Taking proactive ownership of one’s career development requires formulating SMART goals. Moreover, as you set goals it is important to be clear on your vision, values, priorities, and worldview. In future installments I plan to explore these and other items related to strategic planning.

For now, here are three tips for enhancing your success at achieving your goals:

1. Write down your goals. Writing is an exercise that requires you to discipline your mind to formulate and clarify the specifics of your goals. Rather than muddling along with a vague idea of what you generally hope to accomplish at some point or another in the future, having written goals will sharpen your focus on what you want to accomplish, your time-frame for achievement, and the sacrifices you’re wiling to make to create success.
2. Articulate your action commitment to a trusted friend. Don’t keep your goals to yourself. Use this to put pressure on yourself and gain leverage over your own tendencies to procrastinate or back down from your goals when challenges arise.
3. Be accountable to your trusted friend by providing periodic progress reports. Attack your goals head-on, and let your trusted friend know about your challenges and successes.

Read the entire Goals Research Summary.

The Journal of Accountancy provides five prerequisites for CPAs and Controllers who aspire to achieve the CFO role:

1. Strategist — this ties in with seeing the “big picture” of how the organization creates value in the marketplace. Rather than focusing exclusively on the details and priorities of your department or role, tune in to the broader mission of serving customers and developing new business growth prospects. For example, a controller must ensure that employees receive their paychecks, customers are invoiced timely and accurately, vendors are paid, and so forth. These traditional functions are important and might be enough to keep a controller busy, but there is a bigger picture of organizational structure and business develop that summons the resources and creativity of the finance group.
2. Translator — beyond understanding the strategy and being involved with its implementation, according to the article, “It is critical for the CFO to translate the capabilities and performance measures of the organization into useful information for the CEO and, in turn, translate the CEO’s strategy into a measurable, actionable plan.”
3. Leader — senior executives, including CFOs, must effectively communicate, inspire achievement for others within the organization, and set a tone of excellence and ethical conduct.
4. Technical Generalist — seek out a variety of experiences to learn new skills. Ask questions and branch out beyond financial reporting and tax into treasury and cash management functions, forecasting and budgeting, risk management, HR, and IT. I have found these opportunities to be available in abundance particularly within smaller organizations.
5. Facilitator — defy the stereotypical reputation of the accounting department as “the place where all good ideas come to die,” and focus instead on helping other groups solve their problems and achieve their objectives. Network with others, ask questions, and be proactive.

Read the whole article: CFO 101: Five Prerequisites.

The CFO role is quite broad, so there is not a one size fits all approach toward training and developing experience to become a CFO. A CFO can develop a career by way of banking, financial analysis, or other related fields. Because my career path started with accounting, I will focus on the accounting route toward the CFO role. Along the way, an accountant who is used to focusing on traditional “bean counting” will find the need to develop broader skill sets and see the “bigger picture” of how the organization creates value in the marketplace. However, understanding the nuts and bolts of record-keeping and compliance is essential.

Typically, a newly minted accountant fresh out of undergraduate studies will pursue a role as staff accountant. My first “real” job out of school, besides a tax season internship at a regional CPA firm, was a staff accounting role in the cash management group for a commodity trading company. This role involved day to day reporting and forecasting of cash position, foreign currency purchases, foreign wire payments, reconciliation of bank accounts with the general ledger, interfacing with accounts receivable and accounts payable to coordinate how cash would be flowing through the business, and analysis of funding sources and interest allocations, among other things.

Some time after this role as cash manager, I had another role as staff accountant for a small local CPA firm. In light of having recently passed the CPA Exam at that time, my objective was to gain a well-rounded array of experiences in tax, audit, and monthly client write up. The environment wasn’t easy, but I gained the experience I desired. This was the job where I “cut my teeth” and learned the nuts of bolts of the craft.

As I progressed to roles as assistant controller in a private company and now controller reporting directly to the CEO in a different company, I have found that my lessons learned from the staff accounting position at the small local CPA firm were integral to my development. Far more than my years of college education, my experience at a CPA firm taught me to “think like an accountant.” I will further explore what this means in later installments.

I am now in a role that is teaching me to “think like a financial manager.” To be sure, one important pillar of financial management is understanding the nuts and bolts of accounting — this is the area in which I am currently the strongest — but there are other areas to master in my role as Controller, especially given that the enterprise currently has no CFO to undertake the traditional finance functions outside of accounting. I am excited about exploring these areas, developing them, and honing my skills and experience as I progress toward the CFO role.