In this episode, Sophie Jackson talks to Billie O’Conner, Founder of Nova Community – a senior female leadership network. They explore Billie’s career journey and discuss the importance of adapting plans and the power of your network.

This episode was recorded towards the end of 2024, since the time of recording Billie is now CFO at Mulberry.

Hi, and welcome back to Ask a CFO, the podcast series where we're shining a light on the unique path taken to become Chief Financial Officer.

Today's very special guest is Billie O'Connor. Billie is founder and CEO of Nova Community, a senior female leadership network with over five hundred members and an experienced Chief Financial Officer.

We heard about her work through our own Within Women in Treasury Network and she recently joined me for a fireside chat at our Women in Treasury EMEA forum where myself and the whole audience got an amazing insight into Billie's career journey. So, we are very much delighted to again have the opportunity to share her story and also to go further into that journey and to hear her views on the role of CFO. So really excited to share this interview with you all.

Hi, Billie. Thank you so much for being involved today and for agreeing to take part in Ask a CFO.

I'm really delighted to be included. Thank you.

So, I want to start off by thinking about how we came to know one another. So, I mean, your work was recommended to us because you run this fabulous platform called Nova. And we were lucky enough to have you come to our Women in Treasury Forum in London this September, where your fireside chat went down a real hit with our community. So, when did you first hear about us?

So, I think I've been aware of you because LinkedIn is an amazing tool, isn't it? I mean, whether it's from content about business, whether it's learning about new businesses. So, I've been aware of you for a while. And then when the reach out came, we sort of interacted and I said, I can see you've got a great network. Do you have any treasury specialists in retail that I'd be able to chat to? And it was, I do. And in return, would you like to come and have a chat with us? To be honest, I agreed to that kind of thing.

So, I'm really big on collaboration and, you know, paying it forward and helping each other. I had no idea the size of the event you were running at the point. I said, sure, I'll come and be the star of the opening and talk to you at the fireside chat. So, it was a little bit of an interesting one and it was an absolutely fantastic event. I really enjoyed it. So, thank you.

But it was all around that. Can I ask you a favour? And it was in that case, can we ask you a favour? And it was brilliant. And that's exactly how I think the world should work.

Excellent. Well, thanks. So, you're a seasoned CFO and you run an amazing women's platform. But I wanted to start with where you began, your origin story, if you like. So, tell me a little bit about yourself and where you come from and so on.

So, I wasn't planning to be in finance at all. I was actually going to go to Cambridge and do languages. So, I was doing my A-levels. I'd done French, German, Latin, touched on Spanish when I was doing my GCSEs and decided I would stay with languages. Then I completely screwed up my A-levels. So basically, I should have been AAB in my three A-levels and I had a conditional offer at Cambridge and it didn't quite go as planned. And so I didn't get my conditional offer fully through so I went to Kingston Business School instead and I did a business with French degree.

And during that time, that's my really, I think my first education in finance as a topic, as even something that would be applied in the world of work. I think actually back at school, when you're taught about careers, it's very different, or it certainly was when I was at school. I really didn't have any idea of what jobs actually really existed out there.

So, I've gone off to uni, I'm doing this business course, and I'm finding all these finance modules and found that I was just pretty good at them. In parallel, I had to work during university we don't come from a privileged background at all. So, it was all about take out the loan, earn money. And so, I actually worked on an IT help desk doing password reset.

And it was for a company at the time called Schlumberger Sema, which is now became Atos Origin and then Atos, huge IT business. And they ran the Metropolitan Police IT account. So, I'm sat there listening to PC blob and PC this and detective that ring up for different IT queries and so I had to learn how to log calls in an old system called Remedy, which has since obviously been updated.

And it moved into, can you learn about Exchange and mailboxes? Can you learn about how to do Active Directory? So, I actually became a bit of an IT geek alongside doing my degree with finance.

So, it was a real difficult decision when I finished my degree, what direction I went in, because I was offered a graduate scheme with the IT company, but I've found finance and really loved it. So, it was a bit of a tough one.

I made the wrong decision, but you learn from these things and went on the IT graduate scheme and did six months of it or just under six months and went, this is absolutely not for me. And off I went and got a junior accountant role for six months to learn the basics and then landed my first proper role with Debenhams after that.

So, a bit of a wiggly line into finance, but I think you only find things that you love by trying, trying new things and you discover it and then if you find you're good at it, you should really push hard.

