December 12, 2001
In the coming months, I will begin my 30th year as an executive search consultant, during which time I have conducted hundreds of searches for CEO's, CFO's, Chief Marketing Officers and many others. I hope you will permit me a little look over my shoulder to build some perspective for my remarks today. In the time that I have been active in the business world, we have seen much change. The playing field has globalized and we have seen raw materials and capital costs retreat to secondary leverage positions as differential human resource costs have driven manufacturing to parts of the world unknown to most business executives as of 1970. Technologically we have moved from card-readers to the Blackberry.
And during all these changes, the Chief Financial Officer has evolved through a series of specialist phases, beginning with general accountancy; then to tax guru during the leveraged leasing phase; then to systems designer as computing power escalated; then to merger and acquisition manager as the conglomerates were built; then to cost accountant supreme when the accounting focus turned inside to management reporting; and now is a global risk manager.
WHAT DO CEO'S WANT?
Against this background of considerable change, we need to ask the question, What is it that Chief Executives want? Admittedly, some still want specialists, but most want a business partner able to forecast and analyze the entire business landscape.
One of the truly brilliant CEO's with whom I have had the pleasure to work is Rolf Huppi, Chairman of Zurich Worldwide. As he and I collaborated to totally rebuild the senior executive corps of their U.S. operations some years ago, he introduced me to the concept of the conversation partner. In this scheme, everybody throughout the hierarchy is required to be a conversation partner for the person at the next higher organizational level. The inference was that every key subordinate would have the intellectual breadth and personal confidence to discuss any business issue - present or future - which might be important to the growth and profitability of the company. Conversations were held as equals with the understanding that, when consensus could not be achieved, there was still the chain of command.