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When CFO Scott Walker has considered new career opportunities in the past, only a small subset of growth businesses have been able to meet all of his desired criteria.

Very often the firms had achieved product market fit and successfully raised a number of rounds of funding, but to Walker they were just still too young. Perhaps the management was being reshuffled or the operations were too fragmented, and it would become clear to Walker that the company was not yet ready to find its \u201ccadence.\u201d

This would be of no little import, as helping companies to find their cadence is what Scott Walker does best, or so he explains as he reflects back on the different career choices on his path to becoming an \u201coperational CFO.\u201d \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0

Says Walker: \u201cMy sweet spot is stepping into a business that\u2019s doing well but has to professionalize. It has to grow up. It has to mature. It has to add discipline and build rigor in how it gets things done. This ultimately focuses on execution through decision-making on logic and data and facts.\u201d

According to Walker, a business might be able to swiftly close its books and review its balance sheet with regularity, but very often the firm is not yet advancing \u201cin step\u201d as one organization.

\u201cI put a healthy tension on the business to make sure that people are showing up every month, and there is a monthly operating review at which people talk about the fundamental underlying performance of the business,\u201d explains Walker, who believes that the regularity with which people talk about performance helps to inform how decisions are made across an organization and how things ultimately get done in a business.

Last May, when Walker stepped into the CFO office of Clarity Software Solutions, Inc., he was confident that he had found an excellent match for what he does best. Still, his first 100 days were not without a few challenges.

\u201cI couldn\u2019t find the cadence in my first couple of months, so the CEO and I sat down and I told him, \u2018I need to build a cadence here,'\u201d remarks Walker, who adds that his arrival at the software developer occurred at a unique place in time on the company\u2019s path to maturity.

Says Clarity\u2019s CFO: \u201cThis is a very important time for me as an operational CFO\u2014it\u2019s when I can really help a company.\u201d\xa0\u2013Jack Sweeney

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