do a transformation programme and you maybe would do once once in your career. I think it's gonna get to the stage of being continuous. And maybe not, you know, a system, you would want your system to stay for a period of time. But I think transformation is gonna be more of a mindset. So I think we're gonna want to see we're gonna see more people comfortable operating in the grey, not knowing the answers, being a bit more humble, being a bit more agile. Because without all of again, without humility, agility, and comfortable in the grey, you are gonna, you know, you now become as to a must and you think you you're going in the right direction, then something happens over here to the left. Um so I think it's uh clients are gonna need to build capability internally to deliver it, much more so than they would have needed to have done previously.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Thanks to Catherine for the podcast that she's done today. It was really great hearing from her about finance transformation. If anyone would like further details of how to contact Catherine, then please reach out through the normal channels and I will put you in contact.