Sir John Harvey Jones on FDs
I was sorry to hear this morning that John Harvey-Jones had died. He pretty much invented popular business television though I wonder whether he would have been happy with his legacy in that regard. There was more reality in one episode of Troubleshooter than exists in a dozen editions of The Apprentice. Anyway the news prompted me to revisit some of the comments he made about finance directors when I interviewed him back in 2000. And I have to say that he even though he had already curtailed his business commitments (he was already in his mid-seventies) his comments on the role of FDs – and particularly the degree to which they would come to rely on technology – were very much on the money.
‘I guess that within a couple of years time at the present rate of progress everyone will know the financial position of the company at every level in real time,’ he said. He didn’t quite get the timing right but that remains the direction of travel. And I do wonder whether he would have blamed FDs for not making it happen sooner. After all he had warned: ‘FDs could be the key gatekeepers making that happen or they could be the abominable snowman preventing that from happening. They need an IT strategy as well as a financial strategy as well as a business strategy.’
A good FD, said Sir John, must be able to measure innovation, reinforce everything that is working well within a company and be willing and able to cut out everything that is not. And to do it quickly. But, again he warned, FDs who were going to have a lasting impact on their business must do more. They must, he said, be visionaries and persuasive ones at that. ‘In the finance function it’s all about risk and if you don’t take risks that’s the most dangerous position of all. It almost doesn’t matter what you do as long as you are constantly trying something new.’
He also talked of the need for younger accountants to change. ‘They have got to have a dream of where they might be in future,’ he said. ‘It’s not that they might have a 20% chance of becoming chief executive, it’s that they have a 60/70% chance of being the main agent for change in the business in which they working. That ought to be the ambition of the young accountant.’
To achieve that he urged the accountancy institutes to make their training more relevant to modern business needs. ‘The pressure on the training of young accountants is to buy into that change. My message to them is that it is bloody good that you have started but please hurry. You haven’t got much time.’ Ensuring that that happens wouldn’t be a bad legacy.
This is an excellent comment. Unfortunately, the training regimes focus on the past and on prudence and reduces innovation and creativity. Also the lack of appreciation of diversity and its potential to enhance innovation and progress is a drawback. For example, there are lots of Indian accountants in UK, but very few have been allowed to become FD's.
Posted by Dr. Atul Shah | January 14, 2008 12:19 PM