CFO Conference: Power in People, Future Focus, AI

Well said and true for all departments! “The best of us know AI frees us to focus on people and relationships, not just process. But without leadership, AI won’t: → Turn insight into action → Build trust across the C-suite → Shift finance from gatekeeper to guide The CFO seat now demands EQ, IQ, TQ, AQ in balance: • EQ to partner deeper • IQ to cut through complexity • TQ to harness AI as force multiplier • AQ to thrive in turbulence Without that mix, you stay in transactions. With it, you become the partner every executive wants.”

How will AI reshape the role of finance leaders and the skills defining the next generation of CFOs? Dav dived into this topic last week, whilst hosting a brilliant conversation with Jessica Pillow, CCP, GRP (Global Total Rewards Leader, Deel) and Mike Tsang (Finance Director, ARIA) at the CFO Connect Summit. If you missed their session, they covered everything from how AI is transforming workflows to what skills will keep finance leaders relevant and, the mindset shifts every CFO and aspiring finance leader should be making now. Watch the recording (linked in the comments) or review our key takeaways: 💸 AI is transforming, not replacing, finance roles. Automation frees finance teams to focus on strategy, growth, and value creation. 🤔 Curiosity is the new competitive edge. As Jessica shared, there’s no playbook, teams should “treat AI like a product,” testing, iterating, and learning by doing. ⬆️ Upskilling is a shared responsibility. Employers should enable it, but individuals must take the lead in exploring new tools and approaches. 🧠 Human judgment remains irreplaceable. Compliance, ethics, and decision-making are still core to effective finance leadership. AI is rewriting the finance playbook. The question now is: how fast will you adapt? #aiinfinance #cfoconnect #cfoai

Last week I joined the CFO Connect panel on AI in Finance. Here are a few thoughts I shared: 1. Context is the bottleneck, not technology In sales pitches, AI sounds like plug-and-play. The reality is that the hard work is in the foundation: centralizing data, standardizing definitions, and documenting how work actually gets done. Even the best models can't learn from unwritten knowledge or fix incomplete data. 2. Involve controllers early If finance teams can't understand how AI reached an output, they won't use it. Involve controllers from the start. Write business logic in plain English together, build audit trails, make outputs traceable. When the people doing the work help design the automation, trust and adoption follow. 3. Make experimentation the goal ROI isn't always clear upfront, and value shows up in unexpected places. The people closest to the work will discover the best use cases. Give them access to tools and training. The technical team's job is to scale what works so individual wins become broader impact. 4. Culture and leadership matter Build teams that treat past decisions as sunk costs and see change as opportunity. Leaders set the example: experiment with the tools, communicate how expectations are evolving, address fears directly, and help people see possibilities.

🚀 AI is Reshaping Business — But Only CFOs Who Can See It Will Survive It I saw this morning’s jobs report — 20 companies increased hiring for Chief Financial Officers. No surprise. We’re entering a new era where the CFO is not a back-office accountant. The CFO is the strategic brain surgeon of the company. Think about it… When your business needs brain surgery, do you go to your regular doctor? Of course not. You go to a specialist — someone who’s been inside the operating room a thousand times and knows what every nerve connects to. That’s what a true CFO is right now. We understand: • How to synthesize AI into the workforce without collapsing culture or cash flow. • How to stabilize profit during technology transitions. • How to leverage tax strategy, credits, and capital structure to build resilience while others are reacting. • And how to translate AI data into financial foresight — not just hindsight. AI can replace analysts, but it can’t replace a financial strategist who understands systems thinking. That’s why the best companies in the world are hunting elite CFO minds — the ones who can read both a balance sheet and a neural net. If your company needs that kind of leadership — someone who can navigate finance, AI, and the future — you don’t call your general doctor. You call the specialist. That’s me. — JW, CFO / Strategist / Builder of the Future

