'Our members are hard-wired to doing things better'.
| Author | Babber, Gulzari |
| Position | A word from the president |
In today's fast-moving business environment, organisations must focus on finetuning every facet of their performance if they are to remain competitive. For this to happen, they need managers with a dynamic portfolio that not only includes a passion for results, but the skills and insight to understand what drives those results.
I may be a little biased, but I would assert that CIMA members are the only finance professionals who can meet this challenge--not only because of their unique skill set but because they are hard-wired to focus on "doing things better".
Under its royal charter, CIMA is committed to developing the science of management accounting. In essence, this means that the institute must ensure that our members' skills are not only relevant to the business community, but can be continually fine-tuned to help organisations enjoy long-term, sustainable success.
To reinforce this, the institute's programme of continuing professional development ensures that our members' focus is on the perpetual improvement of business practices and performance--in short: doing things better on a constant basis and achieving sustainable business results by doing so.
We recently revisited this subject in one of our new CGMA "innovation agenda" reports. The "Fast-Track to Leadership" points out that the growing demands on the finance function have led to many financial leadership roles becoming more diverse and complex than ever before.
Getting the right people in the right roles--with the right skills--is a perpetual challenge for organisations. In the previous issue of this magazine, we printed a map showing the countries that are threatened by looming shortages in skills.
A recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit added to this debate by highlighting the difficulties that businesses are having in identifying the right talent. Of particular concern was the 68 per cent of those surveyed who said that the skills problem becomes more acute the higher up the organisation you look.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Despite the challenging outlook, there is good news for CGMAs. Our report...
To continue reading
Request your trialCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
