ternal position in the company, and establishes that you are now thinking outside of the traditional IR lane. However, they noted there are multiple paths to become that strategic partner. In the first 90 days after Shettigar joined Glatfelter, he says he made
the effort to visit every operating site. He wanted to meet everyone from the folks on the production floor to the regional management. “Build relationships, raise your hand for cross-functional
projects that come up, whether it’s HR, or operations, or procure- ment. Anything that gives you a good pulse on the company, on the people, on the story,” says Shettigar. “So, when it was time for me to get into the IR role, I had built all those relationships and established credibility.” Shettigar says the company invested the time, effort and money for him to get professional training. “It got me up on a stage, comfortable with investors and conference presentations, able to handle Q&A and have a crisp answer about the company’s strategy, investment thesis and plan to address investor concerns,” explains Shettigar. “Tat communications element was extremely critical when I had to step into the CFO role and be comfortable addressing questions from investors or analysts or even the board.” “Hopefully if you’re in IR, you have one of the characteristics
that will ultimately make you a good strategic advisor, and that’s being curious,” says Ahlstrom. “It’s asking, why. Why is this hap- pening? Why does the industry behave the way it does? Why is our equity doing something? Why did that division not perform according to the model, what happened and why did it happen?” Ahlstrom says you then have to synthesize the data, such as by looking for trends, so when you talk to your senior management you are not just delivering data. “Data is interesting but by itself is often not very useful,” Ahlstrom contends. “It’s the synthesis of that data that allows you to present a perspective of what’s going on that your management teams will find useful. And that’s how you develop into a strategic advisor.” “Again, I think IR naturally positions you to become a strategic
partner,” McDermott says. “You have no resources, you’re sitting on an island and you’re a one-person show at most organizations – it forces you to build relationships of influence, where you don’t necessarily have authority over the person that you’re working with.” McDermott believes that kind of nonhierarchical-grounded
collaborative management style translates well to positioning a CFO. “Conducting a stakeholder listening tour, then starting to build relationships of strength, and externally with the Street, again those are not skills that everybody has,” McDermott says. “I think those skills are lost with some newer generations. Tat’s going to mean more opportunities for the folks that do have the right kind of touch.”
3 2 S UMMER 2 0 2 3 ■ IR UPDAT E
The Subject Matter Expert “Whether the importance of being a subject matter expert in your industry trumps actual management skills or soft skills is a relevant question for me,” Royce admits. “I clearly made the leap to a divisional CFO role at a company, and in an industry, that I knew incredibly well. I think that was helpful from the perspective of credibility and being able to do some different things with the company.” For her, the bigger challenge was shifting into a role where she was suddenly managing a much larger team, and this was made easier because of her familiarity with the industry where her company operated. “In my earlier IRO role I had a three-person team. When I moved to a divisional CFO job, I had 70 people on my team reporting directly to me,” Royce notes. “Learning how to manage a big team was one of the harder things for me, so doing it in a place that I knew very well was probably a good thing in retrospect.” Shettigar says he really needed to be the subject matter expert
before he had the confidence to speak comfortably. “When I got into the IR role, I realized how much more I had to still learn about the business. For me, 60% to 70% of my new role was building that subject matter expertise,” says Shettigar. “And the 30% to 40% of the IR role that is corporate communications, external facing and executive presence and so on, was a nice comfortable fit for me. I could actually stand behind what I was saying because I had the data and the level of detail.” Ahlstrom says from his perspective, as the IRO for your company, your job is to be the subject matter expert. “It should be part of your job description to understand your industry and know how both macro and industry dynamics impact your company. You must know why your company is doing what it’s doing, whether it is going along with other companies or pursuing a different strategy.” When you understand that, Ahlstrom says you become a sort of substitute for the CFO and CEO on investor trips or at conferences. “I think having that knowledge when you step up to the C-suite is extremely helpful because it doesn’t need to be developed – and that knowledge does shape strategy.”
Accommodating Corporate Culture When Royce first transitioned from IR to CFO, she believes it was the company’s culture that permitted it. “People spent almost their whole career at that company,
moving often to different roles or divisions,” Royce explains. “It wasn’t a rotational program, there was just a trust in the executive management team that they were very good at moving people around and placing them in the right roles. Tat was the company culture, and it was important.”
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