Mike Richards advises treasury professionals to stay visible beyond crises. He shares stories from subprime, liquidity crunches, and COVID, then offers concrete steps: regular coffee meetings with FP&A and tax teams, set 3/6/12 month goals, and communicate your wins to leadership year-round.
Chapters
The Treasury. Are you in the spotlight or are you going back into the shadows? It's a nice spotlight, I know, but basically this video is about in a crisis, treasury is in the light. Yeah. You've lived it. When it's tight times. There have been lots of challenges recently. You've had the tariffs, you've had unsettled markets and you are. And I've talked about this before. Where there's been subprime, there's been liquidity crises. One treasurer I placed, he said to me before it arrived, I only usually talked to my CEO once or twice a year when they passed me in the coffee in the morning. Morning. The only other time they ever saw them, their CEO was when they went for their first ever interview. Then along came the liquidity crisis, subprime, everything else. The crunch day was there. They were having daily coffees. It was them, the cfo. They were right under the spotlight, going through the balance sheet, going through liquidity, thinking about it. Right. A morning report, evening report. How are we doing it? It was exhausting. But he loved it. That was it. Covid came along. One of my other treasurers said he never spoken to a CFO as much. They had daily briefings and things like that. But then Kovitz drifted away. Tariffs and I'll get. But will. What's now happening, it's going away. Spotlight's coming off of you. It was great whilst the thing was down. Now at the time, everyone there's, oh, that's okay. Crisis is over. Now their meetings go from daily to monthly to weekly to then to monthly, back to corridor hellos. Spotlight's gone. The risk you face. Then, as one of my other treasurer said when I met him at an international event, he said, I get brought in, I do my monthly meeting with all the team. Oh, it's Mr. Cash. Here comes Mr. Cash. And he was like, actually, I do a lot more than just do the cash. They were like, yeah, but you almost. Cash, you tell us where this. He went, no, I've just saved this in foreign exchange fees. I've just done this in a rcf. And like, they didn't know because he let a lot of his stuff out of the spotlight. I know. Keep going with the prop. Basically, it was. It's great in a crisis to be there, but you don't want to go back to be in the back room. Mr. Cash, basically what you need to do is prove your worth in calmer times. So what can you do? I talked about before a junior analyst who said he wanted to get More well known in the business and and his treasurer said, go and have coffee with people. One of our first videos, you can do that yourself. When was the last time you sat down with the head of FPA and had a coffee? You as a treasurer, when did you sit down with tax rather than the head of tax and say, oh, rather than just meet them at social event or when they're next in the office, don't wait for the next crisis to come along. Make sure you keep your internal network going. And as I said on that coffee chat, this analyst, ages ago, he became really popular and he got headhunted for a role elsewhere in the organization. Treasurer was happy for him, but also slightly frustrated. Why? Because he said I've got a really good guy that's gone off, but actually he's probably got a better profile than me. Why? Because he worked on it and he didn't let his name get out the spotlight. Other things you can do, plan ahead. So we talked about in a couple of weeks ago, I talked about having, when you're going for an interview, what does 3, 6, 12 months look like in this role? Why can't you do that for your own careers now? Why you as a treasurer, not sitting there with your team saying, guys, what are we going to achieve in the next three months, six months, 12 months? What are you going to achieve as the treasurer and how are you going to present that to your cfo? We talk about owning your wins and things. What about when you're actually achieving those goals? Are you explaining those gcf cfo, are you actually out there? Because otherwise you risk going back into the shadows. The spotlight will come back on as it always does, goes round and round, but the real professionals don't wait for it. You keep yourself visible as a Treasury professional year round. That's your job. So have a think. Is your visibility dropping down, latest crisis gone away? If so, what are you going to do to be heard? If you're struggling with that, drop me a note. I can try and give some advice here with career advice, visibility tips and yeah, all the other things, personal branding. So helping you plan that next move as well. So reach out to me anytime. Thanks very much.
