As automation reshapes the finance function, the pressure to build capable, adaptable teams has never been greater. Standard Chartered Tanzania CFO George Binde, Naivas CFO Jonathan Nganga, and Kioo financial controller Prashant Barik share how they are developing the people around them for what comes next.
George Binde believes building a future-ready team starts with exposure. Keeping his team close to the big picture is what prepares them to adapt when those changes arrive.
"One is to give them in-job training. Making sure that I expose them to understand what are the key changes happening within the organisation, what are the key changes happening in the macros, and what sort of impact that has on our environment. Once we are able to understand that, then we proactively try to digest the impact on our business," he says.
He pushes them towards the learning tools that already exist within the organisation, from e-learning platforms to internal development programmes and encourages them to be inventive about how they use them.
"I normally encourage them to be very creative. There are so many opportunities within the bank in terms of e-learning, including things like AI. We need to be creative and not necessarily have large financial budgets to do so. There are so many low-cost opportunities that still deliver the same quality of learning," he says.
The trust shift
The most important step Jonathan Nganga took in building a future-ready team was learning to let go. He describes the change from hands-on numbers person to strategic leader as one of the most significant shifts of his career, one that only became possible when he developed genuine trust in the people around him.
"It is a real alignment that happened about six or seven years ago. It was quite a significant shift in terms of thought process and how you learn from a day-to-day perspective," he says.
This freed him to look forward rather than backward. In his view, a finance leader still buried in sign-offs and day-to-day approvals cannot give the business what it actually needs from the CFO seat. The team has to be capable enough to hold the ground while the leader focuses on the horizon.
"As a CFO, once you have developed your teams to that level and ensured that capability, capacity, and will are there, you are able to step forward into the future and look at the business from a future perspective instead of looking at the past. What got us where we are today will not necessarily get us where we want to go tomorrow," he says.
Building the backup
At Kioo, Prashant Barik takes a deliberately systematic approach. Rather than developing his team in general terms, he maps individual strengths and assigns tasks accordingly. He then works to transfer that knowledge across the team so that no single person becomes a bottleneck.
"Every person may not be good at everything. So, person by person, I look at how one person performs in a particular area and assign that task to them. But we also have to try how that person can give training to another person to get similar knowledge. That way you make a backup for the future," he says.
The result is a team that can function without him having to intervene at every turn. The work he did in the early years, when he would roll up his sleeves alongside his team, allows them to do the work that he was doing alone when he first arrived.
"I only look at group-level consultation, management reporting, and board-level presentations. I have taken them to a level where they can do everything. And if one person is on leave for a month, another person knows exactly what to do," he says.
