When facing difficult

circumstances, make critical decisions

early and quickly

This week, we get Up-Close with Andreas Uddman, Chief Financial Officer at Stillfront Group. Explore Andreas' insights on how the role of the CFO has transformed beyond being a mere 'number cruncher', and his approach to building high performing teams.

What are the top 3 attributes of a CFO?

The most important attribute, from my perspective, is to have a broad range of technical skills. By that I mean the technical components of finance, such as accounting, tax, treasury, risk, financing, governance, and business control. Without these, I think it’s difficult to be a good CFO as you won’t be able to ask the right questions and add the most value. Secondly, it’s important to be able to translate these into a commercial understanding of how the business operates and works. Combining technical knowledge and commercial understanding is how you deliver value. Number three is having strong integrity; you have to say “no” to things sometimes. Integrity for me is knowing when to push back and when to find alternative ways to deliver the desired outcome. That can be difficult, but a good CFO needs to be able to understand the situation and what they are asked to do and how to best deliver it, even if it’s sometimes an unpopular decision.

“you have to say “no” to things sometimes. Integrity for me is knowing when to push back and when to find alternative ways to deliver the desired outcome”

What have been your priorities as you’ve been building and developing your team at Stillfront?

This is the third finance team in the third industry that I’ve built and every time I have had to adapt my approach and align priorities depending on the team, but also the business and broader commercial circumstances. What I learned from early on is the importance of getting the core team in place. Think about how you are going to build and scale the function and how this fits with the business objectives, what the vision is, what the goals of the broader organisation are and how finance will enable that success.

Another thing I learned is that you should build the team in phases – don’t try to do everything at once. You need to provide continuous leadership so that people can rely on you and trust that you know what you are doing. Building finance teams is complex but important to get right. All phases are not equally exciting to build but as the CFO, you need to demonstrate both resilience and enthusiasm for your team to be energized.

I’ve tried to reflect a lot throughout my career and learn from my mistakes. One of the mistakes I did early on was hiring a lot of promising talent but not enough team members with experience. Nowadays, I try to combine the two.

What has been your approach to creating high-performance culture? Can you give us an example?

When you hire people, especially top talent, they want to know they will be able to grow in the team. You need to give them the necessary exposure and that means exponentially more responsibility, which sometimes leads to them being tested in unknown situations. Good and talented people will thrive in those environments and that will give you a good sense of who your top performers are. My mantra has always been that I don’t have to be in all the meetings with my direct reports as there should be other people who are capable to fill in for me when needed. I think this is one of the things that keeps good talent around. Moreover, I believe you need to demand high standards and insist on ongoing quality and rigour. I have always tried to develop a quality mindset with my teams.

One other thing I would add, and this can be difficult, is that you need to be prepared to remove people from the team that are not meeting your standards and are not able to keep up with the performance of the rest of the team. One of the mistakes I have done in the past was to keep people around for too long. In the end, it is not good for their development, but it also impacts the morale and the performance of your organisation. If you want to be a good and credible leader, you must be prepared to make unpopular decisions as well.

“You need to give them the necessary exposure and that means exponentially more responsibility, which sometimes leads to them being tested in unknown situations”

How has the current economic climate and market context impacted the way you lead the business and plan for the future?

In my current position at Stillfront, there has always been a large focus on cash flow and profitability in addition to topline growth. The broader sector and macroeconomic environments have of course impacted us as well, but we tried to prepare for this. We focus a lot on capital efficiency and are diligent in how and where we make our investments. We are detailed and rigorous around the budgeting process, not only for the coming year, but also on mid-term. In times like these, it is important to have strong scenario plans in place – what to do if something does or does not happen.

You are one of those finance leaders who has seen challenging situations and an uncertain economic climate before. What is your advice to finance executives managing through such circumstances for the first time?

I guess I’ve been “fortunate” in a way to have seen quite a few such challenges relatively early in my career where I was able to observe how these situations were managed. I think it’s important to have experienced both good and bad times and know how to adapt accordingly. If you have only seen good times, it will be a very steep change in mindset for you; you need to change the “chip” in your head very quickly – e.g., cash is not free, it’s not all about growth and you need to be ready to think in a different way.

When facing difficult circumstances, I would advise to make some critical decisions early and quickly and plan for the worst. Don’t take excessive financial risk – it’s the time to be more prudent in terms of your financial risk in general and I strongly believe that finance has a big role to play in steering the business. There will be some new aspects you will have to think about and decide on, so make sure you’ve done your homework. For example, in this economy we are talking about interest rates for the first time in 10 years, but they are still not particularly high from a historical perspective.

“Personally, I have always operated in roles where I had to build from scratch or scale up – so I very much see myself to be a “builder” of the finance function. ”

One of the common themes is that the CFO generally evolved from being a “number cruncher” into a broader business partner. Personally, I have been lucky to have always operated in a business partnering capacity. From my perspective, however, the biggest shift over the last c. 5 years has been on the data side, and I’m not talking necessarily about the business intelligence, but actual data. At Stillfront, I have the data platform team reporting to me, even though I don’t consider myself to be a data expert or a data scientist by any stretch of the imagination. Stillfront has approximately 60 million players that play our games every month and you need data to help the business understand the customer behaviour, their commercial decisions and how they consume our content. This in turn help us to make better, faster, and more robust business decisions.

From your perspective, how has the CFO role evolved in recent years?

What is your advice for first time CFOs?

I think this needs to be put in perspective and broader context around the remit of the CFO in the organisation. Personally, I have always operated in roles where I had to build from scratch or scale up – so I very much see myself to be a “builder” of the finance function. However, a couple of thoughts from my side. First and foremost, pick the right CEO. I believe this is crucial as you need to have the right relationship and support from her/him. Will they give you the license to build? How are they going to make sure you have the right resources in place to execute? Make sure you are part of the business decision making from the get-go and you can partner with the larger organisation. Another important thing that people often overlook is to look at the Board and especially the Audit Committee (if there is one). It is critical to have a strong sounding board for finance matters and somewhere you can go for advice. I have been fortunate in all my three CFO assignments to have seasoned CFOs leading the audit committee or being on the board, and this has been a key success factor.

What has been your career highlight to date?

To see current and former team members prosper and grow as professionals.

Has there been a particular book or a leader who has influenced your career or your leadership principles?

I couldn’t pick one person, instead there have been multiple leaders that have been contributing to my career. I am very grateful especially to those who took a bet and let me take on a larger responsibility than I had experience of. One of those persons once said to me in a final interview “let’s see if you can swim or if you sink but I will support you on the journey” that mantra still sticks with me and how I try to lead the team.

I love reading and read quite a lot of books, especially biographies of successful and less successful business leaders, politicians, and historical figures. It’s fascinating to learn about how you should do things and maybe how you shouldn’t do things, with the benefit of knowing the outcomes.