I Got Five On It: Five Lessons from Five Great CFOs
My dreams of working at Google almost seemed like they were not going to happen. I was an ambitious college student at the University of Florida trying to land an onsite interview at the world’s most innovative company. The only problem was that the recruiter scheduled it on the same day as my Financial Management exam. I pleaded with my Finance Professor Jay Ritter (aka Mr. IPO) to reschedule my exam (coincidentally, my professor met with the Google founders two years prior to the IPO to consult them on going public).
Professor Ritter did not reschedule my exam. Google needed to reschedule my interview.
Definitely not the answer I was hoping for. Luckily for me, my recruiter was understanding and had no issues with rescheduling. Bags packed and itinerary in hand, I was on my way to Google’s massive 9th Avenue, Chelsea Market office in New York City, they had recently purchased it months earlier for a whopping $1.9 billion.
Unfortunately, my flight was cancelled for inclement weather, and I was forced to sleep in an airport. I smelled terribly, arrived four hours late to my interview and had about a 1% chance of getting an internship.
I remember the chain of events like it was yesterday and the amazing transition from student to intern to full-time employee. It’s hard to believe that on February 6th, 2017 I’ll be celebrating my fifth Googleversary. During my stint, I’ve had the pleasure of working intimately with a lot of great people and some of the most respected leaders in finance and technology. Having been a part of two of Alphabet’s fastest growing areas: Google Cloud and Other Bets (Fiber, Nest, Waymo, X). I’ve learned a lot and now I want to share some of the lessons learned from the many CFOs I’ve encountered along my way.
Patrick Pichette, Chief Financial Officer
Google, Inc. and Bell Canada
Patrick retired from Google in 2015 after serving as the Chief Financial Officer for seven years. The first time I met Patrick was during my summer internship. We engaged in a water gun battle outside of Google’s Mountain View headquarters. It was surreal to be drenching a senior executive as an intern. Over the years, I would learn that Patrick was always a little more fun and goofy than the typical CFO, but nonetheless, he was serious about Google’s health.
One of the earliest lessons I learned in my career was that process for the sake of process was one of the biggest drivers of poor financial health. Bureaucratic red tape was the cholesterol of business, clogging the heart and slowing down performance. Just like a runner laces up his Nikes to go on a brisk run to help neutralize all that bureaucratic bacon, Patrick, in an effort to ensure a streamlined business took initiatives to “bust bureaucracy.”
Every year he challenged us as an organization to identify processes that didn’t make sense or were not efficient. Employees all around the company worked to make processes move faster. Patrick even challenged us in finance to streamline our internal processes to shorten approval times and streamline financial reporting.
The point of bureaucracy busting is to ‘get out of the way’. Let innovators innovate and inventors invent, afterwards, reinvent. Your coworkers will thank you for it, because you’ll be know as the person who gets things done.
When my internship began in the summer of 2011, Google employed 28,768 full-time employees. As of the end of the end of 2016, Alphabet’s headcount has increased to 72,053. How has Alphabet managed to maintain such a high level of innovation while growing their headcount so rapidly? By busting bureaucracy! I walk into meetings all the time where the first and last phrases are “How can we make this process better? It’s not working for us,” and “Thanks! This is so much better.” Bureaucracy busting is part of our culture and everyone is empowered to do it. Thanks to Patrick, Google’s heart is low on bureaucratic cholesterol.
Jason Wheeler, Chief Financial Officer
Tesla, Inc.
Actions speak louder than words when it comes to Jason Wheeler. A former Booz Allen Hamilton employee like me (I interned there), Jason left to join a small startup called Google in the summer of 2002. There he worked tirelessly and eventually became the VP of Finance. His mantra: always choose growth. Jason knew early on in his career that you had to keep your eye out for the next big thing if you wanted to make an impact.
Jason held true to this belief even as he rose through the ranks at Google, positioning himself to work on the biggest initiative Google had to offer. Additionally, he preached this gospel every time I encountered him. I’ve learned a lot from him over the the years, but this is perhaps the most important of lessons. When you help a small organization grow, ultimately you grow with it.
In 2015 when Tesla was slated to begin constructing their $6-billion battery Gigafactory in Nevada and was planning to launch two new vehicles (the Model X and Model 3), their CFO, Deepak Ahuja announced his retirement. This was a time when Tesla needed financial governance the most. Tesla needed a CFO to bring financial governance to their growing organization, so they reached out to Jason and as expected: he chose growth.
Tom Jurewicz, Chief Financial Officer
VMware, Inc.
When I think of Tom, there are three things that immediately come to my mind. Firstly, the man has a million dollar smile and is one of the nicest people I have ever encountered in my career. Secondly, keeping up with him when he’s doing mental math is like trying to keep up with a whiz kid solving a Rubix cube. The first time I met him, I immediately had a flashback of seeing this video. Thirdly, Tom is a jack of all trades. He understands technical infrastructure, deal modeling, contract reviews, compensation strategy, revenue analytics, the list goes on and on.
