My mistakes have taught me a lot, though, and throughout this article I will include some as examples to reveal how you can approach creating a strong, reliable, and growing finance team that can make your life easier.

It’s not all about you

When starting a career, your focus is on your own abilities, your task list, and your own career. You are focused on what you’re able to achieve and potentially how to please your boss.

When you start building a team, particularly as a leader, your focus pivots a little to your team’s abilities, your team’s roles and responsibilities, and the careers of each of your team members. You obviously need to keep learning yourself and ensuring that you achieve all the above. Particularly when working in a growing business like a startup or scaleup: if you build a team that can grow with the business and develop to be strong future leaders, you have done your job properly as a finance leader.

This is not all about you, and it is also not only about getting tasks done. If you only ever talk to your team about completing their task list and then add more tasks, they aren’t going to develop with the business and become a stronger team. Team development encompasses more than just the work in hand. Tasks need to get done, sure, but it can’t be the focus 100% of the time.

What a finance team should look like

Perhaps you’re in a role as head of finance, and you have one finance manager or one external bookkeeper. Or you’re in a finance manager role, overseeing the entire finance team. Or you’re in a finance director role, and you have one analyst and one finance manager. Whatever your starting point, there should always be a plan on what the finance team could look like in two or three years’ time.

I appreciate that AI may change everything, but this plan isn’t stuck in stone – it’s ever evolving. This plan will match where the business wants to be in two or three years’ time, and it will also be worked through and communicated with the founder/CEO.

Case study: hard work vs strategy

I remember working as a finance leader for a company that was growing rapidly – 100%, year on year. Unfortunately, my team wasn’t growing, just our task list. We were one of the hardest working teams in the building and often the last to leave each day.

On occasion I would mention to the CEO that it would be useful to bring in another team member, but this was always rejected. My team and I were all heading towards burnout.

As the most senior finance team member, it was my responsibility to ensure that the team wasn’t overworked and could easily manage the workload and more. But I didn’t achieve this. I was too focused on the tasks in hand and short-term deadlines; I wasn’t focused on developing longevity and planning for the future. Eventually, a finance leader was hired above me to sort out the finance team, who couldn’t add value or be strategic. This was a huge learning experience, and I never repeated this mistake.

If you know where the finance function is heading and the founder/CEO agrees with this plan, building this team should be easier than just fighting fires and holding out too late for additional resources. As part of this plan, also identify any key person risks. Not doing so is a common problem with startups across all departments.

Case study: lack of risk management

I once worked for a small FinTech, where we had just one person managing all the daily reconciliations – a very manual process. Being a junior, that person only had to give one month’s notice. When they resigned and left the building, we hadn’t found a replacement in time.

The financial controller and I had to spend way too much time reconciling while we waited for the new person to start. It wasn’t pretty. I should have identified the key person risk and ensured that we had additional resources at hand, and that processes were documented and jobs shared around the team.

This illustrates why managing key person risk is so important for financial leadership and should be a significant part of strategic planning.

Tips and challenges

Along with looking after a team since 2002, I’ve learned a lot about what works and, of course, what doesn’t work. Here are the main points that have worked for me:

• Big picture: always communicate the vision, mission and strategic goals of the business so the team knows what they are working towards. The team will have their own operational goals, and it’s useful to see how those fit in with the bigger picture
• Work–life balance: never text or call people outside of business hours. You’re the boss, and they will feel that they must respond to messages. If you’re working outside business hours, communicate via email so they can respond when they next log in
• Career pathway: ensure you know what each team member’s career goals are and help them to achieve their goals. Whether it’s about encouraging study, mentoring or additional responsibilities in their role, as a leader, it’s your job to help them get there
• Regular feedback: give both positive and negative feedback swiftly (same week as the event or action, not months later), constructively (if negative) and regularly. Be aware of the recipient’s emotions – you don’t want to be too critical. Positive feedback isn’t often remembered, whereas negative feedback is etched in, so give more positive than negative
• Dealing with performance issues early on: don’t let bad performance drag on. Tackle it with encouragement to start with and try to give them the skills, education and guidance that they need to improve. If that doesn’t work, you need to make a plan with HR. Failing to tackle bad performance has an adverse effect on the entire team’s motivation and sometimes on culture. It can’t be ignored

Building and developing a strong finance team in a startup environment is not just about ticking tasks off a list – it’s about creating a sustainable, forward-thinking team that can evolve with the business. As a finance leader, your role goes beyond ensuring the numbers are right; it’s about empowering your team, managing key person risks, and creating an environment where everyone can thrive.