THE NEW CFO.

• Author: Millman, Gregory J.

New, as in into-the-trying-pan. Smart, energetic, ground-breaking - and sometimes downright fun - define today's winners of the chief finance title. Here, five of the chosen show why they made it to the top.

Most people wouldn't think of a career in finance as a ticket to adventure. But the new CFOs profiled here have most unstereotypically challenged the quotidien, and found adrenalin-pumping challenges behind the numbers. All have stretched the definition of financial management past any reasonable expectation of elasticity. For quorum's Terry Allison Rappuhn, the proper practice of finance is part of the practice of medicine; she speaks of billing almost as a healing art. Warren Ligan, of Chiquita Brands, found the broadest understanding of multinational operations through a function generally considered to be the narrowest - corporate tax. Longaberger's Stephanie Imhoff learned to craft financial controls that preserve an entrepreneur's dream. The Home Depot's Dennis Carey blazed a career at the top of two of America's most financially successful companies. And our cover CFO, William Chiasson of Levi Strauss, has a habit of seeking a challenge whenever he finds himself getting comfortable.

It is a commonplace now that the role of the CFO is changing. Michael Flagg, a partner in the CFO practice of Heidrick and Struggles, defines the new CFO as "primarily a strategic business partner who happens also to manage the financial function." The new CFOs profiled here - four of the five have earned the CFO title within the past 18 months - find their new jobs are part media relations, part human resources, part marketing, part strategic planning, part technology pioneer and only part finance. Think of it as cross-training in the extreme sport of business.

Out of His Comfort Zone, Again

William Chiasson, Levi Strauss & Co.

William Chiasson, Levi Strauss

Turned CFO at LS & Co. August 1998

Up from sr. vp of finance/information systems and CFO, Kraft Foods

Bill Chiasson joined Levi Strauss & Co in August 1998, and six @ months later chief operating officer Peter Jacobi resigned. "To be honest, what really made me think seriously about leaving was watching Bill Chiasson, our new chief financial officer," Jacobi told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I said to myself, 'There really are new ways to be looking at things.'"

Chiasson wasn't looking for a job when he was approached by the San Francisco-based LS&Co. in the summer of 1998. But he was going to a wedding in California anyway, so he agreed to stay a little longer to talk about the offer. "I spent some time with some of the management team and a few board members and got excited by the notion of a company trying to redefine itself into a real consumer products company," he recalls.

LS&Co. had long dominated the blue-jeans market, but by the mid-1990s the firm had lost touch with its customers - and saw its sales decline. Chiasson was CFO of Kraft Foods at the time. His jump from a powerhouse of brand management to a company in a vortex of change would hardly be a conventional recipe for career management. But Bill Chiasson has never been very conventional. He grew up with seven brothers and sisters. His father, a zoologist on the faculty of the University of Arizona, packed the family off to Africa when Bill was about to enter his senior year of high school. While kids back home were entertaining conventional expectations for the senior prom, Chiasson was hitting the books at the University of Science and Technology in Ghana. He came back to the States with an unconventional educational objective, at least among financial careerists. "I wanted to get the best damn liberal arts education I could," he says.

The anthropology department was the star of the liberal arts program at the University of Arizona, so it was a logical choice. After getting a broad understanding of how people behave, he tightened his focus on business, taking an MBA from the University of Southern California. He launched his career in 1976 with three years of public accounting at Andersen & Co. "It was a good training ground, because it exposed me to a lot of different businesses and types of problems," he says.

The key to understanding Chiasson is knowing that he likes problematic, uncomfortable situations so much that he goes out of his way to find them. After his stint with Andersen & Co., he joined a West Coast division of American Hospital Supply, a company that was acquired by health-care heavyweight Baxter during his 10-year tenure. Chiasson moved through financial posts in several divisions and has high praise for the company's ability to keep challenging and developing high-potential financial types. But in 1988, he went to Kraft, because "I was getting too comfortable and wanted to get out of my comfort zone."

This was the high water mark of the junk-bond era. Chiasson joined Kraft as corporate vice president of analysis and planning. A big, independent company in a consolidating industry, Kraft would be an obvious target. So one of Chiasson's first projects was to develop contingency plans for a takeover attempt. A few months after he joined, Philip Morris made a bid for Kraft. Negotiations proceeded more or less according to Chiasson's plan, and Kraft became part of the tobacco giant's empire.

"The merger with Philip Morris was a terrific time," he says. "Heads were spinning at the changes Philip Morris was looking for." His star rose, as he found ways to "create a finance organization that could partner with the business side to create powerhouse brands." But by 1998, after 10 years, he found himself getting comfortable again. Then the call came from LS&Co., and he'd found another uncomfortable, problematic challenge.

As CFO of the apparel firm, Chiasson has two main jobs: leading the finance function, and helping to develop and implement strategy for the overall company. He has moved fast on both fronts in his first year there.

His first priority as leader of the finance function is to make finance serve the needs of the business. "In the past, we've focused on traditional, historical financial measures. The business managers said GAAP reporting is nice, but it isn't linked to what they were doing. We attacked that immediately, and defined 16 different metrics, a blend of leading and lagging indicators, financial and nonfinancial measures, predictive and reporting results, to measure our achievement of company strategy with the ultimate expectation that it drives shareholder value," he says. As a result, Chiasson helped the company create a "balanced scorecard" to track brand equity metrics, operational effectiveness and product development as well as financial performance.

Another priority has been to make the financial function more cost effective. To this end, Chiasson has centralized payroll, receivables...