AI Era: The Future Skills CFOs Need to Become Strategic Leaders

Megan - 0:52: Today, my guest is Kumar Parakala. Kumar is a distinguished CEO, founder, investor, and board director with 25 years of experience in building global technology and consulting firms. A digital transformation pioneer since the early 2000s, he has advised Fortune 500 companies and governments across 30 countries on innovation and growth strategies, technology innovation, risk, and governance. Kumar recently exited GHD Digital, a global business that he founded in 2019, grew to 700 professionals across nine countries, was valued at over $400 million with a 45% five-year CAGR, and was rated the number one digital leader in the $200 billion AEC industry, winning more than 250 awards. Previously, he founded Technova, which GHD acquired in 2017. Kumar spent 15 years at KPMG, where he co-founded the $3 billion technology advisory practice and served as a global consulting partner, COO, and regional managing partner.

Megan - 1:56: Kumar, thank you so much for being my guest on today's episode of CFO Weekly.

Kumar - 2:01: Thank you, Megan. It's such a pleasure to join you this morning from Austin, Texas.

Megan - 2:06: Oh, you're right down the street. I'm up in Dallas, or just north of it.

Kumar - 2:11: Not very far off. A stone's throw away.

Megan - 2:14: So today, our discussion focuses on the role of the CFO in an AI-centric world, and this is probably the hottest topic in finance and accounting right now, so I'm really looking forward to learning about you and more on this topic. So let's jump right in.

Kumar - 2:32: Absolutely, Megan. Thank you for the opportunity. And, you know, the role of all corporate leaders, including the CFOs, is vastly evolving at a pace that no one has predicted. So we're all in exciting times, and for some people, it's a daunting time as well.

Megan - 2:47: It can be kind of scary for some people. To start, can you give us an overview of your career? Where you've been, what you've done?

Kumar - 2:54: Absolutely. I've been very fortunate. I have been working with professional services firms as well as starting my own businesses over the last 25 years. I've spent about 15 years with KPMG, and I was one of the founding partners of the technology advisory practice for KPMG, as KPMG is known as an accounting firm with a lot of very, very highly qualified accountants who've become very successful CFOs and CEOs. Subsequently, I started a company called Technova. That company got acquired by a global engineering consulting firm called GHD. I spent almost seven years with them, starting a new business called GHD Digital. I've recently exited GHD Digital after a very successful eight years, where we built a business to almost seven or eight hundred people across nine countries. We were rated as the number one digital transformation leader in the engineering consulting industry. Having said that, I have quite extensively interacted during the last 25 years with the C-suite, including the CFOs, the CEOs, COOs, chief risk officers, and chief marketing officers. And other than them playing a very critical role in my business, especially the CFOs, I have been able to help them in my career endeavors from a support, assistance, and future-thinking perspective.

Megan - 4:16: Wow, what an amazing career. Congratulations on all of your accomplishments.

Kumar - 4:22: Thank you, Megan.

Megan - 4:24: And with your experience, how do you personally define success in the ever-evolving landscape of finance?

Kumar - 4:31: That's a great question. The role of the CFO is evolving; it's become very, very strategic. And I think those CFOs who are future-looking, who are future-proofing their organizations, who are thinking a lot more beyond the day-to-day financials, those CFOs are the ones who are able to be very, very effective. So the success of a CFO is predominantly determined by how active a role a CFO is playing in the transformation of their organization. If they are only subjected to budgets, accounting, operational metrics, and performance management, then they are limiting themselves. That's an important function, but the good news is AI will be able to do a lot of those mechanical, operational things. So for me, the new role of a CFO is very much centered around providing real-time financial intelligence, which is both qualitative and quantitative, working with the boards and the CEO on scenario planning using AI tools, and in large organizations that I had the benefit of working with, capital allocation optimization and very advanced cost management. Cost management usually, even now, happens on a monthly or quarterly basis, but with AI, you will be able to do real-time cost management. So those are the new nuances of the evolving role of the CFO. They have a very dominant role in defining the future of the organizations that they are a CFO of. That is the fundamental shift.

