(from the Wall Street Journal) Chief financial officers shouldn't be afraid to ask for help, regardless of the size of their organization or their years of exprience. “I think the best education and learning process is to learn from others," said Lloyd Howell, who became CFO of consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton in 2016. "Finance is a language. To be good, I think you need to understand and learn the language.”
In explaining his decision to recruit an informal band of experienced advisors and tutors, Howell — who had climbed his way up over three decades in client-facing roles at Booz Allen — said he quickly recognized the steep learning curve of serving in an internal capacity. "In this role, you are really in control of a small percentage of what happens and yet you are held accountable for 100 percent of what happens or doesn’t happen," he told the Wall Street Journal. Through informal conference calls and in-person meetings, he met with CFOs from other industries to get their insights on matters from engaging stakeholders to providing greater transparency around finances to establishing careful planning processes. "If more people admitted that they didn’t know something, we probably would be much better off," he said. "I have found that when I admit that I don’t know something and would like to learn it better or understand it, more times than not, folks are very open and helpful."
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