HOW CFO navigated a successful turn-around
Executive Coaching enables the CFO of this newly acquired portfolio company to build her team, deliver better results
THE CHALLENGE THAT LED TO CFO COACHING
Soon after her company was bought by a larger PE fund, Jan (*) found herself under far more stress. After years of consistently explosive and profitable growth, the company was on its way to its first year of loss. The result would be devastating, and Jan needed to partner with the CEO and other C-level execs to turn it around -- quickly. She noticed me on LinkedIn and asked her CEO to sponsor CFO executive coaching.
After a quick assessment using the Positive Intelligence Quotienttool (or “PQ”), it was clear that the fastest way to improve performance was for Jan to stop wasting so much of her mental and emotional energy, often sabotaging her own efforts. She might be able to improve performance incrementally by fine-tuning strategy and tactics and upgrading the team’s skills. But removing her own self-sabotage and tapping into her Sage powers would have quicker and more lasting effects.
At first, Jan was skeptical. She prided herself on being a positive person, and believed this meant she already had high a Positive Intelligence Quotient. Look at all she had accomplished! But the fact that she was suddenly floundering under the increased expectations of her new investors made her open to a fresh approach. What I saw was that having an optimistic outlook couldn’t match the power of the underlying self-sabotaging thoughts that were interfering. It seemed that these intrusive anxiety-inducing thoughts had been supercharged since the company had been purchased. Not surprising: stress fuels fears and negative behaviors. In addition, being CFO of a portfolio company with this fund was quite different from the prior PE firm that owned them. And Jan’s thoughts were making it more difficult for her to change some of the former ways she was used to running the finance team. She resented some of the changes she was being asked to make, and the implied criticism of the quality of her team’s analytics and the Board decks.
THE APPROACH
We began to increase Jan’s PQ by exposing and weakening her master Saboteur, “the Judge”. Jan’s initial response was that she didn’t have a strong Judge. “I am a kind person. I am open-minded.” But the Judge is usually quite disguised. We typically don’t even realize that we are judging! Yet here’s a clue: most feelings of stress, anxiety, frustration, disappointment, regret, and guilt are direct results of judging yourself, or others, or your circumstances, or results. The tremendous stress Jan was experiencing pointed to a powerful internal voice of a Judge who was pretending to be her ally.
To demonstrate the pervasive presence of her Judge, we examined the thoughts that had caused Jan to toss and turn sleeplessly at 2:00 a.m. the morning before. She wrote down 18 thoughts. I invited her to categorize each as neutral, useful, or harmful. Jan decided that 4 of the thoughts were useful: talk to the CEO about the incentive program, consult with HR about an employee’s performance issues, ask her assistant to cancel a trip, and schedule a meeting with the CTO. I agreed with Jan that these were useful thoughts.
Still, I asked her what would have happened had these reminder thoughts not occurred in the middle of the night, keeping her from good sleep. She agreed that they would have probably occurred to her later that day and that nothing would have been lost. Jan rated 4 thoughts as neutral:
remembering her daughter’s birthday party, her father’s question about when they will next visit,
a flashback to her first winter in Colorado, and
later her first trip to Europe.
We agreed to categorize those as neutral and random.
Next we examined what Jan had accurately but hesitantly categorized as harmful thoughts, such as
the possibility that the CEO would fire her if the company’s performance didn’t pick up. This then led to a cascade of anxious thoughts about what would then happen to her reputation, whether they could keep the big house they had just purchased, and so on.
Other anxiety-producing worries included
that she might fail at an ERP implementation, and
that an upcoming presentation to investors would not go well.
A few thoughts were about regrets.
Why hadn’t she reacted more quickly to cut costs when revenues began to slow?
Why had she hired the wrong Controller and wasted nine months before letting her go?
Jan said the reason she was hesitant to firmly categorize these thoughts as harmful was that they kept her on her toes, pressuring her to work hard to turn things around. But this was not the first time she was having these thoughts: she realized they were actually recurring ones. She’d had them dozens of times. And while it’s OK if her mind reminded her of the importance of an upcoming meeting once, there is no redeeming value in her Judge repeatedly insisting on making her anxious in the middle of the night when there was nothing, she could do but toss and turn.
Jan began to see that this was also true of pondering her other past mistakes. Going over a mistake once as an attempt to learn from it and not repeat it is helpful. But to be badgered again and again by recriminations is not useful. The results were a loss of sleep, constant anxiety, stress, disappointment, guilt, regret and an overall lack of energy. Simply put, these are the emblems of sabotage!
THE MOMENTUM
It began to dawn on Jan that her Judge was not the friend it pretended to be. Given the Judge’s role as the master Saboteur, focusing initially on Jan’s internal Judge was key. Typically, we focus on weakening the Judge for the first couple of weeks, yet Jan wanted to move even faster: so, we proceeded to introduce the second strategy of building her PQ Brain muscles.
Together we devised a simple way to connect these two strategies and turn Jan’s persistent Judge into her own PQ Mind fitness trainer. How? Every time the Judge showed up, Jan would use it as a reminder to activate her PQ Mind muscles and choose to make them stronger. This would only take 10 seconds at a time, and could be done while she was in a meeting, driving, or exercising.
