The CFO's Role in Shaping Higher Education

Megan - 00:00:35: Today, my guest is John Ferrari. John is a senior executive with experience in business reengineering, implementing data analytics, and financial management with a proven track record of delivering results across diverse teams and stakeholders. John has expertise in information technology, data science, and computer science, planning, logistical operations, and financial management, as well as lean operations and business process improvement, focused on delivering customer-focused results. John has successfully led several large multidisciplinary enterprises overseas, working with multinational staffs and agencies. John, thank you very much for being my guest on today's episode of CFO Weekly.

John - 00:01:53: Well, good afternoon and thank you for having me.

Megan - 00:01:55: Yeah, today we're going to be talking about the role of CFO as business leader or the strategic CFO. And I'm excited to learn about you and your thoughts and experiences with this topic. So let's jump right in.

John - 00:02:08: I'm ready. Thank you.

Megan - 00:02:09: All right. So to start, you have a diverse and impressive career spanning military leadership, corporate finance and academia. So, can you give us just a brief overview of your career to date and maybe share a pivotal moment for you within that career?

John - 00:02:26: So thanks. And again, thanks for having me on. This is a great show. I do enjoy listening to it. So on. My career started at West Point. So I was a computer science major in college. But then I went into the Army and spent really the first half of my Army career doing traditional Army things. But then I pivoted and got a MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and wound up teaching economics at West Point for a couple of years. And really the pivotal moment in my career was when I got an assignment to the Pentagon, which is where really all the resourcing for the Army and the military happens. And I wound up in an interesting job where I was told I was the person who makes the PowerPoint slides. And so in that job, it was where the narrative of all the financial decisions came together. With the strategic decisions that the Army wanted to achieve an outcome. And I found in that job that I had an enormous amount of opportunity to shape that and to understand what drives what. Where does finances drive outcomes and strategic thinking? And where does strategic thinking drive the finances? So from there, I really then was in a series of many different jobs in the Army, the private sector, and now at Northern Virginia Community College doing essentially the same thing, sitting at that intersection of outcomes, strategic thinking for the corporation, and financial literacy.

Megan - 00:04:01: So as the CFO of Northern Virginia Community College, you're now part of the educational sector, obviously. So what inspired you to make that transition into the education industry? And how is it that you find personal fulfillment in contributing to the mission of higher education?

John - 00:04:20: So when I left the military in about 2019, I did go into the private sector for a couple of years. But I found that I missed really in the military, the soldiers, those young men and women, Americans who were joining the military to make something of themselves. And the military provides the training and really helps them move on in society and really get a step up. What I found in the education field is very similar to the military. It's taking those same 18 to 24-year-olds, giving them the skills, the education, the knowledge to really move ahead in society. And so really, that's where I wanted to get my personal fulfillment was being in a role where I can help those in society who need that leg up to get the education, the training, right, to really get a better paying job. That's the outcome that we want in the education sector here at Northern Virginia Community College, which is, right, the students come in. And when they leave, they're better off for it.

Megan - 00:05:18: And how is it that you balance the traditional financial stewardship role of being a CFO with the need to be a strategic leader and visionary for the institution? And along those lines, can you share specific examples where you've driven strategic initiatives?

John - 00:05:35: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it goes back to where the role of a CFO and the role of a CFO at the college really is not just to count money. Because a lot of people, when they talk about traditional financial stewardship, it's debits on the left, credits on the right. They got it all out at the bottom, income and expenses, and just make sure you don't spend more money than you take in. But the strategic leader or the visionary, it's really about how do those resources that the college have? How do you use them to increase the outcomes of the students? And what are the students who are the customers of the college? What is it that they're asking for? And then how do you pivot the college to meet really the demands of the workplace, which is shifting rapidly? And then the needs of the students, which are constantly changing because the students today are not the students from 10 years ago. They're not the students from 30 years ago. As far as the specifics example. So, Northern Virginia Community College has not just traditional educational opportunities like math and science, but we also have a large trades program. Everything from welding, commercial truck driving, to auto repair. And so one of the areas was in air conditioning repair. And so when I went down there to see it when I first got here, that trades facility really hadn't been overhauled in about 10 years. And so one of the things I did was pull everybody together and said, if the trades, and they are, right, if you know how to fix air conditioning systems, you can make a lot of money in this economy. And so I got everybody together and we used the funding we had. Right, in order to really upgrade that program. And we're about a year into a two or three year makeover of that program. But that's where we started with the outcome of what we wanted our students to do. And then we figured out how we were going to do it. And then the resources followed that.

