the cfo is quietly becoming the most qualified executive to lead firms into their agentic future

a recent study showed 72% of cfo-led ai initiatives produced positive, measurable financial results, 2x the average of initiatives led by other c-suite members

why is this?

because the cfo sees ai for what it is, and isn't fooled by how to truly measure value

they know enterprise ai is tech but it's not your grandfather's software. instead, it pattern matches better to labor expense than saas. regardless of how your vendor bills you or what your controller tells you

this requires a shift in enterprise mindset the cfo can and should lead: to account for an agent's contribution as though it were an employee. instead of sprinkling ai fairy dust across the org and making a wish, the cfo must splash cold water on unsubstantiated ai requests or usages (outside of pilots) and demand:

management and monitoring. betty can look busy while producing garbage results. so can ai. and ai will continue to do this while charging you their hourly rate (aka tokens) until you correct or dismiss them
segregation of duties. charlie will try to simultaneously add himself as a vendor and pay that vendor a million dollars. so will ai. especially for firms less diligent in fire-walling their agents like they do their human employees
enterprise function and safety. danny might bring a gun to work, threatening the health of others (it's happened to me), so might ai. this is the inevitable consequence of the order of operations: ai sits on and abstracts from the static data of surrounding systems. this makes it supremely (often too) powerful. if it has a bad day (e.g. you don't control its seed + temperature) it can have fatal results for your data and outputs

there are so many other parallels. both have trouble remembering, both quiet quit, both have delusions of grandeur, both require supervision and training, both hallucinate, and both have trouble remembering. the prepared cfo knows how to run this type of employee-powered business, once they recognize it

this clear-minded approach doesn't kill fast, innovative enterprise use of ai, it sharpens it. and it respects and challenges other division heads to know at a core level what and why they are pushing forward with their favorite tools.

of course this all requires the cfo to themselves know how tech works, not just how much it costs. otherwise, how can they be a reliable investor within their own company? i'll unpack that idea in more detail later this week.

-human written