I love your story because you've sort of taken things that could be a real setback and turned them into an opportunity for something else.

Would you say that's something that's marked your career is being able to pivot and see another opportunity when, because that must have been quite a disappointing moment, not going to study what you wanted to, but you've turned it into another start.

Oh, do you know what I think? You throw this words around to fail fast. I couldn't support it more. One, try something new all the time, absolutely, and if something's not working, don't just plug away at it. If it's really not fitting, there's no point. You might as well go and do something else that you're going to be good at and that's very much what happened.

Don't get me wrong, when I got my A-level results and I was sat on the field at my Rochester grammar school, I was crying my eyes out thinking the world had ended. But that only lasted for three hours and then I went to the pub with my friends and we got over it. And the next day I'm doing clearing and I'm finding my next best dream. So, these things, I think they teach you character. I think they teach you the ability to think more broadly.

So, any big entrepreneur you speak to that's far greater than anything I've done, all of them will tell you that failure has been a huge part of their learning journey and it's actually made them better at what they do.

Yeah, I totally agree. I was going to say that and I go to a lot of founders talks because they help me to realize that my problems are not as big as the business and they have a commonality with all of the CFOs I've met, which is it didn't all go to plan. And it doesn't.

Like once you're at CFO level, I think to be able to see opportunity and to not be disheartened and to believe that you guys are going to be the exception seems to be like a typifying characteristic, I would say.

So, tell us, say you've gone, you're a junior accountant. You were at Debenhams. What happened next for you? How did you work your way up the career path and end up at your roles as CFO?

So, I don't think I've ever struggled with the confidence side of things. I think that we speak to a lot of female leaders that talk about maybe lacking confidence or that's never been an issue. I don't think it's verged on arrogance, but I think it's a, I'm just going to give it a go. So, why should I worry about doing something I've not done before? Someone else also hasn't done it before. They just might not be telling you.

So, the whole piece was really interesting because I got the junior accountant role in a little sports publishing company called Sport Business. And I walked in telling them I knew everything to know about debits and credits. I knew how to use an accounting system. That was all nonsense because all I'd done is been to university and learned T-accounts and I'd learned finance conceptually. I'd never done a finance job. But I pretended I did.

So, when I walked in on day one and was working with a more senior accountant that came in two days a week, it was very clear I'd never done any of it. But what she learned was I was a very quick learner. So instead of going through a whole interview process again, she took a chance. And that was it.

I was able to pick up Stage Line fifty, which is what they had at the time and move through. So, a good hire for them, even though probably not quite a truthful one at the start.

When I got into Debenhams, I just went in with the same mindset, which is, okay, look, I'm now already an accountant. I hadn't even started my studies at that point in terms of my esteemer. But I said, look, I'm already an accountant, I've done management accounts, just give me whatever you want me to do. So, they gave me a little junior head office and I just redeveloped the report because I used to love playing around with Excel and we had coder there and got quite, I was quite techy.

So, I was quite good with systems and then developing new reports. And when they said, do you know what, we need someone to take on logistics, but it's the second biggest cost area we wouldn't normally give it to someone this junior.

So, I would just give it to me temporarily while you're working out your structure and I'll just take it on for now. And that's what I did and then I ended up with it for the time I was there. So, forty million budget.

And I spent two days a week up in Peterborough, which is where our DC was based, because that's where the logistics director was based. And as far as I was concerned, even though I was a, I don't know, twenty-eight grand cost accountant.

If I'm not sat with the person making the decisions and I don't understand how that DC works, I'm not going to understand any of the output. I'm going to be asking questions about variance to budget, which is just... without value. It's just going to be you're up by a hundred K. Why is that? We seem to have missed X, why is that? I should be seeing it and understanding it. And I drove him mad. This poor guy, his name was Paul Leggett. He was an incredibly experienced logistics director, and he kept calling me the child, which I know I should have been bothered by, but it wasn't.

It's because every time he gave me something, I said, yes, but why? And then he'd give me another answer, I'd say, yeah, but why? And he's like, for God's sake, all you do is ask why. It's like having a child around me all the time. But that meant I was doing my job.

Because I wanted to understand why we were only at sixty percent capacity on a truck and why we were at a fuel variance and why we hadn't budgeted for the extra variable costs of labour when we knew peak was coming and we're going to have to train them in advance.

So, all those questions meant I was understanding the business and driving him mad. And unfortunately for him, when I went to Selfridges later in life, who's working there as a logistics director? Paul Leggett. So be nice to everybody in your career because this is all around.