Megan - 00:07:38: That's brilliant. I've actually, I read an article not too long ago that said that Gen Z has been coined the tool belt generation because they're disenfranchised with higher education and actually going into trades at a higher rate than has been seen in a very long time.

John - 00:08:00: Yeah, so we like to say AI is not going to displace the guy who's going to come and fix your – guy or gal who's going to come and fix your air conditioning system. They'll use AI, and it becomes much more technical, but they still got to show up.

Megan - 00:08:13: And given your extensive background in data analytics and financial management, how is it that you leverage data to influence the decision making seen around you at the executive level? And what systems or processes have you guys implemented to ensure that data is informing your strategic planning?

John - 00:08:32: Well, if you're going to use, if you're going to focus on the outcomes of the organization, you have to actually know what those outcomes are and measure them. And especially if the outcome isn't something you control. So we know at the college how we educate and train people and what their grades are. But that's not the outcome. The outcome isn't to get a grade or a certificate. It's when you leave the college, do you get a job that pays you better than when you came in? And otherwise, right, you're giving us money and we're not really achieving the outcome you desired. So a lot of that is just making sure that the people, we have a robust data section that goes out and collects that information. And then we can use it and track that data over time because the outcomes and job market within the region that we exist, which is Northern Virginia, that changes over time. And so you've got to track that to understand then where the college's resources, ought to be going. Now, as far as implementing it to ensure data from strategic planning, data really has not been accessible. And so one of the things we're investing in is a robust dashboard that people can really use at their desktop, right? So it's democratizing the data, unlocking it in a common fashion so that then. Everybody is empowered to use it because really, if the data is just something that you flash up on a PowerPoint, it's only as useful as whoever put it together. So you really want to be able to empower people all the way down the organization to be able to have access to and manipulate the data so that they can see these trends before the leaders do.

Megan - 00:10:14: And I'm just curious, that dashboard you're referring to, is it something that's off the shelf or was it custom built?

John - 00:10:21: So we actually borrowed it from one of the other community colleges and they put it together. It's a SaaS based product and we're modifying it in order to sit on top of our data because they had done a lot of the hard work of taking the data from all the disparate systems across the college and getting to work in this system. And so now we're just modifying that and putting it on top.

Megan - 00:10:46: And across your career, you've led diverse teams across various sectors, including the military and now higher education. So how is it that you foster collaboration among different departments? And what role do you think the CFO plays in breaking down silos within an organization?

John - 00:11:07: Well, on the second part of that first, right, I think the CFO is the absolute critical player in breaking down silos. And generally, a lot of times the silos exist when the CFO hoards the budget data. I've been in organizations where, like, it's like a secret. Everybody gets their little piece of the budget written down on a piece of paper that nobody else can see, right? And so that force fosters competition and a lack of transparency because people are always wondering and competing against and wondering about where the money is actually going. So what we do here is, right, all those debt budget data is transparent. And we make the decisions collectively as a leadership team to make sure that everybody gets to see where the money is going and what projects are being worked. And one of the ways to do that, even within my organization, the different departments. And finance is. Right. We come together often. And I know meetings are a bad word, but sometimes you just have to meet because like if you meet individually with your team, then nobody else knows what's going on. And so one of the things I do to try to foster the different departments to work together is like. I try not to make decisions, right? I kind of push the decision-making down to them and tell them to work it out. And they should only bring to me those things that they disagree and can't come to consensus on. And so that fosters that collaboration among the departments where they've got to come up with the solution. And frankly, like they're better informed than me on 99% of the decisions. And so that's right. If you push the decisions down, you're transparent with the information, you will get you will break down those silos and force people to work across those boundaries.

