Why cfos make good ceos

Highlights from a recent digital gathering with new external successor Chief Executive Officers, hosted by Egon Zehnder. Financial Officers.

Nevertheless, glimmers of optimism are slowly emerging, encouraging CEOs to look… Read more. Highlights from 12 digital gatherings with over Chief Financial Officers in Germany.

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You can read our cookie policy and change your settings by clicking this link. Editor's Picks Videos. Andrew Roscoe. Satyajeet Thakur. If you are a CFO wanting to be CEO and considering a move to another company, choose carefully and weigh the pros and cons of staying the course in your current CFO role. Develop your skills as a leader The CEO is a leader of leaders rather than a coordinator of functional experts.

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Our Leadership Team. Investor Relations. Our Offices. Find an Expert. Press Releases. Korn Ferry Foundation. CFOs who aspire to become CEOs must move beyond their technical left-brain skills and develop more right-brain social leadership.

KF Exec. Chief financial officers CFOs who believe that becoming chief executive officers CEOs is their next logical career step may very well find that the odds are against them. These numbers are virtually the same overall for through , and improve only slightly among Forbes CEOs. The reasons for the dearth of financial executives moving into the CEO role are both eye-opening and instructive for CFOs with their sights set on becoming the final decision makers. A strategic mind-set, strong financial acumen, and a close working relationship with the board, although they are characteristics of best-in-class CFOs, will be insufficient to transition successfully to CEO.

This paper will show that, to take the next leadership step, CFOs must move beyond their technical left-brain skills and develop more competencies in people- and relationship-oriented right-brain areas. To set the bar for CFOs who have already distinguished themselves as best-in-class financial executives and are now looking to advance their careers, we must define what it takes to become a successful CEO. Another notable strength of successful CEOs is learning agility, a key predictor of success, which Korn Ferry defines as the willingness and ability to apply lessons learned from past experiences to new and first-time situations and challenges.

Until well into the start of the new millennium, CEOs of B2B firms were more often than not picked from leaders with a strong operations, engineering, or technical background while CEOs for consumer-facing firms came with a strong marketing or sales background. It was rare to see CFOs make the cut. Follow and connect with us on Twitter , Facebook , Linkedin.