Megan - 6:20: And let's talk about that term, "future-proofing." In your mind, what tools and skills are necessary for a CFO to be future-proofing their organization?

Kumar - 6:34: In fact, I've called some of the CFOs that I've had the benefit of working very closely with. One of them is Phil Bradley. Phil Bradley was the global CFO of GHD, which is a $3 billion engineering consulting firm. And before that, Tony Young, who was a CFO of KPMG Australia. I worked with him very, very closely, and I had a great collaborative partnership relationship with them. So they have both, in fact, been phenomenally successful in my ventures. We have done things that no one thought we would be able to. We have created significant value. We built assets that are valued between $400 to $500 million in a relatively short time of five to six years. We have disrupted traditional ways of thinking. We've been able to collaborate with people whom we traditionally, the industry stakeholders, are not collaborating with to create new value. All this was only possible because of the visionary skills of the CFO. So I do feel that now with the advent of AI and the advanced tools such as GenTech AI and everything else, I wouldn't be very surprised... But it's also very much about how the whole organization is positioned in terms of investments in AI and investments in leadership, because leadership is shifting in a big way. What leadership was three, four, or five years back is not the same leadership right now. So leadership paradigms are shifting. So the role of a CFO for future-proofing the organization that they lead is that I see them as the chief architects of the financial data that the organization has. They drive real-time AI-driven decision intelligence, empowering the leaders of the organization and the clients to make timely decisions, drive timely strategic decisions, and balance automation with the human element. Yesterday, I was at a forum where people were saying, "What is the role of humanness in the evolving world of AI?" And, again, the CFOs need that help to balance that human judgment in the wake of automation. Very importantly, they need to upskill their finance team and upskill their whole organization. Like every profession, the finance professionals are worried, and upskilling them is critical. And, again, redefine what risk means. For me, in the world of AI, the definition of risk will be very different from the definition of risk which we have been using. There are some ways in which the CFOs can help from a future-proofing perspective. They are a partner to the CEO and the board, and they need to be playing that partnership role. A CFO cannot take a very subservient role, and that will not help them. They need to be strong advocates for growth, and they need to be strong advocates for future value creation. Unless they do that, I don't think the CEOs or even the leadership team will be able to do their job properly. I hope that makes sense.

Megan - 9:51: And your comment about them spending 80% of their time thinking about the future, to me, that just speaks about how quickly the role has evolved because probably 15 or 20 years ago, 100% of their time was dedicated to just reporting the past.

Kumar - 10:08: Absolutely. And that's the reason why I'm a future-thinking leader, and I always think about what's next. I get a lot of excitement. It creates a lot of opportunity for people who work with me. And I've always worked extremely well with future-thinking CFOs who are very strategic, who understand the realities of today, who understand the gaps of current reporting models. And at the same time, CFOs have a very powerful role to balance today with the investment in tomorrow. The moment the CFOs drop the ball on the balancing act, Megan, organizations don't progress at the pace at which they should.

Megan - 10:53: And I'll just add, I think finance and accounting is a very exciting place to work these days, and I hope that more young people will steer their careers in that direction because I know for many years, we've had an accounting shortage.

Kumar - 11:07: Yes. It is becoming very multidimensional and a multidisciplinary finance function. If we are looking at a number of CEO succession plans, CFOs have a key role. Many CFOs are often considered as a future CEO. So if you want to run a business, you want to run a corporation, you want to run a nonprofit, then you need holistic skills. And the training for that is in the role of a CFO. CFOs should see themselves as future CEOs, and that creates an opportunity to have more holistic skills for them to learn and upskill themselves.

Megan - 11:51: And how can CFOs leverage AI to improve things like financial forecasting, risk management, which you mentioned, and budgeting processes? And can you share any real-world examples that you've seen?

