Can Do #18: Why I will never be a CFO again
(Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950, 1950)
Welcome to the 18th edition of Can Do, a newsletter where I share my journey of building a Career Multiverse™.
You can also read my previous editions and follow me on Twitter.
Newsletter at a Glance
Career Multiverse™: Why I will never be a CFO again
Article: Liminal Creativity
Tweet: How soon to leave a toxic workplace
Career Multiverse™
On September 2nd, Gustavo Arnal, CFO of Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY), jumped to his death from a balcony of his 18th floor apartment in New York City. He left no note behind and did not say anything to his wife, who was home at the time.
I used to go to BBBY all the time when I got married nearly 22 years ago. It was before e-commerce took off, and BBBY was my favorite place to buy home goods. BBBY was also our client when I worked at UBS in the mid-2000s. This tragedy feels horrible on so many levels.
My statement about never wanting to be a CFO again is not a reaction to this incident. It simply reinforces my belief.
Over nine years ago, I felt lost in my career. I hired a very expensive executive coach to help me figure out a path forward. The first thing she asked me was, “what do you want?” I was programmed to believe that you had to keep climbing the corporate ladder. The next level was CFO, and that’s what I told her. As I said it, I knew my heart was not in it, but I had to have a goal, and becoming a CFO was going to be mine.
I was not able to achieve that goal at the company I was at when I hired the executive coach. However, several years later, the CEO of an augmented reality startup approached me about becoming the CFO of his company. By that point, I had lost my desire for the role, but he was getting ready to raise a round of funding, and he really wanted me to join his company. I reluctantly agreed. Unexpectedly, I got to be a CFO for ten months. It was the most anticlimactic milestone of my career. I hated it.
Some will say that being a CFO of a startup is totally different from being a CFO of a larger company. I agree. I think the latter scenario is a million times worse.
In my last corporate job, I worked for three different CFOs over the span of six years. All of them, with no exception, developed serious health conditions shortly after joining the company. It was as if that role was cursed. But supernatural causes were not to blame; these maladies were the result of excessive and unconscionable stress.
A CFO is usually one of the top-paid executives at a company for a reason. The pressure is immense. When I was an interim CFO, I thought I was going to develop an ulcer. When a CEO refuses to pay any taxes, and you have to find a legal way to make it happen, that’s not a fun place to be. You need to have unyielding ethics. On several occasions, I had to stand my ground and say, “I am not doing it. This doesn’t feel right. I am not crossing that line.” It is very hard to do that when it is your boss who is asking you to do something that makes you uncomfortable.
Every three years, I have to take an ethics course to renew my CPA license. I used to wonder why I had to take the same course over and over again. Almost no CFO intentionally tries to break the law, but when you constantly operate in the gray, it is so easy to rationalize and justify a minor transgression.
No job should be worth sacrificing your health for. While it seems obvious when I say it, most organizations still do not care about the well-being of their employees. They use all kinds of gimmicks to pretend they care, but they don’t.
When I left my corporate job in 2019, I may not have been suicidal, but I was quickly approaching a major health crisis. I could feel it. As I said at the time, it was either I was going to leave voluntarily, or they were going to carry me out as something physically terrible was going to happen to me.
Article
Liminal Creativity by Anne-Laure Le Cunff
I love it when someone gives a name to a phenomenon I am experiencing but can’t articulate myself fully. This article has done the hard work for me.
Now I know how to describe myself: a liminal being or a person who is comfortable with and enjoys liminal spaces.
Liminality is an in-between or transitional space.
This is a great description of how I see the world:
“some people seem to be more comfortable than others in liminal spaces. They crave transformation, often changing jobs or careers, moving places, persistently looking for surprising ideas and working on new projects. Once they reach a certain level of comfort, they start searching for the next rite of passage — the next liminal space.”
Tweet
I worked in a toxic workplace twice in my career. Toxic workplaces are poison to your physical and mental health. They can be truly traumatic, but what is even worse, they happen more often than we realize.
Even as I write this, memories of those experiences still cause a physical reaction.
We have taught people to believe that if we want to keep our jobs, we have to accept whatever work environment in which we happen to find ourselves. It’s like saying, “If you are in an abusive personal relationship, live with it. That’s how life is.”
Why? How has that become the norm?
Let’s state the obvious once again: if your job is costing you your health and well-being, you have to leave.
Thank you for reading!
Alina