Hit the road Positive leadership for troubled times - ICAEW

FINANCE & MANAGEMENT
How volunteering
enriches the
finance professional
Taking on finance-related voluntary work
doesn’t only benefit the organisation concerned.
As Paul Chan explains, volunteering can be a
good way for finance professionals to develop
existing skills and acquire new ones
H
ow do you develop
executive skills when
your current position
offers few opportunities to
operate at that level? Maybe
you want to improve your
promotion prospects, or feel
your current role could benefit
from a bigger picture
governance perspective.
One way to broaden your
experience and develop these
abilities is to see how others
do things (or don’t do things)
at that level, then put them
into practice. And an effective
way to do that is to volunteer
for a trustee board or
committee role in the ‘third
sector’. This term is used to
describe organisations that are
neither public nor private
sector. It includes voluntary
and community organisations
(both registered charities and
other organisations such as
associations, self-help groups
and community groups),
social enterprises, mutuals
and co-operatives.
Yet another route is to
volunteer for roles within
professional bodies – for
example within one of
ICAEW’s committees. These
are practical ways to expand
your knowledge and to
develop essential
competencies for your career.
BROAD HORIZONS
You will invariably be very
familiar with your company’s
business, structure, people
and norms. However, that very
familiarity can make it difficult
to escape ingrained habits and
understand different
perspectives. Just as travel
broadens the mind, exposure
to other organisations
broadens your horizons.
A trustee or committee
member role focuses on
the big picture and the
organisation’s direction,
offering ample opportunity to
compare and contrast your
prior experience with
practices within a different
organisation, in such areas as:
understanding key
issues and challenges
the organisation faces that
you may not have encountered
before, for example fund
raising and tendering for
government contracts;
understanding different
organisational cultures and
ways of working;
applying existing skills to
new situations, managing
working capital and
investment appraisals for
example;
working within a high-level,
multi-disciplinary team,
with no functional interests
to defend;
learning new ‘insights’ –
good and bad – from the
organisation’s managers or
your fellow trustee/committee
members; and
gaining exposure to legal
and financial compliance
responsibilities specific
to the
charity
sector.
To complement the fresh
insights from the expanded
experience, a trustee or
committee member role also
provides the opportunity to
further your skills and to put
them into practice.
DEVELOP YOUR SKILLS
Even if your current full-time
role calls for strategic
thinking, the bulk of your
focus will be operational
in nature, which affords
little opportunity for
extended debate at
a strategic level.
All too often
discussions get
into the detail
very quickly,
sometimes even before the
strategic goal is clear.
However, trustees or
committee members have
no functional or operational
responsibilities, meaning that
debate can stay at the strategic
level. Furthermore, in a
different organisation you’re
less likely to have enough
specific detailed operational
knowledge to be able to get
very detailed.
So with its main focus on
governance and strategy, a
trustee/committee role offers
the chance to practise useful
leadership, strategic thinking
and communication skills.
CORBIS
26
MAY 2012 FINANCE & MANAGEMENT