Episode 5: Spotlight The Role of the CFO

David Sayers:

[00:00:00 - 00:00:25]

I'm David Sayers, partner at Green park and I lead our financial officers practice. Welcome to today's episode of the Green Park Spotlight series. We're delighted to welcome our guest, Jan Hoseszeel to this episode of the podcast. Jan is an experienced and versatile Chief Finance and Operations Officer with a track record of leading business transformation and delivering improved commercial performance across several functions and sectors. Welcome, Jan.

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:00:25 - 00:00:28]

Morning, David. Thanks for writing me. Great to be here.

David Sayers:

[00:00:28 - 00:00:35]

It's an absolute pleasure. It's nice to have you here. Before we get into the session today, Jan, would you mind just giving me a brief overview of yourself and your career to date?

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:00:35 - 00:01:56]

Sure. So I'm, as you mentioned, the cfo. I've worked in a number of different sectors over the last few years, so probably three main big CFO roles over the last 14 years or so in three very different organizations and sectors. So one was TV, so I was CFO and CEO at UKTV which is a joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Scripps. The second one was global CFO and CEO for the legal partnership Ashurst Honda partners across 25 offices in 15 countries and then most recently as CFO for Premiership Rugby, the sports league set up by the rugby clubs and which was recently invested in by CVC. They took a 27% stake in 2019. So three very different CFO roles in different sectors with different ownership structures. But that's not been the whole of my career. I started actually in banking and then did an mba, followed by a number of roles in strategic and operational functions. Again, a number of different places and organizations. And so it's in the last 15 years I've really come into the CFO, the CFO role. The other thing probably worth mentioning is that I am a sort of dual citizen, so dual Dutch, British nationality, grew up mostly in Spain and the uk, so speak Spanish, French and Dutch fluently. My first job was actually as a graduate account manager for French bank Cardinaline in Paris.

David Sayers:

[00:01:57 - 00:02:36]

Wow, okay, thank you for that. We've got you here predominantly to talk about the themes of diversity of thought and that biog really kind of lends itself to as to why you're sitting here amongst many other things, apart from the fact we've known each other for maybe 15, 20 years and we've become good friends as well. Specifically, I'm really interested to talk to you more today around the kind of transferable skills, adaptability and the role of that CFO CEO that we know is so critical and sort of build in the characteristics of really good relationship. So I Guess my first question, really, just to lead us in, is in your thoughts, really. What are the advantages that diversity of thought through broad sector experience, I guess brings?

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:02:37 - 00:04:43]

So I think the key element is it gives you sort of openness of approach and avoiding sort of having. Making assumptions or preconceptions about what that particular business entails. And I think when you come in from a different sector, you have generally slightly different perspective. Ultimately, you're trying to do the same, the same thing, which is to generate value for that organization. But there may be different ways of doing that. And I think if you come from a different background than, say, most of the people in that sector, you bring a slightly different flavor to that question. And so I think it starts then with always trying to understand how does that business really generate value? So what are the levers that drive revenue, that drive cost and drive profitability? And again, if you've come from a different background, you may have a slightly different approach to that. It comes also with a slightly different view as to kind of the kinds of people that you're looking for in organizations. And I've been lucky enough to have had a few bosses over the years who've taken a bit of a chance on me as well. So I had. When I moved from. I had a strategy role at a consumer goods business, I had to make spirits and wine. I moved to a more operational role in a cable company called Telewis, which is one of the forerunners of Virgin Media. And my boss there was a guy called Tony Grace, who I've stayed in touch with since then, has been a great mentor in a lot of ways. He was running an overall sort of the consumer division from a sort of finance operational perspective. And I joined really to kind of look at a number of the way the internal call centers were working. And I still remember after my first week, he and I, he had a meeting with me and he said, look, we've got a bit of a vacancy because the head of training has just left, so we need a new head of training on an interim basis. How would you fancy doing that? And I thought, well, I said to him, I've not worked in cable before, I've never worked in training, so that's a bit of a stretch maybe, but if you're happy for me to take that on, I'm happy to give it a go. And I think that's the kind of approach which has been really helpful in terms of actually getting a sense of where people might have potential and supporting them into that, as opposed to saying well, you need to have done this particular job in order to do it in the future.

