Beyond the numbers: What really drives sustainable performance? Insights from Kate Akery

Three perspectives from CFO Kate Akery on business partnership, executive perspective and people.

Finance has traditionally had a clear role in an organisation: managing financial performance, controlling risk and reporting the numbers. But as businesses become more complex, more transformed by technology and more dependent on decisions made under uncertainty, the role of Finance is also evolving.

The question is no longer simply whether Finance can produce accurate numbers. It is whether those numbers can help the organisation understand its business, make better decisions and create sustainable performance.

Kate Akery, CFO France and France Market Unit Finance Leader at Brink's, brings a perspective shaped by more than 20 years in Finance leadership across complex, multinational organisations. Today, she leads Finance for Brink's France, overseeing a €0.5 billion business across 53 agencies while supporting transformation, growth and operational change.

Her experience points to three things that increasingly matter for Finance leaders: the ability to act as a true business partner, the value of perspective beyond one's own industry, and the recognition that behind every performance metric there are people.

Finance as a business partner

There is still a common perception of Finance as the function responsible for closing the books and reporting financial figures.

Kate challenges that definition directly:

“The misconception is that the purpose of Finance is to close the book and report financial figures. Numbers and data serve as a means of understanding business performance.”

For her, the role of Finance starts where reporting ends.

Her career provides a concrete example of that broader role. At Collins Aerospace, she progressed into Commercial Finance leadership for a $1.2 billion division, with responsibilities spanning growth, margin expansion, pricing, bids, proposals and investment appraisals.

“As a business partner, Finance provides insights that help businesses identify and qualify risks and develop initiatives that support long-term sustainable growth.”

The distinction is important, numbers can tell a business what is happening, but they do not necessarily explain why it is happening or what should happen next. That requires an understanding of the business behind the numbers, the risks and opportunities it faces, and the decisions that will shape its future.

Finance therefore creates more value when it is part of the decision, rather than simply the function reporting its outcome.

Perspective: The value of starting again

There is another dimension to executive value that Kate's career illustrates particularly well: perspective.

After close to 20 years building her career in Aerospace & Defense, she made the decision to leave that environment and move into a completely different industry with Brink's France.

"I bring over 20 years of finance leadership consistently focused on change and transformation. After building deep expertise in Aerospace & Defense, I moved into Cash Logistics, a deliberate step to widen my industry lens and build the operational range that carries toward broader P&L leadership."

Kate describes it as a way to broaden her industry lens and build the operational range that could support broader leadership. But she also recognised the challenge involved in leaving an environment where she had built experience and credibility to start again in a new industry, a new business and with a new team.

What makes the move interesting is therefore not simply the change from Aerospace & Defense to Cash Logistics. It is what the decision says about experience.

Deep industry knowledge gives an executive context. It helps them understand the business model, the drivers of performance and the risks specific to that environment. But experience across different contexts can bring something else: perspective.

A leader entering a new industry may not know all of its established assumptions, but they can bring the experience to recognise patterns, challenge them and ask different questions.

Kate's move illustrates an interesting balance between depth and distance.

Experience gives you expertise, but perspective can come from knowing that the way things are done is not necessarily the only way they can be done.

The people behind performance

For a Finance leader, performance is naturally measured through financial and operational indicators. What stands out in Kate's perspective is how often she brings the conversation back to people.

When asked what keeps her awake at night, her answer is not a financial metric:

“The wellbeing of my team is my top priority.”

She describes her team as an inspiration, particularly their ability to manage multiple key projects while continuing to deliver business as usual.

This concern for people is also visible in the way she thinks about operational performance. She talks about creating structure to reduce chaos and empower people, while reducing the time spent on non-value-added firefighting.

The objective is not simply to make the organisation more efficient. It is to create an environment where people have the clarity and capacity to focus on what matters.

For Kate, this includes trust, communication, involvement and empathy:

“To be successful, you must start by connecting with your team's heart and mind, take them on a journey and involve them in finding the solution.”

She adds that effective communication and empathetic leadership are key to building trust.

For her, people and performance are therefore not separate conversations. A team cannot sustainably deliver transformation simply because the strategy is sound or the numbers are clear. People need to understand the direction, feel involved in the solution, trust their leadership and have the capacity to execute.

Sustainable performance is not only something leaders measure. It is something they create the conditions for.

Beyond the numbers

Kate's perspective ultimately points to a broader evolution in the role of senior leaders.

Finance still needs strong financial discipline. Data still matters. Industry expertise remains valuable. But none of these things creates value in isolation.

The real contribution comes from connecting them: understanding the business behind the numbers, bringing perspective when familiar assumptions need to be challenged, and creating the conditions for people to turn strategy into execution.

These three dimensions are closely connected.

• Business partnership gives Finance a role in shaping decisions.

• Perspective helps leaders question what they think they already know.

• And people are ultimately the ones who turn strategy into performance.

  
  

For Finance leaders, that may mean moving further towards business partnership. For executives more broadly, it raises a wider question about experience and leadership.

Are we using our expertise simply to provide better answers, or are we using it to ask better questions, see different perspectives and create the conditions for people to perform?

That may be where the real value lies beyond the numbers.