Over the last two years, there is no doubt that technology stepped up — with businesses now having some of the best tools at their disposal, allowing employees to instantly switch between the office and their homes. But technology is only the enabler, not the solution to running a successful business. Instead, the modern, post-pandemic business needs two things: one, a careful balancing of the roles played by technology and by people – both equally important yet interdependent; and two, a reinforcing of the importance of leadership to striking this balance.

The pandemic created a seismic shift in the way we work, and technology offered us a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card, of sorts. For decades, we’ve learnt by observing but with the advent of remote working at such a large scale, the way we learn and interact with our colleagues has undergone tremendous change. Whilst working apart from each other, we’ve managed to create a secondary culture, with catch-ups, regular wellbeing check-ins, and huddles, all trying to recreate the human interaction – those water-cooler moments – we’re used to in the office. Although working from home was initially greeted with excitement, this was soon dampened by the pressure of being constantly “online” and a feeling of being overwhelmed by incessant alerts and interruptions. That was probably the first wake-up call for business leaders, who realised that technology alone, whilst a valuable tool, wasn’t enough to succeed through the pandemic.

As we set foot into another year of uncertainty, we can be clear about one thing: people are the lifeblood of an organisation. And how we lead those people is what makes a business successful, not the number of tools available to us. The most effective leaders see technology as an enabler, a means of expressing themselves, drawing the best out of their teams and empowering individuals to communicate in ways that makes them feel most confident and productive. If used well, digital channels provide us with a level playing field and a platform from which to give praise, work through problems, review and provide feedback, and even bond and have fun!

The most effective leaders see technology as an enabler, a means of expressing themselves, drawing the best out of their teams and empowering individuals to communicate in ways that makes them feel most confident and productive.

However, technology alone can only go so far as to replicating the human working experience. For many, working from home prompted a feeling of limbo, it was hard to learn, be heard, be creative, or progress at the same pace. There is no doubt that consistent remote working and overcommunicating (however well-intentioned) has prompted a sense of digital fatigue, and in some scenarios, greater anxiety and isolation.

Ultimately, as our reliance on technology swells, a balance that works for the people using it must be found and maintained. This rests on the shoulders of leaders. Intentional leaders.

For instance, with so many channels to monitor, work can become overwhelming. But an intentional leader will agree with their team on how best to communicate with each other – inclusive of all work styles – without crossing boundaries. Technology isn’t the answer to hybrid working but creating a space for everyone, especially for those that aren’t always the first to speak up, is what business leaders should be focusing on as they embrace the new normal.

Fundamentally, businesses need to understand that the future will revolve around how they work and not where they work, or the tools they use. Indeed, the most technologically dependent era of working we’ve ever experienced has actually taught us more about ourselves as employees, managers and leaders than ever before.

Leaders need to collect the lessons their teams have taught them; actively engage with their employees to understand what they want from their working environments and use these conversations to solidify working practices that are relevant today and can evolve in the future. Such strategies do not need to be prescriptive. Based on the feedback given, they should empower their staff to choose what is right for them, whilst meeting the expectations of the business.

As with all workplace changes, there is no one right solution. Technology has enabled us to work wherever we are in the world, but it isn’t the answer to hybrid working. People are. The onus will be on managers and leaders to define what works and what doesn’t work for their teams and the business as a whole. What makes us more productive, more efficient, more inspired, more results orientated, more fulfilled? These are the questions to ask yourselves when trailing new technology. Such an approach ensures that whatever the future may hold for businesses, and however advanced ways of working become, people remain the priority, and that is always the key to success.

Finance Monthly is pleased to announce that the full list of winners of our 2021 Women in Finance Awards has been published.

Working in the financial services sector as a woman has always meant facing challenges, barriers to entry and an unequal gender balance in the workplace. Since the release of the Finance Monthly Women in Finance Awards 2020, we have seen some progress towards gender parity in the sector – however, 20% representation of women on executive committees and 23% on boards is still a far cry from our end goals and proof that a good deal of work remains to be done to ensure greater opportunity for women’s advancement in financial services.