David Sayers:

[00:04:43 - 00:05:08]

I think there's real duality, isn't there? What I'm hearing there is. There's a duality that you need either in our case, a recruitment business is actually talking to the stakeholders, encourage them to think more broadly. But actually also, as you say, the bravery, I guess, in some cases. Well, why don't you just give that a go? I mean, I guess it kind of, you know. Do you think if you look back on your career and there's still more to go? Of course. But do you think there's enough diversity or enough thought around that in executive hiring?

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:05:09 - 00:06:28]

Well, I think, as you mentioned, there's a bit of a bravery perspective in that, in terms of it can sometimes feel like a slightly higher risk approach because someone may not have had the specific kind of experience in that role. But to my mind, it's all always more about the sort of the mindset and the openness to learn and the curiosity, rather than necessarily having done that job in the past. And it's one of the things I look for, actually, when I'm hiring. And also. But when I look at the way other leaders operate in terms of who are they bringing into the business is a really key criteria. And I remember when I was back at Allied American Spirits and Wine, my boss there was Mark Holloway, who ran the sort of overall management accounts department. Another great guy to work with. And I remember he's quite a small team, actually, about four or five of us. But I remember him saying to us at one point, you're all smarter than me. You all speak more languages than I do, you've all got more potential than me, and I couldn't hope for a better team. And I thought that was actually a really enlightened way of looking at it, because he could have. Often people feel a bit threatened, don't they, by people in their team in terms of whether they might use up them or take their position or whatever. And he had completely the opposite view. To his mind, the best team he could assemble meant that he would be able to essentially lead that team to achieve the objectives we were trying to get to and would put all of us in a better position. And so that's a sort of approach I've tried to take into all my jobs as well, in terms of saying, in wherever you've got a vacancy, just try and get the best people you can, because that's a great starting point. And from there you can kind of build, build an Organization.

David Sayers:

[00:06:29 - 00:06:41]

Just. Just thinking about, as you talk about it, do you think that because you've experienced that in terms of people taking that sort of chance on you, to use your phrase, do you think you're then as a hire yourself more open to taking 100%?

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:06:41 - 00:07:00]

Absolutely, because I know that I've benefited from that approach in the past where people have taken a bit of a chance on me. And so I always look for potential rather than necessarily having done the specific job in the past. And I think that's the attributes around that are really key element of making a business successful. So I think that's been a big part of it for sure.

David Sayers:

[00:07:01 - 00:07:12]

So if we think about that kind of diversity piece a bit more generally now. So given your experience in those different sectors you cover, do you think it changes the way you build and you lead teams yourself?

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:07:13 - 00:08:42]

Yeah, so I think that's. So if I think about finance teams, maybe more specifically, given that the roles I have generally started from a finance perspective, there's a few things. The first thing, as I say, get the best possible people into the building. And so that is absolutely one of the starting points. The next one is having some sort of affinity or interest in the business itself and what the business is doing with the product or service. So when I was at UK tv, people had to be interested in tv. When I was at Premiership Rugby, people had to be interested in the space. And the reason for that is, I think it gives you a natural conversation starting point with the rest of the organization. And in a function like finance, that's actually really important, isn't it? Because often the finance team is seen as kind of slightly in the back room or the sort of the land where good ideas come to die. The kind of people who say no. And actually, if you can change that kind of approach by being perceived as enablers and supporting the business to be successful, then that makes a massive difference. And that starts, I think, with having an interest in what the business is doing. Right. So on a Monday morning after the Premiership Rugby kind of round, come in and talking about what's happened on the pitch, similarly in tv, looking at the ratings every day to see how did our shows perform versus the competition. And so if you have that common kind of discussion point with the rest of the organization, that helps the finance team be far more integrated. So that kind of interest in what the. What the business is providing, I think is a really key part of it.

David Sayers:

[00:08:42 - 00:09:08]

I like that integration piece. I'm going to sort of bring you back to a conversation we had A dozen or more years ago, when we were sitting in an office in Hammersmith, you were at UK TV at the time. And I wonder if you just share because I think it's something I've spoken to clients about as well. You had a project whereby you moved people around business and got them to swap desks, which I loved. And that sort of portability of moving people around. Maybe just touch on that because I think that also talks about how you build teams.