Kumar - 12:04: I'm actually having the benefit of working with a lot of startups. I've just launched my vision to help incubate 100 startups globally under my new company called Tribeco. For example, there is a startup that is working on financial forecasting enabled by AI. What the AI models do is incorporate multiple variables. And something that was not possible before, a wide range of external factors like market conditions, weather patterns, social media sentiment, and many others to create the forecasting models. The shift from traditional time-series forecasting, which you mentioned before, which is based on the past, is that we are looking at new machine-learning models that would not only enhance the forecasting ability but increase accuracy by roughly 25 to 50%. And what will happen is, in the next 12 to 24 months, you will see AI-enabled dynamic forecasting coming in compared to the static quarterly forecasting. Another area where I'm seeing CFOs will get benefited, or directly as a result, is the risk management enhancement. And that means we are now having new systems. I'm sponsoring a startup based in Silicon Valley that is focused on looking at the risk in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, which is very, very focused on safety and risk and everything else. You know, you're building dams, airports, whatever. You need to make sure the risks are managed in the right way. So imagine you are a CFO where your organization is delivering these very large projects or capital work projects for your clients, or you yourself are undertaking them. Now we have got AI systems which will enable the CFOs to monitor thousands of risk indicators simultaneously, flagging anomalies before they actually become significant issues. The advances in natural language processing will be able to... We've got that capability right now. Look at regulatory documents, news, market sentiments, and everything else to anticipate risks. And then, very importantly, the so-called "what if" scenarios, which we often talk about in the executive and the CFO world, the scenario planning will directly be benefited and become very, very sophisticated. Another area is budget process transformation. Zero-based budgeting will become more feasible as AI can efficiently analyze spending at very, very granular levels in a very quick time. A large amount of data can be digested, and insights can be provided. And this will allow continuous adjustments and will replace the annual budget cycles. This continuous budget adjustment will replace the annual budget cycles, with AI suggesting some real-time allocation of resources. These were all predominantly based on the experience of the CFOs previously. But now we have got tools that will allow CFOs to play a lot more strategic, stronger role and with limited chances of things going wrong, the efficiencies for them. So there are three areas in my view, Megan: financial forecasting, risk management, and the whole budget process transformation will happen again in the next couple of years or so. I see that as a great application of AI.

Megan - 15:51: And in an AI-driven world, data is the new currency. So how can CFOs ensure that their organizations are collecting and managing data effectively to maximize its value? And what role does AI play in transforming this data into actionable insights?

Kumar - 16:08: That's a very, very good question to ask. Traditionally, when you talk about data, you say, "Okay. This is the CIO domain, the chief data officer domain." And the chief data officer is actually reporting to the CIO many times, and they are doing all this AI-related work and whatever. This is how the large organizations are structured, and I think technology sits in the CIO domain. The world is changing so fast that some of those traditional organizational models are being challenged as we speak. So for example, in my view, the CFO needs to become the organization's chief data strategist. It is the role of the CFO to make sure that the data strategy that the whole organization they're leading, the data strategy, allows for data to become a strategic asset, not delegated just to IT or the CIO. And the forward-thinking CFOs, with whom I worked in both clients and my own experience, they show certain attributes that result in great data architectures. Like, for example, even though it's boring, they take an interest in data quality governance. They are focused on a single source of truth. So, for example, you have the HR system and the IT system and the finance system. Sometimes, the organizations have so much data that a single source of truth is difficult. So what the CFOs are doing is creating a unified approach of building data models that connect all the disparate systems to enable cross-functional analysis. CFOs have a role to play in metadata management, developing comprehensive data dictionaries. They may not be themselves doing it, but they need to provide that strategic oversight and also establish clear ownership of data assets and appropriate access protocols, especially for financial data that is so critical. The one aspect is creating financial data architecture. CFOs have an integral role. But the second one that is emerging, which many CFOs have not yet probably thought about as far as my understanding is, is monetizing the data assets. So once you get this high-quality data in the world of AI, data is the new purified oil, not raw oil. Often, people keep saying, "Data is the new oil." I said, "No. As long as it's crude oil, then don't buy data." Because if data is a jet fuel level, a rocket fuel level, buy data or create that. So once you have a jet fuel or a rocket fuel level data asset, it can be monetized. So the CFOs have a role in identifying data products, establishing methodologies to value data assets for strategic decisions, creating internal marketplaces where business units can securely share data, and incorporating data asset evaluation into company and M&A due diligence. These are some of the things that CFOs should start thinking about. So monetizing data assets will become a very critical aspect of the CFO role. And, also, last but not least, using AI technologies to enhance financial reporting and decision-making and provide insights to not a select few, but democratizing insights to relevant stakeholders in real time. There were CFOs who got a role in doing all those sorts of things, Megan. And as you said, it's a very exciting space for some of the CFOs to get into and allow themselves to get into. But it's a very exciting space for those who are planning to get into the CFO roles. In fact, I know a number of organizations where CFO roles have been taken by people who are not traditionally trained. They have an accounting degree, but they have not been trained. They've had other careers. So it's a great opportunity for the diversification of the finance function, bringing in new talent, and looking into some of these great areas.

