318. Inside the 2026 CFO Forum: How finance leaders are preparing for what's next (bonus episode)

0:01Kevin Carmody: For McKinsey & Company, I'm Sean Brown and welcome to Inside the Strategy Room. During today's special episode, we'll discuss some of the key takeaways from our recent CFO forum that we held in London. I'm delighted to be joined today by the leaders of our CFO practice. Kevin Carmody, a senior partner and head of our global practice. Matt Maloney, partner and leader of our Americas region. And Christian Grube, partner and leader of our Europe region. So Kevin, to kick off, when you closed this year's forum in London, you described it as our most impactful yet. Can you tell us what made this year so different?

0:38Christian Grube: Well, I think the difference was the immediate practical relevance. CFOs didn't come simply to sit through presentations, which is good. But what I heard in a number of the side conversations is that they really came to be challenged. and one CFO came up to me and said, we really have not wasted one minute. And then he jokingly challenged me. He said, how are you going to top that next year? And I think the reason for that is we really tried to design an experiential distraction-free environment because these leaders needed a space to step back and think about how they want to lead their organizations without having the distractions of the calendar, of the phone calls, of the fires they have to deal with on a daily basis, they could really focus over the entire time.

1:23Christian Grube: And I think that made the event special.

1:25Kevin Carmody: And Kevin, thinking through some of the discussions at the forum, did you see any consensus emerge on how leading CFOs are finding the signal among the noise?

1:34Christian Grube: It starts with reclaiming the narrative, Sean. We've talked a lot about building on the strengths of a CFO, the strong technical and analytical skills in finance and accounting. And that's critically important. If you think about the role historically, it's been backward looking, closing the books, the financial reporting. But we have talked over the past couple of years about the importance of elevating the role of the CFO. I like to say that the CFO is the first among equals and the strategic thought partner of the CEO. And that's a theme that came across throughout the forum. And the reason that's important is because the board, the shareholders, other stakeholders really want to understand the forward-looking story of a company.

2:20Christian Grube: And the CFO is uniquely positioned to tell that, to explain the value creation story, why it makes sense in a way that resonates with these different stakeholders, because they're the ones who can articulate this story with facts, with the analytics, and they can do it in a way that is communicated with absolute clarity. and never before in my role has a CFO been more relevant in really providing the strategic guidance that helps shape this narrative, but as importantly, really helps the organization layer in a strategy that they can execute and being at the tip of the spear to help drive that along with the CEO and the other executive members.

3:02Matt Maloney: I would totally agree, Kevin. We are seeing basically, right, that investor relations and also the way you are telling a story to the capital market is not just something that's nice to have, probably for a CFO. Specifically, when capital is tight, the markets really reward clarity and confidence. And they put a lot of trust into the CFO because they can actually, if done right, combine the strategic path with a clear value creation narrative and can link it back to the numbers. And I mean, if you don't do this as the CEO, the share price will not develop probably as you envision or as you plan.

3:43Kevin Carmody: Yeah, I think that's right, Christian. I mean, it really starts with identifying the 800-pound gorilla in the room, which is the incrementalism that happens year over year, where everyone sits there and they're stuck in the annual budgeting process that is hours and hours of arguing over granular little line items and people's silos and who can keep their fiefdom, which ultimately is obsolete if you're in a fast moving industry, you know, within months. And so how can the CFO get out of that rut and really provide the strategic guidance that see, and not just in the moment of the, those big, bold moves in the longer term, but also in the, in the near term, the one year plan to be able to move the capital around, to put those against those big bets and to not have it stuck in what was in, you know, prior years where there's almost like a dictatorship of, of, of the budget, right.

4:31Kevin Carmody: And how to break through from that and reallocate capital, because otherwise you're just kind of playing the movie forward and keeping the trains running year over year, hoping for a different outcome. Thank you, Matt. And Kevin, that links directly to our second theme, you know, with AI as a catalyst for business transformation. And in London, we pushed past the basic productivity and efficiency hype. But, you know, as we did that, how does a CFO practically lead that transition? Is this about implementing new systems or is there a deeper operational shift that has to start first?

5:03Christian Grube: Well, son, I think it's all of the above. And the speed at which this is happening is really breathtaking, is measured in weeks or months. But if you think about how a CFO should fundamentally change their finance organization and how it operates, you can pick agentic AI in finance because that's a big one. and what that does to really improve the way a finance organization operates and the value it brings to an organization. It's incredible. And what I would say is by agentifying some of the basic processes in the accounting and finance organization, you can automate it to get better information quicker, to free up the resources across that finance organization to make better decisions faster, and then communicating across the organization to truly lead the company.

