Meet the Masters - Fiona Tee, Currencycloud

FIONA TEE

Fiona Tee, Chief Financial Officer at Currencycloud talks to Danielle Ward, Director at The Up Group, on the importance of having diversity and inclusion aligned with business goals, embedding those values within the organisation, and the benefits of employee-led initiatives.

In your opinion, what are the top three attributes of a great finance leader?

It starts with having the right vision and being a strategic, commercially-minded leader. Finance is uniquely positioned in the business; the numbers are the one source of truth, so finance leaders should be able to leverage those numbers and their own skill set to help the business understand what they could and should be doing.

Someone who can help the business with experimentation and innovation is also important. At the same time, that comes with risks, so part of the role is risk assessment and being the custodian or gatekeeper; you must have a handle on performance and the realities of cash. A great finance leader must fit in between those two roles of entrepreneur and custodian. That’s a difficult balance because, in many businesses, resources are scarce so being agile and able to manage effective prioritisation is key.

I would say the third attribute would be exceptional overall leadership; being someone who can get into the behavioural and ‘soft' side of things. With that comes a finance leader who is curious and empathetic. That is the sort of cultural leadership and values that I would drive for. How you develop others and drive employee engagement is what positions you for the best overall business performance.

Do you find there are challenges in being able to test for those different attributes when recruiting talent? If so, how do you approach it?

“Getting into someone’s real experience and finding out what they have personally done for the business is a challenge.”

Getting into someone’s real experience and finding out what they have personally done for the business is a challenge. Having to disentangle results and performance with what they themselves did and then how they did it. When I am interviewing, I like to get into the feedback on the interviewee from their peer group and the wider business. We want to see what kind of person they are, and real examples of their personal impact.  

In your opinion, why does diversity matter?

How can diversity not be important? It is a fact that people who have different perspectives will generally offer wider discussion and be able to come to a solution faster. It is more productive and creative. Diversity also develops people; in the world that we are in now, people want to be developed and to understand others better. If we understand people better, then isn’t that what makes a team?

You also get better employee engagement as you create a more productive and enjoyable environment and I think that helps retention. Since we have improved our diversity and inclusion at Currencycloud, we have seen our engagement increase. It is good both for our brand and our customers; you get a better result and people enjoy themselves more.

What advice do you have for your peers and other executives in prioritising D&I within their teams?

Diversity must be aligned with your organisational goals and objectives. It is not just a box-ticking exercise; it must come from the top and then you need to think about how it will be rooted into the overall business values and culture. At Currencycloud, we have an employee-led initiative with eight diversity tracks running across the business, which means that it is completely embedded in the organisation. It is agile, responsive, and enjoyable. What I’ve observed is that employee-owned initiatives work, and the values and culture are supported by that and then reinforced in the business. It becomes viral, and I think with that there is a whole, virtuous circle to getting diversity right.   

What have been the most important leadership lessons you have learnt over the past year?

I think COVID-19 has reinforced what we always knew was important: employee and customer engagement built on transparency. When the pandemic hit, we put the handbrake on discretionary spending, we froze our hires temporarily, and cut back some of the more ‘wishful thinking’ in the marketing budget. We were lucky that this put us in a fortunate position where we did not have to cut or furlough our employees. I am thankful that the board recognised that our transparency and engagement were so important, and that we were going to come through this period by supporting our customers and our people.

“There was also a sudden transparency in the supply chain between what customers really needed, what we could do to help them, and what we ourselves needed from our suppliers.”

There was also a sudden transparency in the supply chain between what customers really needed, what we could do to help them, and what we ourselves needed from our suppliers. As a CFO, I really enjoyed this transparency, and it was something I’ve never experienced before. We worked very closely with our customers and, as a result, our NPS and retention went up as they respected the way we had conducted ourselves and how we supported them. We also learned as a business which suppliers were most helpful to us, and which ones we didn’t want to work with going forward.

This also created unbelievable transparency in our budget and plans. Our teams were telling us what they needed and as a result productivity was up and revenues grew.

What is your career highlight to date?

I would say that, in terms of experience, my highlights have really come from the lowlights. They come from moments of epiphany, where the lightbulb has gone on as to where I want to take my CFO role and my career. One of the most important things to date for me has been the shift of culture and values that has happened over the past five years, especially with companies like Currencycloud who have recognised that personal success comes from developing others, and that employee development drives the business performance. This shift has made me realise that the most important thing for me is to work for a company that helps me be the best I can be in my role.

How do you create a high-performance culture, do you have any examples you have put in place that have been effective?

At Currencycloud, we are using a framework that is very effective. We worked with The Table Group to implement The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, a triangle-based framework that focuses on vulnerability-based trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results. Great, truly high performing cultures must start right at the bottom and ask themselves whether they have trust and commitment. We are finding that this framework, along with the strength of our values and cultures, is very effective.

As a leader, how do you build those fundamental characteristics in your team, such as trust?

I think it must come from doing what you promise. Our human values focus on vulnerability-based trust, around knowing each other’s values and how we tick. We found that within the executive team we needed to know and understand each other better, and live through our own examples. The trust comes from us all having a debate, agreeing on the outcome, and then committing, knowing that we have each other’s back in a difficult situation.

Have you got any suggestions of great books that have influenced your career or leadership style?

There is one book I came across five years ago which is Clay Christensen’s, How Will You Measure Your Life. It’s about measuring success and happiness in life and how, when it is comes down to it, the answer to success lies in developing others. I’ve found that really inspirational.