This answer sounds a bit cruel, but the real CFO is facing such confusion. For a time, Zhang was afraid that the chairman would let her analyze the company's financial report. "Financial reports are highly abstract figures and actually reflect the management achievements of others. It is difficult to analyze the reasons through this result. " As the chief financial officer of China Shenhua Energy Co., Ltd., Zhang used to worry about his incompetence in enterprise management. For this reason, she constantly improved her accounting system and accounting statement system, but the result still could not meet the needs of the leaders. However, in the process of continuous improvement, clever Zhang found that the problem actually lies in the original financial system. "Our traditional financial system is external and abstract. We have been trying to abstract all living business activities into financial statements, which makes our professional language managers actually unable to understand, because such financial statements only reflect the results of business activities, and financial information has not really penetrated into business activities, so it is difficult to find an explanation. " Zhang said frankly to the chairman, "I know what you need." What you need is the financial statements of the management accountant. What you need is to see the reflection of business activities, but I can't give it to you now. " After that, Zhang began to build a strategic financial system for the group, which is based on the business activities of the enterprise, that is, business flow, which will produce a cash flow and a real logistics at the same time, and finally produce an accounting flow and an information flow on this basis. What Zhang has done is to change from the traditional financial accounting, the routine work of transmitting financial information and post-event management to strategic consultation and strategic management. And this change is what we are talking about now, the change to a financial manager with financial leadership, and the fundamental solution to the confusion lies in financial leadership. New term and old problem Financial leadership is a new term that has only appeared in recent years. Some people think that leadership usually refers to the ability to gain the recognition and loyalty of followers. From this perspective, financial leaders are no exception. However, as a special kind of leader, financial leadership often means more. Crucially, leaders must have the ability to maximize financial performance. "The term" financial leadership "has not been defined academically." Professor Yang Youhong from the Business School of Beijing Technology and Business University said when talking about this issue. Zhang said that "financial leadership" is actually a new formulation in the process of gradual evolution. "It used to be said that the core of enterprise management is financial management, and the core of financial management is cost management. In fact, it is talking about the financial leadership. Our traditional financial management is afterwards management. In fact, the role of management is very small and it cannot reach the core role of managing enterprises. " As a scholar, when talking about financial leadership, Yang Youhong thinks that we should first understand the leading role of financial work in enterprises conceptually. He said that enterprise management is divided into financial management, marketing management, resource management, production research and development management and so on. And judging the success or failure of an enterprise is actually to look at the success or failure of its financial indicators, which is determined by the mission of the enterprise. We must have this idea. Sun Jiaqi, a Canadian certified management accountant, said that the accounting we talked about before is actually the lowest financial function, but when it comes to leadership, it has reached a certain height. The company must have a certain scale and team. "whirlpool's chief financial officer once told me that when you earn thirty thousand dollars a year, just like those colleagues sitting outside, you are just an accountant. When your annual salary is 300,000, you are a financial manager. When you earn 3 million yuan a year, Sun Jiaqi also said that the job of most financial personnel is to obtain financial data and ensure the authenticity, integrity and timeliness of the data, which is what we usually call bookkeeping and making statements, but a CFO does not do these jobs. He pays attention to the company's strategic issues, including company performance management, internal control and risk management, mergers and acquisitions, investment and financing management. " Leadership is to add value to the company through your operations. When an enterprise needs financing, what should you do, mortgage, borrow or go public? You have to judge what means to do it, and you have to control the overall direction of the enterprise. Leadership is not only to lead the team, but more importantly to take the company to a higher level. "Guo Liangchuan, the Beijing CFO Development Center that affects decision-making, divides financial leadership into two aspects: influence and decision-making. He believes that the CFO should influence the CEO and the board of directors of the company. Guo Liangchuan said that the reason why we talk about financial leadership at this stage is mainly because the living environment of CFO in China enterprises is not particularly ideal. Wu, chief accountant of Xugong Group, feels the same way. He said that he had studied the problem. In developed countries, the CFO of European and American companies is recognized as the second-in-command and the CFO of Japanese companies is the third-in-command. However, China enterprises, especially listed companies, have never reached such a consensus, and the CFO of most enterprises ranks last. Zhang believes that the problem of financial leadership is not that leaders do not pay attention to it, but that the financial personnel's own abilities have not been brought into play. In addition to these internal reasons, Sun Jiaqi also talked about external factors. The reason why financial leadership is so important at this stage is mainly influenced by the financial crisis. He said that it is difficult for the chief financial officers of the world's top financial institutions to be responsible for their bankruptcy and bankruptcy overnight. If we can have an accurate grasp from the beginning, some things must not be done, or we must retreat to a certain extent. In the past, many domestic enterprises were mainly responsible for strategic work like this, but in fact, there is still one person who should have leadership, that is CFO, otherwise this enterprise will have great financial risks. "What we are talking about here is actually the decision-making ability of CFO, that is, in an enterprise, in addition to the CEO, CFO should also be one of the decision-makers of the enterprise. When the CEO wants to do something, his senior manager, CFO and COO should evaluate it. To what extent can this thing be done? What kind of resources are needed? Can financial and operational resources support it? These are judged by the CFO and COO. It is dangerous to make decisions only by CEO. One can't be an expert in all fields. Unfortunately, at present, there are not many financial managers with real leadership ability in China, even scarce resources, because people have always paid more attention to the business