Tenet "was absolutely in a turnaround, and if I look at my other companies, they all had some element of challenge," says Porter. Among other difficult assignments, Porter joined Dallas-based utility TXU just as the company was dealing with deregulation, and became controller at Raytheon in 2003 as the aerospace giant was being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. When Tenet hired Porter, the company was also being investigated by the SEC and still licking its wounds from both hurricane damage and a Department of Justice investigation that ousted its former management team. "If you've experienced change and dealt with it in one business, you're more prepared to do it in the next," the 55-year-old CFO says.
These days, finance executives may even be able to use the ever-increasing volume of regulation to their sector-switching advantage. Porter says his experience in heavily regulated industries has helped him move, too, even when the rules are different. In such industries, he says, "you have to be able to think along [two] lines at the same time: What makes good business sense, and what will the regulator allow? If you haven't had that experience before, you're much more likely to just get frustrated."
While there is plenty to frustrate finance executives in any industry these days, of course, increasingly they will have to deal with the expectation that they understand the world beyond their own sector. "Companies are realizing that [for executives] to grow up solely in one industry gives [them] a pretty slanted view on global markets, events, and challenges," says Nosal. "More CEOs and boards are pushing to have candidates with multi-industry, multicompany experiences — not five or six, but two or three where they have been successful. That's absolutely a feather in somebody's cap."
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