Extracting Value from Data — Adrian Gaveglia

SphereCast

This week, as a part of our CFO podcast series, the SphereCast team interviews Adrian Gaveglia, Portfolio CFO at EmergeONE and Interim CFO at EnterpriseAlumni. Throughout his career, Gaveglia has held a wide variety of high-level finance roles at companies in the London area, including a lengthy stint at HarperCollins. Adrian has extensive experience making sense of digital platforms, navigating mergers and acquisitions, and providing in-depth financial analysis.

At the end of the day, Adrian is a master of the numbers. And like any good CFO, Adrian’s superpower is reading between the lines of the spreadsheets and asking the right questions, all to discern what’s important, what’s not, and where companies should be paying special attention. On the podcast, Adrian shares how he both finds what matters most and persuades others in the company that his point of view is correct. He also speaks to the attributes of a good financial leader, the nature of luck in business, and much more.

Noteworthy Quotes:

"The CFO basically sees everything in an organization. They've got the numbers. They can visualize everything that's going on. If you've got a very strategic CFO, they become very good at seeing the problems and successes in the business and thinking through how to make them better."

"It's not the CFO's job to know everything. It's their job to lead and put in the processes to get things done."

"The most important thing when presenting to a board is that you and the CEO are aligned on what's being presented."

"Good financial leaders are good at listening and taking in information to make decisions. The best financial leaders are transparent. They make sure information is available, timely, and correct for the audience."

"The most important thing for any leader is influence. Leaders are in place because they want to influence. To have a seat at the table and take the business forward... All other attributes funnel into this attribute."

"When presenting, I always think that less is better than more. But always be prepared to have that more in the back of your pocket if you need it."

"When a business starts scaling up, the FP&A function cannot be sitting outside of finance because finance brings the realism and the accuracy to that."

"If you're thinking about progressing in your career, you're always looking at the attributes that your role models have. For me, I could see that my role models were consistent, measured, thoughtful, and quite analytical."

"One important thing that's important for leaders is consistency... You have to have a method where people can trust you and trust how you will behave."

"Relationships are very important. Because for most people, luck plays a huge part in their success."

Bullet List of Resources –

Adrian Gaveglia

• LinkedIn