I first met our old (current) CFO at an introductory group meeting where he bragged about his spoiled ExPat life growing up, moving from privileged international school to school where he admitted to constantly skipping classes to surf all day. Daddy paid for an expensive elitist snobby Southern California private school and connections got him the job with Phillips. He introduced himself to us by announcing he was smarter than anyone in the room and could do each of our jobs better than we could, and, as a matter of fact, was better in the bedroom than any of us.
The fact he got to his current level says a lot about our leadership. He will best be remembered in the company as the “leader” who took a loser finance department and actually made it worse, and who used EOI as a loyalty weapon against employees: you volunteer for EOI and your performance ratings suffer. He’s personally responsible for significant value loss for the company: FX, credibility losses by under-reporting deferred capitalized cost well expenses, incompetent balance sheet forecasting... the list goes on.
The new CFO is actually a brilliant choice. He knows numbers everything and has a near-photographic memory. In his race to the top I’ve seen him back down from challenging incompetence and lies of those above him for the expediency of not making enemies, so we’ll see how he does now that he’s officially arrived. We’ll see if he uses his position to do what’s needed: gut the bureaucratic planning process and zero base the entire reporting system. His finance leadership includes an infamous brown noser, a certified witch of the universe, and a micro-managing control freak jerk. He should fire them all and look to the next level for real competence and leadership: they are out there, but they’ve been muzzled into acquiescence.