Scale-Ready
Finance Teams
That hold under pressure and stay trusted across the board
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Certified B Corp · 10% of profits to our community and the planet · Multi-award winning
Your Reality
YOUR WORLD ISN’T STATE-STEADY
Most finance hires are made under pressure.
Pressure to fill the seat fast. Pressure to land a ‘safe pair of hands’. Pressure to keep the investors happy, the board calm, and the auditors quiet.
And the moment you hire for the CV instead of the pressure, the cracks start to show.
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The weight on your shoulders.
When the team only works because you step in, finance becomes fragile. You’re one absence, one resignation, one bad week away from the whole thing cracking.
Investor scrutiny.
Your numbers get stress-tested by boards, PE, lenders, and auditors. Every forecast miss, every cash surprise lands on your credibility. Personally.
Pace and ambiguity.
The business is moving faster than your team, your systems, and your processes can keep up. Messy data, shifting priorities, and a job that can change before the hire’s even settled in.
Constant trade-offs.
You’re balancing risk with reward, holding founders to account on spend, and being the voice of reason to people who don’t always want to hear it. You sit between everyone, and everyone expects you to have the answer.
Where hiring breaks…
The four hiring risks that cost CFOs trust.
These problems sit in the ‘important but not urgent’ pile, until the pressure hits and they turn into commercial risk. We’ve watched it play out hundreds of times.
1. Good on paper, wrong in reality.
Strong CV, right qualifications, good interview. But they can’t shape decisions or challenge commercial when it matters. The forecast keeps missing because nobody pushes back on the assumptions. You hired for the CV, not the stage.
2. The right decision, in the wrong moment.
You can see the pressure coming, but you can’t find the airtime to act. ‘Let’s push it to next quarter’ becomes the default, and suddenly you’re hiring after someone’s already burnt out. By the time you move, the damage is done.
3. One person holds the keys.
Month-end happens, but it’s heroic. No documentation, no cross-training, no handover plan. They go off sick, payments stall, close slips, and the CEO blames finance. Holiday creates panic. Sick leave causes chaos.
4. Finance is right, but not heard.
The numbers are accurate, but Ops doesn’t believe them. Commercial thinks you’re the blocker. There’s a translation gap between what finance knows and what the business acts on. And it usually comes down to whether the people in the seats can influence, not just report.
2 in 5 senior finance hires turn out to be the wrong fit within 18 months.
3x salary – typical cost of a mis-hire
(Source: REC, PwC, Oxford Economics)
THE PROOF™ METHOD
FIVE PHASES. ZERO GUESSWORK.
PROOF is our system for de-risking finance hires, so the problems get designed out before they start.
P
Pressure-Fit
No surprises in seat
Define what ‘good’ looks like under your specific pressure, so the hire holds when the heat is on.
R
Role
Story
The right people lean in
Tell the truth about the role, so the right people lean in and the wrong ones self-select out.
O
Outcome Design
Hires built around outcomes
Not just job descriptions. We define what matters for this seat and what prevents surprises.
O
Objective Assessment
Evidence, not interview polish
The best operator, not the best interviewer. Structured scoring and tailored assessments.
F
First 90 Days
Hires that earn trust fast
Tailored onboarding plans so credibility forms early, not after damage is done.
We put people and planet before profit. It’s about doing the right thing.
THE RESULT
A SCALE-READY FINANCE TEAM.
That holds under pressure and stays trusted across the board.
No, surprises.
Early warning on risk… cash, margin, delivery, working capital.
The right person in the seat spots it early, acts while there’s still time, and you stop being the one who “didn’t see it coming.”
Trusted decisions.
Faster, cleaner decisions with founders, boards, and investors. The numbers and the story line up because the person delivering them can translate, not just report.
A team that holds.
Close is solid, forecasts are believable, stakeholders trust the output even when things get tense. The function works because the people in it can hold the pressure, not because you’re carrying it.
Free Scorecard
IS YOUR FINANCE TEAM SCALE-READY?
A 5-minute self-assessment built on the same framework we use with our clients.
Pulse-check your finance function across the five human risksthe human risks that quietly turn into commercial risk. Get a personalised report with the gaps to close before the next board meeting, the next funding round, or the next surprise.
What you get?
- A scorecard across the six risk areas (Capability, Timing, Dependency, Credibility, Culture, Future-Fit).
- A personalised summary of where your team is most exposed.
- The highest-impact moves you can make to make your team scale-ready.
What our clients say...
“In a very crowded market, the thing that stands out is trust. It’s a real premium, and you struggle to put a price on it.”
John Collins – CFO Vivobarefoot
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