So that's like my sort of career within Debenhams that I moved through quickly there was because again, just said, give it to me, even if it's temporary, give it to me, I'll give it a go. Let's see what can happen.

Amazing. And then what was the next step on your path towards your first CFO roles?

I think as early as that; I realised the importance of having a network and when you meet smart people, staying close to them and making an effort. And I had a manager within Debenhams who went across to Marks & Spencer.

And so, she immediately sort of tapped me up and said, what's the chances of you moving across to a different retailer? And so that's what I did. So I went halfway through my senior studies, went across to M&S. And that allowed me to design a bit what I did. So, I'd been a cost accountant at that point, really hadn't dealt with revenue.

I'd only dealt with volumes. So, I said, I want to do trade. I want to do weekly trade and then I want to do analytics, and so that's what I did. I went in and did the weekly trading. And so that was, oh my God, you had to be up at five, you need to be in the office for six thirty. You had to have all the reports.

Remember the days before Dash properly existed and the whole business was relying on those numbers coming out. So, you had a real sense of urgency around your role and always wanting to develop and give more insight.

So, I sort of went through that stage and then I wanted to do real business partnering because I missed that side of the logistics role.

And so, I became the Finance Analyst for Home and Beauty at M&S, which at the time was a brilliant time to be doing it because, well, one, Steve Rowe was the Home and Beauty Director who later became the CEO and is a really interesting character.

So, you're dealing with lots of different complex stakeholder management in a big hierarchy of matrix. It was at time they were doing incredibly well. So, they were testing and learning on lots of things they started white goods.

So, I was dealing with literally washing machines and I had a big logistics side of the home business. And I worked with an amazing lady called, at the time, Sam Baber, who was sort of the more senior finance person in the same space. And she was brilliant to work with. And actually that's come full circle because she's now a member of Nova.

So it's a bit of a small word, but that next step all came from knowing somebody, moving across, applying for a role and knowing that I had a good advocate within the business and then continuing to build that network and build my knowledge and know those skill gaps I had and pick up roles that would sort those out.

Amazing, so what came for you next?

I'll just touch on sort of a few because the CFO role sort of was a few roles after that. And what I did is made sure that each new role I took was filling a knowledge gap that I had, as well as allowing me to add value. So, I was quite specific about the fact that when I was leaving M&S, which I probably wouldn't have done, M&S is a brilliant business to move around and grow. It's got so much going on. When I got married, my husband and I moved down to Fleet in Hampshire, and at the same time, M&S relocated to Paddington from Baker Street suddenly to do my job well. I couldn't be there at seven in the morning, which is when trade prep had to start, when you needed to be on the ground with all of the sort of B&M directors.

And so, I had to pivot out of there and decide, okay, what have I not done? I've not worked for a US-owned business. I've not done any kind of sale process, and I've not run FP&A. So, with those things in mind, looked locally, found and basically found roles that fulfilled those.

So, I did six months on purpose as a mat cover for a US-owned business called Cardinal Health. And that allowed me to go through what dealing with the NHS was like and also dealing with the US business.

But that was always short-lived because I don't particularly want to work for a US-owned business just because of the hours. I'm a morning person, so having everything later in the day is not ideal for me.

And Esporta I went into because, one, I met the CFO who was amazing, a guy called Jock, who I'm still friends with today. And he had already sort of given me an indication that they would sell. And so they would go through a sale process. They needed smart people that could understand the business. And I wanted to go into FP&A and do all those kind of the analysis of how the fifty-five clubs are performing.

So, that allowed me to tick off a couple of things during those roles and have exposure to really senior leaders that wanted smart people to just get involved. And that's where I thrive, I don't thrive in a, this is your lane, don't worry about anything else, just do that well. I thrive in, get your lane right and you can go and meddle in anything you want type businesses.

And sometimes they're forty million turnover businesses, sometimes they're nine point five billion, it doesn't matter. It's that attitude they're looking for. So filled those gaps with those roles and then decided, right, I haven't done international properly. I want to do international.

So I went to a company that at the time was Alliance Boots and Alliance Healthcare had a huge international angle. And again, just became a meddler. I had my lane in terms of finance, financial control and finance business partnering, but I wanted to understand cash, I wanted to understand mergers. We did lots of acquisitions in different countries and then had to wrap them in.