As a leading financial publication, Finance Monthly strives to shine a light on the work of female professionals, the obstacles they face and the challenges they overcome. Each of the finance experts featured in this year’s edition of the Finance Monthly Women in Finance Awards are women who consistently achieve more than is expected of them despite barriers within the industry at large.

2021’s Featured Winners

This year’s standout winners include Susie Hillier, Head of Wealth Planning at Stonehage Fleming, who tells us about her success in building a diverse and high-performing team. We also hear from Rebecca Fels Larsson on her career progress as an investment professional at CORDET, among many other stories of achievement from female professionals.

At Finance Monthly, we are proud to share each of these stories with you. Congratulations to all our winners.

I was looking back through some old work files the other day. I came across a glossy brochure from a former employer setting out some internal reforms designed to make the organisation fit for the future. “Vision 2020” was the less than original title, a reform programme that promised to deliver sweeping competitive advantage by the year 2020.

Funnily enough the words “pandemic”, “lockdown” and “remote working” didn’t feature in this breezy portrayal of a land flowing with milk and honey. Read with the benefit of hindsight, the document was a vivid reminder of the dangers of predicting the future. We can make our best guess, sure, and teams of analysts do just that, fuelled by human insight and the power of technology, but the future is always going to be something of an undiscovered country. 

This, surely, is one of the key takeaways from this whole experience. Rather than predicting what will happen, business leaders should instead expect the unexpected. Surely no one will now query investing in robust rapid response plans and flexible IT support systems – prerequisites for any organisation, large or small, public or private. But what else can leaders, particularly those in the financial sphere, garner from the past 18 months or so? There’s no shortage of lessons to draw. 

Ready, set…

We’re all going to have our individual memories of the pandemic. For me, it's things like getting the first text about my vaccine. Another is that feeling of leaving the office in mid-March 2020 and wondering when I would next be back. But individual recollections aside, Covid’s impact has been ubiquitous. We really have all been experiencing it to greater or lesser extents and this means that getting the right culture in place is key. Empathy for those hit harder than others, as well as having a supportive and trusting attitude towards remote working, have been key. Compassion and kindness really do go a long way.

It’s not just people skills though. Infrastructure, too, is likely to change dramatically. We’ve learned that good work can be done in the office and at home but that’s no reason to cut investment in an organisation’s physical premises. On the contrary, making an office as pleasant as possible, with meeting rooms and social areas in abundance, will help persuade employees to brave their commute once again.  

Ongoing opportunities 

The good news is that the economy appears to be recovering strongly and contract opportunities across the public and private sectors have thankfully remained plentiful. For example, there have been over 100,000 open tenders and frameworks issued and public spending worth over £1000 billion by the UK Government alone within the last 12 months.

Of course, opportunities vary in size from the smallest to the largest, but competition is fierce – if anything fiercer than before Covid and likely to remain so as companies jostle for advantage as the economy recovers. While who you know is still important in any procurement, the process is becoming ever more digital, with more tenders moving online and industry open days and other one-to-one interactions becoming an ever more digital experience.

Industrial revolution

The sheer scale of this conversion to all things digital means that now, more than ever, organisations need to industrialise their business winning processes. This will enable them to reap digital dividends, such as using technology to streamline procedures and increase their own efficiency, and in the process save their precious time to do the things that cannot be streamlined – such as the human interaction that can often secure the golden nugget of information that secures the win.

An online treasure trove of information is now available, on both the market and on new opportunities that organisations would wish to bid for. Using data feeds, market trackers (like my very own Contract Finder Pro, for example) and integrating both outsourced (like bid writers and legal teams) and insourced components and services, the business winning process can become increasingly automated and slick. 

Since there is never quite enough time to write a bid, those organisations that can automate the process most effectively and take advantage of the digital opportunity at hand will be more competitive than those that don’t. Their reward will be larger market shares and the promise of even more competitive advantage still to come. 

About the author: Sandy Boxall is founder and Managing Director of Contract Finder Pro sandy.boxall@contractfinderpro.com

What do you think are the key lessons business leaders have learnt over the past 15 months?

Firstly, business leaders would have quickly learnt the importance of liquidity in a crisis. Without cash, everything in a business grinds to a halt.

