By Mr. Koushik Krishnan, Regional Manager, accounting & control, A-PAC, Tetra Pak Mentoring – building great teams to manage the madness. I handle a somewhat large role in a somewhat large organization. My work spans 6 time-zones, 9 markets and a billion euro in turnover.

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CFO’s Role in
Mentoring the F&A Team
and
Improving the F&A Team
Effectiveness

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By Mr. Koushik Krishnan, Regional Manager,
accounting & control, A-PAC, Tetra Pak Mentoring –
building great teams to manage the madness
I handle a somewhat large role in a somewhat large
organization. My work spans 6 time-zones, 9 markets and
a billion euro in turnover.
Last week, I got laid up
with a slip disc. With Q3 close
and the budget season in full
swing, this was not exactly
the best time to be laid up.
So, here I was, trying to
juggle decision making, tactical overseeing, putting out
team fights, participate in corporate future gazing, get the
team ready for an upcoming audit, and the list goes on.
And also, squeeze some time for rest and therapy when
the body gave way.

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And when I was resting, I realized my company hadn’t
shut down just because I wasn’t around and I would shut
down if I kept up this madness.
This brought home two very vital truths. One, work is
getting more and more complex and a person in a
leadership role; be it finance, marketing or production, just
can’t pull the cart alone. Second, teams today are more
willing to pick up the ball and start running, when the
captain gets injured and is not giving a 100%.
It is in this context that it becomes not just important,
but also necessary to have strong teams in place who
deliver superior performance in a consistent manner.
Finance & Accounting (F&A) has changed beyond
recognition in the last twenty years. A slew of local and
international accounting standards, each competing with
the other in complexity have been promulgated. Every
economic legislation comes with a compendium of rules

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and procedures with grave warnings that more changes
are imminent. Businesses are venturing into new markets,
new areas, new arrangements which bring in their share of
complexity. If all this was not enough, the people we work
with – shareholders, customers, vendors, employees,
banks, regulatory authorities, are smarter, better informed
and more demanding.
I have never seen a stronger case for change, a
stronger need to empower our F&A teams.
We need a F&A team that has subject matter
expertise, speed in implementing decisions, can run
along-with the business and provide solutions even before
they become issues. They need to do this day in and day
out on a sustainable basis. And all along, they need to be
assured that they are well rewarded in managing this
madness.

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How to find, mould and retain such a team should be
in the front and center of any CFOs agenda. If it isn’t
there, then he is probably in jail or making some very
tough presentations to the board, or plain out of job.
Now, the unfortunate thing about mentoring or
building world class competent teams is that,
organizations have basically made this whole process so
crappy, full of nonsensical mumbo jumbo, that most
realists wrinkle their nose when you talk about mentoring,
coaching. I don’t blame them. When you make a group of
sensible middle managers stand on a blanket in the hot
sun and another group try and yank it from under them, all
the while trying to get them to see a lesson on teamwork, I
would run a mile away too. Neither do you need complex
performance management forms, nor fancy workshops to
be a good mentor.

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Building and sustaining world class teams is all about
loving your team. When I say love, I mean complete,
genuine, deep love. It goes beyond taking them out for
lunch once a month and saying you care for them. It is that
love, which will lead you; to listen to their problems without
thinking “he is such a moron”, recognize what guy in your
team likes or is good at and assign him work accordingly,
give them all an equal opportunity to grow without feeling
insecure that they may shortly leave your team and go
someplace else to one day build great teams themselves.
It is amazing how you can practice this love without
being mawkish or academic. This is a laundry list of things
you could do:
− Sign up as a team for webinars run by the big 4
accounting teams on emerging issues in finance

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− Encourage your team to have lunch with marketing
guys once a while, to understand which customers/
products/ markets are growing and why
− Show them it is safe to challenge anyone, including
you, if it means better quality of reporting, accounting,
compliance
− Challenge them to pick one person in the team they
cannot stand (could be yourself) and learn to develop
a working relationship
All this sounds familiar? Of course it does! This is
exactly what you would do with your kids, right? And don’t
you feel happy when they grow up, succeed and start
driving the car while you sit behind and enjoy the view?
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