Columbo Lite

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

I ran across a short piece in the April issue of HRMagazine this week. Of course the title, “Many CFO’s Don’t ‘Fit’ Company Culture” caught my eye. The article refers to a survey Right Management conducted with HR managers and executives at mid- to large organizations in all industries about how Chief Financial Officers (CFO’s) are faring in the Sarbanes-Oxley world.

The survey revealed that 23% of the respondents listed “CFO did not fit into culture of organization” as a reason for why the CFO left the company, exceeded only by the number one reason, “accepted another job offer.” This one bit of information gave me enough pause to unleash a bevy of questions. Here we go.

Does this demonstrate a respect for and safeguarding of company culture or have we discovered the new euphemism for “he/she got fired?” Were these CFO’s getting the right results and still didn’t fit in or weren’t they getting results? What’s more important to a culture, getting results or fitting in? Or is an inability to fit in merely a symptom of a culture that can’t handle diverse leadership styles? Who is to fault, the rigid CFO or the rigid culture?

Why so many mismatches? To what degree is this a failure of the selection process? Was “cultural fit” a factor in the selection criteria? If so, how did the hiring manager(s) go about teasing out the potential match/mismatch? It’s interesting to note that the survey respondents (HR managers and executives) are the same people who would have interviewed and selected the CFO candidate. Might their explanation of “cultural mismatch” say more about them dropping the ball than the CFO’s inability to fit in? Are we talking “cover-up?” (Don’t call Woodward just yet.)

Can the powers-that-be hold a culture in too high of esteem? Where is the tipping point between upholding the culture because it serves the business and the business serving the culture? Do we always know when we are slaves to our own culture?

Can an executive create a culture within his/her department that is different from the organization’s culture? Would this reflect a strength or weakness of the culture?

Who is the keeper of the culture? The executives? Human Resources? Who has the right to say, “This is the way we do things around here?” Who owns the culture to claim the right and responsibility to protect the culture’s standards and values? Does HR or the executives see the culture the same way as the rank-and-file? Who is more in touch with the reality on the ground?

To what degree was the culture really rejecting the rigor of the CFO’s financial standards and not his/her leadership style? CFO’s can make life difficult inside organizations that don’t adhere to rigorous financial standards. Were these CFO’s sacrificed because they played by the rules of others, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission?

Would Inspector Clouseau be proud of me?