So, my hand was always up to be on a team that went in, brought them in and integrated them, which allowed me to move around Europe quite a lot. These things don't happen easily, it sounds like, oh, I just decided to do this. You have to work really hard at searching it, putting yourself forward, finding out how you can help that stakeholder.

So, if someone's looking for someone to help them, the best way to get that role is to talk about how you can help them achieve their objective, not what you want from the role. Of course, you're just going to get what you want from the role. But that's what they need to hear in order to understand how you fit into their strategy. And I think I've been quite good at that from an early age.

So, I think having that international angle allowed me to then step into Selfridges at a very senior level and then start that trajectory into FD, CFO.

So, there's a few kind of common threads throughout your development that I wanted to kind of pick up there. Number one, I would say, not the child state of mind, but being curious. And I think being curious is often like the solution to a lot of political, bureaucratic, economic issues that we have and just learning more about where someone's coming from and having that kind of open mind.

And certainly, intellectual curiosity is a trait that I notice in all the leaders that we interview that I'm lucky enough to speak with. Is that something that you've always had in you and is it something that you actively try and pursue more?

Yeah, I think, again, everyone comes from different backgrounds. I think part of that was definitely formed. I was an only child for the first eight years. And so I was surrounded by adults.

So, I was always around people who were by nature smarter than me. And I was always taken along to all the events because I was the only youngster. That meant you're always operating at a different level because you've got no one to play with at your age, unless you're in school or you're in playgroup.

So, I do think that first eight years was quite formative of always being surrounded by everyone wanting to teach you how to count and teach you how to, so I think that helped. I do think going to a grammar school and my grammar school was particularly good. It wasn't private, I've never been to any private school or that kind of private education layer.

But my grammar school was great at pushing you if you wanted to be pushed. And then I think Kingston University was brilliant because I was a real weirdo. I had my sort of schedule for the things I wanted to do, but they allowed me to because they thought I was weird, to do the same classes twice, because in my view, one lecturer will teach it one way and one will teach it another.

So, if it runs at two times and I can get to both, there's no clash, I want to do it twice. And I remember going and asking permission, and they were like, why would you want to sit through the same content twice? It's how I will learn this lecture might be better at explaining the accounts than that lecture. This lecture might be better at explaining Porter's five forces than this lecture. They were like, just do what you want, we don't want to argue. Yeah, sure, just do your thing.

So, I think again, that's just a who's who am I going to learn from best is another trait that I think has come through those earlier years that I now, I now use in daily sort of work life.

Yeah, it's amazing because your story really resonates with me. Like I also, my brother's seven years younger than me and my mom had me very, very young. So, I spent most of my early life with adults and my grandparents were pretty much my best friends. And I've never thought that maybe that's why you're more confident asking. And I felt for a long time that people think that it's smart to pretend to know something when you don't.

And I think the most confident people, which we're definitely one of, is, are the people who are not afraid to say they don't understand something and ask for more information. And like that's how you accumulate knowledge and wisdom and understanding of where other people are coming from. Because how people explain something to you is just as important as what they're explained to, I think, so I love that. Sorry to share, but I thought that really, yeah, really resonated.

I honestly think how that had a huge part of my forming. I also think what we talked earlier about when we've met each other before, you can't be what you can't see. I was born into a family where I had very young mum and dad and they went back off to work. They finished school, went back off to work, they went. And so it was the idea of a woman not working was just not a concept I knew.

And whilst my grandmother in theory was a stay at home grandmother, she was always either working as a school dinner lady or she was fostering or she was helping my granddad with his business. So, there wasn't any concept of women don't work there was just the concept of you work for a living, and that was instilled very early as well. So, I think all those things create you as a product for sure.

Yeah, and it's been amazing because I feel like everyone that I've interviewed for this series has had a very unusual story. And I'm like, maybe the usual story is that you have an unusual story and that you have these exceptional people around you. The other thing I want to talk about, there's a couple of things, but one of the things, and perhaps that does connect this curiosity, is having a variety of skillsets and not being afraid to move into a department you have no experience of.

You mentioned kind of being quite intentional there around, you know, I haven't worked for an international company yet, I haven't done this yet. How important was it for you to think about kind of adding to your skillset toolbox, if you like, and being quite intentional about where there might be a gap or where there was an opportunity for you to learn something new? Is that something you did actively or did you just see an opportunity you’d be like, I'm going to go for that.

No, really intentional.

