Forget everything you’ve read about job-hopping.
All that move-to-get-promoted advice is BS.
The real power play is the 20-year mission. The long, patient, methodical takeover of an entire enterprise.
And Michael Fiddelke at Target is proof. My recent post about him becoming CEO went viral and it signaled a lot of CFOs and senior finance leaders are interested in becoming CEOs, but most are scratching their heads at the idea of if it’s possible.
Consider today’s letter not just an inspirational story but a playbook for your career.
Fiddelke started in 2003 as a finance intern. For 20 years, he never left the building. He just kept conquering new territory.
Finance? Mastered it.
Strategy? Mastered it.
Operations? Mastered it.
Merchandising? Mastered it.
He didn’t climb a ladder; he built an unassailable fortress of competence across the business.
In 2019, he took the CFO job.
In 2025, he takes the CEO job.
This 20-year path from a spreadsheet to the corner office is the new blueprint.
Fiddelke’s story proves two things.
The finance function is, without question, the single most effective training ground for enterprise-wide leadership.
Long-term loyalty is not a weakness. It is a weapon. Deep institutional knowledge is how you win the game.
This isn’t just a win for finance. This is a takeover.
The bean counter stereotype is buried.
The new model is the strategic co-pilot, steeped in data, technology, and corporate war. The CFO is now, for many boards, the CEO’s natural and only successor.
This is the No BS playbook for going from Chief Financial Officer to Chief Everything Officer.
You must know the why behind this power shift, understand the hard data that proves it, and get exposed to the critical performance paradox that can damage your career if you ignore it.
So enjoy your coffee and let’s dive in.
The Remaking Of The CFO Role
To understand why you’re next in line, you have to understand that your job description was fundamentally rewritten while you weren’t looking.
The role has exploded.
It’s no longer a support function. It’s a core driver of enterprise value.
The Old CFO Model
The traditional CFO was defined by 2 boring, inwardly focused jobs.
The Steward: Protect the assets. Minimize risk. Get the books right.
The Operator: Run a tight ship. Make FP&A, treasury, and tax work on time.
In this old model, you were Dr. No.
You were the executive who poured cold water on unrealistic plans.
Your primary job was to be the financial brake pedal for the entire company.
That model is now table stakes. If that’s all you do, you’re a dinosaur waiting for the meteor.
The New CFO Model
CEOs and boards still expect you to be a flawless steward. But that’s just the price of admission.
The new mandate demands you be 2 other things:
The Strategist: You’re not just supporting the strategy; you are shaping it. You are aligning financial power with business goals. You are the partner in growth.
The Catalyst: You are the chief change agent. You are expected to instill a financial mindset throughout the entire organization to make other departments perform better.
This is the shift from gatekeeper to strategic growth partner.
You’re no longer the guy who says No.
You’re the guy who asks, ‘Why not’ and ‘How fast can we fund it?’
This transformation is so complete that 67% of CEOs believe their company’s success rests squarely on their CFO’s shoulders.
Every CFO Must Know The 4 Drivers Of The CFO Takeover
This didn’t happen by accident.
It was driven by a confluence of powerful forces that put you at the central hub of data, strategy, and operations.
1. The AI & data revolution
You own the truth. You are now the AI-driven technologist and data-centric storyteller. As digital transformation refactors the business, finance is ground zero. Your job has moved from historical reporting (what happened) to predictive forecasting (what will happen) by harnessing AI and ML.
But AI oversight is the real power.
As AI systems generate more of the company’s financial insights, you’re not just a decision-maker. You are the decision auditor.
You are the only executive responsible for ensuring the governance frameworks are in place to validate AI outputs, check for bias, and maintain accountability.
You are the one who tells the CEO if the magic AI box is lying.
That is terrifying but powerful.
2. M&A and Capital
You’ve always been involved in M&A. But you’ve gone from due diligence support to strategic architect.
More importantly, you own the single most powerful lever in any company:
Capital allocation. And capital allocation is a strategy. Period.
You are the one making the brutal calls on where to boldly explore new revenue streams and which projects to starve of oxygen. You decide who lives and who dies. You balance the long-term R&D bets against the market’s psychotic demand for short-term gains.
3. You already run the company
Your span of control has physically widened. You’ve been absorbing the responsibilities of other C-suite leaders. Modern CFOs now frequently oversee not just finance, but also IT, Human Resources, and procurement.
The average number of discrete roles reporting to the CFO has grown from four to six in just the last two years. Think about what this means.
The CEO’s role is increasingly external-facing.
Managing investors, regulators, and the public story.
You, the modern CFO, have become the internal-facing de facto Chief Operating Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, all in one. You manage the core enterprise (IT, HR) and architect its financial future (M&A, capital).
The final leap to CEO is no longer a leap. It’s a small, logical step.
4. Crisis loves CFOs
The relentless volatility of the past decade was the final driver.
