The Next Stage

Moving from stage two to stage three involves shedding some day-to-day duties and working across departmental boundaries, teaching colleagues and co-workers, and looking to make a mark on the company as a whole rather than just doing the best possible job on the task at hand.

Progression to stage four involves yet another change in perspective, this time to look even more broadly at the business and how it fits into the competitive landscape. To reach this point, a CFO must rely heavily on his supporting cast, as there simply is not enough time in the day to both close the books and meet with outside stakeholders. "You're putting the technical stuff behind you, and putting your faith in those who are handing you the balance sheet, trusting that they've got it right," says Sweetman.

"At some point in any job, you can't do it all yourself," says Finkelstein. "But in order to delegate, you have to have tremendous confidence in the people around you. And that means spending the time to develop those people." Thus, one of the most reliable differentiators between a merely good leader and a great one is the ability to develop strong teams, where debate is welcomed and junior staffers can have opportunities to exercise their own leadership skills.

Such a passing of the baton requires a leap of faith, to be sure, especially in today's precarious economy. "The pressures are even greater than normal to focus on the bottom line, and not even next quarter but the end of the week," acknowledges Sweetman. "But the business is going to continue beyond the end of the week. A leader is thinking about that long-term future."

Kate O'Sullivan is a senior writer at CFO.

But Enough about You
Finance executives can use the career-stages model to assess talent companywide.

Building on the work of former Harvard Business School professors Gene Dalton and Paul Thompson, the career-stages model of leadership development outlined in the book The Leadership Code can be used to evaluate talent needs throughout an organization. Even a quick exercise in which managers assess the leadership potential of their teams can provide a telling picture of strengths and weaknesses, says Kate Sweetman, co-author of the book and a consultant at The RBL Group, which employs the model. "It can be shocking to people when they realize intellectually what they need and then look at what they've got," she says.

Among other things, the model enables managers to:
• determine the company's distribution of talent
• determine how many people the company needs at each stage to reach its goals (few businesses require many stage-four leaders; ones and twos will typically be in greater demand)
• have discussions with employees about the overall structure of their careers
• change the company's recruiting strategy as required — K.O'S.

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