The skills that make a finance professional excellent at their job are not automatically the skills that make them ready for an executive seat. Understanding that gap early is, according to several Zimbabwean finance leaders, the single biggest determinant of a smooth transition.
From Functional Expert to Enterprise Thinker
Senior finance managers are rewarded for depth — mastery of their specific function. Executives are rewarded for breadth — the ability to weigh trade-offs across the whole business, including in areas where they have no direct expertise.
Building the Track Record Before the Title
Finance professionals who make this transition successfully, several executives told us, start acting like enterprise thinkers well before they're given the title — volunteering for cross-functional projects, sitting in on strategic conversations even when not required to, and practising the discipline of recommending action, not just presenting analysis.
"Nobody promotes potential. They promote the person who's already demonstrating the behaviour of the next role."
The First Ninety Days
Once the transition happens, the consensus advice is consistent: resist the urge to prove yourself technically in the first ninety days. Executive credibility is built through judgement and relationships, not through demonstrating you still remember how to build a model.
