Finance insights based on real conversations with leaders between April 2026 and June 2026
Over the past quarter, there has been a noticeable shift in the transformation conversation. For most leadership teams, the question is no longer whether change is necessary; that case has largely been made. What is proving far more challenging is how to deliver meaningful change at pace while protecting performance, maintaining control, managing cost and, crucially, bringing people with you.
Most organisations are no longer debating whether they need to transform. That decision has already been made. The more pressing challenge now is that transformation is being shaped at the intersection of financial discipline and organisational capability.
On one side, businesses remain under pressure to simplify operating models, reduce duplication, improve productivity, strengthen governance and build more scalable platforms for growth. On the other, there is a growing recognition that none of this lands effectively without the right leadership, talent, culture and change capability around it.
What is becoming clearer this quarter is that stronger organisations are moving beyond a narrow cost-out mindset. Efficiency is still firmly on the agenda, but the more sophisticated businesses are asking a better question: how do we redesign roles, processes and structures in a way that improves effectiveness as well as reducing waste? That is a more mature conversation, and one that demands close partnership between finance and people leadership.
There is also a subtle but important shift in how growth is being discussed. After an extended period of inward focus, restructuring, controls, resilience and cost management, growth is re-emerging as a board priority. But it is not being framed separately from transformation. In many organisations, the route to growth is now understood to be through better execution, sharper capability, stronger alignment and a more adaptable operating model.
Yet for all the discussion around systems, process redesign and structural change, the same truth keeps reasserting itself: transformation still succeeds or fails on people. Businesses can invest heavily in technology and programme design, but if they do not secure adoption, build trust, communicate clearly and equip leaders to build genuine followship, the value rarely sticks. The so-called soft side of change remains, in practice, the hard part.
When viewed through the lens of finance and people leadership, the issue becomes more acute. Many organisations are not struggling to define the transformation agenda; they are struggling to find the leadership capability to deliver it. Across the market, there is growing demand for CFOs and CPOs who can do more than fulfil the conventional boundaries of the role.
Finance leaders are increasingly expected to shape operating models, release capacity, allocate investment and define value creation opportunities. People leaders are expected not simply to support change, but to lead on capability, succession, organisation design, culture and execution.
That sounds logical on paper. In reality, it is exposing a significant talent challenge. The market is not short of technically credible finance or HR leaders. What remains much rarer is the individual who can combine technical depth with strategic judgement, resilience, calm authority and the ability to lead through ambiguity. The premium is on those who can challenge constructively, align stakeholders, stay close to the detail and still bring people with them.
The recruitment market is reflecting that complexity. Boards are now clear that they need broader, more adaptive leadership in both finance and people functions. At the same time, they are often wrestling with the realities of succession, internal capability gaps, compensation limits and the tension between hiring for today’s needs versus tomorrow’s ambitions.
In CFO recruitment, the brief has stretched well beyond stewardship. The strongest mandates now call for someone who can deliver control and credibility with boards and investors, while also driving transformation, shaping the operating model and helping the business think differently about growth, structure and value. Businesses want commerciality, technical strength and leadership range in one person. They also want someone who can operate with maturity, humility and authority in increasingly complex stakeholder environments.
CPO recruitment is going through a similar broadening. Organisations are looking for people leaders who can move beyond policy, process and support, and instead play a central role in business transformation. The most sought-after CPOs are those who can connect culture to performance, leadership capability to execution, and organisation design to commercial outcomes. They are expected to help shape the future workforce, not just manage the current one.
The difficulty, of course, is that the supply of leaders who genuinely operate at that intersection remains finite. That is why many businesses are finding that the search for a CFO or CPO now takes longer, requires broader calibration and often demands more realism around what good actually looks like. Increasingly, organisations are having to consider not only external hires, but also whether they have internal potential that could be accelerated with the right support, mentoring or surrounding capability.
Broader CFO and CPO briefs
What feels increasingly clear from the market is that the CFO brief is not just getting broader; it is getting more demanding in character. More organisations now want finance leaders who can modernise the function itself through better data, sharper insight and greater automation, while also stepping further into the commercial agenda around pricing, margin, cost visibility and decision support. That matters because it changes the role from one of stewardship and explanation to one of active influence, where the CFO is expected not simply to report on performance, but to help shape it in real time.
Shift From Support to Active Influence
The same is true of the CPO brief, which is shifting from custodian of policy and process to architect of capability and culture. More organisations now want people leaders who can read the business through data and evidence, sharpen workforce planning and bring greater rigour to how talent, succession and organisation design are managed, while also stepping further into the commercial agenda around productivity, cost of people and value creation. That matters because it changes the role from one of support and administration to one of active influence, where the CPO is expected not simply to enable change, but to help shape and lead it in real time.
Stronger CFO-CPO Partnership
That is also why the CFO-CPO partnership feels more important than ever. Where it is strong, organisations tend to strike a better balance between pace and pragmatism, cost and capability, challenge and engagement. The CFO brings clarity on value, productivity, resource allocation and performance. The CPO brings the leadership, capability, culture and organisation lens required to make change stick. Together, they create the conditions for transformation to be both commercially disciplined and genuinely adoptable.
Taken together, the message from the market is clear. Organisations are not short of ambition; leaders are in the starting blocks and ready to go. The businesses that move furthest fastest are likely to be the ones that stay clear on value, invest properly in leadership and execution capability, and treat people, culture and adoption as central to transformation rather than secondary to it.
In the current market, that feels less like good practice and more like the dividing line between businesses that create genuine forward momentum and those that simply create more activity.
Written by Simon Moore, Managing Director within BIE’s CFO & Financial Leadership Team
