“Stories and lessons from an unexpected journey in finance.”

Every crisis is a leadership exam—graded in real time.

The numbers matter, but they’re not the whole story. What really defines you as a leader is how you show up when the pressure is highest and the margin for error is smallest.

I learned this firsthand stepping into a CFO role at a company facing severe cash flow pressure. The spreadsheets told me one thing: runway was limited. But the team told me something else: they needed clarity, direction, and confidence.

Here are the four lessons I carried forward from that experience (and others like it):

1. Cash is oxygen.
Liquidity buys you time, and time buys you options. Without cash, strategy doesn’t matter—you’re simply running out of runway. That’s why the first instinct in crisis is always to protect and preserve cash. It may feel defensive, but it’s actually what gives you the freedom to go on offense later.

2. Communication is trust.
Silence creates fear faster than bad news ever could. Teams don’t expect their leaders to have every answer, but they do expect honesty and clarity. A simple, “Here’s what we know today, here’s what we don’t, and here’s what we’re doing next” can calm uncertainty and rally people together.

3. Speed matters.
In calm times, you can wait for perfect information. In crisis, perfect is the enemy of progress. Action—followed by course correction—is almost always better than delay. The best leaders know that fast, imperfect decisions can save companies.

4. Crisis exposes culture.
How people react under pressure says more about your culture than any vision statement on a website. Do people come together and problem-solve, or do they retreat into silos and finger-pointing? In every tough moment I’ve seen, culture was either the biggest liability or the greatest competitive advantage.

At the end of the day, the real measure of leadership in a crisis isn’t what’s in the financial model. It’s whether your team feels they can trust you, follow you, and fight alongside you—because how you lead under pressure is what they’ll remember long after the crisis has passed.

👉 What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned from leading (or working) through a crisis?

#Leadership #CFO #CrisisManagement #inersec #FinanceLeadership #TheAccidentalCFO