5:48Christian Grube: And that's really different. And I have to say this because every time I think we talk about AI, we talk about, is this about cost cutting and head count reduction? And the answer is that's not the end game by any means. And we saw a bit of this on day one in the forum where we had a workshop on agentic AI with CFOs actually writing prompts to deal with how they would change their finance organization. That was really a proof point. But in my mind, it's really about freeing up your senior team's capacity so that they can actually do things like underwrite new growth opportunities or take the time to step back and look at the strategy to stress test it across different scenarios, things that are really directly in the domain of the finance organization and the CFO to make their organization stronger.

6:33Christian Grube: And you start with AI to really move your people to the activities that are up the value chain to really help drive performance and lead differently maybe.

6:43Matt Maloney: Kevin, if we take it even one step further, I mean, we were also talking a lot with the CFOs on what prevents you from, you know, rolling now out AI at scale. And I think it's actually not the technology, right? It's more or less the process redesign. I mean, if we are automating a bad process, you just get a bad outcome, probably at a faster pace, but it's still going to be the same bad data. And so most of the CFOs were very clear, right? You need to redefine and rewire your operating model. You need to redesign the workflows actually before you can really leverage AI. And then of course, you also want to make sure that AI in its entirety delivers measurable and probably also bottom line value, not just leads to kind of local efficiencies or a bit of FTE productivity in one or two parts of your organization or teams.

7:41Kevin Carmody: Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Christian. I think, though, there's a finer point even in this, which is, are you using AI to just simply replicate a broken process? Or are you using AI to reimagine end to end of how you interact with the data and performance manage your organization? That's a complete rewiring where the tool of AI is a key enabler. But really, it's a mindset and a way of working that's very, very different. And so taking that end to end process, figuring out what are the true drivers of the business, linking both the financials to operational KPIs that the business looks at day in and day out.

8:16Kevin Carmody: And then understanding what, again, back to signal versus noise, what really is driving the business and having that real time and democratizing the data so that you can have honest, true, transparent, and very quick conversations about what's happening, what can you do about it, and to actually drive that. It's very different than sort of just a tech forward solution or replacement of a broken process. But ultimately, it's a mindset and a capability that many finance orgs, I think, are aware of and would like to have, whereas others haven't even kind of considered that as a different way of operating because they haven't seen the art of the possible yet.

8:51Kevin Carmody: What the three of you are talking about is that this really puts the finance organization and the CFO in more of a business partner role, right? And if we do that, that really brings us to this human element around the talent that the CFO is bringing and the mindset as really the ultimate differentiator. So you've all written extensively about the importance of focusing on people and capability building during enterprise-wide transformations. And so why is that such a make-or-break factor? Christian?

9:24Matt Maloney: Well, probably because, you know, finance is 90 % people business in a way. It's not going to be the systems, right, that help you win the race in AI. It's actually the people. The discussions we had at the forum and also the consensus was more that, you know, there are technical skills. They are just, you know, table stakes. And it's actually the mindset and also the power of imagination, how you can use these new tools that will make a difference. And many CEOs were talking about that they have acquired a lot of those tools, but they still see that their teams are in the old ways of doing and that they only use probably the technology for their own productivity, but they do not use it at scale.

10:08So they do not think differently.

10:10Matt Maloney: They do not rewire their processes. They actually just use it as kind of, let's say, extended more or less MS Office or so. So the question is, how do you build, how do you develop, And how do you also refresh these kind of capabilities on an ongoing basis? Because in the end, you want to move your people from being manual kind of data collectors into real strategic value creators with the help of AI.

10:39Kevin Carmody: Exactly, Christian. I mean, what I see is the winning organizations aren't just simply sort of upskilling and checking the box as saying, oh, yes, we're going to do this. It's really it's a mindset that starts at the top and needs to be imbued throughout the organization for folks to start thinking like owners. How would they run their business? And so that you can increase both the confidence and the speed at which they can take decisions, identify opportunities to really drive alpha and to ignore the noise that's out there that is not necessarily something that they can address or manage through.

11:12Kevin Carmody: And in the end, you know, retraining their folks to think like this at each step. If you remember last year, the prior year, we had a CFO on that way that talked about the that they only worried about four or five things globally as a as a multinational CPG company. But yet the people below them, each of them would manage one of those five and then four others. And so everyone is looking at what is within their realm and managing that portion and trusting them that they're acting as owners to be able to drive both value and identify risks rather than just pulling together a bunch of spreadsheets and reporting the weather from yesterday.

