The MTP Business Learning Blog

This blog is produced by MTP for senior professionals highlighting relevant and interesting books and articles on business, finance and strategy, and the opportunity to comment on them. It also contains news of MTP and its clients and, from time to time, extracts from MTP publications.

Sunday, 1 February 2009

‘The year of the CFO’ by Lucy Kellaway, page 139 The Economist review ‘The World in 2009’

I have reviewed this article because of its relevance to the two management functions that MTP deals with most – Finance and HR – and because it raises interesting issues. Ii is chosen even though it is relatively short and is pitched at a light hearted level, because it predicts an interesting development during the challenging times of the recession, that power will move from HR towards Finance. At first this might seem an obvious point that will be true in many companies but when you look further at the arguments that Kellaway is producing, you have to question the logic and wisdom of such a power transfer.

It is surprising that a well known FT journalist like Kellaway should adopt a light hearted tone that is out of touch with the times and it makes you wonder whether she really is trying to make a serious point. The predictive nature of the article and the lack of evidence to justify the predictions, make it difficult to relate to; at times one wonders what such an article is doing within the pages of the Economist’s otherwise excellent review. These are serious matters that require a different and more balanced tone.

Among the questionable suggestions – which I hope most companies would not be implementing - are that:


  • Emotional intelligence and thinking outside the box will no longer be rated by top management.

  • Top CEO jobs will go to ‘ Beancounters’.

  • Value rather than vision will be the order of the day.

  • Companies will no longer be looking for talented people.

  • HR priorities will be restricted to managing headcount and payroll.

  • Marketing people will also lose power as their budgets are cut.

While it is true that there will have to be firm leadership from the finance function and that some cost reductions will be necessary, it is difficult to think of a selection of actions more likely to lead to long term corporate failure.

Lucy, I hope you weren’t being serious but if you weren’t, what was the point?


To access this article go to http://www.economist.com/theworldin/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12494665