【英语生活】如何从CFO平滑过渡到CEO？

Lipsmackin’. That was the market’s reaction to the announcement from PepsiCo last month that its current chief financial officer, Indra Nooyi, was to take over as chief executive from Steve Reinemund this October. Having served as CFO for the past five years, helping to steer PepsiCo’s strategic repositioning, Ms Nooyi seems well placed to take on the top job.This appointment ticks so many of the boxes scrutinised exhaustively by politically correct observers – and viewed with suspicion by professional sceptics – that the most important aspect of the news risks being overlooked.

Yes, I have noticed: Ms Nooyi is a woman, now one of only 11 female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Nor has it escaped my attention that she is Indian, born in what was then Madras (now Chennai). At 50, she is at an age where some senior executives feel the hot breath of age discrimination at the back of their necks.

What really matters about Ms Nooyi’s well-received promotion is that she has made the increasingly common move from the finance department to being in charge of the whole show. No longer sidelined as a mere “bean-counter”, the CFO or finance director is often seen as a quasi-deputy chief executive, in at the heart of all the big decisions, exercising a huge influence that reaches beyond the balance sheet. Companies as diverse as Southwest Airlines, International Paper, Harley-Davidson and Halliburton all have their former CFOs in place as CEO. Oracle’s chairman, Jeff Henley, was once its CFO. According to CFO magazine, as of last October almost one-fifth of Fortune 500 companies had a former CFO as CEO. （CFO杂志名见http://www.cfochina.net/docs/event_calendar.html）

The increased importance of the CFO role reflects the speed, volatility and sheer muscle of the investment community. In spite of ongoing unhappiness in boardrooms about the “tyranny” of quarterly reporting, no executive is under any illusion about the consequences of failing to hit the numbers. When a vacancy arises for a new chief executive, who better, shareholders might feel, than the person who has spent the past few years delivering on those financial targets?

CFOs have often developed a sharp awareness of the risk factors that play out in different markets. They have been in the room listening to explanations when things have gone wrong. They are familiar with the sort of complexity global business brings with it today. “You don’t have to have been a CFO to make a good CEO”, the head of one of the UK’s “big four” accountancy firms tells me, “but it helps.”

What is the downside here? There is clearly a danger that a former CFO will be tempted down the financial engineering route, too interested in the numbers and insufficiently sensitive to the broader needs of the organisation. Any narrowness of approach will hinder attempts to build lasting and sustainable growth.

Mergers, disposals and acquisitions may well form an important part of a corporate strategy, but they are not a substitute for researching and developing new products, or investing in staff (who are, incidentally, people and not depreciating “assets”).

But this is the good news about PepsiCo’s new boss. Ms Nooyi is – and this is not in any way meant to sound disrespectful – a bit of a fox. I mean she is a fox and not a hedgehog, according to the definition offered in the seventh century BC by the Greek poet and soldier Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Business leadership today calls for the fox’s agility and breadth of experience rather than the hauteur of the hedgehog. The best CFOs know this. Norman Lyle, until last year group finance director of Jardine Matheson in Hong Kong, explained it once in these terms: “The CFO will have to deal with ambiguity. Things are not black and white. To have sound business judgment means that they need to have a comprehensive understanding of the business they are operating in. They need a deep and broad knowledge. There can be no ivory towers any more. The CFOs have got to get out and talk to people.”

This rather chimes with what my father has spent much of the past 30 years trying to tell me: that I should aim to be a “Jack of all trades, and master of one”. (I will save the letters editor some trouble by acknowledging that I clearly have more work to do on both sides of that last comma.)

Finance must not become too mighty or too proud. As John Connors, former CFO at Microsoft, put it: “When I hear a strategic plan has come out of the finance function, I know that that is a stock to avoid.” Seeing the face of John Mayo, former finance director of GEC/Marconi, smiling out of a newspaper last week was a reminder that even the most highly regarded financial brains can get things terribly wrong if their grand vision is not tempered with realism and sound judgment.

It is also worth pointing out that in 1999 CFO magazine’s “most creative financial officer of the year” award went to Enron’s Andrew Fastow – who was not, incidentally, a certified public accountant, any more than the similarly scandal-hit Ahold’s former CFO Michiel Meurs was.