11:50Christian Grube: Yeah, and I would just build on that, maybe hit this point even harder. To do what Christian and Matt just said is hard. So change is hard. Change requires real discipline. And I can think of as one example, as an early analyst spending literally 30 days, I think all of us probably did this at some point, in a financial model and excel from scratch. and just grinding through it to build a three-statement model, for example? What if that became an exercise that could be done in a matter of hours? And then you've got all this time that's freed up to think about what to do with that information. That requires upskilling.

12:21Christian Grube: It requires real capability building, redefining the role, and then encouraging team members to do something different. So it's a fundamental change, as I said earlier, that's happening at an incredibly rapid pace. And finance organizations that are at the cutting edge are thinking about how do they react to that quickly to redefine the roles so they get more out of their people. And it should be exciting at some level for the analyst now that is thinking about the implications of the model as opposed to building it for a 30-day period of time. So a really exciting moment for all of the finance leaders, in my view.

12:54Kevin Carmody: But Kevin, how do you actually make the headspace to do that, right? Because they still need to close the books every month.

13:00Christian Grube: Well, I think there are a couple of ways to do it, but I think it requires taking a step back and saying, how are we spending our time? Not only is a CFO, because that role is changing, we talk about that a lot, but going down to the analyst level. If an analyst is not spending 30 days in a model, what are they doing? And so that's where I say it's hard because the easiest thing to do is continue to push forward with what you've done before. Create all the financial reports that you created over time without thinking about what it's going to take to win in the future. One exercise that we do at a lot of clients is we'll literally print out all the financial reports that a finance organization generates on a monthly basis and we'll debate who's using this information.

13:39Christian Grube: And what you find is there's a lot of slack in the system. So you can find large pockets of time that aren't really adding value today that maybe were five or 10 years ago. But I think you really have to redefine as a CFO the finance organization you want to build. And that's what I'm saying, that it's bold, it takes courage. You've got to redefine the roles. People will be a little bit scared and maybe vulnerable. And it takes real time to invest, to train and upskill your workforce so they become even more effective and frankly, enjoy their jobs more. But it's hard work.

14:14Kevin Carmody: Maybe just to wrap up, Kevin, what would be the ultimate challenge that you'd send to the CFOs listening today as they look ahead to the next year and how they plan their organization and their agenda?

14:27Christian Grube: I think it's looking at the current agenda, but truly being bold every day, even when it's hard, I think is the challenge I'd put out there. And the question is, are CFOs spending 80 % of their time on the transactional conundrum? Or are they focusing on the truly big moves that will move an organization, inspire people, not just in the executive suite, but throughout the organization? That's really important. But I would say, just ending quite frankly, I challenge our listeners to top their own performance and start by rewiring their budgeting and talent models today so that they're forward leaning and they're really redefining what the finance organization does.

15:06Christian Grube: More of a strategic partner, as I said earlier, those would be a couple of the challenges that I put forth.

15:10Kevin Carmody: Yeah, I'd echo that, Kevin. I think that the two big things are, one, CFOs should go back and really look at their agenda, look at where they're spending their time and figure out the things they need to just kill off or to delegate things to free up the time in the headspace for what really, really matters, right? Not getting stuck in the micro, but more in the macro. And I think the other is the idea of the big, bold vision. Where do you want to be in three to five years? You know, not just incrementally, but the 2x, the 3x or more of your business and how you get there. And what are those strategic growth vectors, margin drivers, and things that drive enterprise value?

15:48Kevin Carmody: Like this is the way that CFOs can really step into that role as a strategic partner to the CEO. And how about you, Christian?

15:56Matt Maloney: Let's not forget the teams and the talents, right? Because it's not only the CFO who will make a difference. It's actually the question, what kind of finance colleagues and what kind of teams do I build? Do I have bean counters and number crunches on the one end? Or do I really build value creators, colleagues who think like owners and to really then also helped me drive on this value creation agenda our whole organization forward and how do you make the shift of course already today and not tomorrow awesome kevin matt christian thank you all for

16:30Kevin Carmody: joining us today and for bringing such a direct and actionable perspective as you reflect on this year's cfo forum and thank you to all of our listeners for joining us we hope you enjoyed the conversation and we welcome your feedback and ideas for future podcasts just email us at itsr at McKinsey.com, which stands for Inside the Strategy Room. You can also share your ratings and reviews on any podcast player with many thanks to all who've already done so. We really appreciate the comments and feedback we receive every week and encourage you to keep them coming. And if you enjoyed this episode and would like to subscribe, you can easily follow our weekly series on any podcast player, where you can also access our entire library of more than 300 episodes.

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