ability of financial personnel, and management ability and leadership have been put behind. Zhang believes that the main reason for this situation is that we used to pursue scale effect, and as a result, we didn't pay special attention to value, but only paid attention to quantity, which made the requirement for financial management just keep the accounts clear. With the increasingly fierce market competition, the core competitiveness of enterprises has become the ability to create value, and they have begun to pursue product differentiation and cost advantage, so financial leadership has naturally been put on the agenda. Zhang said that Shenhua launched a "double increase and double festival" activity last year, which was to increase production and save money. Although this is an ancient word, we have given it a new meaning and linked it with all the value creation links of the enterprise. In fact, cost management has three levels, namely, strategy level, production organization level and control level. If you don't control the first two levels, you can't control the cost. In the cost structure of China's extractive industry, 60% is strategic cost and 25% is production organization and operation cost. If we only control management expenses, such as travel expenses, the proportion is very small. We combine strategic cost control with' double increase and double festival' activities, and carry out cost control from the strategic level and production organization level. Zhang said that the effect of this activity is very obvious. The whole group increased revenue and reduced expenditure by more than 654.38 billion yuan, which affected the current profit by nearly 6 billion yuan. Zhang Dui said that this is the embodiment of financial leadership. Now more and more enterprises and individuals have realized the importance of financial leadership. Tan Lixia, chief financial officer of Haier Group, was the general manager of Haier overseas business department. She said that she didn't have a good understanding of financial leaders at that time. "I think finance is what I want to do. You can support me, but looking back now, if an enterprise wants to pursue high performance and sustainable development, including whether an enterprise can successfully transform, financial leadership plays a vital role. "Tan Lixia said that in 2006, when she first served as CFO of Haier Group, there were more than 400 legal persons in the enterprise. At that time, there was great internal friction in the process and internal structure, and the interests of different internal departments were different. Each department has an independent accounting unit, which is inconsistent with the goal pursued by the whole group. "We changed the financial management of the group, and concentrated the accounting personnel of all units in the same office, so that they had nothing to do with the management personnel of the original department, as long as they reflected the performance intuitively in accordance with the regulations. Then we rectified the company's accounting model and introduced the internal automatic liquidation system. This change has promoted the cooperation of all of us. Not only that, after the accounting model is changed, the whole process becomes more reasonable and the responsibilities of each business department are clear. Through Haier's example, we can see that enterprises can better carry out internal control and straighten out processes through the reform of financial management, which are all crucial issues in enterprise development. Improving the password However, for the CFO who is changing roles, while taking on more corporate responsibilities, we should also consider how to improve their own abilities in order to successfully complete the role change from traditional executors to managers. Yang Youhong said that to complete this transformation, a CFO with financial leadership should have four abilities: professionalism, relevant knowledge, ability to communicate with people and moral literacy. Yang Youhong believes that although a CFO does not participate in specific financial activities, he must have financial control ability. The statements submitted below should be able to quickly see if there are any problems, which is the basic professional quality; Secondly, if a CFO's knowledge structure is 90% accounting knowledge, he is only a very low-level financial personnel, and he should also have corresponding management knowledge, legal knowledge and financial knowledge. Third, the ability of financial personnel to communicate with others has also been greatly improved. CFO should communicate not only with ordinary employees, but also with leaders, financial and tax authorities, certified public accountants, etc. Finally, CFO must also have excellent moral literacy. Zhang summed up three aspects of financial leadership in years of practical work: first, reflective ability. Traditional financial management emphasizes post-event reflection, and more is compliance. In fact, what we need is the ability to reflect management accounting, which reflects the process and activities. The second is risk control ability, including legal issues, financial discipline issues and capital chain issues. Zhang said that Shenhua's risk control has always been very good. They have been focusing on their main business, not speculating in derivatives, not speculating in the capital market, and the capital chain is also very healthy. Because they are centrally managed, all the funds used by the Group must be approved by the financial department, and it is not allowed to lend the funds to other enterprises, nor to invest the funds in the stock market and real estate. Zhang said that even when the stock market and real estate were the hottest, they insisted on the principle of not advancing. "Our original real estate company has been established for more than ten years and entered in the last round of real estate fever. Later, it was discovered that in this field, although we have financial advantages, we have no management advantages and no team, which is very risky. Now this real estate company is shrinking and has not taken a new one. " Zhang said that Shenhua has always adhered to its main business, and there are many industries that make money, but it doesn't mean you have to do them all. The third is decision-making ability, which has several levels. The first is the strategic level, whether this strategy can create value, whether the resource ratio can meet the realization of strategic objectives, and the supporting capacity at the operational organization level. There must be a model to maximize the interests of the group. When talking about financial leadership, Zhang has always stressed: "Leadership is not given to you by others, but created by yourself." In addition, financial leadership is different in different stages of enterprise development or different types of enterprises. For example, if an enterprise wants to go to the capital market for financing, it is hoped that this CFO is a master of capital operation and a master of public relations and investor relations. And if the main task of the enterprise is not financing, then the work of internal control is the focus. But in any case, CFO must be clear about his role. In Zhang's view, "leadership" refers to leadership and guidance rather than leadership. "My position on finance is the role of dashboard, not steering wheel and helmsman. The function of dashboard is to prompt early warning and provide decision support for decision makers.