[Goose]

In my experience there are lots of different paths to the "top job" leading large businesses. Almost nobody in those positions are competent at every single aspect of the organization. I have seen examples of people from HR, Sales, Operations, and yes, Finance run companies. My personnel bias, based on experience, is that is almost always better that the organization be led by someone who knows what the company's expertise is and what it's products are, i.e. a medical operation is best run by a "doctor", an engineering firm by an engineer. However, that person has to be at least conversant with what the "support" organizations do and can "speak their language", at least to a degree. The leader has to know what the right questions are and have the ability to penetrate the jargon to the actual core of the matter.

FWIW Stanford offered (probably still does) an in-residence "instant MBA" that you can get over the summer :-). The main purpose of this for the vast majority of the people taking the classes is to be able to penetrate the fog of the finance folks. One such person described it as "learning to be an anti-nerd nerd". That appeared to work well, as both became "presidents" running business areas for large companies. These business areas did well. I can't claim to know to what degree the leadership was responsible, but I do know those guys were both very competent.

I also have two personal experiences with the CFO taking over the presidency of a company that is having trouble. In both cases, the CFO was a key member of the effort to oust the CEO. They were absolutely convinced they could do a better job than the CEO. In both cases, after the CFOs took over, things went from bad to impossibly worse. The problems centered around the new CEO's inability to recognize that the customers and products weren't just numbers. The company needed to actually sell and deliver product. The new CEOs had no idea how to make either happen. Their point of view and how they "looked at the world" was so far from reality those companies had no chance. For that reason, I am biased against the notion that the Finance people really understand what the companies they work in actually do. Certainly, there are exceptions, though I must admit I have yet to meet one :-).

[Goose]

In my experience there are lots of different paths to the "top job" leading large businesses. Almost nobody in those positions are competent at every single aspect of the organization. I have seen examples of people from HR, Sales, Operations, and yes, Finance run companies. My personnel bias, based on experience, is that is almost always better that the organization be led by someone who knows what the company's expertise is and what it's products are, i.e. a medical operation is best run by a "doctor", an engineering firm by an engineer. However, that person has to be at least conversant with what the "support" organizations do and can "speak their language", at least to a degree. The leader has to know what the right questions are and have the ability to penetrate the jargon to the actual core of the matter.

FWIW Stanford offered (probably still does) an in-residence "instant MBA" that you can get over the summer :-). The main purpose of this for the vast majority of the people taking the classes is to be able to penetrate the fog of the finance folks. One such person described it as "learning to be an anti-nerd nerd". That appeared to work well, as both became "presidents" running business areas for large companies. These business areas did well. I can't claim to know to what degree the leadership was responsible, but I do know those guys were both very competent.

I also have two personal experiences with the CFO taking over the presidency of a company that is having trouble. In both cases, the CFO was a key member of the effort to oust the CEO. They were absolutely convinced they could do a better job than the CEO. In both cases, after the CFOs took over, things went from bad to impossibly worse. The problems centered around the new CEO's inability to recognize that the customers and products weren't just numbers. The company needed to actually sell and deliver product. The new CEOs had no idea how to make either happen. Their point of view and how they "looked at the world" was so far from reality those companies had no chance. For that reason, I am biased against the notion that the Finance people really understand what the companies they work in actually do. Certainly, there are exceptions, though I must admit I have yet to meet one :-).