The ability to tell stories materialized on the spec list of required CFO skills a few years ago. After all, CFOs often communicate weighty information that needs to be heard, digested, and, in many cases, acted on by the listener. Compelling storytelling can accomplish all three.
“Inherently, people are far more narrative-driven than information-driven,” Sam Kemp, CFO of Built Technologies, told StrategicCFO360 last August. “Presenting people with clear logic isn’t how you get them excited about a strategy or operating model or get them to follow an idea.”
Prominent CFOs are highly aware of the value of stories and the need to hone their storytelling faculties. At the CFO Leadership Conference in Dallas last week, three shared where and how they have used storytelling to build trust and inspire action.
Tap the Customer
Pitching to potential equity investors, prospective hires and sales prospects, a startup’s finance leader has important messages to convey. Anand Govind, CFO of o9 Solutions (in photo above with editor-in-chief Dan Bigman) told the conference audience he’s found it much easier to impart the venture-funded company’s financial message by listening to customers tell their stories of how they use o9’s product.
At o9’s user conference recently, the company let a few large customers on stage to tell their story of using o9’s planning software. A large lighting firm, for example, leveraged the software to make better decisions on inventory, customer demand and product positioning. The results allowed the firm to pay for the next five years of IT budgets. “Those elements are highly translucent storytelling points,” said Govind. “It’s one thing to tell the story of the numbers, but being able to relate the customer value created from a financial lens is incredibly powerful.”
Leave No Audience Behind
As an organization undergoing transformation, WM (formerly Waste Management) wants to “hold to the best of what we are,” CFO Devina Rankin told CFO Leadership Conference attendees while making the company name synonymous with renewable energy and environmental solutions.
“CFOs are chief storytelling officers because we help guide the senior leadership team with investor dialogue and engagement,” Rankin said. A CFO must ensure a transformation story resonates and “connects with those who have aspirational views of what the company can become,” she said. At the same time, the new narrative has to connect with existing stakeholders. Rankin calls them “the people relying on the dollars and cents and thinking about the financials, and whether or not [a change like this] is too risky because it’s fundamentally different than what we do today.”
Adds Rankin: “You can’t walk away from the fundamentals investors expect.”
The Message Must Connect
Stacey Ryan-Cornelius, global CFO of ad agency Ogilvy, is surrounded by people who tell stories for a living. Although everything in finance is data-driven, Ryan-Cornelius said, the critical element of a CFO’s storytelling, as in advertising, is connection. A CFO is not communicating just to inform but as an “ask,” she noted. “You have to figure what connections will make [the listener] want to act,” Ryan-Cornelius told the CFOLC audience.
A quotation is a device Cornelius-Ryan likes to use with the executive committee and other groups she addresses. (David Ogilvy, the founder of Ogilvy & Mather and known as the “father of advertising,” is an abundant source of business maxims that Cornelius-Ryan likes to tap.)
“When I start with a quote, it opens up [the audience’s] minds,” Ryan-Cornelius said, compared with an immediate, abrupt launch into a presentation or discussion. The quote usually has an underlying theme that connects to the meeting’s purpose and the message Ryan-Cornelius wants to convey.
With the use of GenAI to churn out reports and other language-based content, nuanced storytelling that contains emotional depth and context will stand out. But there are few natural-born storytellers. As Jack McCullough, founder and president of the CFO Leadership Council, wrote last July, getting good at it requires practice and refinement. Rehearse the delivery, paying close attention to pacing, tone and body language, he advises.