 My ASCEND™ Framework, In over two decades as a finance executive, now upskilling to become AI Strategist , I’ve seen common pattern: Organizations (and leaders) get stuck not because they lack ideas, but because they lack a clear framework/system to turn those ideas into results. That’s why I follow The ASCEND™ Framework, a framework work that I have created to help me from idea to execution, this is a practical roadmap I use across every role I play: 💼 CFO | 🤖 AI Strategist/Advisor | 🎯 Coach | 🎤 Speaker I help leaders and teams move from Awareness → Action → Acceleration with clarity and confidence.  The ASCEND™ Framework A – Awareness/Assess: Educate and assess where you are today. What’s working? What’s not? what should we be doing that we are not? S – Strategize/Simplify: Align AI and business opportunities to create and deliver value. C – Champion/Capability: Build internal literacy, skills, and confidence to lead change. E – Execution/Efficiency: Identify and automate high-ROI workflows and repurpose team to do more value add work. N – Navigation: Guide implementation, tool selection, and change management. D – Drive/Delivery: Execute, measure, and scale what works. Whether I’m leading a finance transformation, coaching teams, or speaking to an audience of entrepreneurs, ASCEND™ provides the same foundation: ✅ Simplicity in strategy ✅ Confidence in capability ✅ Speed in execution ✅ Clarity in results We’re entering a new era where AI + Human Intelligence (Human in the loop) together define success. My goal is to help leaders and teams ASCEND , not just adopt AI, but transform how they think, lead, and deliver impact. I’m curious, which part of the ASCEND journey do you find most challenging right now? #AI #Leadership #DigitalTransformation #FinanceLeadership #CFO #AIConsulting #Coaching #Transformation #Automation #ASCENDFramework #FutureOfWork

AI isn’t replacing CFOs. It’s replacing average CFOs. The ones who rely on lagging reports instead of real-time intelligence. The ones who analyze after the fact, not as it happens. AI has already shifted what financial leadership means. The CFO’s job used to be: → Ensure accuracy. → Control budgets. → Deliver monthly reports. Now? That’s the baseline. The real CFO advantage is in strategic prediction and decision velocity. AI makes that possible, but only for leaders willing to change how they operate. Here’s what I’m seeing across $1M–$10M service businesses: → Forecasting is becoming proactive. CFOs use AI models to simulate scenarios before they happen. → Reporting is near-instant. Dashboards update continuously, eliminating the end-of-month scramble. → Advisory is elevated. CFOs spend less time gathering data, more time guiding CEOs through data-backed strategy. It’s not just efficiency. It’s influence. AI is shifting the CFO role from “financial controller” to “growth strategist.” The best CFOs won’t be the ones with the biggest teams. They’ll be the ones who integrate AI deepest into decision-making. Because in the next 3 years, knowing your numbers won’t be enough. You’ll need to predict them. #CFO #ArtificialIntelligence #BusinessStrategy

Loved Raj Seshadri recent piece on how CFOs can improve forecasting and insights with AI.   When it’s budget season, most of us start by looking back: what worked, what didn’t, where the money went. But what if leaders and teams could look forward instead?   Today, we’re seeing AI reshaping B2B payments by enabling smarter, faster decisions. Gone are the days when CFOs were just financial stewards and their team worked in isolation. Instead, with AI connecting the dots and making inter-team collaboration much easier, CFOs are strategic architects minimizing lost revenue and maximizing working capital.   It’s a fundamental mindset shift, and one that’s already redefining what modern finance leadership looks like.

𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗥𝗘𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗥𝗧: AI in Financial Services — The Transformation Playbook. Comment below to secure your copy today! A few years ago, AI in finance was a slide in the strategy deck. Today, it’s a line on the P&L. Yet, when I speak with transformation and strategy leaders, they keep telling me that 𝗔𝗜 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁. Over 70% of GenAI use cases are still trapped in pilots. Budgets have grown, but ROI has flattened. Most firms are learning the hard way that AI doesn’t fail in the model… it fails in the operating model. That’s why at Consultport, we created 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸. A hands-on guide for strategy and transformation leaders shaping the next decade of financial services. 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲, 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱: → Where AI is already cutting fraud losses by 50% and driving 3–5% revenue uplift through personalization. → Insights from real implementations across banking, insurance, and asset management. → A proven six-pillar framework to scale AI responsibly, from data and governance to workforce and trust. → Benchmarks and checklists used by leading banks and insurers to track real ROI. 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁: They see AI not as a technology rollout, but as an organizational transformation in disguise. If you’re navigating the same questions: How to scale beyond pilots, measure ROI, and build trust at speed.  This playbook may help you find your next step. 👉 Get your copy of AI in Financial Services: The Executive Transformation Playbook, and lead the next wave of intelligent transformation. — 📌 Save for a reminder. ♻️ Repost to help others in your network. 🔔 Follow Till Schmid for more on consulting, AI, and leadership.

Day 3’s Visionary Panel: “AI Like a CFO” brought straight talk and sharp insights from Chad Wonderling (CFO, Zone & Co) and Usheer Naik (VP of Finance, FinQore) on how finance leaders are turning pressure into performance in the age of AI. As Chad put it: “ If nobody owns it, finance owns it.” and Jack McCullough reminded us: “They say Curiosity kills the cat but Lack of curiosity kills the CFO.” A conversation every finance leader needed to hear. #CFOConferenceAustin #CFOFallConf2025 #CFOLeadership Photos by HarryPhoto