Megan - 20:28: To your point, I feel like I see more and more CFOs coming from nontraditional routes.

Kumar - 20:35: Absolutely. Because the diversity of thinking that organizations need, the nontraditional routes are fulfilling that need. And, nevertheless, I think every organization should cultivate diversity of thought at the CFO level as a focus area.

Megan - 20:54: And you've worked with those startups and large organizations. So how do the financial strategies differ when adopting AI across these two different business models?

Kumar - 21:04: I've had the good fortune of working with startups during my career and very, very large corporations, multibillion-dollar corporations. So there are some fundamental differences in how startups and established corporations approach AI from a financial perspective. I would ask the founders of startups to start thinking about using AI for capital allocation because startups are many times capital-poor, and they need to place their bets around their core value proposition. And if they spread their investments to 10, then they won't have an impact. So capital allocation is one area. The second one where startups can look at is build versus buy. What can they build as AI capabilities compared to buying them? I meet every day at least two or three startup founders who tell me whatever they're doing is very unique. Only then, I go and check if there's somebody else doing the same thing somewhere else. So with this explosion of activity in the AI space, where everybody is into AI and there are startups and their corporates and everyone, I think it's very important for startup founders to intelligently use AI models to figure out what others are doing and leverage that. So that's, again, a build versus buy decision. Again, they can use AI to help make better talent investment strategies. The allocation of disproportionate resources to securing elite AI talent in some organizations has resulted in their competitive advantage. So where can they limit the wastage of resources and where can it's a talent investment? A better handle on risk. Every startup has got so many risks, and they're operating in a very dynamic environment. So they can get some control over the risk scenarios and speed, prioritizing rapid deployment, iteration, or comprehensive testing and governance, especially if they're in a product-centric world. So that's about startups. Large corporations, they will fundamentally be different from startups. They will use AI with a greater emphasis on integration and risk management. So portfolio management is a distributed AI investment. So they will have AI investments across multiple areas of the organization, unlike a startup, which is very, very focused. They'll have stricter thresholds for ROI. They'll be monitoring the return on investment much more closely. In the startup world, there's a lot more flexibility, but in a large organization, stricter return requirements will be in place. Very importantly, what startups don't have, many of the large companies have, is legacy environments. So what will happen is that in large corporations, a majority of the AI budget will be allocated to transforming the legacy environment and extracting the value from existing systems. That will happen because they have these huge systems. Some of them, in fact, invested millions and sometimes billions of dollars. So governance and scaling, how do you scale across various entities and things like this? So, fundamentally, the differences are: for a startup, the focus is a lot more on making choices, build versus buy, talent investment, where to invest, managing risk better, and smartly allocating capital. Whereas, in a large corporation, the focus is a lot more on taking a much more portfolio approach, managing ROIs in a manner in which there is a clear value, getting more value out of a legacy environment, and a huge focus on the governance of these and, of course, leveraging and creating data assets. Those are the two sets of stakeholders I've dealt with, and I see those are the sorts of differences that come in. I do feel that with all this happening in large corporations, the CFOs will be able to get greater insights on hidden costs. They'll get greater insights on their capitalization strategy. They will be able to better manage their depreciation of assets, especially AI assets. I think we need to start thinking about how they depreciate. And other things like talent economics, we are now getting, like, agentic AI. So digital workforce versus a real workforce. How do you manage the economics around that? The successful CFOs I've worked with understand some of these implications. Some of the areas that I mentioned are in early stages. But nevertheless, the CFOs need to clearly pivot on a day-to-day basis to focus on some of the things that I'm talking about.

