Our CFO is retiring in twelve months, and we are planning to promote our internal controller. However, the controller lacks M&A and capital-raising experience, which are vital roles for our upcoming exit. Our leadership team is trying to rewrite the CFO seat to match her current skill set. How do we force ourselves to design the ideal CFO structure first, rather than tailoring the seat to our loyal employee?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a classic trap. When you build your Accountability Chart around a specific person's resume, you compromise the future of the company. To break this habit, your leadership team must mentally terminate every employee in the organization, including yourselves, before you design the structure.

Start with a blank slate. Ask yourselves what the business needs to achieve its three-year target and secure a clean exit. If an acquisition is on the horizon, your CFO seat absolutely must include roles like capital structuring, deal due diligence, and tax optimization. Write those five key roles into the seat without thinking about your controller.

Once the ideal CFO seat is defined, look at your controller. Run a GWC assessment against this newly structured seat. Does she truly get it, want it, and have the capacity for high-level M&A work? If she lacks the capacity because she has never done a deal, you have your answer. She is not the Right Person for this specific seat at this stage of your business journey.

You can then look for a creative solution. Keep her in a highly valued Controller seat running the daily accounting, and hire a fractional CFO or investment banker to handle the transactional M&A roles. This keeps your structure clean, protects your exit timeline, and ensures you do not set a loyal employee up to fail in a seat she cannot handle.