Sometimes we hear these talks and there's lucky accidents and there's absolutely a degree of luck in everything because right time, right place makes a huge difference. But I do think you also create a lot of your own luck. So, as I'm going through, if I know that ultimately, I'd like to be X or be Y, you can be quite clear what you don't know.

And I actually think saying you don't know something is far more powerful, as you were saying earlier, than pretending you do. Imagine a board where everyone sits and says, yes, I understand cybersecurity risks and they don't that's absolutely a disaster in the making. So, I think that I was very intentional.

I think also though, part of my intentional choice and not everybody makes the same choices, which is absolutely fine. I always knew I didn't want a family, I’d never wanted children, it's never been on my roadmap.

And I've always known that the things that I enjoy doing do go very closely with intellectual stimulation and learning and wanting to be connected with smart people. So, even in my social time, it's engineered around there being something stimulating my brain.

So, I have given probably more time than some others, whereas others will have different priorities that they've given time to, which is absolutely fine. They're just choices that you make, and neither one is correct. And actually, neither one of us will be happier or less happy, we've got different views of what success looks like.

And I think that's one of the things you have to challenge yourself on. What does success really look like? Because a number of women I'm meeting now and men are getting to a stage of their career where they said, I'm going to be a FTSE one hundred CFO, I'm going to be a FTSE one hundred CEO.

And they've got to a certain stage, they're really well paid, they're learning, they're working with really great people, they don't actually need to change that. They can continue in that vein in a, I don't know, four hundred million SME type space rather than push into.

So, I think people, you should always reevaluate. Same with the strategy of a company. You kind of revisit every three to five years. Yes, you'll have a budget, but you revisit that forecast every quarter or every month, depending on how the macro climate is. I think you should do that with your own career. You should always reevaluate your priorities, where you are in your stage of life, what that looks like. Because I think success and happiness need to be what you consider them to be, not what someone else does.

I totally agree with you. And I think often it's when we think, oh, I had that idea in my mind and I haven't achieved that so I failed. And I've seen people let them not having done what they thought they were going to do, make them very unhappy and feel like a failure.

Whereas, I mean, perhaps that goes back to your kind of grit and resilience of being able to see things not working out as we'd expect as an opportunity for something else that we never even imagined to happen. Because I think there's a lot of people who say, well, I had that idea or I was going to be this. And then there's no one wants to talk to that person if they're stuck in this kind of idea about like what life should have been for them. So, I think that's a really good point to make.

And as you say, like success to me isn't someone who's completely burnt out, who never sees anyone they care about, who's forgotten why they were doing a job in the first place, but who has a massive title and who's earning a lot of money. Like that's not successful.

On that note, I met that person one of my big companies and I remember that person made me go, oh my god, I do not want to be a FTSE one hundred CFO and I definitely don't want to be a FTSE one hundred group financial controller, because if those two individuals are a snapshot of what living that life looks like, that is absolutely not for me.

And it wasn't that I sell anybody worked harder or less hard than each other. They were just miserable, and I just thought, that's not what I'm going to do. I don't want to work really hard, but I want to work with people I really like and I want to know we're all going towards the same goal. And I definitely don't want to walk in and feel like I'm kicking everybody every day.

So, I just, I met people that I went, that's not who I want to be and that's not the role I think I want. But it takes a lot of, I think it takes a lot of courage to do that because the amount, even now in interview processes or as part of Nova, I meet some particular partners, recruitment world that go, there's not been a CFO of FTSE two fifty.

So, it's probably, it's not really much we can do for you, I'm afraid, because if you haven't, and that's absolutely fine. I think you will miss a lot of talent and a lot of expertise that could actually change some of the places that need changing by having that approach. In the same way that if someone's not done a transaction before, it doesn't mean they're not going to be good at doing that.

And taking the chance on the right skill sets can be incredibly important the last two years and the economic climate has made everybody very risk averse, but you're missing out on some great diverse talent as a result. And that's very much what I've been seeing through my interaction with Nova.

So yeah, I think, you know, I think evaluating what good looks like to you is the most important thing.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Like we, fortunately enough, Treasury Today Group were up for, we're shortlisted for Women of the Future and so I was lucky enough to speak with the ex-chair of Burberry and what you were saying just really resonated with me, because I would say their golden era was when somebody was clever enough to think we need to hire more women, we need to hire more diverse talent and our industry doesn't really have it.

So, we're going to look to others and we're going to kind of create a new model and like Angela Ahrendts has been like kind of then the hybrid for going across from fashion into tech. And I think that kind of left field vision of where does have a different kind of talent and like what's the transferable skills? And if you're only hiring someone who's already done that job, it's never going to change.

