Why CFOs should recognize the hidden specialists who quietly drive success

Host: Hello and welcome to the EY Better Finance CFO Insights podcast, the series that explores the changing dynamics of the business world and what it means for finance leaders of today and tomorrow.

Miles Courson: I'm Miles Courson from ey.

Host: In this episode, I'm thrilled to be joined again by Jack McCulloch, president of the CFO Leadership Council. Jack is a font of knowledge through relationships he has with CFOs. Jack's got a forthcoming book, the Rodman Paradox, and our conversation today is going to focus on the core idea behind the book. Why some of the most valuable people in finance organizations aren't always the most visible. And why recognizing and protecting these indispensable specialists is becoming critical for CFOs who are navigating complexity in a tech enabled world.

Miles Courson: So let's get started. So, Jack, welcome back.

Jack McCulloch: Thanks. It's great to be back. Appreciate you inviting me.

Miles Courson: You join a small but very powerful group of return guests. It's an elite group. Last time you were on, we spent a bunch of time talking about what sets exceptional CFOs apart. And since we spoke, you've launched your podcast, A Great secrets of rockstar CFOs. So I'd love to just kick off by talking about what's changed in the world of CFOs and how CFOs continue to evolve to meet those changing expectations of the role.

Jack McCulloch: I like to say that the CFO role, it went from evolution to revolution because in the last couple of years the role has truly changed. I'd say the biggest to me is the relationship with the CEO. And for a long time, CFOs have been saying that their most important professional relationship is with the CEO. And that makes sense. But in my worldview at least, the CEO didn't necessarily reflect that they would say, maybe it was with the top engineering person or the VP of sales or someone like that. But in recent years, for the first time, CEOs are now saying, yes, my most important professional relationship is with the cfo. So the job, it continues to expand, grow, and it's an amazing time to be a cfo.

Miles Courson: I think reflecting on the podcast itself, anything that stands out in terms of some of the stories that were told or things that you've learned through to that process and that opportunity to interact with the CFOs through that medium.

Jack McCulloch: It's interesting because apropos of nothing but a surprising number of CFOs, because I often ask their first job, it's a surprising number of CFOs, their first job was at a fast food restaurant. And they also, a lot of them grew up on farms. I've noticed too. But more relevantly, what I've seen is a lot of former engineers are becoming CFOs. That struck me as a little bit odd. And it's kind of like, why would that happen? And when you think about it, Miles, the main role of a modern CFO is to solve problems, right? Who's better at solving a problem than an engineer? So I think that's one of those things that first, when I only had one or two, I'd say, okay, that's just a little bit of a quirk, but I actually think that's something to look forward to as a long term trend. More people from outside the world of finance and accounting becoming CFOs as the world continues to evolve and become more strategic.

Miles Courson: You've obviously engaged with a lot of CFOs through your role on the CFO Leadership Council. Anything coming through those, maybe from a sector perspective or anything geographical that you see as themes coming through that you found interesting?

Jack McCulloch: When I talk to members, of course Gen AI always comes up as a topic. Leading talent is always a big thing. But what they've learned to do is to build in resiliency to the culture. Uh, since COVID we've just had a series of one crisis after another, one unprecipitated change after another. And really building in this resiliency is kind of a cultural strength of something CFOs are looking to do more and more. I did a fun little survey. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? And a lot of them wrote in the ability to see the future, the expression I wish I could see around corners. Because just think about all the things that we've gone through in the last few years that CFOs have never had to deal with in the past. The most recent one maybe being tariffs. Right. We haven't had a, uh, president that was pro tariffs since Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. All of our presidents in that time have been free traders. So there aren't exactly a lot of CFOs running around there who are also CFOs in the 1970s. This is a whole new mindset that they need to learn. And it threw them off their game. But as CFOs always do, they figured it out.

Miles Courson: Maybe, uh, we'll come back and revisit some of that because I do think things like tariffs and what's the best response? And frankly, if you could see around corners Would you actually just run screaming from the building or you should actually be able to do anything? Is a different question. You were quoted in a quite interesting piece on CFO.com recently about the role of networking organizations. And joking aside, in terms of the pace of change, the volume of things coming at CFOs, how do you find your peer group people you can actually have an open and honest interaction with? And I was kind of thinking you quoted in there as saying sometimes they just want to talk. And actually the ability to engage in dialogue with peers, someone that really understands the challenges you're facing, is really powerful and really important. And it's important from sort of a personal and organizational resilience perspective. So I was just interested in that observation and the role the organizations like the cfo, uh, Leadership Council play right now in the world we live in.