Secondly, given the speed of the pandemic, many global/regional headquarters were overwhelmed or had little time to react. Offices closer to markets were empowered to react quickly to local situations. This decentralised decision-making model is here to stay as we can anticipate more disruptions in a post-COVID world – it is important for an organisation to continue to stay localised, nimble and swift in response.

Thirdly, there have been major paradigm shifts and the pre-COVID world is not coming back. Business leaders realise they need to accelerate the pace of integrating technology into every aspect of the organisation e.g. remote working, online payments, real-time inventory levels, etc. Technology has flattened the playing field and the commerce world is becoming borderless.

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly redefined the way business leaders interact with their teams. How can leaders re-approach their interactions to increase employee engagement?

It is important for leaders to clearly set out the organisation’s overall direction and key performance indicators for each business unit, especially post-pandemic when there can be changes in direction for the organisation. With fewer face-to-face opportunities, there is a greater need for leaders to regularly and consistently communicate progress via newsletters, town halls or group check-in sessions. I would recommend senior leaders to have regular virtual chat sessions with varying small groups of employees from any section of the organisation. This ensures senior leaders are accessible and enables them to feel the pulse of the organisation personally.

Employees will stay engaged if they are able to provide feedback for the organisation to stay competitive or how to improve. However, it is critical for leaders to follow through on actions and feedback to stay credible. Feedback from the coalface will be more valuable than before as we are in unprecedented times and the local impacts from the pandemic are different.

Managers play an important role in driving employee engagement and as such, leaders must continually invest in the development of managers for them to be successful. Managers need to have empathy in order to appreciate their employees’ needs as these have changed during the pandemic. For instance, working with their partner at home, homeschooling children, job security, organisation stability and financial well-being are some of the key concerns for employees and these need to be consistently addressed and supported where possible.

Ironically, studies show that leaders who try to be all-rounders and focus on improving personal weaknesses, do not always turn out to be effective leaders. Can you imagine the world if Steve Jobs chose to focus on his improvement areas instead of his key creativity talent?

As the world emerges from the pandemic, what would you advise business leaders to do now?

Following a year of firefighting, it is time to revisit five-year business plans to confirm if long term objectives and business assumptions are still valid post-pandemic. As the world is no longer going back to pre-COVID days, leaders have to be brave enough to accept that there are no sacred cows in the organisation. Where necessary, they have to restructure and adapt to the new world e.g., right-sizing organisation structures, streamlining the supply chain, optimising office space, reviewing business continuity plans etc. Organisations need a sense of urgency to complete this review or face having the company overtaken by the competition.

A positive outcome from a crisis is that it tests and showcases good talent within the organisation i.e. those who stepped up to navigate the challenges. Business leaders should ensure these talents are retained and have clear development plans for the future. The sustainable advantage of a company is its people, and it is easier and more cost-effective to groom internal talent.

Finally, leaders should acknowledge employees for managing the organisation through an extraordinary period of disruption. They should build camaraderie within the ranks by sharing success stories, recognising employees who went the extra mile, recognising individuals through awards, etc. The next stage is to focus on the future and share updated business plans. Build hope, confidence and resilience within employees, as these are the fabric for thriving teams.

Why is coaching so important, even for individuals and leaders who think they don’t need it?

Organisations may think their technology, innovative product designs or branding give them a competitive edge. However, it is the employees who drive these “competitive edges” and people’s talents are an organisation’s sustainable advantage. These talents should be nurtured, especially within the people leaders in the company.

Leaders need to understand their natural talents so they can operate in their ‘strength’ zone and be good at what they do. Ironically, studies show that leaders who try to be all-rounders and focus on improving personal weaknesses, do not always turn out to be effective leaders. Can you imagine the world if Steve Jobs chose to focus on his improvement areas instead of his key creativity talent?

On the other hand, teams must be well rounded to be successful. Studies show that diverse, strong and cohesive teams have a combination of strengths in strategic thinking, executing, influencing and relationship building. In a pandemic, well-rounded teams will navigate well through any crisis with no predictability.