And so, I think what you say really resonates, like you need to have a vision of like what someone could be and what the energy that you want is rather than, oh, they need to have done this.

Because always you end up with just the same one diverse person moving around from company to company because nobody's got the guts to take a punt on someone a bit different. So, thank you for saying that.

Obviously, you run Nova. You've talked a lot about leveraging your network, wanting to be around very smart people and kind of picking their brains. What would your advice be for those who perhaps don't have the personality type that is naturally adept at, I mean, I hate the word networking, it sounds insincere, but creating your own network, creating your own community. What advice would you offer them and what things have you found have been helpful for you to leverage that network and to engage with it?

Yeah, I think it's an interesting one because if we go back to what does success look like for you, aspiring to have a big network and getting a big role as a CFO or whatever it might be, might not be something that you'll feel comfortable in.

So going through all the steps to enable you to get that actually could just feel like you're going in the wrong direction. So, I think there's a big difference between real leadership roles and subject matter expertise roles. And we had a Women in HR breakfast recently, which was very much focused around why do we promote functional experts that aren't leadership experts? Because then we don't create and train them to be good managers and leaders along a journey. So, I think really early on, working out whether you want to be a leader of people, whether you want to be a functional expert is quite important. Because that will dictate then how you should go about and what extent you should go about building a network.

So, understanding yourself and what you really want is the first stage. I think then after that it is just stepping out of your comfort zone.

Now, you don't have to turn up to the opening of an envelope, but if there is something on that's like a topic or a speaker that you will find interesting, if you don't like interacting with people, just attending that event will mean you leave with some new knowledge. And you can forget the networking bit for stage one.

Just get, I would only invest my time in going to things where I think I'm going to learn. The networking part for me is almost secondary. And some days I turn up and I don't want to talk to anybody because actually I'm kind of spent, I've done so much. I just want to focus on the topic at hand, other times I go and there's a really interesting list. So, I've been able to see the delegate list or I've been able to understand the mix of speakers. And I really want to speak to everybody else that's there to hear their views on what they've just heard or what's going on.

So, I work out before I go to a networking event of any kind what I want to get from it. And I think people who aren't thinking about it again, strategically, will turn up to something and come away with maybe a positive feeling, but actually, what did they get from it? Not what they could have done because they didn't know why they were there in the first place.

So, I wouldn't just turn up to things just to network, I would be really choosy about how you spend your time, because time is money. So, working out, what am I going to learn? Or who am I going to meet? And it's even more important to do that if you're not got the more natural trait in yourself to want to talk to people if you've got different, if you're on different elements of the spectrum.

So, I have a stepson who's on the spectrum and you have to be really aware of what that's going to be like for that individual and therefore having forced one to ones. I really don't like those events where you have to sit down one to one with somebody in order to attend. I don't go to them because whilst I appreciate it's a great way for partners to engage, that could be the make or break for somebody who's not in that kind of personality type. So, I have to find that quite difficult.

I like the idea that there's a small group though. The small group ones are brilliant because then you can choose to engage in a very comfortable way. Or being in an audience of big, you know, like so the opening part of the Women in Treasury was great because you were just in a big audience. So, if you're not naturally a talker, you can just listen to the content and be part of it.

So, I think different formats like that on a day is really important. But you do have to think about it strategically whenever you're, networking to make sure it's right for you.

Yeah, and that goes back to when I asked you earlier around the kind of development, different skillsets, you said, you know, you were very intentional. And I think this is the same advice that's coming through around the networking as well-being intentional.

You mentioned some great points there, but only going to something where you really want to be there, like finding a way that you're going to feel comfortable, you know what you're going to get out of it and so on. And I think that's great advice. Otherwise, you can waste a lot of time running around in circles, you're not really getting what you want from certain things.

I want us to come back now to think about the role of CFO. So, you've arrived in your first CFO role let's go back when you arrived there, what was as you were expecting it to be and what wasn't as you were expecting it to be?

Oh, great question. I hadn't appreciated. So, whilst I've done a lot of stakeholder management before I got to Milk & More, so we even with Selfridges and some of the other businesses, I got to FD level at Selfridges.

I had not been faced with being one of the key confiders of the CEO. And I think I hadn't appreciated the weight of that role on day one.

