Wanted: the versatile CFO

Beyond COVID-19, understanding the business challenges facing companies is an increasingly critical task for finance leaders, argues Morgen Witzel.

Within the management consulting firm McKinsey, we referred to the concept of “consultant in T”: the vertical bar of the T representing the specialized skills and the horizontal bar representing a broad understanding of organizations and management. What we need today are T-shaped managers – people who have both deep skills and capabilities, but who can also make those broad connections and understand the organization as an organic whole, and not just as a set of moving parts. Survival in the modern world depends on everyone coming together and working towards a common goal, and we can’t do that by sitting in silos.