Your first 100 days as a finance leader: a practical guide from those who’ve been there

As you begin your first 100 days as a CFO or finance director, it’s a good idea to listen and observe rather than start changing things straight away. Build relationships with your team, learn how the organisation really works, then use what you find to set priorities. Be honest with leadership about what you discover. You may enjoy the most leeway you’ll ever have to make changes.

The short version

• Expect to change things. New finance leaders are rarely brought in to carry on as before – and what recruiters, the board or CEO tell you often differs from what your team can show you.
• Make listening your first job. Spend the early weeks – one CFO says 30 days – learning how the organisation works before you change anything. Start with your finance team, where building relationships, trust and respect is the best way to learn how things really work.
• Plan in phases but be ready to flex. A 30-, 60- and 100-day framework gives you structure but sticking to it too rigidly can prevent you from responding to what you find.
• Tell leadership the unfiltered truth. If the data doesn’t match the picture they hold, being honest about where the organisation stands, good or bad, is the best way to win trust.
• Use the window while it’s open – and take people with you. Your fresh eyes and lack of preconceptions can give you the most leeway you’ll ever have to make changes and have an impact. But don’t be a bull in a china shop.

It’s the first day of your new job heading a finance team.

You haven’t yet ascertained how the coffee machine works or where people assemble in the event of fire. Yet as you boot up your Dell and begin the 200th cybersecurity course of your career, you’re conscious of a weight on your shoulders.

Your new employer is expecting you to banish inefficiency, turn tangled workflows into elegantly simple routines and start steering the organisation towards a prosperous future. No pressure then.

In a series of articles, we’re going to share some advice on navigating those first 100 days as a finance leader – not from us but from professionals who’ve been through it. We’ll look at where you should start, what people might have forgotten to tell you – and how to make an impact in barely three months.

'I had to rip everything up': Your briefing vs reality

It seems nobody is hired as a finance leader and told to just carry on doing what their predecessor was doing. “You’re never brought in to just take over,” says Clare Elliott, Group CFO of NetSupport, who won the iplicit-sponsored Finance Leader of the Year title at the Accounting Excellence Awards 2026. “It’s always, ‘OK, now you’re here, I want you to do this and change that, I want this report and I want that to happen.’”

Often, the MD or chief executive who hired you will have a strong view about how finance is running and what your priorities should be. Whether their perception matches reality is another matter.

“In my experience, there’s always more,” says CFO and former FD of the Year winner Becky Glover. “There’s always something else there that no one wants to talk about. When you start talking to the people in the team and asking ‘What’s your day-to-day looking like? What frustrates you?’, you start to think, ‘OK, there’s a little bit more here that needs some work’.

“People are probably not trying to pull the wool over your eyes but there’s a disconnect between the people who are getting you prepped for the role – the recruiter, the CEO, the board and so on – and the reality of your financial controller or finance assistants.”

Chris Atkins, Financial Controller at Dorplan, has led a succession of finance teams – and has sometimes needed to turn around a department that faced challenges. “Often, you’re interviewed by somebody who’s not strong at finance – so what you’re told and what you see when you arrive can be polar opposites,” he says.

“I went into one company where there had been an interim leader in place and I had to go in and rip everything up. The whole department was broken and there was no confidence in finance, so we had to start again and build back trust.”

Marc Brady, Director of Resources at the charity Walking With The Wounded, says: “There’s only so much you can tell about an organisation from the research you do before you join. You can get a pretty good feel for the financial situation but until you arrive and get under the bonnet a bit, there are things you just won’t know.”

Should you follow a 30, 60 or 90-day plan?

Some guides will suggest having a plan for your first 90 days or first 100 days that breaks this period into distinct phases. The approach is recommended for many careers – and in finance, it tends to look broadly like this:

• Phase one (days 1-30): gather data, understand the business, identify problems and warning signs.
• Phase two (days 31-60): start racking up some visible achievements, improving processes and reviewing the opportunities and problems revealed by a fuller analysis than that in the monthly reports.
• Phase three (days 61-100): deliver better visibility for senior leadership, propose a 12-month financial plan and commit to it.