The irony of this plan was that the Judge would now be working toward its own destruction: because as the PQ Mind grows in strength, the Saboteur-voices get weaker. For example, if Jan had the thought, “What’s wrong with you, Jan? Why did you screw that up?” she’d say to herself, “Oh, there goes my Judge again” – whom she nicknamed Venom -- and then she’d activate her PQ Mind for 10 seconds.
Jan learned half a dozen ways to activate her PQ Mind. Her favorite methods were to focus on a particular object and to notice fine details she had never seen before, such as the color of a person’s eyes, or the details of a carpet pattern. Another was to feel each of her fingertips by rubbing them against one another, noticing the ridges – or some other object where she could notice details of how something felt. Or identifying the farthest-away sounds she could hear, and then the closest. Jan was skeptical that such simple exercises could have the dramatic effects I claimed they would. She was surprised to learn that her belief in the idea of “no pain, no gain” was one of the many self-fulfilling lies her Judge whispered. Not everything has to be difficult to be effective. In addition to their positive impact, the exercises are also fun, relaxing, and energizing. A short mental break.
At our CFO coaching session, the following week, Jan was amazed by how prevalent her Judge’s voice was. Once she started noticing her Judge, she discovered its sticky fingerprints everywhere. It was as if her Judge was running a constant editorial commentary, whispering or shouting in her ear all the time. Jan signed that she was discouraged at the mountain ahead of her, yet at the same time energized by the initial progress. She was dismayed that her internal enemy was so powerful, prevalent and persistent. But there was an immediate change when she learned to switch from saying “I don’t think we can make it” to “my Judge says she doesn’t think we can make it.”
COACHING OUTCOMES
Once Jan began to expose the Judge as an enemy -- and she began to notice and label destructive thoughts -- the Judge lost some of its credibility and power over Jan. After a couple of weeks of focusing on the Judge and strengthening her PQ Mind muscles, Jan was able to turn her attention to an accomplice Saboteur, the Pleaser.
Saboteurs get more active with increased stress. Jan’s added stress in recent months -- fueled all the more by her Judge -- had further energized her Pleaser Saboteur. The more things went wrong, the harder Jan worked to help, please, rescue, or flatter others. She said “yes” to too many requests, and missed opportunities to prioritize. This produced short-term results that temporarily reduced her anxiety but kept her and her team overworked and overwhelmed. She was losing sight of her own needs and becoming resentful as a result. In response to her Pleaser, Jan’s team did as they were asked but they began to feel some burn-out, and resentment was growing because it seemed Finance was working way harder and longer than anyone else in the company.
At our next CFO coaching session, she began to see the impact her Pleaser was having on her team members’ ability to take care of their own needs and to have balance. She began to see how this risked additional turnover which would lead to more over-work for everyone. But Jan was also afraid to let go of the Pleaser, who kept saying things like, “I don’t do this for myself. This is best for the company. I help others selflessly and don’t expect much in return. The world would be a better place if everyone stepped up like I’m doing.”
While it was true that the Judge and Pleaser got attention and validation for Jan and brought short-term rewards, we couldn’t just let go of these Saboteurs without replacing them with the Sage. The good news was that whenever Jan activated her PQ Mind, she was already strengthening her internal Sage’s voice (who she dubbed “The Driver”) and accessed its great powers. Jan didn’t need the harassment of her Judge and Pleaser to be a highly action-oriented, decisive, and effective individual.
Soon Jan began to see the Judge and Pleaser all over the place. She said it was like wanting to have her first child and suddenly seeing baby strollers everywhere. The good news was that Jan was finding it fun to shift her attention to activating her PQ Mind for 10 seconds whenever she saw her Judge or Pleaser show up. As she strengthened her PQ Mind, her Sage’s wisdom broke through the Saboteur noises more and more often.
RESULTS OF CFO COACHING
Jan continued to discover better, easier, more creative, and more joyful ways to deal with her challenges. She learned to say “No, unless …”, and “Yes, if …” or “Yes, after …”. She was surprised that most of the time, the person asking simply went away and found another way to get their needs met. So she could be more selective and strategic about what she said yes to – without the risk that she would be seen as not a team player. As she began to set more boundaries, and clarify priorities, her team’s natural gusto began to re-generate itself.
As Jan began to look forward to her weekly team meetings, the team felt fresh energy and unity. There was one exception, however. Her Director of FP&A seemed unwilling to shift gears to meet the new level of expectations. He was eventually replaced.
It took Jan and her colleagues 3 quarters to steady the ship and begin the turnaround. The investors were visibly more intense for a while, but gradually relaxed when the company’s simplified product and service offerings began to gain traction again. She was able to take a vacation. On her return, Jan mentioned that during the flight, she was telling her 12-year-old daughter about the Judge. Her daughter listened thoughtfully for a while and said, “I have that too. I will call mine ‘Pretty Little Liar’. She’s always making me feel bad.” We laughed at what an appropriate description that is for the Judge.
At the end of the engagement, Jan’s CEO remarked “CFO coaching has been a powerful engine that helped Jan, and frankly me, to navigate a very difficult time with our investors. She’s emerged as an even better partner for me and the COO. I would absolutely invest in executive coaching again when I have such a high confidence in someone’s capabilities and drive as I do with Jan.”
(*) Names changed to maintain client and sponsor confidentiality. Tailored solutions and services for CFOs, Executives and VPs. See what others say.