Megan - 25:59: And AI in finance can enhance efficiency and obviously reduce human error, but it also introduces complexity. So what are some of the risks that CFOs need to be aware of?

Kumar - 26:12: The first and foremost is that the CFOs need to know there is this AI revolution going on and it depends on the culture of an organization. If the culture is very much legacy, conservative, the same set of people running a business for decades, and somehow they finally got to the top, and they are running today's business very well, but they are not familiar with the future that is evolving very fast. And they have their head in the sand, and I've seen some of the organizations are still stuck in the legacy world. CFOs have the role to manage that risk of obsolescence and legacy mindset. They're in a very, very powerful position to motivate the leadership, the traditional conservative leaders, to think about the future. And it will be very well-received if it comes from the CFO because they have this excellent financial understanding. And at the same time, they're talking about the future. So one is to help manage the risk of not moving fast enough to create the future and to future-proof organizations. That's the number one risk that the CFOs need to address today. And if they, again, take a subservient view to the board or the CEO and stop trying, not being impactful, they're doing a great disservice to themselves and to the people that they're leading. The second risk that CFOs need to deal with is the demand versus supply. Everybody wants to be doing AI as the new buzzword. And so they have a role to play in terms of the business case for AI. They have a role to play in terms of impact analysis. They have a role to play in terms of putting systems in place, which will allow for the right kind of approach. And, again, there are no established ways of doing it. Every organization needs to create these new ways of allocating capital and investing and things. So the second one is the optimal allocation of capital. The third risk is, I know of a number of companies where they go into very tricky situations in terms of their regulators' financial reporting or something or the other happens. This may not be deliberate. It may be some financial issue which has created huge problems for them in the marketplace with their stakeholders. There's an impact on share prices and things like that. Again, I'm engaged with a company where they have faced this inadvertent challenge. And CFOs have a role to use AI to be able to predict those situations, those hidden issues that can become big issues, and take it up directly to the CEO and the board. Because sometimes, and that's the reason why the CFO role needs to be a little bit more independent of just being a partner of the CEO. They need to be a strategic adviser to the board as well, and they should have a healthy debate. So these are some of the areas: future-proofing, investments, helping with optimal investments, managing the risk of talent economics because many large organizations have lots of people. So how do you manage people costs versus technology costs, all those sorts of things? And last but not least, being able to provide timely information on risks that could seriously impact the reputation of the organization. So these are some of the ways in which the CFOs can help their organization and manage related risks.

Megan - 30:02: And how can CFOs and people in the finance and accounting department, how can they educate themselves on AI, or what can they do to prevent AI from just being a "black box"? You know, it spits something out, and they just take it at its face value. What would your recommendations there be?

