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When starting a new role as a Finance Director in the complex world of real estate and construction, you will have your hands full understanding and prioritising the many opportunities to achieve success and establish yourself in your new organisation.
So where do you start to have the biggest impact in your first 100 days?
1. Listen and Learn.
The biggest priority for anyone joining a new organisation is to win trust, build relationships and understand the people, structure and stakeholders throughout the business. Giving yourself the time to have conversations to understand individuals is priceless – what are their preferences, knowledge, talents, frustrations, personalities and hear their experiences both from a finance and wider business perspective. These can be pulled into an initial audit summary, along with a thorough understanding the value drivers of the business, sources of growth and business model and operational efficiencies.
2. Processes, people and tools.
Now is the time to start getting into the detailed evaluation of your team – the structure, skills, systems and processes. What works and what needs changing. Start lining up the right partners and researching what is out there to support the improvements you want to see.
It can be a challenge to assess and know what you need without seeing what is possible – sometimes just seeing profiles of candidates can help you to shape what good looks like and visualise the possibilities. It can also help to compare market rates of remuneration when understanding budgets, how to best retain and reward existing and new hires.
3. Create and share the vision and the journey.
It’s time-consuming and involves a lot of energy, but engaging and inspiring your stakeholders to co-create and share your vision and the journey in key to successfully executing any changes. Now is the time to ensure you have the right people around you to depend on and deliver.
During this time, you will undoubtedly have the pressure of day-to-day deliverables and the usual busy periods – do consider and plan for these challenges and whether bringing in an interim individual will give you some breathing space, save time and make month-end/ quarter-end closing more efficient.
If you have just started a new role or plan to, feel free to book in a short call with me or connect – I’m always happy to share any insights based on searches for similar teams and how they are structured to help you shape the structure of your team as you get clear on your goals.
If you already know what you’re looking for just drop me a line and I can share relevant profiles of our fantastic network of accounting professionals who have a wealth of experience in the world of real estate and construction.
Article written by William Dodds, Managing Consultant, Accounting & Finance.