There is merit in having a broad plan like that – but there’s also the danger of being too rigid. “There are these frameworks that are built around the first 30 days, then 60 days, then the 90-100 day mark, but I think it’s too rigid,” says Becky Glover. “I worry that people then won’t flex because they want to stick with the plan – and things don’t work like that sometimes.” What all our interviewees agreed on is that the early days should be based around listening and learning.

Your first step: don’t just do something, sit there

Sometimes, the first thing you should do in a new role is … not much. Or at least, you should take some time to listen and observe, getting an idea of how everything works.

“If you’ve landed somewhere and the chief exec has said ‘You must do this straight away; this is a fire you’ve got to put out’, then obviously you have to jump in and get on with it,” says Marc Brady. “But in most roles I’ve been in, the leadership has always said ‘Take a few weeks at least to understand where you fit in and how the organisation works’.

“It’s really important to understand what the organisation does, how it works and put some context behind the figures. Once you understand the organisation, you can start understanding the finances in more detail and then you can start seeing where you can have an impact.

“To be honest, I was probably still a bit too keen to dive into the processes here,” Marc admits. “I was chomping at the bit to get things done.”

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There’s likely to be some nervousness among the finance team at the arrival of a new leader. But if you listen to them and reassure them, your team can be your invaluable guide to the organisation. “My number one is people. You need to learn as much as you can about the systems and processes, but through the people,” says Clare Elliott. “So focus on building relationships, trust and respect. The quicker you do that, the more you’ll learn.”

Becky Glover suggests this part of the process should take about 30 days. “I do think it’s good to have that first block of time earmarked for just listening and understanding and making it known that that’s what you’re doing,” she says.

“Something I’ve seen before – not only in the CFO role but in other roles as well – is that people are really keen to make their mark on an organisation, which is great, but it’s done too early. They’re not willing to listen first.

“In your first 100 days, I would certainly be pushing back and changing things, but not in anywhere near the first 30. You’ve got to take people along with you. You definitely don’t want to be the bull in a china shop. I’ve never seen that work well.”

There’s an old adage that applies here: “Don’t just do something, sit there.” The listening phase takes patience and a bit of nerve when you know people are expecting results from you. Yet it can yield insights that you wouldn’t necessarily get by talking to your own boss. It can also confirm the boss’s impressions were right.

“When I landed in this role, my chief exec purposely didn’t tell me anything about his view of how finance works,” says Marc Brady. “He wanted me to have an unbiased approach. As it turned out, when I said, ‘These are our top three or four priorities’, he was in agreement.”

Making the most of your window for change

As you observe things, you’ll start to get an idea of the data you need to see and whether the organisation has the right processes in place to produce it.

You might also discover things that don’t fit with the picture the leadership currently has of the finances. Chris Atkins once discovered an apparently profitable business was almost insolvent.

“The best thing to do is give people the full, unfiltered truth. It’s the best way to win trust – to be honest with them and tell them where they stand, whether that’s good or bad,” he says.

After your early observation and data-gathering, you may find you’re given a good deal of scope to change things – perhaps more scope than you’ll enjoy in the future. “Your first 100 days tend to be the most intense because everything’s new and you’re finding your feet,” says Chris. “But you’re coming in with fresh eyes. You don’t know anybody and you don’t come with any preconceived ideas. It’s the period when you can make the most impact – and where you’ll be given the most leeway to make changes if you want to.”

Next time

Meet the team: how to calm any anxiety, win trust and draw on the wisdom of your new colleagues’ experience.

How iplicit helps

Many iplicit customers have been new finance leaders looking to improve processes and systems. Visit our case studies to discover:

• How Louise Zandstra moved from a “cluttered” system with “spreadsheets for everything” at The Charleston Trust.
• How Darren Tiffney replaced a system that was “creaking at the seams” after Yorkshire Wildlife Trust grew in turnover from £4m to £12m.
• How Sandra Tcheumeni Boschet replaced a patchwork of systems that were slow to flag problems around the world at Health Poverty Action.

If you’d like to see for yourself how iplicit can help new finance leaders improve processes and get the data they need, take a 3-minute tour of the software.