Kumar - 30:22: It's not only just the CFOs. I've been in this AI space for 30 years now. My master's thesis in the early 90s was in a topic related to decision sciences, cognitive science, and some of those things. So AI has been around for a very long time. It's been around since the early 1950s. But the impact of AI has significantly increased in the last two years with the release of ChatGPT and other things. And since then, there has been an explosion of activity on all fronts. There is no book or there is no one individual, or there's no one university—some of my friends at the university may not be happy with this—who can impart that knowledge. They can give you some basic information. But knowledge acquisition is often an individual pursuit. In the way of a business, I've run a large global business as a managing partner. And I've said to myself, every day morning when I get up, the responsibility to educate is on me, and I have to find different sources of acquiring that knowledge. Many times, people in CFO roles, and I have experienced this myself, are on a "meeting treadmill." You get up at 8:00 and you start. At, like, 6:00 or 7:00, your meetings... every single hour has been some meeting or the other. You're in executive meetings. You're a stakeholder, board meeting, whatever. And then you are doing... if you're a part of a global business, you're traveling a lot as well. It takes a toll on you. So with all this happening, how do you really learn? How do you really keep up? How do you really pivot? How do you bring in a change in your leadership? How do you define the future? This is a very important question the CFO should ask. In my view, they should free up their diaries. In my view, they should have meetings on a "need to have" versus the traditional executive "fill the diary, be very busy and very important" type of approach, and create enough discretionary time in their diaries to be able to focus and think about the evolving world. And in that new world, again, no textbook knowledge, no reading of a textbook from Amazon will help. Experiential knowledge is what they should be seeking. That's the reason why, running a business with seven or eight hundred people, I would rather spend time with a startup and look at the customer journey that the startup has taken many customers to create impact to learn, than ask them to come and present a PowerPoint slide or whatever. So CFOs need to focus on learning from whatever source is possible, freeing up their diaries, experiential learning by being on real-time projects. And mind you, they need to look at projects outside the organization, not just within the organization. And very, very importantly, CFOs need to actively participate in debates and discussions. There are reasonable amounts of disagreements as well. They need to have those disagreements about how their role is evolving, how they can add value, how they can define the future and influence that whole ecosystem. These are some of the ways in which I feel all of us will get benefited if CFOs embark on that strategy of knowledge acquisition, immersive experience gathering, and then an active role in defining the future for themselves and their organizations.

Megan - 34:11: And a couple more questions to go. But when CFOs are looking to implement AI technology, what metrics should they be looking at or considering when measuring their ROI on that investment?

Kumar - 34:26: That is a really, really good question, and a lot of CEOs are right now actually struggling. In my view, what has worked is the CFOs who have led digital transformation and have investment staging strategies. So for example, the most successful CFOs that I've worked with have observed implementing phased investment approaches. So for example, discovery funding, 5 or 10% of the total budget, then a success-triggered release. So if something goes well, okay, they'll release a little bit more money. Parallel path development, so funding both quick-win tactical applications and long-term strategic initiatives simultaneously. And the ecosystem as well. Just don't look at that one part by allocating resources for probably data infrastructure in the AI world and organizational capabilities alongside just building some of those AI solutions. So the first one that a CFO should look at is investment staging strategies, the way I would just explain. The second area that they should be considering is beyond traditional ROI. Traditional ROI... they always had these debates with the boards, the board directors, and sometimes they simply still don't get it. Many board directors, many CEOs, they don't get it. Investment in digital transformation. Investment in AI requires beyond traditional ROI metrics. So, for example, the evaluation that CFOs are putting through and benefiting from some of these frameworks is time to value acceleration, measuring how AI reduces the cycle time from decision to financial impact. The second area where CFOs need to start thinking about is valuing new strategic possibilities, option value creation. So what does this AI-enabled world with all its options create from a strategic possibilities perspective? So, option value creation. Decision quality enhancement. That's again beyond traditional ROI, decision quality enhancement. And again, last but not least, assessing market share and pricing power impacts due to AI capability. So this is... that is what comes under "beyond traditional ROI." Multidimensional metrics, which CFOs may be already thinking about, are things like short-term metrics, which include cost displacement, cycle-time prediction, and working capital optimization. And medium-term metrics like resource allocation effectiveness, enhanced forecasting accuracy, improved pricing optimization, and fraud and leakage reduction. One area where I haven't seen CFOs do that well is the long-term metrics such as predicting new revenue stream creations, predicting the benefit of business model transformation, or being able to provide information on the financial impact of business model transformation, being able to understand and predict the impact of talent attraction, retention, and organizational adaptability. These are all longer-term metrics that the CFOs should start thinking about because that is what will help them future-proof their businesses. I have not seen yet many CFOs look at the long-term metrics. They definitely look at the short-term metrics. They're beginning to look at the medium-term metrics, which I've just mentioned. The long-term metrics, directly as a result of the benefit one would get from AI, they have not started looking at that yet.