Megan - 00:12:57: And I'm just curious, but... Is your budgeting process, is it top-down or is it bottom-up? Do you, is it collaborative or are you just told kind of within higher education what you're going to work with and that's it?

John - 00:13:14: Yeah. So we have several streams of revenue that drive our budget. So one of them is we get a state appropriation, which is top down, and that's about half of our revenue. And the other is generated from our students, right, through tuition payments. And so there, what we like to say is that our budget should follow our students. So in that case, it's kind of top-down. The state gives us money, and some of that money is earmarked for certain things. So that's got to follow that. And then the students, the courses they take, how many credits they take, what they take it in, which campus they take it in, really drives the rest of it. We see now our student mix is changing. So whereas we used to have 90% of our students were on campus, we now have 15% of our students are taking our courses in their high school. We have another 15% to 20% who are taking courses online. And so it's really only about 55% of our students who are on the campus. And so you have to then adjust the budget to where the students are and not, right, if you allow it, bottom-up. Then the traditional organizations that had the money, really the money doesn't get reallocated then based upon where the students are. And so it is a top-down process that follows the intent of the legislature and then, more importantly, the students.

Megan - 00:14:39: And another thing I'm curious about, I hear this all the time, but accounting is kind of a dying, dying thing to study. And accountants just aren't coming into the workforce as prevalently as they did 15, 20 years ago. Are you seeing the same thing at the college level? Or how have you seen what people are actually studying evolve over the last, let's say, five years?

John - 00:15:06: So I think, I mean, you bring up a great point. So that's an example where the accounting field is its own worst enemy. Because over the years, it has put in place many hurdles and requirements, right? So you have to have a certain degree. In addition to that degree, you have to take extra courses and credits that you have to pay for. And then you've got to pass an exam. And so the students are looking at return and go, I can just take these courses and go get a job in finance and actually make more money. Or actually less investment of education. And so I think that's the reason students are steering away from accounting. It's too hard. Why do you need a bachelor's degree? Like, why can't it be an associate's degree and some training? What's the value of the CPA? So I think that, and the challenge is, it's this credential lock, right? So the field of accounting has this kind of... Guild over it that says, you can't be an accountant if you don't do these things we've told you. And so the field doesn't really allow for the evolution of students saying, hey, I really don't want to take on this debt. Hey, I really don't want to go to school for an extra year after, right, the amount of college I get ought to be enough to get me in the door. And then you can train me what I need to do. And then you've got all the hurdles for the CPA exam. So what we've done is we've just put hurdle in front of hurdle in front of hurdle in front of an 18-year-old kid and said, hey, how would you like to jump over these three? As opposed to, hey, you can go over there and, right, you take a couple of finance courses and you can go work on Wall Street. So I think the accounting... Field, the people who are actually running it today. Are going to have a reckoning coming where they're going to have to like, and for us, like, why can't you go work at a big accounting firm if you have an associate's degree in accounting? Why do you need a four-year degree? Why can't you tell us these are what you need, we'll do the course and train you. But that's not it. It's time-based. You must go to school. You have to earn these credits. So I think that's the role. That's the problem right now.

Megan - 00:17:10: Yeah. I think they set it up like that. So it would be prestigious, but you're right. They're their own worst enemy at this point.

John - 00:17:17: And again, prestige in whose eyes. If you're disadvantaged, and we talk about diversity, and really diversity is about like, so how do you get people who are disadvantaged into those good fields? And all you do is put up obstacles, right? Then you wonder why you don't get the diversity you're looking for.

Megan - 00:17:35: Yeah, very true. So how is it that you approach change management as a CFO? And what strategies do you employ to lead your team through transformations while maintaining morale and productivity.

