Donna Severson

Does the CEO elevate the CFO… or does the CFO elevate the CEO? Weak finance departments create weak companies. I spent more than a decade and a half in banking looking at hundreds of companies. And there’s one pattern that is one hundred percent correlated. Every...Single...Time. CEOs underestimate the power of finance. They think finance is reporting. Compliance. Budget updates. Keeping the books clean. No. That’s the bare minimum. A strong finance function does something completely different: It becomes the steward of the strategy. It guides execution. It educates every department on how to win. It allocates capital with intention. It builds the runway for growth. It shapes decisions before they become problems. It keeps the CEO honest. It holds the entire company together. You want to know the real limiter of a company’s performance? The relationship between the CEO and the CFO. If the CEO treats finance like an afterthought… If the CFO gets trapped in reporting mode… If finance is only brought in at the end of decisions… If the CFO is not a co-pilot… Then the company hits a ceiling. Always. And that ceiling shows up in the financials long before anyone admits it. The best companies, the ones that scale from $50M to $500M and beyond, all have one thing in common: A strategic CFO who thinks like an operator. And a CEO who knows they can’t fly the plane alone. This is the limitation of the CFO: What the company is vs what the company could be. Most companies never reach their potential. Because the CFO is operating at $50M thinking… when the business requires $500M thinking. And you feel the difference everywhere. #CFO #FPandA #StrategicFinance

394

61 Comments

Kohl’s has fired its newly installed CEO, who has spent less than five months in the position, after the retailer found that Ashley Buchanan engaged in unethical behavior. Buchanan’s dismissal was “for cause,” a rare rebuke of a business leader that carries serious weight in the business community. It comes after an investigation from an outside counsel found that he “violated company policies by directing the company to engage in vendor transactions that involved undisclosed conflicts of interest,” according to a press release. Kohl’s added that his termination is “unrelated to the company’s performance, financial reporting, results of operations and did not involve any other company personnel.” https://cnn.it/3YNF43J

204

29 Comments

Accounting bottlenecks? AI now handles repetitive tasks like categorizing expenses, flagging suspicious transactions, and speeding up reconciliations, cutting manual work by over 60%. ✅ Smarter books. ✅ Faster close. ✅ Fewer errors.

236

10 Comments

Launched same year as Walmart, Kmart should be a retail titan Instead, by 2002, fragmented systems drove it to bankruptcy 📉 In our latest Capital & Clarity newsletter (link in comments), we dive into the real issues behind Kmart's collapse: Silos across merchandising, supply chain, and finance. Numbers existed, but no one connected them. The result was bloated inventory, frozen cash, and vendors walking away. The lessons are clear: 1️⃣ Tech + Finance = Leverage Walmart invested in IT to unify data in the 70s. Kmart didn’t. Without integrated systems, finance can’t be the arbiter of trade-offs. 2️⃣ Promotions Without Modeling = Death Spiral Discounting looks like growth until finance maps the real cash cycle. Without that lens, promotions erode margin and liquidity simultaneously. 3️⃣ Culture of Instinct > Analytics At Kmart, executives ignored data that challenged instinct. Today, founders must force finance into the strategy room, not let it sit in the back as “reporting.” -- Kmart had capital, brand recognition, and scale. It still fell because finance wasn’t the unifying framework. #cpg #retail #dtc #kmart #walmart #privateequity #restructuring #cashflow #financialmodeling #cfo

20

13 Comments

KOHL'S EXPECTS REVENUE TO FALL 5% TO 7% IN 2025 #Kohl’s posted an earnings and revenue beat for the fiscal fourth quarter on Tuesday, but its stock plunged as it issued much worse-than-expected guidance for the year ahead. Kohl’s fourth-quarter net sales of $5.18 billion fell from $5.71 billion during the same period in 2023. Full-year 2024 sales came in at $15.39 billion, down from $16.59 billion in 2023. Timm said Tuesday that while store sales were strong, digital sales underperformed, especially in the legacy home category. https://lnkd.in/g4Ha-nMs #retailnews #retailsales #departmentstores #futureofretail #storeclosures #TopRetailExperts #RetailVoices

14

4 Comments

What Near-Term Fixes Does Kohl's Need? On his first quarterly analyst call since being named Kohl’s CEO, Ashley Buchanan announced a number of “tactical, short-term, no-regret moves” to help stabilize the retailer’s business, including rebalancing assortments, improving in-stocks, and reducing coupon exclusions. Read the discussion and share your comments: https://lnkd.in/ep6BrE4a Jeff Sward "What near-term fix does Kohl’s need? A personality. A Brand Promise that offers some kind of distinction and differentiation. Product curation that gives people a reason to drive Target and shop and Kohl’s. Maybe a series of high profile collaborations. And i would buy all the planners and buyers new calculators." Paula Rosenblum "I think they did well when their private label brands were interesting so that’s what I’d use the cash for. A relative used to do the visual merchandising for Chaps, which was Lauren”s private label for Kohl’s. She was laid off before the pandemic, as the company began heading downhill. hopefully their forecasting software is solid." Neil Saunders "Kohl’s has lost 1.3 million customers over the past five years. So, a good start point would be to understand why those people defected. When we look at our data there are some clear priority reasons: assortments not being relevant, hard to shop stores, poor value for money, and a lack of interesting products. Unfortunately, all of this adds up to a pretty broken proposition which needs to get back to basics."

11

3 Comments

Finance will not be valued if we only provide number Do we just throw numbers at people? Think about it. If I tell you, "Our revenue is $500 million," what does that even mean? Is that good? Bad? Compared to what? Numbers don’t speak for themselves. They need a story. I once sat in a meeting where a finance guy rattled off numbers like a robot. Everyone nodded, but I could see it, their minds were somewhere else. Finance is about making decisions. Numbers are just tools. It’s how we connect them to the real world that matters. → A profit report means nothing unless ↳ we know if that profit is sustainable. → A cost-cutting plan is useless unless ↳ we know where to cut without hurting growth. → A high cash balance sounds great until ↳ you realize that money is not working for the business. Don’t just present numbers. Tell the story behind them. Then show what’s next. Then help teams see the path forward. That’s when finance becomes powerful. Not just math. But impact. #Story

68

6 Comments

Retail Staffing: The Ongoing Tug of War Between Finance & Operations Let’s be honest — few conversations are as consistently debated in retail leadership rooms as store staffing. Finance wants to optimize labor cost, keep GMROL strong, and protect the P&L. Retail ops wants coverage, service quality, and customer experience — especially in high-touch formats like footwear. And both are right. But here’s the real challenge: staffing can’t be standardized across all retail categories. A footwear store is not an apparel store. A high-margin, high-service brand isn’t the same as a fast-turnover volume play. That’s why any serious staffing discussion needs to go beyond hours and headcount. It needs to ask: Are we deploying labor where it generates the best return? Some of the KPIs we track to answer that: GMROL – Are we getting the right gross margin return for our labor investment? Sales per Labor Hour – How efficient is the sales output per hour worked? Conversion & Staff Productivity – Are we turning footfall into revenue? Labor Cost % of Sales – Is our cost aligned to our sales volume and service model? We also consider the nature of the product: Footwear: more backroom handling, size trials, longer selling time — but higher basket size and margin. Apparel: faster transactions, higher volume, more folding/merchandising — requires speed and efficiency. So what’s the answer? It’s not cutting staff blindly or throwing bodies at the floor. It’s about category-aware staffing models. It’s about building agile finance teams that partner with ops. It’s about aligning KPIs to both profitability and customer experience. What’s worked for you in balancing finance discipline with retail floor realities? Do your staffing KPIs reflect the true complexity of your category? Let’s discuss.👇

16

2 Comments

80% of finance leaders say manual work is holding their teams back. That’s not a productivity issue. It’s a growth problem. When AR teams spend hours chasing payments, value creation stops. Disconnected ERPs, missing data, manual matching… it all adds up to slower cash flow and frustrated teams. There’s a smarter path forward. One where cash is applied in seconds, not days. And your team focuses on strategy, not spreadsheets. Scroll through the carousel 👇 --- Give your cash applications rocket fuel - https://ow.ly/fj0650Y8UPI

11

Watching what’s unfolded at Kohl’s with Ashley Buchanan isn’t just about one leader or one company. It’s a wake-up call—and a reminder that integrity still matters. More and more people are starting to question what leadership really means. They’re challenging outdated ideas of power, control, and performance at all costs. And they’re asking the hard questions: Who are we trusting to lead us? Are they walking the talk? Are values just words on a wall—or are they being lived, even when no one’s watching? What’s happening at Kohl’s is part of a bigger shift. People are tired of spin. They want truth, accountability, and leadership that’s grounded in something real. As someone who believes deeply in leading with purpose and character, I hope this moment pushes us all to rethink how we show up—for our teams, our communities, and ourselves. Because the real measure of leadership isn’t how loud your title is—it’s how well your actions align with your values when it really counts. #IntegrityMatters #MoralCompass #HRLeadership #CorporateAccountability #LeadWithPurpose #CultureMatters #AuthenticLeadership

139

11 Comments