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Lessons On Growing And Retaining A Successful Finance Team – Forbes


A common question I get asked is how the company I work for
 scaled its team while growing at breakneck speed. When your company increases its workforce into the thousands, adds multiple tech stacks, acquires new companies, jumps into new verticals and quadruples its number of brand partnerships, managing a happy, productive team becomes an even tougher challenge.

Here are a few concepts I’ve worked on and fine-tuned along my journey of managing expanding finance teams.

Never Settle For Less Talent

I’ve learned it’s always better to stretch for a proven all-star than settle for the easy candidate. Every company experiences recruiting cycles, especially in the early days of building a team, when you receive only a handful of qualified resumes. In a lot of cases, you won’t be overly thrilled about the group you have available. When you’re growing fast and drowning in a sea of work, it can be tempting to hire the first qualified candidate you find.

I appreciate time-to-fill metrics, of course, and the fact that open headcount also represents a cost. However, most of the time, it is better to be patient and hire the person you’re really excited about who can help take the business to the next level. And yes, you might have to — and probably will have to — upgrade the base compensation/incentive package to do so, but that’s okay. No one should be hired by default as the last one standing. Never settle, or you will regret it later.

Don’t Get Caught In The Weeds

If you’re building a finance team, your boss probably wants you focused on specific cost efficiencies, revenue/growth metrics and other reporting. You can’t find time for the important stuff if you’re constantly dealing with staff-level issues. This is why you need to prioritize hiring the best people possible — even if you have to raise the base salary. You need managers who make sound decisions, answer questions and churn through the day-to-day workload so you don’t have to.

Further, avoid constant check-ins with your team. It can illustrate a lack of trust, causes them to be less efficient and takes you away from your own core responsibilities. If it gets to a point where your team is missing deadlines or mishandling projects, talk to them and course-correct — but if you’re managing down every day, that’s harmful to the team. Instead, look forward strategically for ideas that fuel business growth and be available when your team really needs your direction.  

Train Your Replacement

Someone will sit in your seat someday, and, frankly, you don’t want to be there in two to four years anyway, right? Sadly, this often threatens ineffective leaders — it can make them feel as if they aren’t relevant or can easily be replaced. The opposite is true: If you train your replacement and focus on reducing your boss’s workload, you demonstrate your worth to your team and your superiors, and you can proactively grow your own career with confidence.

To grow a successful team, a talented group of high performers must be there and ready. At the end of your career, you will be judged on the talent that you hired, mentored and promoted. One of the biggest successes you experience as a leader should be seeing your direct reports excelling and reaching heights beyond your own, knowing you helped mentor them along the way.

Build Loyalty And Trust

Part of building a successful, efficient team is nurturing loyalty and trust between team members. When you have employees who trust and value each other, they will be there for each other — and for you when you need them most. Recently, and in the midst of my company’s continued growth, I had a family issue that required me to take extended time off. Because I had worked to build trust first, I was able to go to my leadership team and explain the situation. Rather than worrying about the increased demands my time off would create, together we figured out how to reprioritize and move forward. 

We held firmly that home life is a priority over work life, and we figured out a solution that covered both. When you go through something heartbreaking like I did, it is essential that you have worked to build and maintain loyalty and trust early on.

Implement A Week One Check-In

At the one-week mark — and no matter their position — invite every new employee into your office for a one-on-one meeting. Ask how it’s going, how the workload is and how they feel about their connection to the team. Invite any questions they have about the business model, financial trajectory or their career.

Ask them to share any initial innovative ideas they’ve come up with, too, and let them know they can be transparent and share ideas with you — and, further, that you expect them to. Steve Jobs said it best when he quipped, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” Top employees expect you to demand them to be thought leaders and bring those ideas to you.

Connect The Dots

Accounting and finance could be viewed as merely a support function in sales-driven organizations where marketing owns the pipeline. Make sure your team understands how valuable what they do is — and how that work impacts revenue and profit. Underscore the connection between their work and the organization’s goals. This helps establish purpose, which is also crucial to retention.

Hire stars, value people and take the time to nurture their talents. Find good people. Treat them fairly, and give them opportunities to share their voice. That’s how you grow (and retain) a successful team.



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