Caroline Stockmann is a musician, a linguist, a chartered accountant (FCA) and a seasoned executive whose experience includes senior roles in both blue chips and charities.
She is a classically trained flautist who is just as happy at a Massive Attack concert as a Daniel Barenboim one. And she is well travelled, having worked in the Netherlands and Thailand, to name just two overseas assignments.
Openness about who she is as a person fundamentally informs her leadership style. “My belief is people need to know you’re human,” she says.
It’s central to the way she operates. Compared with many other chief executives and senior leaders, Stockmann is strongly people-oriented and believes in embracing communication between herself and the people she leads. Teams contribute more to their organisations and to their customers, or indeed members, if they are allowed to play to their strengths.
Fulfilled, motivated people perform better, she believes, so throughout her career she has encouraged respectful two-way communication and sought to promote diversity and interaction with and between the individuals she has led. “We all want to make a difference to people’s lives and to our organisations,” she says.
That desire to make a difference began early for her. As a young graduate, Stockmann wanted to put her skills to use in one of the world’s most deprived corners. “I wanted to go to Ethiopia to teach blind children music, because I wanted to help make a difference,” she says.
“As it happened, they wouldn’t let me in the country because of immigration policy at the time, so I did some fundraising to buy musical instruments and the local police band taught the children. I ended up working with young people in the north of England, designing and running school-leaver courses. It was probably where I first started developing thoughts around diversity.”
With that formative experience behind her, she began looking for a role that would play to her skills and take her onwards into her career. Stockmann’s move into the world of finance began with KPMG, and it was her love of languages and of learning that got her through the door.
Her family had an engineering business built up by her grandfather, and her mother had ended up as chairman, a role her mother hated. “She particularly disliked it when the auditors came in, and I thought I could help out with that. So that’s why I ended up at KPMG. They wanted linguists and I thought I would learn something new.”
We all want to make a difference to people’s lives and to our organisations
After KPMG, she took the classic route into business, taking up a role as a senior internal auditor at Cadbury Schweppes. Her work there took her via secondments to Germany and Poland, where she set up the financial systems at a new Cadbury factory, after which she moved into a financial controller position at Granada.
Stockmann then moved on to Bestfoods, a company she stayed with for four years, during its takeover by Unilever in 2000, with whom she stayed a further six years. Surviving the takeover turned out to be quite a feat, but Stockmann had already won her place in Bestfoods by dint of determination.
When the role of Benelux regional CFO in the Netherlands originally came up, her soon-to-be boss dismissed her as too young for this senior and Dutch-speaking role. Stockmann’s response was to learn basic Dutch on a week-long crash course. Securing the job, she duly moved her young family to the Netherlands.
In the wake of the Unilever deal, she was one of only a handful of Bestfoods finance executives to retain their role. “I was one of the few Bestfoods people who survived. Unilever’s finance team was very strong and dominant in the merged organisation,” she says. Vice president of finance at Unilever Foods Europe turned out to be a fascinating position and one that confirmed her presence in the Unilever network.
It was also the largest subregion within the group, and Stockmann was able to take advantage of training opportunities, becoming a coach and reviving her earlier interest in diversity work. Then came the move to Unilever Thailand, one of the group’s high-growth locations where, as CFO and CIO, she managed the finances of the €600m entity.
In 2006, she moved to Switzerland to take up the role of head of global business planning at Novartis Group, looking after $23bn in pharma financials. After that she changed tack, returning to the UK to become financial and commercial director at the Southbank Centre.
This role marked the beginning of nearly a decade of senior roles in UK charities. As financial and commercial director, she managed 14 franchises, set up the annual Christmas market, established the riverside outdoor bars and secured lifeline funding for the centre at a time when small theatres were closing and arts funding was being cut to the bone. “I put together a strategy for the organisation, something they’d never had before – none of the arts organisations had.”
With that strategic framework, Stockmann was able to win her case when she told the Arts Council that investing in the Southbank over the short term would enable it to become self-sustaining, an argument that netted the organisation an extra £16.5m.
In the FTSE 100, around 80% of chief executives have a finance background. In the charitable sector, it’s less than 10%
A leadership change at the Southbank Centre prompted another move. In 2010, Stockmann became interim international director at Sue Ryder Care. Then came four years as CFO of Save the Children International, a role that involved considerable restructuring of the operation. In 2014, she was headhunted by the British Council, the UK’s largest charity, with a £1bn turnover.
Both of these roles gave her an opportunity to bring some hallmark financial and professional rigour into organisations that badly needed change. She joined Save the Children International at its inception, with a brief to integrate and streamline its operations.