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:09:09 - 00:10:29]

Yeah, that was. We moved office in Hammersmith to a brand new building actually, which is always a great opportunity to set up an office environment, a working environment which supports and builds on the culture you're trying to set up. And so in this case we had, it was a fully open plan office, so no one had any offices, but it wasn't hot desking, so everyone had a nominated seat. But what we did was we moved people every three months and the first time we did it, we literally just kind of put all the agents into hat and pull them out and sat people down. That actually wasn't that effective because, I mean, you were sitting with people who you probably didn't necessarily have that much to do with on a day to day basis. So the next round, after the next three months, we switched it to people moving in teams. The finance team would move as a block, but one quarter you'd sit next to the Dave Channel team and then a kind of operations team and an HR team. And so what it meant was that every three months you got to, you were still sitting next to the people you were working with directly, but you got to hear a number of conversations around you from other parts of the organization and that helped people get to know each other, helped people understand what other teams are doing. I think in a creative business it was also quite helpful in terms of helping avoid this sort of the cool part of the building where the creators sit and not so cool part where some of the other functions sit because actually every three months you knew your desk was going to move and you're going to sit somewhere else. And I think it was one of things which really helps that business work collectively far more, far more effectively.

David Sayers:

[00:10:30 - 00:10:37]

That really resonates for me. When I first started out in finance, we always got the worst desk and definitely got worse. We'd never had a window that looked out on the street.

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:10:37 - 00:10:38]

Exactly right.

David Sayers:

[00:10:39 - 00:10:52]

Given, given your sort of your move through those sectors again, I mean, and the perspectives you've gained, have you, you know, what's, have you adapted your style of leadership as a result of those Kind of lived and learned experiences.

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:10:52 - 00:12:23]

So I think I've over time probably spent increased amount of time I spend when I first get it join an organization understanding how it really works. So by spending as much time as possible both with the. Where the business actually happens. So for example, in sport, going to watch the games in the different kind of at the different clubs in TV understanding. So why does a show do better at 7 o' clock rather than 8 o'? Clock? Why does it better on Dave vs Gold? So really getting to nuts that the operational parts of the business and the second element is understanding who really makes decisions. Generally you've got a formal organization structure with a number of names and boxes on our chart. And then you've got the informal organization structure where actually the influencers are the ones who make things happen. That's particularly the case in a law firm where you've got a lot of people, a lot of partners who all have different kind of spheres of influence within the organization. And it's trying to figure out who are the ones who other partners listen to and how do you kind of get to know. That's how you drive change within that kind of organization. So as I've kind of grown through different roles, it's spending the time upfront to really get to understand how that works and get to understand how the value is actually generated before you start making any kinds of significant decisions really about changing the way things happen. Because there's always a reason why things take place the way they do and before driving lots of changes. I think it's worth understanding why that is really the case.

David Sayers:

[00:12:23 - 00:12:38]

I think we talk a lot around how finance integrates itself into the business and that starts with the cfo. So from your experience, how do you go about engaging finance into the organization across that. That sort of. That broader base of the employees.

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:12:39 - 00:14:46]

So it comes back to this point around really understanding what drives value. Because if all you're doing is looking at the financial metrics, that essentially tells you what happened yesterday. Right. It's a bit like driving a car by looking at the rearview mirror, because that's what the financials are. They're the story of yesterday. And you need in order to be able to make effective decisions about where to take the business, you need to be looking at what's going to happen in front of you. And so you need to spend time with the rest of whether it's the commercial teams, the marketing teams, the operational teams. And the best way to do that is to actually show interest in what they're doing and to give them a sense that you are working together to drive value for the organization. Firstly, that's where that shared interest in the product or service has a big impact. But also the other thing I always try and do is go and talk to people when things are going better than expected. Back at UK tv, we always had an expectation about how shows would perform in terms of ratings and sometimes they'd do better, sometimes they do worse. But I always try and make a point when a show did better than expected to go and talk to that particular team because actually you've got a lot to learn from that as well, firstly. And secondly, it means that when they see someone from finance coming over, it's not always to have a negative conversation about why they've overspent on this budget or that or haven't got something right. It's actually someone who's interested in understanding why things have gone well. So that way you build up a kind of shared alignment or interest in taking the business forward and you build those relationships and you then make it easier. It's not always straightforward, easier to have some of the difficult conversations about why you can't always do what you're trying to do. So that's the first piece. I think the other big one is to show sort of collective ownership or responsibility of what you're trying to do. So again, back to UK tv, I was always as interested in the viewing figures, in the brand health, in who we were recruiting, who we were bringing through the organization as the numbers. And I think once you get to a sort of C suite or leadership position, whatever you want to call it, you do become collectively around the table, responsible for driving success. You're not just responsible for your kind of own narrow silo within that business.