Executive coaching in strengths helps individuals (especially people managers) and teams to accomplish goals by doing what they naturally do best. As company resources are in short supply, managers must effectively utilise team members’ strengths, otherwise, the team’s performance will be mediocre. There are benefits for team coaching sessions as the team members will better understand how each individual works. For instance, a team manager’s talent can be making good decisions, but he or she may need a longer time to deliberate. Therefore, the team can consider sending pre-reads in advance of meetings to expedite the decision-making process. Team coaching enables teams to work cohesively together.

In NetSuite Brianyard’s quarterly surveys, the data has typically shown that CFOs are more conservative capital spenders than their peers, for example, but slightly more likely to increase budgets in other critical areas during good times. Art Wittmann tells us all about it.

The differences, while noticeable, have been manageable - until the pandemic. Since April, we’ve seen a significant and growing gulf in the fiscal priorities of finance leaders versus their peers as the two groups worry about their business from different perspectives.

In April, finance leaders wanted to aggressively slash spending except in payroll and marketing. Meanwhile, non-finance leaders were looking to cut mostly in capital projects, non-IT operations, marketing and sales. Both groups wanted to preserve IT spending, calling for only minor decreases.

Mapping that to business priorities, while all leaders wanted to cut in April, finance leaders prioritised talent and maintaining market presence, while other business leaders seemed more concerned about maintaining production and product-support capabilities. The difference in approach could be thought of as finance looking to ensure the company continues customer acquisition efforts, given that it’s reasonable to assume some existing clients will be lost. Meanwhile, non-finance execs were thinking more about maintaining service to those current customers. Other data points in our quarterly surveys back this up: Customer service ranks as a slightly higher concern for non-finance executives than for finance.

There’s logic behind finance leaders’ approach. Marketing is often the first in line when cutting needs to happen. If competitors go dark, it’s a great opportunity to steal market share as long as demand hasn’t completely tanked. We saw pockets of that opportunism in car sales and in certain restaurants that easily shifted to take out.

By June, non-finance executives reported creeping back toward flat budgets across the board, except for capital (still down) and IT spending, where most sought increases. Work-from-home mandates and e-commerce success likely drove that desire for more technology.

Finance leaders, still warily eyeing cash flow, were not quite as optimistic. Still, June saw less severe cuts, with technology spending flat. Finance leaders were starting to think about staffing reductions, likely in response to the end of PPP loans and the potential for long-term slowed demand.

These differences are what we’d call “fairly negotiable” between the two groups. Not so with the widening gulf that appeared in our September survey. CFOs are now ready to spend again, while other leaders are looking to keep outlays flat or reduced even further.

Our explanation: That hard upturn in CFO spending plans tracks the GDP turnaround reported by the US Commerce Department in late October. It seems clear that many CFOs have seen cash flow improvements in their own businesses and are looking to get back to healthy spending levels to keep the momentum going.

Rather than wonder why financial leaders are looking to get back spending as usual, it might be more telling to ask why other leaders aren’t. After all, with Commerce data showing an annualised 33% rebound in GDP, most businesses must be seeing bounces in their own performance numbers.

One possibility is that non-finance business leaders are less attuned to what internal KPIs show than their finance counterparts. Our data over time confirms that, outside of the finance department, KPIs aren’t a priority. In this survey, 66% of CFOs said producing better insights into key performance indicators was a Top 4 priority for the finance team. It was CFOs’ most frequent answer. Just 45% of other leaders agreed, making it their fourth most frequent choice.

Meanwhile, 55% of other leaders chose “identifying savings” as a top priority for finance, and 62% looked for finance to identify areas for strategic investment.

In previous surveys, we’ve seen that non-finance leaders in companies with under $50 million in revenue tend to rate user satisfaction as their most important business metric -- even before revenue and profit. It’s natural for finance leaders to stick to what the numbers say, but the numbers are often a short-term indicator that, if used as a basis to plan long term now, will probably lead to faulty assumptions, particularly if the overall economy continues its gyrations.

