“Are you working? for CEO or and Who is the president? ” This is the most essential question every financial professional must ask themselves in the age of artificial intelligence, says Serial founder, CEO, and television personality Marcus Lemonis. Because if your job is just to provide numbers to the person holding the top job, your days, and thus your career possibilities, will surely be limited as AI grows.
Financial professionals are packing in for the opening of CFO Leadership's 2025 Finance and Accounting Technology Expo on November 11 and 12 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Midtown Manhattan. In the Keyhole Hall, Lemonis, CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond and Camper World, admonished the audience to recognize the importance and power that CFOs have within organizations, which he said is too rare for CFOs to do.
“Most CEOs, myself included, get angry when I say this, but we think we know how all the inputs and outputs work,” he said. “We don't. And sometimes we're a little too embarrassed to admit that we don't know that. Your job is to be a co-pilot, not a wingman. We don't think about our jobs, especially waking up every day in this room. And think of yourself as a co-pilot.”
The reason is simple and self-evident to him. CFO and CEO are the only two roles that touch every part of the business. But only one of these roles requires deep attention to all the real operational details happening in key areas of the company, especially cash flow and the care of employees regarding necessities like payroll and health benefits.
However, he frequently said that CFOs are still perceived as “giftsmen” who don't generate revenue because they “don't generate revenue.” Don't believe me, he said. There are only two ways to generate profitAnd CFOs command the most powerful levers in the equation: cost and effective capital allocation.
“CFOs have been relegated to accounting for years,” he said. “They've been relegated to telling me the numbers and telling me what to do with those numbers. They've been relegated to putting together board packages and putting together bank loan documents and applications. And that's a terrible, terrible mistake. The CFO, the controller, to me is the co-pilot and often has to make more decisions about the business than anyone else.”
AI “authority”
To succeed in the coming months and years, CFOs say: must We dive into the scariest aspects of the AI revolution, so you can not only learn about AI, but also lead it in your organization. CFOs in particular are well placed to not only identify areas where cost savings and efficiency gains can be made, but also to be asked to vet and pay for potential solutions, he said.
Additionally, your stores need to get ahead of the AI wave, start implementing AI, and free up time for themselves. And for the best members of your team to become true partners with the CEO and other leaders in the business, they need to be better leveraged for higher-value strategic thinking.
“When it comes to your own work, your knowledge and abilities are [AI]“By embracing it, researching it, taking classes, meeting different vendors, you become an authority,” he said. But what I need to think about is redefining its use in business. I think you're selling yourself short if you believe you're only using it to close the month and calculate things and make sure payroll is processed and loan terms are met. ”
“Make yourself indispensable”
If closing the book and looking at the numbers is becoming an AI-powered “push a button” function, CFOs owe it to themselves and their organizations to “make themselves ‘indispensable.’ That may just be the best strategy for career growth and longevity. How? Three imperatives:
Understand business leaders. Whether you're running an organization that's built around sales, manufacturing, or distribution, whatever it is, a CFO needs to understand every part of those businesses, all of the different inputs and outputs, but most importantly, the people who are responsible for those businesses. “Your job is to build relationships with those people and understand how they are connected in terms of purpose and motivation.
“That doesn't mean taking all the information and keeping it to yourself,” he says. “The way to make yourself indispensable is to provide more value to different parts of your organization, knowing that people's livelihoods and incomes depend on the outcome of their work.”
Track statistics. Lemonis asked CFOs to “document everything they do every day” to document how they can be better partners to potential CEOs in the future. “If you compare it to sports, people get signed, traded, or drafted based on their performance on the field,” he said. “The difference is that those statistics are kept, those statistics are calculated. And the people who are in this room, who make their living calculating and gathering information, need to do the same with their own actions, their own actions, their own proposals, their own deliverables, in order to prove their worth.”
Develop (much) better communication skills. He said he has repeatedly seen CFOs get frustrated with people who “don't know anything.” “The key to being a leader is understanding that there are different aptitudes.”
“Finance people usually get irritated when I repeat a question over and over again, and they just start looking at me and saying, 'I don't understand what you don't understand,'” he said. “I really need to break the ice because sometimes I'm asking a lot of questions to see if you know the answer, not if I know the answer. And I want to see how patient you are with me and if you I want to see how much detail you're telling me. And I want to see if you're starting to make up a story. So when people are asking questions, you have to assume they either don't know or they're testing your knowledge.”
“I deeply and truly appreciate and feel the need for my CFO to help me run the business,” he said. “I don't calculate everything and put it on a desk because I truly believe that the health of the business, the strategy of the business, the future of the business is in her and his hands.” “I'm asking you to be the kind of leader that I and all other CEOs need. That kind of leader doesn't exist.”