David Sayers:

[00:14:46 - 00:15:18]

So again, we talked about sort of engaging with employees. Now I want to kind of focus on, in, on the board, that kind of critical voice in the boardroom. And again, you would have sat in some very different boards from, you know, you could have. I kind of, I can. I can only imagine maybe you'll. You colored in the gaps for me. But a board construct in a legal practice by its very nature has to be different to that of a creative business and maybe in turn slightly different to the kind of early stages as well in, in retail and FMCG more specifically. So how about that influencing piece in the boardroom? What have you learned over time?

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:15:18 - 00:17:30]

And that's right. So I worked in three very different board structures actually. The first one was a joint venture, corporate joint venture between BBC on the one hand and a US listed company, Scripps on the other. And that was a sort of 50, 50 split board. The second one was a law firm partnership, Ashurst, where you had partners on the board as well as non execs. And then the third one was apprenticeship rugby, where you had representatives, owners generally from the clubs as well as cvc. So three very different board structures and very different kind of governance mechanisms. But there's some principles there which I think are common to all of them. And the first one is that when you're working with the board, it's really important to be as clear and consistent and succinct as possible in terms of the communication that you're providing to them. And that's often because lots of particularly non execs aren't, you know, they're not spending their days with the organization. If they come to three, four, five board meetings a year and they have to try and relearn the business from scratch every time, because the papers they're being sent don't really relate to the papers they got two or three or four months, that makes life very difficult for them. So you've got to try and make life easy for them in terms of actually putting in front of what is helpful to them in terms of making decisions. The second one is again understanding what their own drivers and interests are. So to take an example, at Premiership Rugby in the year after Covid allowed us to go back to games, obviously we couldn't go to any games for quite a long time time I went to a game at every club over the course of the season. So it's 13 clubs and there you're talking to the owners in their own environment. You're seeing the game take place in the stands, in the pitch where it's actually happening. And you have a very different level of conversation than you might do when you're sitting around a boardroom back in office in London and you get to understand really where their interest lies. So understanding the interest that each of them bring to it, putting in front of them a set of information which is straightforward, clear, and it kind of ties back to previous conversations. And then one of the most important things is no surprises. I mean, no one likes coming into a board meeting and being shown something which they haven't seen before, which isn't straightforward to understand and which is a bit tricky. That is a massive no, no, in my view, in terms of kind of board relationship management, you've got to try and kind of make sure that doesn't happen in the board meetings.

David Sayers:

[00:17:30 - 00:17:57]

That would have been very challenging, I guess, in the shifting sands of rugby. I'm a massive rugby fan, so I'm going to avoid asking you 400 follow on questions about rugby. Given the fact that we've just talked about relationship building, team building, stakeholder engagement, influencing style. What are the biggest misconceptions, do you think, about being a cfo? And two parts, really. And how have you managed to deal with some of those misconceptions?

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:17:57 - 00:19:55]

Yeah, so the two, two big misconceptions that I would highlight are, firstly, the perception that CFOs are only interested in the cost base and not in revenue. And I think that's massively flawed because actually, as a cfo, you're custodian of the whole of the P and L. And the P and L starts with revenue. And actually, in some ways there's no limit to how far you can drive revenue, where there's obviously a limit to how far you can drive down costs. Actually, it's the fact that you, as a cfo, an effective cfo, you should be looking at the whole of the P and L and where you can drive value from across it. And so often that means taking a real interest in revenue and helping to support that revenue base. That's a big misconception, I think. And then the second One is that CFOs are only interested in reducing cost and that's all they care about. And frankly, again, that is not the best way to drive value for an organization. I think oftentimes you need to increase cost in certain areas, but you need to make sure it has obviously a good return on investment. And so I make a big distinction between for what you call good cost and bad cost. Right. So good cost is cost that helps you drive either the top line or some other source of value, whereas bad cost is money that's being spent unproductively, inefficiently, and therefore you're better off not doing it. So those, I think, are two of the big misconceptions around the role of the cfo and the way that I try and get around that is again, initially, when I joined organization, trying not to spend a lot of time just talking about the numbers, actually trying to, well, what makes the business tick and what makes the individual stuff to, you know, because ultimately it's about getting the best, coming back to the point from earlier, getting the best possible people into the organization where you've got to spend time with them, figure out what, what makes them, what makes them work and similarly, what are the levers that drive the business? The financial is just literally what drops out at the bottom end. So that's not where you start a conversation. You start it at the other side of things and. And then you start talking about revenue rather than cost. People always like talking about the upside rather than that side. Right. So people like talking about how you kind of make. Generate more turnover, generate more sales. And so that is the starting point rather than actually, why are we spending this, or X or Y, or kind of how can we reduce those elements?

