From enforcer to coach: how CFOs can build high-performing teams

When last did you enjoy announcing a tough budgeting decision? Almost never, I’m sure. I bet you immediately braced for backlash from the affected departments.

And how frequently have you needed to make tough calls last year and into 2026? More and more would be my guess. The adage “you can’t please all of the people all of the time” certainly applies. Such is the lot of the CFO, correct? Or maybe not.

I’m not suggesting the tough decisions are going to go away. But I am wondering whether there is a way we could help them land a bit easier, and with less resistance and drama.

Turning high-performing individuals into a high-performing team

Look at how the South African rugby team beat France in Paris at the end of 2025. Love them or hate them you can’t take away from the result. Particularly considering that they only had 14 players on the field for the second half, which they started with a deficit, and they were playing at the bastion of French rugby in front of a somewhat partisan crowd.

What I would like to focus on is the management on and off the field, the decision making processes, the efficiency with implementation and, above all, the placement of the team above individuals.

For me the thing that really set the Bok team’s performance apart was that really tough, even controversial, and certainly unpopular decisions were made firmly and clearly. Choices about who was on the field and who was on the bench weren’t always popular with players and fans. (Imagine deciding to take South Africa’s most successful captain off the field in his hundredth match!)

But if you look at the final score, and the bigger picture, in context of preparation for the 2027 Men’s Rugby World Cup, then some of those decisions start to fall into focus and make the discomfort more palatable.

Somehow, behind the scenes, the coach and his team have turned a group of high-performing, type-A individuals at the peak of their careers, into a group that will roll with tough decisions to chase a long-term goal.

This ability is built over time, and only works if the person making those calls is in a position to do so. They need to have the vantage point to see enough of what’s going on, to understand the competition, to read the market, and to have enough backing and confidence that, when a decision is unpopular or uncomfortable, it still gets made and acted on.

From the sports field to the budget

If you’ve read any of my previous columns, you’ll know that getting in touch with the coal face of your organisation and taking the finance function out of the ivory tower are principles I have repeatedly advocated for.

Following the lead of the Springboks could be a good model to make this a reality in 2026. Take your high-performing managers and turn them into a team that can absorb and adjust to tough decisions, and stick to the overall game plan.

Business is a team sport

Once a business hires its first employee, it becomes a team sport. That sounds obvious, but it’s remarkable how often financial decisions are still made as if the organisation is a collection of separate functions rather than an interconnected system. Finance over here. Sales over there. Manufacturing, inventory, marketing, product. Each has its own pressures, agendas, and priorities, running on parallel tracks that seldom, if ever, meet.

Finance is in a unique position to bridge these silos. Every part of the business flows through finance at some point, whether people like it or not. This gives finance a particular kind of visibility and leverage, if they get out into the business.

But getting out into the business doesn’t only mean listening and gathering information. It inevitably means making and implementing decisions, which are rarely neutral.

These decisions show up as budgets being reallocated, cut, or frozen. You may need to tell teams that, however good their idea is and however much their efforts are valued, it’s not the priority right now. These are not abstract trade-offs. They affect people’s work, status, incentives, and sometimes their sense of fairness.

It’s like telling a high-performing international sportsperson that today, they’ll be sitting on the bench.

Make the call, then land the result

But what I’ve seen, time and again, is that the problem is not usually the decision itself. It’s how it lands. If a decision feels as if it’s come from nowhere, or is solely framed as “the numbers say so”, without any visible connection to how the business actually operates, you’re likely to meet resistance. Worse, trust starts to erode.

Back to rugby. Players don’t have to enjoy being substituted. And they don’t have to agree with the timing. But they do need to believe that the decision is part of a bigger plan, and that the decision-making process is being applied consistently. They also need to know that being taken off the field doesn’t mean they no longer matter to the team.

Likewise, when finance decisions are shaped with a shared reality in view, they tend to be more palatable when they land. Even if people still disagree with them.

Strong teams flex

Another thing that stands out in high-performing teams is flexibility. In rugby, it’s what allows players to adapt when someone is injured or sent off, or when the opposition changes tactics. In business, the equivalent is when markets shift, costs spike, demand falls away, or priorities change halfway through the year.

Can your organisation adjust without seizing up? Whether people can accept that plans change, and that yesterday’s priority isn’t today’s, comes back to whether there is enough shared understanding for decisions to feel coherent, rather than arbitrary.

A simple test might be this. The next time a tough finance decision lands, for instance, a reallocation, a pause, or a cut,  how is it received? Do the people who need to carry out the decision immediately assume it’s disconnected from reality? Or do they recognise it as part of a bigger picture, even if they don’t like it?

As published AccountingWeb - February 2026