John - 00:17:50: So change management, again, you have to do that all the time. What I like to do is make sure that the people who work for me, I give them concrete problems to solve. Because it's not necessarily about being task-oriented. Because if you're task-oriented and process-oriented, you just want to do the same task and process over and over again. When you think about it, when we audit people and we do compliance audits as a CFO, it's all about do you do the same thing over and over again, exactly the same way that it's written down? Well, you don't actually get change when you do that. That's like the opposite of change. That's like pouring concrete around your organization. And so what I like to do is give the leaders of my different departments projects to solve, which is, hey, we've got a problem with this part of the college. It kind of touches on you and what you're doing. Go pull people together and go solve this problem and change anything that needs to be changed in order to do that. That forces them to see the big picture, and it empowers them then to change the processes. Now, contrast that with, okay, right, we've got our internal audits, and you've got to make sure all the widgets are lined up and all the procedures and all the I's and T's are dotted. So if you want people to change, you have to empower them to change, and you have to let them see the big picture as well as then, like, let them go change things. That's the big way to do that.

Megan - 00:19:20: And you touched on this a bit with your students, but how is it that you see the role of CFO evolving? To incorporate a more customer-focused approach? And can you provide insights into how financial decisions can enhance customer experience?

John - 00:19:38: So I'm unsure like how you don't have a customer focused approach because the customers, they tell people at the college that it's really a very easy business model. The students give us money and I pay everybody at the college. So we ought to pay attention to the people who are reaching into their pocket and giving us the money. And so it's actually not very hard to be customer focused because if you don't have revenue, then you don't have an organization. And so one of the things that we're working on right now to do that is we actually, the education sector is not necessarily known for user-friendly software, for enrolling and for paying the college, for all of those functions for registering. Mainly because over time, because of in the past bottoms-up budgeting across the educational sector, software has dominated. The outside world, but in higher ed, really, it had trouble competing for money. And so one of the ways I do it to enhance the customer experience and drive organizational growth is to make sure that we're investing money in software, that software needs to priority. I joke, but I don't. We're a PC-based... Culture and organization, but our students live on their mobile phones. And so if you ask the question, hey, can you apply on your mobile phone? Well, not really. Hey, can you pay us? Hey, can you do financial aid on your mobile? Like, no, you've got to go to a desktop. And then people are like, well, we need to buy desktops for our students. It's like, well, why don't we just modify the software so it works on their phone? And some people say, well, the phone's not a good device. And I think I learned my lesson when we've got a big screen TV at home and you go upstairs and you find the kids and they're watching movies on their phone. And you're like, I never would have thought that. But that's how kids consume everything in life today on their phone. Yet the college is still trying to play. The whole education sector is trying to play catch up in that realm. And so that's if you want a customer focused approach, you got to meet them where they live.

Megan - 00:21:49: Yeah, that's amazing advice. And can you share with us a situation where you had to make a critical decision between mitigating risk and pursuing a new opportunity? As a CFO, I know you're always having to balance innovation and risk management.

John - 00:22:11: Yeah, thanks for that. And if you don't mind, I'm going to challenge the premise of the question, because the way I approach it, I don't actually believe that's actually a risk management, because actually... Not doing innovation is most of the time more risky than not doing it. And so really what the question is for CFOs is what you've got is near-term risk and you've got far-term risk. And oftentimes we're willing to decrease near-term risk and increase the far-term risk because, well, it's out there. Nobody will see it. Maybe I won't be here. And so you make a lot of incremental, small, near-term decisions to paper over and reduce near-term risk. But your organization really is then at risk of really failing. And you see that in the commercial sector all the time of companies that go out of business. You see it in education now with schools that are closing down because they fail to innovate and evolve. And so the way I look at it and present it and how do we make these decisions, it's you make that decision stark for people so they understand it. And back to the software, it's you need to spend more money on financial aid software so that the students can use it. And so you accept that maybe in the near term. You're going to close down some offices. And so we've been doing a lot of centralization at the college, which means some of the services are being pulled back. And so that's the near-term risk. But the payoff is those resources can then be redeployed, right, to reduce the far-term risk of students not being able to get financial aid down the road. And the way to think about it, it's not a one-for-one trade. This is like trying to convince somebody to invest their personal money. So you can take the dollar and spend it today, but if you invest it in even a total market index fund, right, you get exponential growth in compounded interest rates. The returns to innovation dwarf the risk in the near term. And so it's just a way of approaching. And for leaders, the CFO has to be willing to shoulder and absorb that near-term risk, right, to enable then people to focus on the long term and to enable the resources for the health of the organization and to better serve the students.