As everyone knows, it takes two men to fill the gap left by one good woman. That is what is happening at PepsiCo, with Indra Nooyi’s former responsibilities being taken up by two male colleagues. Perhaps for once the uniformly positive market reaction is well founded. This is one CFO who knows what the numbers mean, but understands that they can never tell the whole story

百事公司(PepsiCo)上月宣布，现任首席财务官英德拉•努伊(Indra Nooyi)今年10月将接替雷孟夫(Steve Reinemund)担任首席执行官。市场对这一声明的反应是一片赞叹。努伊过去5年一直担任百事的首席财务官，帮助引导了百事战略上的重新定位，这一经历似乎使她成了CEO职位的不二人选。

在政治正确的观察家们极其关注的各项标准——同时也是职业怀疑论者以怀疑目光审视的标准中，这项任命的合格之处如此之多，以至于这条新闻最重要的一个方面都可能被忽视了。

是的，我注意到了：努伊是个女人，是《财富》(Fortune)500强企业中目前仅有的11位女性CEO之一。同样没逃过我眼睛的是：她是印度人，生于印度马德拉斯（现在叫做晨奈）。50岁的她，正处在某些高管感到年龄歧视的风言风语就在耳边的年纪。

在努伊受人欢迎的升职事件里，真正有意义的一点是，她走了一条日益常见的道路：从财务部门走向整个公司的权力巅峰。首席财务官或财务主管不再作为一名单纯的“会计”而置诸事外，而是常常被视为“准代理首席执行官”，在各项重大决策中发挥着关键作用，其巨大影响力已超出资产负债表。各类企业，如美国西南航空(Southwest Airlines)、国际纸业(International Paper)、哈雷—戴维森(Harley Davidson)和哈里伯顿(Halliburton)等，都让前任首席财务官出任了首席执行官一职。甲骨文(Oracle)的董事长杰夫•亨里(Jeff Henley)也曾是公司的首席财务官。《财务总监》杂志(CFO magazine)的数据显示，截至去年10月，在《财富》500强企业中，近五分之一企业的首席执行官由前首席财务官提拔而来。

首席财务官角色重要性的提升，反映了投资界的速度、波动性和绝对实力。尽管董事会对季度报告的“苛求”始终感到不悦，但没有哪位高管会对不能达到目标的后果抱有幻想。当新首席执行官职位出现空缺时，股东们会觉得，谁还能比过去几年实现这些财务目标的人更合适呢？

首席财务官通常都具备了对不同市场上风险因素的敏锐触觉。当事情出了纰漏的时候，他们总是在会议室里听取解释。他们熟悉全球业务如今具有的那种复杂性。“要成为好的首席执行官，你不见得非得当过首席财务官，”英国“四大”会计师事务所之一的负责人对我说，“但那会有所帮助。”

但这其中有什么弊端呢？显然存在这样一种危险：前任首席财务官会受到诱惑，继续沿着财务操作的路线前进，过分沉迷于数字，对整个组织更广泛的需求不够敏感。任何一种狭隘的管理思路都会阻碍公司实现长久而持续的增长。

合并、资产处置和收购可能都是企业战略的重要组成部分，但这不能代替研发新产品或员工投资（顺便提一下，员工是人，而非不断折旧的“资产”）。

然而，对于百事的新老板而言，这是个好消息。努伊有些像狐狸——这样说并非要对她有何不敬。我是说，她是狐狸，而不是刺猬。按照古希腊军旅诗人阿尔基洛科斯(Archilochus)公元前7世纪的定义：“狐狸知道很多事，但刺猬只知道一件大事。”

如今的商业领袖需要狐狸的敏捷和广泛阅历，而不是刺猬的自大。最好的首席财务官都明白这一点。去年仍任香港怡和集团(Jardine Matheson)财务董事的黎乐民(Norman Lyle)曾这样解释：“首席财务官必须应对模棱两可的问题。事情不只是白与黑那样简单。要养成良好的业务判断能力，意味着他们需要全面理解公司经营的业务。他们需要渊博的知识。再也不能有象牙塔了。首席财务官必须走出来，与人们交谈。”

这与我父亲30年来总在试图告诉我的道理不谋而合：我应该“博览众行，但专攻一艺”。（我得自己承认，无论是哪方面，我都明显存在不足，文字编辑就不用费心去注明这一点了。）

财务不应影响太大或过于夸大。正如微软(Microsoft)前首席财务官约翰•康纳斯(John Connors)所言：“当听到某公司的一项战略计划是出于财务功能而制定的时候，我就知道不能买这家公司的股票。”GEC/Marconi前任首席财务官约翰•梅奥(John Mayo)上周在报纸上的笑脸也提醒我们，如果伟大远景未能考虑现实情况，没有经过合理判断，即使是最受尊敬的财务官也可以让事情变得非常糟糕。

同时有必要指出，1999年，《财务总监》杂志 “年度最具创意财务官”奖授予了安然(Enron)的安德鲁•法斯托(Andrew Fastow)。顺便提一下，法斯托不是一名注册会计师，同样遭丑闻打击的Ahold前首席财务官米希尔•莫伊尔斯(Michiel Meurs)也不是。

众所周知，一位优秀女性留下的空白，需要两位男士才能填补。百事正是如此，英德拉•努伊之前的职责由两位男同事承担了起来。也许这一次市场一致乐观的反应是有充分理由的。这是一位既懂得数字的含义，但也明白数字永远不代表一切的首席财务官。

译者/何黎