So, whilst I went through my normal playbook of right, you need to go in, you need to build trust, you need to build credibility, you need to assess the team, you need to understand strategy, whilst I had my what I needed to get done in my first sixty days, I had not realised how successful or unsuccessful you could be in your role without that one relationship really working. And part of my skillset is understanding people, understanding their motivation so that I can manage things accordingly, sometimes them, sometimes circumstances, sometimes the business.

That was a huge learning straight away. Because when you go into that role, you're trying to understand that individual, from the business perspective and a personal perspective, you're then trying to understand their relationship with the rest of that exec and how that fits together, their relationship with the chair or the investors, in this case, it was Müller, and then work out your place within it.

And your place within it needs to change in the first three months to the first six months to, you know, a year. So that has to evolve. So I think that was the first thing and I'm just incredibly grateful that without knowing the extent of that, that I ended up in a business where I felt like I had an exceptional relationship with the CEO, at the point we went through the exit, and also with the owners, because we had an excellent board member who was part of our board from the Müller Group called Marcus.

And you were able to have very data-led, unemotional conversations around the table about the right thing to do for people, the right thing to do for results. And that being able to have those kind of conversations made it feel very grown up and the ability to do great things. The more tricky parts is when a lot of emotion will come into the room.

And I think, again, as a CFO, I think our role has to be, I'm not saying don't bring your whole self to work, but I think a role of a CFO is to keep things factual and data-led. There's lots of other emotions in the room. Let's, let that all come out. We don't want a blue sky thinking to go away but try and bring it back to, so what is it we're trying to do?

What is it where, if we feel that that's what's happening with the consumer, where's the data that shows us that's what's happening with the consumer?

If we feel that's the right price point, how does that fit against others in the market? Or how does that, so keep asking those open questions, not challenging necessarily, but open questions. How do you feel about that? How would we do that? What would that look like? What does good look like in that scenario? And encouraging that conversation and then trying to bring it back to fact. So, I think the relationship between the CFO and the CEO in any of the businesses is absolutely key for sure.

Amazing. And you've made some amazing points there, but what would you say typifies that like an exceptional CFO versus a good one?

It makes only my opinion, but I think what I'm finding challenging for some of the Nova members and some of the wider network I have. So, we talk about Nova being a female-led community, but we have a secret group called Nova with Balls because I've got lots of really great male colleagues as well that want to be part of, you know, what we're doing.

So, we actually are, you know, we're relatively agnostic about leadership. But I think doing what you've always done is not going to take you through the future. If we’ve learned nothing from COVID, plus all of political uncertainty, plus the economic crisis really that we've had in the UK over a number of years for different parts of it. Don't get me wrong, not for all businesses, but different parts. If we've learned nothing, it's we had a great period of stability.

So, whilst people may have worked in role, they might not have dealt with the challenges that have been dealt with in the last five years. So, actually look at those who have delivered in the last five years and almost not forget everything prior to that. It's a different period.

And I would want someone on my team and I would want to be part of a team that has been through great adversity and come out, out of it in the right way than somebody who can point to me that they were CFO of a FTSE two fifty business for twenty years prior. But in the last five years, you know, it's been a bit more of a challenge.

And that's because actually moving at speed, being agile, making decisions quickly, getting to facts quickly is, I think, a difficult gig. And that's what I think the future needs to look like. It needs to be people that can prove to be able to react and be proactive. I think the juggernauts of the world are kind of going to see some challenges if they don't have that kind of faster thinking within their teams, and that's just my opinion.

No, I, your opinion is a powerful one. And I think that really fits with the traits that I've kind of drawn out from your whole story, which is, resilience in the face of adversity and being curious, like that, being adaptable and seeing challenges is not the end of the world.

Because I think there are a lot of leaders who are hoping things will just go back to normal or whatever and like there is no normal and you have to pivot. And if I look at companies that are doing so well right now, like your old shop, Marks & Spencer, that was kind of like, let's throw out the rule book and lead in a totally different way.

And I'm thrilled to see it's working because these institutions, they can maintain a core of what makes them special but still be so adaptable and that's where you see leaders that you really admire, so thank you so much.

Not without a great deal of change, right? Not without people, changes in approach. And you won't get that with the same things in place.

Absolutely, yeah, like hiring creatives from a completely different company that had a totally different way of working that's going to bring something totally new while still providing your core. Amazing.

So, I mean, I've loved speaking with you, but I want to kind of move us to wrapping up. And that would be, we want Ask A CFO to help those and to make more transparent a career path to the top. So, tell me, what's your advice for those aspiring to reach CFO level? What would you advise that they do or think of or listen to or get involved with?

