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Bona Allen has been CFO and senior vice president of Kajima Building and Design Group for nearly 12 years, and while his impact on his company goes beyond the numbers, his willingness to contribute to the greater CFO community has made him an asset to those within his network. Through a leadership approach that comes across as authentic and people-centric, Allen has used his experience to help other CFOs and financial leaders achieve their goals.
During a visit to New York City to keynote at an event, Allen met with CFO.com to discuss his company’s initiatives, what being strategic means to him, how working with multiple generations in one office has impacted business, the importance of taking care of his people and more.
Bona Allen
CFO and senior vice president, Kajima Building and Design Group
First CFO position: 1997
Notable previous employers:
Montgomery Financial Services
NYLO Hotels
PRS Companies
Host Funding
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
ADAM ZAKI:As the number of networking organizations for CFOs grows, how do you determine their value?
BONA ALLEN: I believe it’s about knowing what you’re looking for out of an organization and then finding a good fit. Many of these organizations have developed their own purposes. For example, The CFO Leadership Council has monthly meetings, and I think this is key to developing meaningful relationships with your peers. I have been a member of their group for a long time. They’re great when you want to get into a large group of CFOs and learn from a variety of local people, in different industries and at various stages in their careers.
I think a regular cadence of meetings is the best way to help build those relationships. I like it when an organization has a mindset that everybody is there to help each other. Many of us don’t need technical training; we need to learn from the challenges we’re all facing, how we are responding to the economy in our own industries, how we are taking care of our people and retaining our talent — those types of things.
Have you seen any improvements to the talent shortage in finance and accounting?
ALLEN: It depends on the industry. It’s always going to be a challenge to attract and retain the best talent, but now it’s even more of a challenge because there are three to four generations of people working in one office. So, for folks like me on the older end of the spectrum, right down to folks coming out of college, I think the values are the same: everybody wants an engaging role in their work while also being motivated to improve and grow.
You don’t find those motivations have changed over time and differ between generations?
ALLEN: No. I was a child of the late ’60s and early ’70s, and even the Boomers who came up after the war felt similar to younger generations today. My generation was judged by our long hair, our music and the perception that we didn’t want to work — sound familiar?
There are always exceptions, but our parents and grandparents were wrong about us, and many of us are wrong about the generalizations of the current generation of young folks.I see many highly motivated people, of all generations, that strive to contribute and succeed. Some generations get a bad rap today; there are plenty of unfair generalizations out there. I think the desire for a rewarding career that is enjoyable and engaging has always been felt.
How have you developed your succession plan, and how would you recommend CFOs do the same?
ALLEN: It all starts with getting to know your teams and what their goals are. I try to focus on giving my finance team opportunities to develop their skill sets in ways that cater to where they want their careers to go. Whether it’s CFO, controller or whatever it may be, this is something that exists throughout the company. There’s also a respect element to this — that during a succession plan’s development, it’s important to identify those on the team who are respected by others and have earned their place. These are the people who will be ready to step up when asked.
I am not ready to retire yet — maybe at some point they will kick me out — but for now, I have worked on making sure my people are developing the skills they need to get to where they want to go, while also making sure that should there be a situation where I need to step aside willingly or unwillingly, there is a plan in place that the team can implement.
When you hear the term “strategic” in the context of finance and accounting decision-making, what does that mean to you?
ALLEN: The ability to look into the future. Focusing not so much on where we’ve been, but on using finance and data as a way to predict where the business is going, aggregating information from across the company. Rather than getting quirky with charts and graphs, being strategic means being able to articulate to all parts of the business what the best direction is from the finance team’s perspective. Whether it’s opportunities in existing markets, new areas for potential growth or identifying developing strengths and weaknesses in the business, it’s these types of things that produce value when a strategic approach to being a CFO is taken.
How do you stay aware of the front-line challenges of such a dynamic business like yours and avoid getting siloed or bogged down in the finance function?
ALLEN: By looking after my people. By getting to know as many people as I can across the company, I can learn their challenges firsthand and therefore get a genuine understanding of their respective parts of the business, then use that information to come up with ways my team can help.
I also think it’s really important to encourage your team to build out so that when challenges arise, they don’t overwhelm our people. We encourage our people to take time off, and we staff the business accordingly. We have the right number of people, both in the back end and front end of the business.
The leadership team has focused on instilling that into our corporate culture, and it’s worked well. Our people are happy, our culture is extremely positive and we are innovating and growing the business.
