Imagine if you had a room where you were given all the ideal tools needed to create your perfect work environment — no distractions, your favorite beverage, excellent Wi-Fi, maybe some Chopin or Satie, or whatever you want — for four hours while working in this room. When you’re done, it would be the same time as when you walked in. Stolen time, so to speak. How would you use it?
Here’s what finance leaders had to say:
Stacey Ryan-Cornelius, global CFO of Ogilvy (international advertising conglomerate)
![Stacey Ryan Cornelius](/imgproxy/WFCzRHnE6iKbQhJD83TmktPB0v0kZtMJeAj2rd-Bfvk/g:ce/rs:fit:800:800/bG9jYWw6Ly8vZGl2ZWltYWdlLzE2MDk2MjIzMTIzNDcuanBn.webp)
I would say scenario planning. Everything in our business is so fast-paced. Everything can be a bit of controlled chaos at times. Sometimes I move very quickly onto the next phone call or person at the door. If I had a bit of “stolen” time, a free few hours, I could lay out paths that could make people’s blood pressure go down in times of stress. We all only have a set amount of energy and time in the day, and I think we could all do a better job of protecting those boundaries of time.
Extra time to find the missing piece of the puzzle, improve thought processes, evaluate more data or further the understanding of the dynamics of the decisions all take time that I wish I had some more to allocate to sometimes.
Lee Taylor, CFO of OnlyFans (largest global explicit content creation platform)
![Lee Taylor](/imgproxy/D4FQs-PuxFh5zu8HK0bmf542kHjpoqfFEQ7zgSTpcDo/g:ce/rs:fit:1376:1377/bG9jYWw6Ly8vZGl2ZWltYWdlL0xlZV9UYXlsb3JfMS5qcGc=.webp)
It depends on the week. If the week had very busy days, I could use those four hours to continue working rather than pushing my days into the late hours of the night.
But, on days when I get my work done within my normal work hours, I would use that time for self-development. I would read more, keep up with the industry we’re in, pay more attention to global markets and things like that. Those are the things I tend to put down when work gets busy, and I would allocate the time towards that.
Erica Williams, chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), a non-profit corporation that oversees the audits of US-listed public companies
![Erica Williams](/imgproxy/ODGvkDeNJtmXpwbaOfnkHoRa4jsyIm7_GALRYvUhOQk/g:ce/rs:fit:1200:1500/bG9jYWw6Ly8vZGl2ZWltYWdlL0VyaWNhX1dpbGxpYW1zXzFfNHg1LmpwZw==.webp)
I struggle with this one truly, but I will say this; all the work that we do here, and the work that I’m able to do with this board is because of our staff. Since I’ve taken this role, I’ve tried to listen to our teams and use what I gather to empower our staff to do more. We’re improving our standards, enhancing inspections, strengthening enforcement, and improving organizational effectiveness. During all of this, I want to make sure that this is a great place to work, too.
I would take the extra time to spend it with our staff. Not only would I focus on furthering this notion of making the PCAOB a great place to work, but I would also try and also try to figure out if there’s anything else we can do to protect investors.
Troy Anderson, CFO of Universal Technical Institute Inc. (leading provider of skilled trades training and education)
![Troy Anderson](/imgproxy/YiXvk4Aqa6tTi_Q_pzOO5r7wX8YNETG6W2dsbZYxOjQ/g:ce/rs:fit:490:491/bG9jYWw6Ly8vZGl2ZWltYWdlLzE2MzUzNzk1MDU5MTdfY29weS5qcGc=.webp)
For me lately, I have been focusing on compiling some of my thoughts in a way that I can share more information with my team in a productive manner. When I have ideas swirling in my head, especially when I travel and go to events, there are a bunch of sessions I go to and learn from. There are even more [sessions] I see but don’t get the chance to go to that I wish I could.
If I had some extra time, I would take it to identify key elements of things I’ve learned recently and ways to share them with my leadership team and more broadly across the organization. I want to make sure I convey and then empower people with that information, with the hopes that I can stimulate some thoughts of their own so that can help them with their jobs or team engagement.
Jim Head, CFO of Multiplan (health care network provider)
![Jim Head](/imgproxy/sS0jCe_cLcO4LymxAW6Wk9KGKiF9CZwZ-se33U1jEDM/g:ce/rs:fit:800:800/bG9jYWw6Ly8vZGl2ZWltYWdlL0ppbV9oZWFkLmpwZw==.webp)
I would use the time to be more proactive. I wish I could have a bit more time to try and predict the future. We have a pretty interesting business in the sense that a lot of our activities revolve around flows of healthcare claims and utilization in the industry. So, if we get better at predicting the future, which has been one of the hardest parts as CFO, it will be a win for us.
It’s about “looking around the corner,” if you will, getting all of the technology in place to do that, making predictions and then waiting for the outcome. It’s a very time-consuming process.