Many of my correspondents (CFO's, Controllers, Financial Directors) tell me that the biggest source of their stress and anxiety is the Boss. I am sure we will be addressing this topic many times in different stories. President, CEO, Owner, or whatever title they have chosen for themselves, more frequently then not, these entrepreneurs are the main reasons for our frustration.
Some of them are courageous and brilliant who actually foster and lead, others are batty and lucky who succeed in spite of themselves, and the others are lazy and disinterested who ruin everything even with our best efforts in place. Regardless, they have few things in common.
First of all, we can never forget that they are the ones creating jobs. That's a tremendous achievement. They've got to be madly brave to go out in the world and implement their ideas, sometimes against all odds. If they succeed, they build companies that not only create products and services, but also employ people and pay them salaries. They take insane risks and end up with entities that can afford to hire CFOs, Controllers, Financial Directors, i.e. us. And even if the Bosses are not the founders, but heirs and the business just fell into their lap, until they destroy it, they are the employers and our salaries are coming out of their pockets.
Of course, as financial execs we kill ourselves in order to either facilitate their success and prosperity or stop them from killing the business. And even though we are concerned with our own material well-being just like anybody else, at the end of the day all of our efforts in a private company end up to be about guarding the owners' private purses. That kind of a responsibility to a person in the office few steps down from your own brings the level of pressure to a completely different level. It is not the same when your "owners" are some unknown masses of mutual fund investors.
But the most prominent common denominator of all small and mid-size CEOs is that they are all afflicted by the same disease - something I call an entrepreneurial bug. The business development machines in their heads run forward ahead of everything else. They want everything to be done yesterday, and those who cannot make it happen or voice their concerns are considered to be obstacles on their way to success.
Because it is up to us, CFOs and Controllers, to make sure that the back office, the financing, the structures, the control procedures, etc. are on the par with new developments, we frequently find ourselves at odds with our Bosses. We are called negative, uncooperative, difficult, etc. etc. Nevertheless, we must be strong and do our jobs right, because if we fail to cover their fast running asses, everyone will get hurt, including the Bosses.