David Sayers:

[00:19:55 - 00:20:14]

Yeah, I mean, I've been recruiting CFOs now for almost 30 years and I think the biggest misconception is the role of the cfo. It's much broader now, isn't it? We see it in every kind of facet. And I think when you use words like, you know, I'm curious, I need to get involved, I need to make finance more relevant and it's. Yeah. It's not just a cost game, is it?

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:20:14 - 00:20:15]

That's right.

David Sayers:

[00:20:15 - 00:20:28]

Really isn't. The CFO role, though, by its very nature is a singular role, much like the CEO as well. And sometimes it'd be quite lonely. Who do you look for for advice and support?

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:20:28 - 00:21:48]

Yeah, yeah. So I've always seen the CFO role as a sort of peer role to the rest of the leadership team. And so I've been quite careful not to try and position myself as being separate from them in that sense. And it comes back partly to the being collectively responsible for all the KPIs in the business, not just the financial ones, but one of the key roles within that group. That always is really important to me. And I've been lucky to work with some great Chief People officers in the recent businesses. Ashurst and UK TV being great examples, because again, the people side is what drives the organisations. And so the Chief People Officer has a massive impact in who we're hiring, who we're promoting, who we're kind of moving around within the organization, who we're letting go as well, because you've got to look at both sides of that equation. And so I tend to spend, aside from the time I spend with the CEO, the person I spend the most time with tends to be the Chief People Officer, because that, I think, is where a lot of the big decisions get made. And that's where also in terms of driving change, because the organizations that I've enjoyed working for, ones where there is an opportunity for change, it's not just about kind of managing the status quo and the people element is always the hardest bit around change as well. So again, that's where the chief people officer comes to the fore. So that relationship is one which I've always invested in very heavily and one where I found that you can really make a big difference in doing so.

David Sayers:

[00:21:49 - 00:22:15]

In my role here, I'm often, and I'm very fortunate, I'm very privileged too to be asked for advice both from kind of CEOs asking us about what a good CFO looks like, CFOs asking us about what the next step up should look like. I guess I'm going to turn this to you now. So what career advice would you give to somebody mid career who is obviously growing and trying to develop to be the next cfo? What advice would you share?

Jan Gooze-Zijl:

[00:22:16 - 00:24:23]

So the first thing I would say is to try and get involved with non financial projects as much as you can. You know, whenever there's an opportunity to, to spend time in the non financial side of the business, I would do so. So in rugby, you know, obviously go and go and watch games and go and kind of have the fan experience. In TV again it's go to production kind of sites if you can, go and attend focus groups which we held in order to understand how our programs were working, working. So get involved. At UK TV I worked on a initiative to overhaul the whole of our recruitment process together with our HR director. And again that's not narrowly financial. Obviously it's going to sit potentially outside. But so wherever there's a chance to get involved in something which is non financial, I would do it because it just gives you a different perspective to bring back into the finance function. That's the first thing. And then the second thing I would look for is actually whether it's CEOs for a CFO or it's a divisional kind of MD for or a finance director. The peer that you're looking at from a business perspective, the way they approach finance is this is a two way thing, right? And so one of the relationships where it's worked really well for me was at UK TV where the CEO was Darren Childs and he had a great sort of vision for where the business could go in terms of how the TV market was evolving, the changing nature of viewing by individuals, the different types of revenue streams we could catch from that and lots of ideas around where to take the business. And so he was very externally oriented in that sense. And then he and I would kind of bounce all of those things off each other, kind of figure out which ones could, could work given the assets we had at UK tv, which ones were more difficult put together business cases for that takes take those to the board and then he would spend time externally because he had confidence in me being able to deliver against those initiatives internally. So it is very much a kind of two way relationship where the CEO has to be able to look at the finance role in that kind of broader business perspective and that gives finance people then the ability and the kind of confidence to be able to go and do that. So it does depend on both sides of the equation.

David Sayers:

[00:24:23 - 00:24:35]

Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Green Park Spotlight series. For more information on today's topic, please go to our website, which is www.greenpark. Hyphen Park Co UK.