Jack McCulloch: It's an interesting time because CFOs have certainly always valued relationships with their peers, but just right now it's more so than ever, I think. And unless you're working with a company that has lots of divisions, you're usually the only CFO in your company. And even divisional CFOs don't necessarily have that much in common with the corporate cfo. So where are they going to get this information? And a lot of it is just simply from talking to your peers. One of our most popular offerings is we call them the mastermind groups. And often they're organized by industry like CFOs of nonprofits, CFOs of gaming companies, manufacturing, what might be, and they just get together five, six times a year. There's no large size speaker, there's no agenda, they just talk. It's like, hey, I'm dealing with this, can you help me out? They're really great conversations. And what, what's interesting, like we have about 3,000 members. As far as I know, we only have six who work in the gaming industry. But we have a mastermind for them. And all six of them show up at every mastermind. And part of me says, geez, do you want to do this? There's only six of you. And they're like, yeah, they wouldn't change a thing. They just have great conversations. So it's really the ability to connect with people who on a day to day basis are facing the same challenges and helping and supporting each other, go through those.

Miles Courson: Well, I think it's such an important role that you play. Uh, and again, I think oftentimes we've talked about the CFO role can sometimes be a bit lonely. Because in the organisation, you've obviously got a lot of responsibility. You don't necessarily have a, uh, natural peer group experiencing the things that you're experiencing, particularly in terms of the breadth and the rapid evolution of the roles. I think it's really important to find that sort of sense of community and places where you can learn from others and share insights and perspectives.

Jack McCulloch: There's many places to learn, but, you know, that's one that we specialize in.

Miles Courson: I think one of the things we're going to talk about specifically is this idea that you've been talking about, and I think you're going to be writing about the Rodman Paradox. We're a global audience, so people may not be fully up to speed with some of the basketball analogies, but perhaps you can just give a little bit of context about what the Rodman Paradox is and then we can talk about how it translates into the finance world.

Jack McCulloch: The Rodman Paradox. It's an observation I've made and a lot of CFOs and frankly, other members of the C Suite as well. In a lot of organizations, there's these elite specialists who only do one or two things well, but they do it extraordinarily well, to the point that in some cases they may actually be more valuable than members of the C Suite, but they're not often necessarily appreciated until either there's a crisis or they leave or something like that. The idea is they do the dirty work so C Suite leaders and others can do their jobs better, knowing that certain things aren't going to be worried about. And you mentioned the global audience, and it was named for a basketball player named Dennis Rodman. I wish it were named for Michael Jordan, because he's certainly well recognized outside the U.S. but Dennis did only two things well. He was the best rebounder, if you believe, and he dated people. He was the best rebounder in history, they say, by far. And he was also an elite defender. Couldn't score, couldn't, uh, pass, wasn't a leader. And yet he was a core contributor on four different teams. He won five championships during his career. He made all of his teammates better. And the interesting thing about him, Miles, is he has the highest winning percentage in the playoffs of any player ever. Higher than LeBron James, higher than Michael Jordan. There's a player from the 60s who won 11 championships and Rodman actually has a higher winning percentage than him. And that surprised me to find out. And yet here's a guy, nobody really appreciated him during his day. When he retired, it took 11 years before he was voted into the hall of Fame.

Miles Courson: I love this idea that sometimes people do a small number of things really well, can be really impactful on a team. As we start to translate that into what does that mean in the finance context? If I'm a cfo, what should I be thinking about and how should I be looking out? How do I identify whether I have potential Rodmans in my team that are there, perhaps unnoticed, unrecognized, that if they were to leave, if we were to lose them for some reason actually would have a really disproportionately negative impact on the performance of the team.

Jack McCulloch: Sure. If I can answer that, like with an example from one of our members who's a friend of mine also, he was telling me about a situation he was in. His company was struggling a little bit and he had to do some staff reductions and he let go of a controller. She apparently was really, really good. Everything you'd want in a controller. She was a good leader, very versatile, understood the business, did everything he'd want. He let her go. There was a financial analyst on the team with only two years of experience, but that person understood generative AI, uh, really, really well. And he ended up keeping that person, even though that was the one thing she could do is generative AI. But he found that she was using genai tools to help the executive team make faster decisions more quickly. So it was a classic case of saw this controller who is terrific, but completely replaceable. Even a really good controller, you can replace them. You can ask the team to pitch in a little bit, cover the things she was doing. When things turn around, you can hire one. He didn't think the data analyst was replaceable at all, either by the existing team or even going out and finding somebody. So it's a good example of a situation where, hey, I've got this specialist on my team and I really can't live without them. And kudos to him for recognizing that because a lot of people would have kept the controller that he had a multi year relationship with.