No wonder he’s the CFO. How did he become an expert on so many topics? It all adds up when you hear Tom’s career advice, “don’t spend five years getting two years worth of experience.” Seems obvious and simple, but so many people can resonate with the feeling of being two years in, getting promoted and coming to work everyday being the subject matter expert on the team.
You may think to yourself that it’s time for a new role, or you might think that maybe you’ll milk being the go-to guy for a while. Afterall, it’s nice to come to work and drive value. But if there is one place you should never feel truly comfortable, it’s the workplace. When you effortlessly crush it everyday at work, it’s time to move on. Complacency can be a real motivation killer. This is why you should change roles and change roles often. A new career or new role within the same company can renew the energy you had on day one. You’ll learn more and grow faster.
Ann Marie Petach, Chief Financial Officer
BlackRock, Inc.
It’s unusual for a young analyst like me to be privileged with the opportunity to have dinner with a Wall Street juggernaut like Ann Marie. She’s served as the former Treasurer of Ford Motor Company, was the CFO of BlackRock and actively sits on the Board of Directors of BlackRock and JLL. So forgive me for not squandering my intimate dinner with her on niceties and fluff. I wanted to learn and grow. Five minutes into our seemingly informal dinner, I formalized it by asking her about lessons learned and what she could pass on to me.
Her response, “Learn a lot early.” That’s the key to achieving great success in your career.
When you’re fresh out of undergraduate or graduate school, you’re wide eyed and ambitious. This is the most important time of your career. You need to learn to nail the fundamentals. Learn your respective role like the back of your hand, and when you nail it, switch up and learn some more. Don’t spend too much time focusing on promotions and money like so many young professionals do (myself included). Of course those things are important, but if you’re learning, growing and constantly driving value for your organization, those things will come. Developing an arsenal of skills will prove invaluable as you grow in the ranks, and without them, you’ll plateau.
One thing to remember is that learning the fundamentals early is one of the reasons it’s so hard to switch careers/industries later on. When you’re a mid-level employee and you try to transition from finance to marketing, it’s difficult. You haven’t learned the fundamentals of that new industry and often times it takes years to get there. So be cognizant of this fact and if you’re not happy in your current role, make a change as soon as possible.
Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officers
Alphabet, Inc. and Morgan Stanley, Inc.
Everyday, the leaders of Alphabet/Google make decisions that impact the future of technology and society. In their world, there’s a seemingly infinite amount of data to be gathered and analyzed and Ruth is their most trusted advisor. When it’s time to engage with the founders, she helps them answer some of the toughest questions at Alphabet. What’s the right balance between growing Ads and growing the next thing? How much investment is enough? What countries do we invest in?
She helps them navigate the decision making process on a daily basis and it’s likely that you’re doing the same to one of your stakeholders/ business partners. There are so many questions to be asked, but usually there are only thirty minutes to discuss them. How do you optimize that time? How do you craft the perfect message?
Ruth is an expert at just that, whether she’s speaking with the press, conducting an earnings call, or meeting with the Board of Directors. She knows exactly how to craft the perfect message.To do that well, you need to know three things:
- Know your audience. Everyone has different priorities and they consume content in a unique way. Know their personal style of consuming info (e.g. white papers vs. presentation vs. emails) and their focus. A sales leader will likely only care about data that helps them achieve their quota within the measurement period. So talking to them through the entire P&L might just be falling on deaf ears.
- Know what’s important. When you only get 30 minutes, what will you say? The key is to ask yourself ‘what are the problems that your leadership should know?’ and ‘what actionable insights can you present?’ Everything else is just noise and should be disregarded. This isn’t comedy, it’s business. So get rid of the fluff and get straight to the punch line. There’s a reason the executive summary is always the first slide in a presentation.
- Have a recommendation. It’s important to have an opinion on your next course of action. Your leaders trust that you’re the subject matter expert; that’s why they hired you. If you’ve identified a problem, come with a solution. If you’ve found an opportunity, seize the moment and sell your idea. The bigger the company, the more important this becomes. When an executive has only twenty-five minutes to be briefed on a problem and five minutes to devise a solution, rest assured, they’re going to ask you, “what do you think we should do?”
I remember the taxi ride from the airport into Chelsea. Walking into the office for the first time. My demeanor which could only be described as exhausted, metamorphosed into something more energetic. Everyone I encountered that day was enthused about their work. My interviewers loved my spirit and had no idea about the hardships I encountered in the last 24 hours. The day I received my Google offer, it was one of the happiest days of my life.
That was five years ago and during that period, I’ve learned a lot and encountered many amazing people that helped me grow in my career. These lessons have been the only map I’ve had while navigating the world of career ambiguity. I’m not even sure where they’re taking me, but the journey so far has been beyond anything I could have imagined. My only hope is that they will help you on your journey, and perhaps, get you to the place you’re trying to get to.
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