The hire that gives you your week back is a strong number two who owns the close and the routine, so you stop being the last line of defence on everything. Usually that is a Financial Controller or a Head of FP&A, depending on where your time actually leaks.
Most CFOs do not lose their week to strategy. They lose it to review, chasing, and correcting work that should have been finished a layer below them.
This article is about fixing that.
Where does your week actually go?
Before you hire, track two weeks honestly. Not what you planned to do, what you did.
Most finance leaders find the same pattern. Reviewing schedules that keep coming back wrong. Rebuilding a board pack because the commentary was thin. Answering the same questions from the commercial team because nobody else can. Signing off things you should never have seen.
That is the job description of your next hire, written for you.
If the leak is control, accuracy and timeliness, you need a Controller. If the leak is analysis, forecasting and business partnering, you need FP&A leadership. Naming the leak first stops you hiring a generalist and hoping.
What does the right number two actually take off your plate?
A good Financial Controller owns the close end to end. Timetable, reconciliations, review, sign off. You see a clean set of numbers, not a work in progress you have to finish.
They also own the team below them. Their development, their quality, their deadlines. That is the part CFOs underestimate. When your Controller manages the juniors properly, you stop being the escalation point for every query.
A good Head of FP&A owns the forecast and the story. They turn the numbers into something the board can act on, and they hold the commercial team to account on their own assumptions.
Either way, the test is the same. After ninety days, are there whole categories of work you no longer touch? If not, you hired an extra pair of hands, not a layer.
Should you hire for the close or the story?
Be honest about your own strengths, because your number two should cover your weaker side, not mirror your stronger one.
If you are a technical, controls-minded CFO, you probably keep close discipline high but run thin on forward-looking analysis. Hire FP&A strength.
If you came up commercial and think in scenarios, your close and your controls may be the wobble. Hire a Controller who will not let month-end slip.
The worst outcome is hiring in your own image. You end up with two people who love the same third of the job and avoid the same third. The gaps stay open, and they stay yours.
How do you tell a real number two from a strong individual contributor?
Plenty of candidates are excellent at the work but have never carried a team or owned a process end to end. Both are valuable. Only one gives you your week back.
Ask about ownership, not activity. Not "did you run the close" but "what was the close like when you arrived and what was it like when you left". You are listening for evidence they improved a system, not just operated inside one.
Ask how they develop juniors. A real number two talks about their people unprompted. An individual contributor talks mostly about their own output.
Ask what they would want you to stop doing. The strong ones already have a view.
What does the hire cost you if you get it wrong?
More than the salary. A weak number two means you keep reviewing everything, so you never actually delegate. You have paid for a layer and kept the workload.
Worse, a mishire at this level unsettles the team below. Your best juniors watch how the new leader handles pressure and month-end. If it goes badly, they start looking, and you lose two people instead of one.
This is why the level below you is worth slowing down for. Getting the wrong person costs a quarter, sometimes more. If you want a steer on shaping the role or the search, this is exactly the ground we work in at Harper May, and our open finance roles show the shape of the market.
How do you set them up to actually give you time back?
Do not hand them a title and hope. In week one, agree the list of things that will move off your plate, and the date each one moves.
Give them the authority to go with it. If your team still routes decisions to you out of habit, you have to redirect them out loud, repeatedly, or the old pattern holds.
Then protect the handover for a full quarter. It is tempting to grab work back the first time something is imperfect. Coach instead of reclaiming. The point is to build a layer you can trust when it matters, not one that only works when you hover.
Get that right, and the week you get back is not admin time. It is the time you were hired to spend.
Common questions
Should I hire a Controller or a Head of FP&A first? Hire against your biggest leak. If the close and controls consume your review time, hire the Controller. If forecasting and board narrative eat your evenings, hire FP&A leadership.
How senior should my number two be? Senior enough to own a process and manage the team, not so senior they want your job in a year with no path to it. Match the level to the gap, and be honest about progression.
How long before I feel the difference? Expect a full quarter. The first month is learning, the second is taking ownership, the third is when whole categories of work finally leave your desk.