Miles Courson: How much of that is down to. There aren't that many Gen AI specialists out there at the moment. And frankly, it's such an important skill. It's one that all finance leaders are thinking about, being asked about, are, uh, there other examples of other skills and particularly in the context of AI transformation ones that perhaps aren't going to be as readily transformed by AI, where actually you really need to make sure when you're having conversations about how to transform your organization, there are some of those Skills that you need to make sure are maintained, a lot of them, they

Jack McCulloch: tend to be in the sciences or the arts. For example, I know somebody. She works at one of the largest PR firms in the world, and she hired, like, a designer that the company for years was trying to get into the tech space, just couldn't do it. Hired this designer who's a little bit socially awkward, dropped out of college, didn't really have a whole lot of versatile skills, but really understood the tech sector and how to talk to them. And she was totally transformative. She opened up the sector to the point now it's like this company's second or third biggest sector of technology. She's not very useful in the consumer or retail or any other sector. But in terms of designing campaigns that really resonate with technology companies, she does that far better than anyone else. And even though still a junior employee, no leadership skills, will never be a manager, doesn't want to be a manager. She's made herself invaluable because she's so good at this one particular thing that the company really can't live without it. And there's others, like, uh, inside salespeople who just really understand the customers, have those deep relationships, more so even than like a VP of sales. That's another example where the specialist who seems limited might actually be more valuable than the C suite member.

Miles Courson: As you think about what it means to lead through that lens and the culture it creates, whether it's cause or effect, I'm assuming to be able to do this effectively, you've really got to understand your team, you've got to build those relationships, and you've got to think about what really matters to your finance organization, understand it, and then, I guess, be willing to differentially recognize and reward that performance in ways that the traditional models haven't done. But if you think about it, what does it look like to lead to that lens? Understanding the Rodman paradox, Miles.

Jack McCulloch: It's an interesting thing to recognize. I'm a metaphor guy, but like a fire department, right? There's a reverence that you have for a fire chief, and there's a heroism for a firefighter. But there's the fire preventers, the people who are behind the scenes that prevent the fires from breaking out in the first place. That doesn't show up in an odd chart. It doesn't show up in KPIs. You don't even know who those people are, the ones that stop the crises from happening in the first place. Those very often your Rodmans. And it's Difficult to recognize those because how do you reward somebody for the disaster that didn't happen? Right. It's not the most obvious thing in the world at all, but yet you have to try and recognize that skill set.

Miles Courson: It's a great point. But in order to do that you've got to understand how your organization operates. You've got to know who's doing what. You can't just rely on the upward progression of information and knowledge. So I think it points to this need to be a connected, uh, plugged in and really understand who's contributing.

Jack McCulloch: Well, there are traits that generally they possess. One of course is the irreplaceability. They have niche skills. They also generally speaking they're not promotable, they don't have good leadership and management skills and bluntly they don't want to be promoted. A lot of times the tendency is hey, this is my best engineer, my best scientist. I want to reward them by giving them a promotion. They don't want it. It's not that they're not ambitious, they're just not ambitious like you or I might be. Their ambition is to become better and better and better at their job. Not so much to become recognized as a leader at their job job. Then they're also big crisis performer, but the other way to do it. C suite members don't necessarily recognize it, but it's the B level players. They actually have kind of an intuition of who are these Rodmans, who are the people that I depend upon on a day to day basis to get things done. They understand the entire company and I really can't live without them.

Miles Courson: I think it's a really interesting point you made around that these people don't necessarily want or seek promotion. They want to be really good at what they do in a very narrow and well defined area. And does that mean organizationally you need to have different tracks whether you will have the people that are ambitious, want to get promoted, want to move forward, but actually at the same time understanding the model needs to be able to accommodate people that want to stay where they are and just become really excellent at uh, what they like doing and what frankly as you've I think identified they're really good at and adds huge value to the organization.