If one thinks of coronavirus as a step impact on the economy and business, one possible model is a unit step response as seen in many systems in science and engineering (diagram below). Financial curves don’t usually look like this because of remedies applied as time goes along or the removal of the original impact (tech bubble burst, SNL crisis, financial crisis). The introduction of a vaccine could affect this model but absent that the virus persists, so economies must constantly react. If economies open and close to varying degrees as we understand the virus better, we’ll likely introduce cycles of decreasingly severe expansion and contraction as we learn to manage the virus and its effects.

The trick for business leaders, and for the economy, in general, is to dampen these gyrations as quickly as possible and return to normal, predictable growth. On a macro level, this can be thought of as more targeted restrictions that governments are enacting now as compared to the hard shutdowns of March.

It’s fair to assume that the views on spending of CFOs and other leaders are both reasonable given the data they’re using. Or at least if one is less rational than the other, we can’t say which. At the business level, coming to a steady state more quickly will likely happen if both views are considered, understood and accounted for in planning and analysis exercises. In other words, finance and non-finance leaders need to better share their views and work toward planning models that include careful consideration of all expertise, viewpoints and data.

Take the time to ask leaders across your business how they think sales and spending and business development will go. Know what steps they think the company should take to get itself into sustained growth, and what factors they consider in coming to their conclusion. Scenario planning should be an inclusive exercise that includes the views of each of your core business leaders, not just the finance team. Agree on the terms of the model and consider what happens if the economy isn’t all good or all bad but oscillating toward a new normal over the next quarters and years.

Martin Schneider began his professional career in Consulting Engineering. He then worked for ABB and ALSTOM in various international functions up to senior management level and restructured a US-based technology company. As of 2004, he’s the CEO of the BRAINFORCE Group, and as of 2007 – its owner.

BRAINFORCE Group has been a leader in interim management and expert solutions for almost 40 years. Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, the company has subsidiaries in Europe, the Baltics, Russia, Africa and Asia, as well as a strong network of partners in the Americas. Here, Martin tells us more about his company and the benefits of interim management.

In your opinion, how important is it to have first-hand experience of running a business in order to be an effective interim manager and to provide valuable insight to other business leaders?

Business leaders are typically people with strong self-confidence about their knowledge, capabilities and skills. If they realise that their counterpart has an equivalent level of knowledge and experience, they tend to trust and accept them. Interim Managers are usually needed in difficult, non-routine situations. The goal is to achieve sustainable results as quickly as possible, based on their past learning curve, an above-average ability to lead and motivate people, and last but not least - an entrepreneurial mindset. The same way a ‘silverback ranger’ knows his forest inside-out, an interim CEO knows his profession and has been successfully steering operations through tough challenges for years.

Why is an interim manager more effective to optimise organisations? How can cultural and historical challenges be overcome?

I believe that a manager who has previously led, optimised or restructured e.g. three different management structures has a higher success rate to do the same with the fourth management structure. An interim manager comes in with an analytical mind and an unbiased view. He also has no aspirations to stay there forever, which eliminates the negative political aspects. Furthermore, he brings in leadership skills, cultural sensitivity and a portfolio of best practices from his several previous assignments in different company cultures. All these aspects are essential for the success of an interim manager. Once an interim manager “changes sides” and becomes a permanent employee, the dynamics and perceptions around him change. His gaze, as if blinkered, is restricted to the part of the road that lies immediately ahead of him and thus, the value-added of the interim management approach vanishes, from our experience, within one or two years.

An interim manager usually is able to gain the trust of the people in the company within a few weeks due to his seniority, objectivity, empathy, cultural sensitivity and strong professional track record. An interim manager usually gets to know what truly is going on in an organisation amazingly quickly. People start to talk as soon as they realise that the interim manager is there to help and to give the credit for the achievements to the internal people who were actively involved in the project.

What do you find are the most common issues that organisations struggle with, from a management perspective?

In a nutshell, I would say that weaknesses we observe are often connected to weak internal communication, slow decision-making and ‘over-engineered’, rigid and bureaucratic internal processes. An experienced interim manager has learned how to communicate effectively at all levels.

Due to the work overload and limited management resources, management decisions are not always implemented to the last consequence. An interim manager brings in additional management capacity and is dedicated and responsible for the completion of implementation.