I think anywhere you can hear and learn from other FDs or CFOs, because it may be FD into a CFO and that's still a role that has taken on a breadth of experience. Anytime you get to hear from those is a really good opportunity because you'll hear different career paths and stories, which might open your mind about what you should be doing differently.

I think the other thing is, even if you just went and looked at some sample job specs online and look at all the responsibilities a CFO has, then look at your own career right now and go, I've not touched department A, department B. If you're lucky enough to be in a business where they have those as separate departments, go and learn from them.

I mean, god, give up half a day if you need to, whatever it needs to be to go and just shadow and learn to really see how it operates. Because most people would love to show you what they do, would love you to be interested in what they're doing. And also outside of finance.

So, a CFO, traditionally, you may end up with supply chain, you may end up with IT, you may end up with people, you may end up with legal, you might end up with procurement. If you've only focused on finance and been an amazing finance partner, that's not enough.

You're going to have to be broader and definitely get on top of cash and how to deal with lenders. Because if you've never dealt with that before, you are going to have to oversee that at some stage if you want it. So, I think there's that. So that's kind of the technical know-how and understanding of business. But I think more important is what we call the softer skills, but they're absolutely the really important human skills of how do you lead a team?

How do you manage? How do you, everything from how do you manage absence? How do you manage motivation? How do you have conversations with stakeholders outside of finance? How do you build a relationship?

And I'm not popular for saying this regularly, but you do not do that via a screen. It is not possible to build the kind of depth of relationship that you can have longer term over a screen, only over a screen from day one. I think that is going to be difficult.

So, whether it's hybrid, whether it's in, I'm really not interested, I'm just interested in people getting together and starting to have those coffee conversations that then lead to really productive conversations later.

Things like teams, remote working or agile working, whatever you want to call it. It's absolutely created opportunities to be efficient, but it's not always effective. And I do think you need both in order to do that. You learn from seeing how others behave.

So, I think it's really working out how to build your soft skills by being around people and look at your skillset to date and the technical pieces you might be missing and look at ways to plug those gaps.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that's one of the real sort of sadness that I saw in the pandemic was if you're maintaining relationships via screen, that's great. So, for those of us who are already established, but to create new ones is very, very difficult.

Finally, we've made several references to your amazing platform, Nova, and we're real fans of it at the Treasury Today Group and advocates for it. So, tell our audience a little bit about it. And for those of them interested in getting involved, what they can do.

Sure, thank you. Well, as I said, it started as a happy accident. It really wasn't supposed to be a community, but we've got just over five hundred now across our four main cohorts.

So, whether you're a, executive in the C-suite or you've retired into more of a plural net scenario, whether you're a CFO or FD, a head of finance or financial controller or a woman in transformation, there are four key cohorts.

And we provide just safe spaces for open Q&A, being able to have discussion, talk about what current topics are in a really informal setting.

We've also then extended out into in-person events so people can get together and physically talk to each other and then we bring great speakers in or subject matter experts to cover things off. We're just broadening out into Women in HR by popular request and women in professional services. And next year, there's definitely an intent to go more internationally because of the demand.

It's run like a not-for-profit. So, this is literally a community for us by us. We all pay a small membership fee in order to be part of it. There's a team that now runs it and looks after it for us. And I have to say, with the quality of the people that are in that community, there's probably not a single question in business we wouldn't be able to answer and be able to tackle through somebody having that experience. And I think that's been invaluable. People are so incredibly generous of their time in supporting each other.

Now, it's a female leadership community, but we have the best speakers, male or female, from all different diverse backgrounds. And I'm, because of my background I shared with you, pretty fastidious when it comes to wanting to have different forms in. So, social mobility for me is a huge one. Just because you don't have a privately educated background doesn't mean you can't lead a really great international business.

So, I just think we push lots of different boundaries in different ways. So, it was great that you picked up on us, you know, when you did. And I was, you know, really pleased to be able to speak to you at your previous event as well. It was great.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I'm really excited to see what happens with Nova. And just thanks again for taking a part on us and being part of our new Ask A CFO series.

Lovely to be there. Thanks, Sophie, take care.

Thank you so much to Billie for being involved in our Ask A CFO podcast series. I really, really enjoyed speaking with Billy and I hope you all enjoyed hearing her thoughts and her insights. Thank you so much and please join us next time.