Jack McCulloch: I believe it was probably IBM that first if didn't invent, popularized the dual career path. They recognize that there are these people that they start off say as an engineer and they get promoted but at some point there's some they just want to become technical masters and others want to become managers and Leaders. So you put them on different paths and the high end of the managerial path might be VP of engineering. But you take people they don't want to lead a bunch of people. For them their highest title might be distinguished Engineer or principal scientist or something like that. And within their own world that's considered as prestigious, if not more prestigious than a VP of engineering. And the compensation generally speaking, uh, pretty similar. But a uh, company as big as IBM, they can't live without either one of those. And generally speaking companies have done that, have flourished in fact. Interesting. 3M, um, did it as I understand it for one person in particular and that fellow invented Post it notes and dupont also did it. They were losing a person who was brilliant but the person just wanted to keep inventing things. They just, they tried to force him into being a manager and a leader and it wasn't what motivated him. Um, and he had a lot of offers to not do that. But this person invented nylon. So if these companies hadn't embraced Rodman friendly management philosophies, we might not have post its notes on nylon today. Probably someone would have invented those things at some point.

Miles Courson: Some great examples. But again it shows a lot of innovation probably comes from allowing people to have focus and be specialized rather than overwhelming them with lots of things. So just bring it back to the AI conversation. Jack, do you think Rodmans will be even more valuable or will they be potentially at risk from AI?

Jack McCulloch: I do think they'll be more valuable. But let me put the caveat that basically every prediction I've made about generative AI for the last two years has proven to be wrong. So disregard everything I'm about to say for the next two minutes.

Miles Courson: We don't go back and audit predictions.

Jack McCulloch: Fair enough. But yeah, I think they're going to be more valuable, not less valuable in an AI world. Technology, we all know what it can do, scale, execution. But we still live in a world where it's people. Technology can't create trust to this point. It can't create judgment, it doesn't necessarily understand context I think. And um, right now it's actually happening in finance. There is more automation and that does impact lower level jobs. But you still need these specialists who can connect the dots, understand risk, anticipate it before it happens and prevents it. And basically one of the great things about Rodman is they make people better at their own jobs. And with technology that's just going to get more so, not less so. So I would say AI won't replace Rodman's. I think It'll make them more valuable and better at what they do and really amplify a lot of the things that they bring to a company.

Miles Courson: So Jack, just in wrapping up then, what does this mean for CFOs in have a lead? What advice would you give with this knowledge and insight? How can we translate that into some actionable stuff for the audience?

Jack McCulloch: First of all, discover who your Rodmans are. It is tough at the C Suite to do it. Ask people, who do you turn to during a crisis? Who is it behind the scenes that you think is invaluable? Who's the person that's not obvious, that their loss would really have a negative impact on you? If they identify certain people and they're not really recognized very publicly, you've probably discovered your Rodman and then reach out to them, make sure their motivations are going to be different, not wrong, just different. Again, don't interpret the fact that they don't want to manage people as a lack of ambition. They want to go deep, they just don't want to go high. So embrace that. Ask them questions like, what does success lead to you? How do we keep you? What do you see your role here is? And if they say doing the same job, just better five years from now, that's absolutely legitimate. But then the other thing is pay, which is a difficult sell because a lot of times the Rodmans might be more valuable than your vice president. It's a tough sell. Why, you know, the board of directors? Why are we paying somebody that by title seems to be middle management or lower the same level as a C Suite? It's because despite the title, they bring as much, if not more valuable than a lot of members of the C suite. So it's really about impact, not about where they sit on the org chart. And if you can recognize that you've done a great service to your organization,

Miles Courson: I really appreciate you sharing those ideas. It's really valuable. And as you've highlighted, I think even in an AI world, individuals where you can identify them, nurture them, reward them, recognize them, are hugely valuable in many finance organizations and in many cases, the unsung stars, uh, really appreciate you sharing that. So we normally wrap up with a few rapid fire questions. And having been to this once, I'm going to pivot it a little bit and I'm going to ask, is there a particular quote in the last couple of years that's really stood out to you or you've reflected on and gone back to in multiple situations?

