When U.S. workers leave their jobs, a lack of growth opportunities or lousy leadership are often the reason. Those circumstances can also cause elevated levels of employee disengagement and, ultimately, high employee turnover. Perhaps it’s not a surprise then that many CFOs see a need to be better developers of talent, regardless of the labor market’s direction.
Greg Sigrist, CFO of banking-as-a-service company Pathward, views talent development as vital to a finance team’s success. It’s also part of why he believes CFOs with a transparent and collaborative working style deliver better results.
In the following interview, Sigrist, with 25 years in banking as an accountant and CFO, shares why CFOs are only as successful as their team, how his personal life equipped him for the CFO office and what it is about Pathward’s culture that allows it to buck the trend of demanding employees return to the office.
As a CFO, what have you found is the true driver of financial success?
Talent development. A CFO is one person; we are only as successful as our organization. A highly functioning team working closely together is a must-have to accomplish our goals.
I take the time to develop a highly functioning team by allowing members to explore new areas of interest and skills-building experiences that push them to the next level. Having a strong bench not only means that I am prepared for the future, but I can also export talent to other areas of our organization. These other areas then have a resource who understands the financial side of the business.
What experience best prepared you to be a CFO?
Having a family. When you have a family, you have to plan for everyday occurrences, such as getting the kids to school and extracurricular activities, preparing meals and determining how all of that fits with your spouse’s plans on that day. But you also must plan for longer-term, strategic items, such as vacations, buying a home, college for the kids and retirement.
In addition, unexpected events can throw short-term and long-term plans off track, forcing you to adapt quickly. Focusing on the day-to-day while planning for the long term and adapting to constant change has helped me the most in the CFO seat.
What qualities or ways of working make for an effective CFO?
For me, there are three main things: inclusivity, transparency and collaboration.
By being inclusive, you bring everyone along on your journey. Whether that journey is the budget, an expense review, a treasury decision or another project, including others helps them understand how we got there and why. The more members of the team who understand how and why we do something, the easier it is to work as a team.
Transparency gets back to building trust. If you are open and transparent, it leaves no questions. Others understand that you are presenting them with all the facts, and they know they can trust you. When there is trust within an organization, it fosters growth across the team.
Finally, collaboration ensures we work together toward the same goal. We deliver better results when the team is focused and firing on all cylinders.
By focusing on these elements, I can also be a trusted partner to my peers. The executive team must move in lockstep, which means I must deliver on my part of the plan. I can help my peers understand where we are financially, what gaps exist to achieving our goals and what steps we can take financially to get there. These ways of working also allow me to understand my fellow executives’ challenges and how I can best support those executives.
While many companies issue return-to-office mandates, Pathward is staying remote-first. What are some of the lessons the company has learned about remote work?
The biggest lesson we took from the early days of remote work (during the pandemic) was ensuring that everything we did was aimed at intentional interaction. That included gathering teams more often and organizing in-person meetings to boost morale and invite collaboration.
We focus on a culture driven by the organization’s mission, vision and values. Despite not being together daily, that brings us a sense of togetherness and bonding. Our employee resource groups and a robust community impact program give us time to get to know each other and the causes important to the company.
Another big lesson has been availability. In a remote world, ignoring issues and allowing them to fester can be easy. To avoid that, we are very intentional about meeting live versus sending emails. An emphasis on face-to-face interactions allows us to live our operating norms, such as making eye contact as we work through issues together and avoiding miscommunication that could cause further problems.
