Our long-tenured Chief Financial Officer is a perfect core values fit and has been with us since day one. However, as we prepare for an exit, we need a finance leader who can handle sophisticated due diligence and equity modeling. He wants the seat but lacks the experience. How do we handle this GWC™ issue without losing him?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When preparing for an exit, you must elevate the company's needs above personal sentiment. Using the GWC™ tool, you must evaluate whether your CFO truly Gets, Wants, and has the Capacity for the future state finance seat. While he clearly wants the seat and gets the basics of your current accounting, his capacity is lacking for the complex due diligence and modeling required for an acquisition.

This is a classic right person, wrong seat situation. Keeping him in this seat out of loyalty will hurt your exit valuation and stress him to the point of failure. You must have an open, honest conversation using the principles of trust and mutual respect. Explain that the requirements of the seat have outgrown his current capacity, and you need to bring in an experienced leader or a fractional CFO to run the exit transaction.

Then, look at your Accountability Chart to see if there is another seat he genuinely GWC™s. He might be the perfect fit for a Controller or Internal Audit seat reporting to the new CFO. This preserves his institutional knowledge and honors his tenure while ensuring you have the necessary horsepower in the top finance seat to complete a clean, high value exit.