Jack McCulloch: Well, the quote's not New, but I think it's become more meaningful to me in recent years. It's by that brilliant thinker, Mike Tyson, the boxer. And he famously said, everybody has a plan till they get punched in the mouth. And I actually think it's a great quote for business, particularly in the modern era, because it goes back to resiliency. You can write all the plans you want, but man, nobody has predicted any of the things CFOs and other members of the C suite have faced. So be realistic, Chuck. Strategic planning, absolutely critical, more so than ever. But also just be prepared for the strategic plan might change in 60 days and you yourself need to be able to get up when you're punched in the mouth and build a resilient culture that can do that along with you. So it's kind of a dumb quote. On the other hand, it's kind of a brilliant quote.

Miles Courson: I think it's a great quote and as you say, very relevant. And as we were reflecting on 2025, doing some year end reviews and reflections, it was certainly, I think, a year where when you got to the end of it, you wouldn't have ever predicted some of the things that happened during the year. And a number of roundtables I hosted during the course of the year we reflected on that. And one of the themes that came out, come back to the point of tariffs, is sometimes knowing when not to do things is as important as knowing when to do things. Is that, uh, ability to sit back and actually not feel the need to react in the moment becoming even more important?

Jack McCulloch: Yeah, absolutely. I forget who said it, but sitting back and waiting is not doing nothing right? Sometimes you just got to sit back, let external events play themselves out, then take action, study, learn everything. You can make the best decision. But reacting in the moment, particularly CFOs because their bias is towards doing stuff right. But sometimes you've got to hold back a little bit and just recognize that the best path is to sit back and not proceed on the path. Just wait till you get a little bit more of a picture. Particularly, you know, in the current environment, things seem to change daily, if not weekly.

Miles Courson: And so related to that, obviously the risk of burnout, uh, and the importance of resilience and personal well being is something that we've come back to obediently. And I saw you posted recently a picture in the gym comment about the importance of working out and be able to do that on the road. I've seen a few other CFOs being actually quite explicit on that. Gina masto, Antonio from ServiceNow was a really good post that she did on LinkedIn. She'd been asked a question about how do you find time to exercise? And she said, well no, actually I make the time to exercise because it's such an important part of again personally how I'm effective as a leader. So I really appreciate that post. I don't know if you want to talk a little bit more about again, know how important that ah, broader wellness is to you and how you think it impacts CFO performance.

Jack McCulloch: Yeah, I mean Gina's actually inspiration because she's CFO of ServiceNow, one of the most visible companies out there. And I know she's got a great team around her because she's told me that. But yeah, she's definitely made it. It's a commitment, it's non negotiable and I will say I'm probably a level below her in terms of my commitment but you know, I just find I'm better at my job when I do these things right. If I work out a little bit, it doesn't cost me hours. It actually gives me more hours in terms of clear headed thinking, higher energy levels. I think I'm probably less likely to get burnt out than I will because I'm able to do this. And there is a body of evidence that suggests I'm right, that people who don't work out at all, they're great performers in the really short run. We've all been through those periods but as a medium term and a long term type of thing thing, it just doesn't make any sense to not do it. So her workouts are pretty serious it appears. But you know, mine, mine are pretty simple. You know, I just set of dumbbells three or four times a week I do yoga and uh, a little bit of cardio. But it's four or five hours a week on the high side and it makes all the difference. I'm not training for the Olympics, I'm not a good athlete. I wasn't a good athlete when I'm young, I'm not going to be now. But it gives me an edge professionally.

Miles Courson: That's wise words. And as we get older it's that balance of cardio, mobility, strength, resistance, you've got to do it. And frankly even just getting out and having 15 minutes in the fresh air is an amazing way of clearing the head. And I always come back much more able to deal with some of the more complex challenges. Some great wisdom there. So make the time for it is the key.

Jack McCulloch: Absolutely.

Miles Courson: Well, Jack, great to have you on as always. I hope at some point we'll get you back for a third interview. But I really appreciate your insights. You obviously have such a great um, base to pull from in terms of the conversations you have with the podcast and the network. So I really appreciate you coming sharing some of that and as well as the insights you generate. So thank you.

Jack McCulloch: Thanks so much for having me. It was a lot of fun and yeah, I do hope we get to do it a third time. Would I be the first ever three time guest if that were to happen?

Miles Courson: I would be the first. So you'd see.

Jack McCulloch: All right, we'll see.

Miles Courson: We'll see.

Jack McCulloch: New Year's resolution.

Miles Courson: Setting that ambition. Great. Good to see you.

Host: If you've enjoyed this or any episode of the EY Better Finance CFO Insights podcast, please subscribe or leave a rating review. You'll find related links@ey.com BetterFinance as always, thank you for listening.