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August might be Patrick McClymont\u2019s preferred month when it comes to entering the CFO office. 

\u201cSeptember is great, but you may want to show up a little before in order to get your feet wet,\u201d comments McClymont, who last September became CFO of Hagerty, a once\u2013stand-alone insurance agency for classic automobiles that has now morphed into an automotive enthusiast brand that in addition to insurance products also serves up to its car-minded customers a menu of \u201cmembership\u201d programs and experiences.

It should perhaps serve as no surprise that McClymont\u2019s timing preference has everything to do with the industry\u2019s annual planning process and the opportunity that it affords newly appointed CFOs to convert the fall rite into a learning process

Observes McClymont: \u201cYou must ask not only \u2018How do I learn from this?\u2019 but also \u2018What are my intuitions?\u2019 and \u2018What do we need to change?\u2019\u201d

To better highlight the rewards of CFO timing, McClymont tells us about an earlier CFO chapter with entertainment technology company IMAX.

Having joined this firm in August of 2016, McClymont found that the fall planning process enabled him with the insight necessary to more confidently signal a possible lane change during in his CFO stint with the company.

In early 2017, only 5 months after stepping into the CFO role, McClymont began to see some negative trends within the company\u2019s operational data, prompting him to raise his concerns with IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond.

\u201cRichard had this tremendous intuition about the business, so he kind of saw where I was coming from and said, \u2018Okay, let\u2019s closely monitor our performance on the next three movie titles that are coming out, and if we find that we\u2019re not on track, then let\u2019s have a real conversation,\u2019\u201d recalls McClymont, who adds that this approach provided him with an opportunity to set up an \u201cearly warning system.\u201d  

Besides the benefits that a CFO can garner from \u201clearning while planning,\u201d McClymont\u2019s experience highlights the critical CFO\u2013CEO relationship-building that transpired during the early days of his IMAX career.

While he does not tell us whether a \u201creal conversation\u201d ever actually took place, McClymont does let us know that the conversation that CEO Gelfond had in mind would have involved IMAX\u2019s stakeholders at large.

Comments McClymont: \u201cHe said, \u2018Go get ready for that real conversation now\u2014we need to start working on what to do if we end up in a spot where we need to pivot.'\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney