The CFO: Becoming a Strategic Partner

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Dates Location Tuition
Nov 2, 2008 - Nov 7, 2008 Philadelphia $9,475
Apr 26, 2009 - May 1, 2009 Philadelphia $9,475

In today's world, financial rigor and strategic insight need to be tightly linked. Senior financial executives play a key role in strategy development and implementation, working closely with the CEO to creatively design growth opportunities for the future.

As CFO, you are called upon to identify and assess profitable business ventures, lead mergers and acquisitions, establish alliances, and shape internal growth strategies. You need to gain a deeper understanding of strategy, build leadership skills, and better communicate your financial knowledge to other leaders. In fact, 88 percent of 164 CFOs surveyed reported that CEOs expect them to be active members of the top senior-management team, according to a McKinsey survey of the first 100 days on the job. More than half said CEOs counted on them to challenge company strategy.

Wharton's leadership development program, The CFO: Becoming a Strategic Partner, offers frameworks and processes to help you contribute more to strategy development and value creation in your organization. You will learn and apply a scenario-based strategic planning process that examines possible futures to develop strategies for profiting from uncertainty. You'll learn approaches for managing risk, creating flexible strategies through options thinking, and developing alternative growth strategies.

Tuition for Philadelphia programs includes lodging and meals. Prices are subject to change. Program Consultants are available to provide more information on course specifics and discuss how this leadership development program might meet your needs. Please contact them by telephone at +1 215.898.1776 or by e-mail.


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An interdisciplinary team of Wharton faculty in finance, strategy, marketing, and leadership use lectures and case studies (including Airbus, Teletech) to demonstrate frameworks and hone strategic thinking. Small teams work with faculty on scenario planning for specific industries that is then used to explore the key capabilities that will be needed to succeed across multiple futures. Industry representatives examine key issues affecting CFOs and CEOs.

Session Topics for The CFO: Becoming a Strategic Partner Program

  • Using Financial Data To Drive Value-Creating Growth
  • Strategic Planning Under Uncertainty
  • Integrating Finance and Strategy
  • Portfolio Analysis
  • Managing Risk
  • Alternative Growth Strategies
  • Applying Real-Options Thinking to Strategy Formulation
  • Influence and Leadership
  • Relationship Management

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This leadership development program is designed for senior financial executives who are responsible for developing and implementing strategy as part of senior leadership. CFOs, vice presidents, controllers, and other senior financial executives with strategic and financial responsibilities have participated in the program.

We encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to leverage the application and value of the program. Additional group benefits are available when four or more participants attend a program.

Heighten your company’s competitiveness by combining financial discipline with strategic insight. Through exercises in integrating finance, marketing, and IT and sessions on portfolio analysis and alternative growth strategies, you will come away with stronger leadership skills and ways to apply real-options thinking to strategy formulation. You will:

  • Develop more effective strategies for building value and managing risk in an uncertain environment.
  • Learn and apply the best practices for profitable growth.
  • Network with financial leaders in other industries.

John Percival, PhD JOHN R. PERCIVAL, PhD
Academic Director
Adjunct Professor of Finance,
The Wharton School
CEO, JRP Associates

John Percival is active in the development and teaching of various Executive Education programs. At Wharton since 1971, he is the lead faculty on several open-enrollment programs: Creating Value Through Financial Management and The CFO: Becoming a Strategic Partner. He has also developed customized programs for companies such as GE Capital, Pitney Bowes, IBM, Fiat, Chubb, Hartford, American Skandia, Sun Life, Siam Cement, Scientific Atlanta, Ford, and Bankers Trust. He consults to organizations in both the public and private sectors, has authored or co-authored articles in numerous publications, and was recently the recipient of the WEMBA Program Core Teaching Award for Financial Analysis.
Peter Cappelli , DPhil  PETER CAPPELLI, DPhil
George W. Taylor Professor of Management
Director, Center for Human Resources
The Wharton School

Peter Cappelli's areas of research are human resource practices and talent and performance management. Dr. Cappelli is the author of The New Deal at Work: Managing the Market-Driven Workforce (Harvard Business School Press, 1999), which describes the challenges associated with managing the new, more mobile workforce. His article "A Market-Driven Approach to Retaining Talent" focuses specifically on the challenges of retaining employees. Dr. Cappelli was recently named one of the 25 most influential people in the field of human capital by Vault.com.
Roch Parayre, PhD ROCH PARAYRE, PhD
Fellow, Aresty Institute of Executive Education
Managing Director, Decision Strategies International, Inc.

Roch Parayre is a senior partner and scenario-planning expert with Decision Strategies International, a consulting firm specializing in strategy. He teaches executives at the Wharton School, at CEDEP/INSEAD in France, and for the Institute of Management Studies. He has consulted with many of the Global 1,000 companies (including 3Com, Abbott Laboratories, Alcatel, American Airlines, American Re-Insurance, BASF, Baxter Healthcare, Bethlehem Steel, Brunswick Corporation, Cargill, Chubb, Citgo, Coca Cola, The Conservation Fund, Disney, EDS, Entergy, Givaudan, GlaxoSmithKline, Investors Group, J&J, Knight Ridder, Litton Industries, Lucent Technologies, Marathon Oil, MCI, Medtronic, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, New York Life, PNC Bank, Progress Software, and Texas Instruments) and has led executive education seminars on the topics of decision making, scenario planning, creativity, and strategy. He was previously on the faculty at the Cox School of Business at SMU, where he won numerous MBA teaching awards. He holds a PhD in business strategy from the University of British Columbia, a master's degree in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University, and an undergraduate degree in operations research and mathematics magna cum laude from the University of Ottawa.
David J. Reibstein, PhD DAVID J. REIBSTEIN, PhD
William Stewart Woodside Professor
Professor of Marketing
The Wharton School

Professor Reibstein has conducted research into competitive marketing strategies, e-commerce resource allocation, promotion evaluation, product variety, brand equity, and market segmentation. He has authored numerous books, developed the ValueWar competitive simulation, and teaches marketing management and marketing research in the MBA program, where he has received numerous teaching awards, including national recognition for teaching among business school faculty in BusinessWeek and Fortune. He developed and coordinates several Wharton’s Executive Education programs such as Competitive Marketing Strategy and Wharton Marketing Metrics™: Linking Marketing to Financial Consequences. He helped found Bizrate.com, a leading infomediary that has surveyed more than three million Internet customers and was recently appointed to a new marketing task force for Major League Baseball called Major League Baseball in the 21st Century.
Harbir Singh HARBIR SINGH, PhD
The Mack Professor
Professor of Management
Co-Director, Mack Center for Technological Innovations
The Wharton School

Harbir Singh is a leading researcher on strategic alliances and strategies for corporate renewal, including path-breaking projects on managing acquisitions and alliances and post-acquisition management. He has consulted for companies such as Bell Atlantic, IBM, Merck, and AT&T. His current research includes strategies for corporate alliances and acquisitions, corporate governance, joint ventures, management buyouts, and corporate restructuring. He serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious publications and has extensive experience in working with senior executive audiences in the U.S. and India.

Organizational ROI: Capturing New Business

Brad Schneider, VP and CFO of MicroSat Systems, Inc., knew it wouldn't be easy for his startup company to land lucrative commercial contracts for its satellites. But within 6 months of implementing an evaluation system learned at Wharton's The CFO: Leveraging Strategic Partnerships, Schneider's company finalized a multimillion-dollar commercial contract, is in negotiations for international contracts, and is pursuing other international work with the federal government. "Through aggressive marketing, we were able to bring our business plan forward by about five years, relative to the commercial and international business sectors," Schneider said.

And while those contracts were under negotiation long before he attended Wharton, the knowledge he gained in the classroom served to reinforce and reinvigorate the company's strategic analysis process. "Brad came back from Wharton with some new ideas that we hadn't looked at before," said John Roth, President and COO. "He's gotten our whole management team thinking in new ways about the future of the company."

"Most of our employees at MicroSat Systems have years of experience with well-respected companies, but in this industry you have to earn your wings," Schneider said. "No one in the commercial sector wants to take risks with young companies. We knew the biggest barrier would be getting into commercial contracts."

Last summer, Schneider organized an offsite meeting with Roth, the company's CTO and director of marketing, where he implemented the scenario-planning techniques presented at Wharton by Roch Parayre. "I was able to take what we did in the classroom and help our management team narrow down the specifics of what we need to accomplish this year," Schneider said.

One of those methods was not discounting any ideas. "We got everything up on the board and then began isolating the key drivers of the business," Schneider said. "From that meeting, we opened up this process to our first-line managers — those who actually lead the engineering and manufacturing functions — and were able to get a more diverse understanding of what we're faced with in the competitive arena."

The company has now incorporated this process in its quarterly offsite planning sessions. "We've gained insights into how to better market our products and how to capture new business," said Roth.

It was Roth who encouraged his CFO to attend Wharton's leadership development program. "I'd attended a class at Wharton before and wanted my CFO, my right-hand man, to do the same," Roth said. The five days Schneider spent at Wharton has helped bridge the gap between his "day-to-day tactical issues, such as current projects and cash flow" and more long-range, strategic-level thinking, Roth said. "The CFO is the linchpin that makes sure your business' financial side grows along with your technical side."

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