The 2020 pandemic. Supply chain collapse. Raging inflation. Geopolitical chaos. New ESG rules. During every single one of these company-ending crises, who did the board, investors, and the CEO turn to first?
Not marketing. Not sales. They called you.
Your obsessive focus on liquidity, risk, and contingency planning was the only thing that mattered. This has built an immense well of trust.
In an uncertain world, boards are prioritizing resilience and fiscal discipline over the growth-at-all-costs bullshit of the 2010s.
You, the CFO, have become the safe pair of hands.
The data is stunning: A Russell Reynolds analysis found that boards now view CFO competency as the second-most important factor for investment decisions.
CEO competency? It ranked seventh.
When the board and investors trust your judgment more than the CEO’s, you are the most logical choice to lead.
Becoming CEO: Read this Part Twice
Becoming CEO is the single most critical challenge you will face. The data reveals that the Continuity Track comes with a distinct, predictable, and dangerous performance trade-off.
Analysis of over 1,300 CEO transitions by Spencer Stuart uncovered a brutal pattern in the performance of new CEOs from a finance background.
The Pro: Higher Profitability. CFOs-turned-CEOs consistently outperform their peers on profitability and operating margins (EBIT). Your entire career has trained you to be a master of cost control, efficiency, and financial discipline. You bring this rigor to the top job, and it works.
The Con: Lower Growth. The same leaders significantly lag behind their peers (especially those from COO or Divisional CEO roles) in driving top-line revenue growth.
The performance gap is so wide that, according to the research, only 8% of these promoted CFOs manage to steer their companies into the top quartile of performance.
Only 8 percent!! That’s your survival rate for being a top-tier CEO.
The rest of you become margin-focused caretakers who get fired 3-5 years later when the company stops growing.
The root cause of this paradox is a gap in both your experience and your mindset.
The Mindset Gap: Years of instilling financial conservatism and acting as the financial conscience of the company have hard-wired you to be risk-averse.
The Experience Gap: The responsibilities that are more risk-prone. Innovation, new product development, sales, and marketing are often outside of the CFO’s purview. You may not be close enough to sales and marketing. You lack deep, customer-facing experience.
In this uncertain economy, boards make a deliberate, cynical choice: they are prioritizing the certainty of margin (your strength) over the ambiguity of growth (your weakness).
Your entire mission is to prove you can be the master of both.
The 8% who succeed are the ones who solved this paradox.
How To Break the Growth Paradox
Margherita Della Valle, Vodafone
2010: Financial Controller at Vodafone
2018: Group CFO at Vodafone
2023: Group CEO at Vodafone
Margherita Della Valle is the ultimate commercial-minded insider.
A 30-year veteran at the same company.
She directly solves the CFO growth gap. How?
She understood the customer before she ever touched the balance sheet.
Early-career rotations in commercial functions are invaluable.
To solve the growth problem, you must be customer-first, not finance-first.
Her turnaround plan isn’t a spreadsheet.
It’s these 3 words:
1. Customers
2. Simplicity
3. Growth
Murray Auchincloss, BP
1994: Senior Tax Manager Amoco (now bp)
2007: CFO North Sea bp
2013: Chief of Staff at bp
2020: CFO at bp
2024: CEO at bp
Murray Auchincloss played the shadow game.
He built his finance career, but he also got proximity to power. His key move:
3 years as Head of the Group CEO’s Office (Chief of Staff).
This role is a massive accelerator. It gives you a direct, unvarnished view of:
Enterprise-level strategy
Board politics
Crisis management
He also ran a commercial division.
You must get out of the finance silo.
A shadow role is the fastest way.
The board needs to see you as a strategic partner, not just the numbers guy. He was the last-mile-trained successor before he even got the CFO job.
The Bottom Line
The final mile of this journey is the most difficult.
It is not a promotion; it is a transformation.
Stop thinking like a CFO.
The leap requires a profound psychological shift, as the very skills and instincts that made you a world-class CFO will become liabilities for a CEO if you don’t rebalance them.
What got you here won’t get you there; this has never been more true.
Take over IT, HR, or a P&L. Get out of the silo.
Live with the sales, marketing, and product teams. Meet customers.
A Chief of Staff role is the perfect accelerator. Let the board see you as a strategist, not just the numbers guy. Build your replacement. Mentor your team. A board is far more likely to promote you if you have a successor ready to go.
The CFO-to-CEO takeover is real.
Boards are done choosing between a visionary (who burns cash) and a steward (who only cuts costs). They demand one leader who can be both.
That leader is the new, modern CFO.
And that’s all for today.
See you on Thursday!
Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:
Advertise with the AI CFO Office. We’re taking new sponsorships in January.
If you’re building an AI-powered CFO tech startup, I’d love to hear more and explore if it’s a fit for our investment portfolio.
I’m Wouter Born. A CFOTech investor, advisor, and founder of finstory.ai
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