Whether you are preparing to be a first-time CFO, or you’re a seasoned finance leader in your 5th CFO stint, success in your First 90 Days depends on how well you are able to:

• Orient yourself to the business and generate 2-4 “early wins”,

• Build relationships with your leader, your direct reports, peers, Board and others,

• Align expectations among your many stakeholders, and

• Adapt to the culture, even while you may be working to change it over time.

9 Things you must do as a CFO in your First 90 Days

What are the specific actions to get you on solid footing by the end of Month 3? 

1. Set yourself up for success before you start

2. Accelerate your learning

3. Build Relationships

4. Understand the business & company portfolio

5. Diagnose financials & processes

6. Define milestones

7. Align expectations

8. Assess your people, products and services, projects, locations and value chain

9. Secure 2-3 “Early Wins”

Executing on the above will position you to have your CEO, peers and others saying to themselves, and perhaps to one another, “We definitely hired the right person for this role”.

By the way, this same roadmap and similar milestones apply to other finance leaders as well.  A Vice President or SVP of Finance, a Controller, Director must build on these same bedrock principles.

Download the PowerPoint below for more details, including specific Milestones for Day 30, 60, 90

How do we produce great CFO coaching outcomes?

8 Pitfalls CFOs must Avoid in First 90 Days

1. Failure to focus

2. Failure to adjust to the culture

3. Failure to spend enough time with your  boss 

4. Falling prey to self-sabotaging behaviors:  10 Most Common

5. Not taking the business situation into account:  “S.T.A.R.S.” 

6. Failure to make a strong enough biz-case for resources

7. Failure to secure enough “early wins’ that matter to your boss

8. Letting the ends justify the means

   How Finance Leaders Self-Sabotage:  Repeating Old Patterns

Fresh Approach. Rapid impact. lasting results.

Call 855-924-7600 to learn more.

How do YOU self-sabotage?

Maximize success | 6-week CFO training cohort

The “x-factor” that sets CFOs apart is the ability to respond to life’s challenges, at work and at home, with a POSITIVE mindset, instead of a negative one.  As with muscle-fitness, a strong mindset, stamina and resilience come from an equivalent mind-fitness.

See how you can build the 3 core muscles that constitute mental fitness, based on research that included 500,000 participants including hundreds of CEOs, finance, sales, operations and technology leaders and teams, elite athletes and Stanford students. It is based on research conducted by Shirzad Chamine, and described in his New York Times best-seller Positive Intelligence. 

Leveraging an app-based coaching program, NEXT has created a 6-week training module for CFOs which supports success in one’s First 90 Days.  Together with a cohort of 4 other CFOs, you can dramatically increase in your ability to intercept the self-sabotaging behaviors that produce negative results like anxiety, stress, fear, shame, guilt.

Instead, leaders are able to create more resilience and work/life satisfaction as they activate the muscles of clarity, empathy, creativity, and ability to take laser-focused action.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS, AT THE LINK BELOW:

It’s Time.

Because if nothing changes… nothing changes.