“It was a $1bn start-up, taking on all the programmes from Save the Childrens around the world and merging them, for instance, in one location, where you had seven country directors, seven HR directors and seven finance directors, most of them not only on the same road, but operating out of the same building.”
The work also involved rolling out a new financial system. In all she worked with 30 member organisations to deliver $10m a year in savings to be reinvested in the charity’s work with children.
Stockmann came up against comparable levels of complexity and challenge at the British Council, which needed a better-functioning finance operation. “That was about including people, filling the gaps, building new teams where needed and developing existing teams,” she says.
The foundational work also helped inject a strong financial management ethic at the heart of the organisation, something that enabled her to roll out a new finance strategy, as well as global procurement and estate management programmes. “This was an organisation that had grown rapidly over the years, but hadn’t grown its professional services,” she says.
Making sure there is a professional work ethic within finance functions is a recurring theme in her career, but getting a financial mindset more widely recognised and accepted within charitable organisations is not a given. It’s broadly the case that charity CEOs tend to make their way up via operational roles rather than through finance, a fact that might inform finance’s lack of standing in the sector.
“I believe that in the FTSE 100, around 80% of chief executives have a finance background. In the charitable sector, it’s less than 10%,” she says. But she believes having a financial and professional qualification has given her a great deal. “It gives you an insight into the whole organisation, which is invaluable. Through my roles in all these organisations, I’ve seen everything that goes on.”
In turn, the mix of charity and private sector work she has experienced has paid dividends in career terms. “I do believe wholeheartedly that you can apply these skills and lessons in any organisation. One of the most important things for anyone in finance is to first of all try and understand the business.”
Clearly, the next step for Stockmann was to become a CEO, a long-standing ambition. And she intends to carry her commitment to diversity and encouragement of others with her into the top job at the ACT. For her, the primary role of the CEO is leadership and empowerment.
“It’s interesting to see how some people take that next step up, but are fearful. And that manifests itself in trying to control things. They stifle everything around them. People around them have to check everything with the boss. The boss’s ideas are always responded to with a yes and you get that ‘yes culture’. That’s not healthy for an organisation.”
I believe that you can apply these skills in any organisation. One of the most important things for anyone in finance is to first of all try and understand the business
The ACT’s value, as a people-facing organisation committed to helping and promoting its membership, is strongly evident to her. The ACT has a great deal to offer – high-quality people working at the hub with council members and the advisory board contributing a wealth of expertise and experience.
The events she has encountered so far, this year’s Smart Cash Conference and Deals of the Year Awards, have shown the membership and professional body’s commitment to applauding its high achievers and sharing its wealth of good practice, and demonstrated that service ethic abundantly, she says.
Through all this, she says, the main thread is professionalism. Professional membership groups have so much to offer because they provide that assurance about the solidness of an individual’s qualification as well as their qualities and integrity.
As she points out, the implications of a person going into a treasury function without a solid qualification or adequate preparation are pretty stark. “It is possible without those for someone to bring down a whole business. This is about professional integrity, making sure that’s in place in business, encouraging that and helping people understand treasury and its role in society.”
She would like to see the ACT grow and increase its membership – although not at the expense of quality. And the task of ensuring that commercial organisations appreciate the centrality of the treasury discipline will also be paramount. Colin Tyler’s work to reach chartered status for the ACT was work well achieved, she says, and Stockmann would like to see the ACT be able to confer individual chartered status on its members in due course.
For now, what’s important is ensuring the ACT and its members can build on these solid foundations, leverage the expertise that already exists within the body and its membership, and forge fruitful relationships with membership bodies with similar concerns and outlooks. She looks set to bring considerable energy to that undertaking.
Present Chief executive, ACT
2014-2016 CFO, the British Council
2010-2014 CFO, Save the Children International
2010 Interim international director, Sue Ryder Care
2007-2009 Financial and commercial director, the Southbank Centre
2006-2007 Head of global business planning, Novartis Group
2000-2006 Various roles at Unilever, including two years as CFO and CIO, Unilever Thailand
1997-2001 Various roles at Bestfoods, including FD and CFO, Bestfoods Benelux from 1999
1996-1997 Financial controller, Granada
1994-1995 Senior auditor, Cadbury Schweppes
1990-1994 Assistant manager, KPMG
Liz Loxton is editor of The Treasurer.
This article was taken from the April 2017 issue of The Treasurer magazine. For more great insights, log in to view the full issue or sign up for eAffiliate membership