Megan - 00:24:44: And as a strategic leader, what initiatives, and especially as a strategic leader in higher education, but what initiatives are you championing to develop financial talent within your own organization? And how do you identify and cultivate future leaders in finance?

John - 00:25:00: So I think that the thing that I'm doing to develop financial talent, so the financial talent is very good at making sure that it is technically proficient. But where it struggles is in kind of that leadership and strategic direction and cross training people so that you have succession plans and you don't have key person risks. So one of the things I'm focused on is making sure that we have depth in our organization that we're developing the next generation of leaders. And you do that really by both moving people around and doing something that people don't like to do, which is sometimes reorganizing the organizations just to give people the ability to take on different roles. And when you do that, then you understand that the financial talent isn't just about being able to go into the accounting system and put things in and out. They now see the bigger picture. They're interacting with other people. That's one of the ways we do it here. The other is by then giving some of those key leaders college-wide problems to solve and putting them in charge and say, yes, you're the controller. But I need you to solve the problem that the student affairs team has with the clubs and how the clubs are dispersing money. And it forces them then to look at not just whether the money is going in and out, but how is it coming in and out? Who is it going to? How does it enable the mission of the college? Who is running the clubs? And when you do that, they get a much – It's much more rewarding to understand when you're interacting with students in student clubs and you can see what the money you're dispersing and bringing in does than to just sit at the computer and watch the digits go in and out. Then all of a sudden finance and accounting becomes fun because you can see and touch and you see what you do actually changes the arc of the lives of our students.

Megan - 00:27:07: Yeah, that sounds almost like a leadership rotation program where it allows you to get to rotate through different departments and see an entire organization at work.

John - 00:27:17: Yeah, but instead, sometimes rotating leaders, for lots of reasons, people don't like to do that. I just rotate the work, right? So if you can't rotate the leaders because you've got state rules and you've got HR people, there are some certain technical skills. Just rotate the work.

Megan - 00:27:33: Yeah, that's a great idea. So we've talked about how technology is changing for students, but how have you seen technology change within the role of CFO? And are there any specific tools or technologies that you found to be most effective in driving operational efficiencies?

John - 00:27:53: So I think that the technology that's changing things and everybody's talking about it, artificial intelligence, I think, is going to change how CFOs and finance and accounting systems operate. We just don't exactly know how it's going to do that. Right. And so I think that over the course of the next couple of years. Right. And I think part of how it's going to do that is by really... Getting rid of a lot of the rote work that a lot of the finance and accounting team does, and then freeing up people to actually do the human value added of strategic decision making. And so part of it is like, again, it's like getting people to do more thinking because the computers will wind up doing a lot more of the the nug work of making sure that all the compliance stuff is done. If you remember where we started off, it's this big dilemma, right, of compliance versus change, right, and how do you foster that? I think that if technology, when used properly, will ensure compliance and then the people will do what people do best, which is think and change. Technology is not very good at change. AI is not very good at change. That's where people think, oh, we're going to get AI. It's going to change everything. Sort of. AI, right, when trained, is just a reflection of the past. And so humans have the ability to take the past and project forward. AI is going to do is change the workload so humans don't have to do those repetitive tasks. AI will enable you to do a lot more data analytics, but then the human's going to have to go, okay. This is the direction we need to go.

Megan - 00:29:47: And reflecting on your experience within the Army, as you did say the Army, right?

John - 00:29:53: I did.

Megan - 00:29:54: Okay, within the Army as a major general and now a CFO, what lessons have you learned about leadership during times of crisis? I imagine you've learned quite a bit about managing through crises. And how is it that you're applying these lessons today?