Today’s world is heavily regulated, even over-regulated in many areas. As a consequence, management at all levels are motivated to make ‘safe’ decisions only, as opposed to brave ones and even worse - to sit out problems. Such managerial shortage is cascading down organisations.

Another major problem that I’ve seen is the belief that IT systems lead to better decisions. They should only be supporting the decision-making process, not substituting it. As there is no perfect information in this world and ambiguity is more common than clarity, despite Big Data, the human decision power based on previous experience and intuition generally leads to better results. Why are the ‘Hidden Champions’ typically family-owned and/or family-style managed companies and not corporates? Why is one of the key factors of successful corporates their ability to keep entrepreneurial behaviours alive?

100% standardised and measured processes kill people’s ability to think out-of-the-box, to respond with common sense in exceptional situations and to nourish positive creativity.

An experienced interim manager has the capacity to judge where and to what degree of sophistication new processes should be introduced, and existing ones optimised or simplified. They take a more entrepreneurial approach.

Last but not least, today’s trend towards ‘the cheapest solution is the best solution’ is detrimental to companies’ sustainable performance. In most cases, the ‘cheap’ internal solution turns out to be the most expensive solution due to the learning curve needed. Simply put, time is money. This expensive learning curve can be avoided by deploying an interim manager who has already gone through the learning curve previously. The value-added of an interim manager generally exceeds the cost of a learning curve by far.

Can interim management play a role in developing managerial talents within the business?

Certainly. In fact, we often observe businesses burning young talents by promoting them too fast to the next level when there is an unexpected early departure of their superior. In such a situation, the deployment of a well-picked interim executive for a few months can save the business a lot of money. Why? The interim manager will build-up the young manager’s skills step-by-step by assigning him new responsibilities and being his neutral mentor during this phase. An example: a young manager talent without previous restructuring experience was assigned to restructure a complex engineering and manufacturing operation. The perspective was to lead this international operation as their CEO after restructuring. The corporate management decided to save the investment for an experienced restructuring interim manager who would have further developed this young manager during the restructuring phase as his deputy. The result was that the young, promising and capable managerial talent was overwhelmed by the complexity of the restructuring situation, and left the company before the completion of the restructuring. The corporation lost time in the restructuring, as well as a good future managerial talent.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of promoting senior positions from within, vs. external recruitment?

Promoting senior positions from within is the traditionally preferred approach by most companies. The reasons are manifold: familiarity with organisation and processes, cultural fit, known strengths and weaknesses of the individual promoted, etc.

However, there are also substantial disadvantages. Without ‘fresh blood’ entering from outside, there could be rope team building, less innovation and lower agility. A typical statement one can hear very often is: “We have done things the same way for 20 years, why should we change our way of getting things done?”.

To fill senior positions from the outside is particularly important if an organisation is in a phase of transition (e.g. cultural change, disruptive technologies challenging the business such as Industry 4.0/IoT/Digitalisation, etc.). Interim managers particularly bring in the required “’fresh blood’ instantly and due to their unbiased view and changing management experience are able to break up rope teams and change the culture into a new direction. Once a new desired state is achieved by the interim CEO, he hands over the company to the new permanent CEO selected with the appropriate profile.

What are BRAINFORCE’s philosophy when helping clients with interim management and consulting services?

Our philosophy is to provide managerial solutions within days at a high-quality level, and to achieve results which exceed the investment for the interim or consulting assignment by far.

What makes your company unique?

We are a fully integrated service provider and work with our own people. We do not believe in the franchise model in this demanding management field. Founded in 1979, we have a wealth of experience in the field and are proud to say that we are the ‘original’ in the interim management provider industry in continental Europe. Over the years, we have perfected our professional, quality-focused M.A.S.T.E.R.³-Pool Management and customer-relationship processes.

BRAINFORCE’s experts stand out for their extensive leadership experience, with proven successes in design and implementation, as well as having a positive mindset and a winning personality.

Contact details:

Phone: +41 44 448 41 41

Email: management@brainforce-ag.com

Website:  www.brainforce-ag.com