Goals of Financial Managers - Their Glasses Have a Different Tint than Marketers

Not that we’ve explored the general goals of senior management and the C-Suite, let’s take a look at the specific goals of financial managers.  The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) group can have varying influence on the C-Suite depending on both the culture of the company and the CFO him/herself. 

For instance, at General Electric, we used to say that we were a finance company disguised as industrial and consumer businesses.  The finance partner in your organization could be very much junior to your position yet have more power than you as they dually reported to both the CFO chain of command and the business unit chain of command.  They were the commissar (a reference to the official of the communist party in the former Soviet Union) that was responsible for strict adherence to the financial goals of the organization.

As you can imagine, financial managers see the world in a different light than other parts of the organization.  They wear the green eyeshade visors and are largely focused on metrics involving the cash and financial borrowing position of the company.