Accenture has published a report on the role CFOs play in the accelerated digital transformation process, revealing the issue of the?“paradox of choice,” increasingly putting executives under pressure
CFOs today hold more decision-making power in accelerated digital transformation: Accenture. Image: pexels.com
A recent report from Accenture revealed that 93% of CFOs feel the responsibility they have today is much greater than in the past.
While 90% of C-suite executives said their organisations are undergoing an accelerated digital transformation, CFOs are often tasked with business-critical decisions, that impact the whole organisation rather than a finance department only. Thus, financial executives are often involved in sustainability initiatives, workplace transformations, and even business model re-invention.
Therefore, understanding the corporate aspects which help to accelerate interconnected transformations is a critical skill for modern CFOs. Since optimising numerous non-related operations and fuelling a company’s growth today requires finance-related technology, data and artificial intelligence (AI), effective reinvention presupposes that CFOs should make complicated, interrelated decisions at speed.
The research shows that 68% of respondents’ organisations conduct three or more transformation initiatives simultaneously. Moreover, 86% of the surveyed executives noted that the time limits for the decision-making process have shrunk.
That is why CFOs today face the phenomenon known as the “paradox of choice.” When a person?has too many options to choose from, it causes stress, slows down and complicates decision-making. It is no wonder that 67% of CFOs feel overwhelmed and “paralysed at times” by the number of decisions they have to make and the volume of available choices.
As a result, Accenture recommends:
- prioritising between business-as-usual responsibilities and working on transformation,
- focusing on delivering measurable results from each strategic decision,
- adjusting your leadership style to the organisation’s needs, and
- building a complementary team?that can strengthen the CFOs weak points
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Nina Bobro
Nina is passionate about financial technologies and environmental issues, reporting on the industry news and the most exciting projects that build their offerings around the intersection of fintech and sustainability.
