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5 Moves That Turn a CFO Into a Real CEO Contender

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5 Moves That Turn a CFO Into a Real CEO Contender

CFOs aiming for the CEO seat must do things like drive growth, think like owners and build trust with others.

Russell Reynolds Associates’ 2024 Global CFO Turnover Index found that 34% of CFOs who left their roles moved into a President or CEO position, up from 20% the year before. Around the same time, a Boston Consulting Group survey of roughly 500 chief executives found that more than a quarter of them see their own CFO as the biggest threat to their job, ahead of every other role in the C-suite.

Two numbers, same story from opposite ends — the CFO seat has stopped being a purely financial function and turned into a proving ground for the top job.

The finance track record will get you into the conversation for the CEO seat. Winning the seat takes more. I say that as someone who joined Dreamix in mid-2022 as its first CFO, after a decade in corporate banking, and became its CEO in September this year.

In between, there was a buy-side acquisition, a sell-side acquisition, a Deputy CEO role and an EY CFO of the Year award, but none of it would have mattered without the five things below. What follows is written from the inside, in the order I would do it again if I were a CFO today who wanted the top job.

Protecting margins is the natural CFO instinct, and it is the instinct that will keep you a CFO. Chasing growth is not natural for a finance leader, which is exactly why it is the first thing I would change.


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