John - 00:30:11: So the key thing about leadership, be it in times of crisis or not, is it's all about making decisions with uncertain information. And in times of crisis, what's eliminated in that equation is time, right? So when it's not a crisis, what people try to do is extend the time to get more and more information, which is why a lot of times decisions never get made, because people are uncomfortable with the risk of saying, you got about 60% of the information, here's what we're going to do. What a crisis does is it forces you to make a decision, because the nature of the crisis is it's time constrained. And that's when you find out who's really comfortable in making decisions with uncertain information and who is able to actually figure out and do things probabilistically, which is in assessing things and looking at it and go, hmm, that's about 50%. I've got only about 30% of the information there. And you're not born with that. You've got to practice that. That's not a skill where, you know, you just kind of, some people are born with it and some people aren't. And so what I make sure is that what you want to do in times that are not a crisis is you want to sort of create crisis-like time constraints for people so that they learn how to make those decisions in short amounts of time with uncertain information. Now, the side benefit of doing that, is you get decisions faster and then you teach people, okay, you made a decision. It was a good decision, but it was only 60% of the information. Now you have 80% of the information. You have to go and now change your decision or change what you're doing. And so that's what then also speeds up innovation because now you're allowing people to, or forcing people to make decisions quickly and then adjust as more information comes in. And so that's how you build. And then when a crisis actually comes, they're used to doing that. And that's how you build organizational resiliency.

Megan - 00:32:19: Yeah, that's brilliant. That's building people's agility.

John - 00:32:23: Yeah, and underwriting the risk. Because again, if somebody makes a decision with a 60% probability of success, that means 40% of the time it's not going to succeed. And so as a leader. You don't go, whoa, that was a bad decision. It didn't work. It was actually a very good decision. But we all knew there was a 40% chance of failure. So now the question is, did you put in the sensors, if you will, to track when did you know it was going to fail? Were you tracking it? And when it started to fail, did you have a mitigation, right? Did you have a plan B now that you had more information to do that? And it's teaching people to make those iterative decisions, but again, underwriting the risk and not punishing them for probabilities that don't pay out.

Megan - 00:33:09: So looking ahead, where is it that you envision the role of CFO evolving to in the next three to five years? And what competencies do you believe are going to be essential for the CFOs of tomorrow?

John - 00:33:22: So I think, right, it goes back to that discussion we had about balancing near and far-term risk. And I think if you go back 20 years ago, 30 years ago, the distance between those near-term risk mitigations and the far-term innovations was large. And so you could, in essence, live in the near term because the change was not rapid enough to overtake you. I think what we're seeing in the world today, right, people talk about the speed of change accelerating. I think it's actually true. The marketplace, the economy, it's changing so fast. We're in the midst of this. The information revolution is moving so fast. If you look at penetration of cell phones and AI, things are happening fast. And so what's happening is that long-term look is becoming closer and closer to the near term. And if you continue to manage the near-term compliance risks in the way you did in the past, there's going to be a tsunami. The effects to your organization of not innovating fast enough are just going to swap you very, very fast. They're going to overtake you. And so I think the skill that the CFOs have to learn is like maybe compliance is not as important or all it's chalked up to be. Sure, you got to be compliant. But just because you pay all your bills on time doesn't mean you're solvent. And if the risk of insolvency is right on top of you, maybe you need to jump on that quicker. But with that, there's a whole ecosystem of former CSOs and accountants who are so focused on the near-term compliance stuff. All of that's got to change, and the entire community's got to look at this thing and really assess and balance, get the balance right between risk management of the near-term stuff versus the far-term stuff, especially if those outcome far-term stuff, that it's now much closer to the near-term than it was before.

Megan - 00:35:30: John, thank you so much for being my guest today. This has been a really interesting conversation.

John - 00:35:35: Well, listen, it's been my pleasure and I really enjoy what you do. And I listened to the podcast. I ask you to keep doing it. It's valuable to the entire community. And thank you again for having me.

Megan - 00:35:47: Yeah, well, thank you for that. And thank you also for finding the time to be here with us today to share your experience, knowledge, and I wish you all the best. And to our listeners, please tune in next week. And until then, take care.