Megan - 38:25: And last question. But looking ahead, how do you see the role of the CFO evolving over the next three to five years? We can even take a guess. And what new skills or mindsets do you think are going to be crucial?

Kumar - 38:41: That is something that I'm pretty sure many of your listeners have on the top of their mind. And I wrote a book about "Lead to Disrupt: Seven Keys to Success," which became a bestseller, just released about seven months back, a USA bestseller and an Amazon bestseller. And that book, which I was very motivated to write, in fact, my philosophy about leadership, if you want to be a leader in today's world to create tomorrow and beyond, you need to learn to disrupt what you are doing today and be ready to try something that will help you create the new future. So for me, quite surprisingly, 2030 is just about four or five years away. I see the role of the CFO becoming more future-centric. In my view, because of their financial understanding and knowledge, they will become the Chief Future Officers of their organizations. They will become the business model architects. The kinds of CFOs that I've shared I've been benefiting from and who would be visionary and inspiring, they are simply not CFOs. They have been business model architects. They're motivated people like me. They enable people like me to create new business models in my roles. They become ecosystem orchestrators, managing complex networks of partners and stakeholders, and they help develop and provide oversight to data strategies. So in my view, the future CFO is a combination of being a leader who is recognized for their ability to shape the future through scenario planning and strategic foresight, a business model architect, bringing the ecosystem together, an ecosystem orchestrator in the right way to be able to help organizations transform, and building in data strategies as well. If you ask me, "Okay, what are these new skills that the CFOs need to develop as they are pivoting?" In my view, it comes down to four or five things. They need to have more digital intelligence. I wrote about this about 10 years back, and I said CEOs need to be digitally intelligent, they need to gain digital intelligence. It's happened at a slower pace than what we expect. They need to have systems thinking, learn systems thinking. They need to understand how the decision science works, which is enabling ML and AI and all those things. They should be excellent strategic communicators, and they should think about human-centric design or design thinking. So there are five areas which, in my view, CFOs will benefit from: digital intelligence, systems thinking, a better understanding of data science, being better strategic communicators, and design thinking. And also, in my view, one thing which we all know very well: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." So the CFOs have a very important role in creating that cultural leadership imperative, which means building that psychological safety that allows for calculated risk-taking, continuous learning, monitoring, experimentation, and fostering diversity of thought. We're now hearing, "Okay, DEI is no longer important. Belonging is important." Now these are all words. People are playing with words. Ultimately, this is all about diversity of thought. So CFOs have a role to play in fostering diversity of thought in decision-making, balancing performance, and discipline for the short term and benefiting the long term, and helping their organizations that they are leading develop financial fluency in the new world of AI. So those are some of the things which I would like the CFOs to consider. I do feel that in the new world of cyber risk technology and investment, with the greater need for technology investment and a greater focus on sustainability—sustainability is not going away; it will still be a a top topic—I think CFOs have a great role to play being a partner on the executive team that they are part of as well as to the board. This is, in my view, the new landscape which the CFOs should consider, where they should serve as not only the guardians, if I say so, of the financial health of the organizations they lead, which many of them are doing exceptionally well right now, but also, very importantly, the catalyst for organizational transformation.

Megan - 43:40: Mark, thank you so much for being my guest today.

Kumar - 43:42: Thank you, Megan.

Megan - 43:43: Yeah. I've really enjoyed speaking with you, and thank you so much for finding the time to be here with us today to share your experience and knowledge. And I wish you all the best.

Kumar - 43:53: Thank you for the invitation, and I wish you all the very best. And if there is anything I can do for you in the future, let me know, and I'm very happy to collaborate.

Megan - 44:03: Thank you.