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Looking back, CFO Ravi Narula tells us that he wishes that he had become a \u201cservant leader\u201d sooner, as he references the familiar leadership tag signaling a mind-set focused on serving others.

\u201cIf you asked me 15 years ago, \u2018Do you have a servant leader mind-set?,\u2019 unfortunately, I would have said \u2018No,\u2019\u201d comments Narula, who credits a graduate executive program at Stanford University for helping to raise his acumen when it comes to the role that servant leaders can play in successful businesses.

\u201cI began thinking more broadly as a CFO and seeing servant leadership and company culture as being foundational to the success of firms, as well as to my own future success as a CFO,\u201d remarks Narula, who\u2014in addition to servant leadership\u2014identifies the customer-probing Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a primary contributor to the culture of his current company, FinancialForce.

Asked if FinancialForce\u2019s NPS rating is the most widely known measure across the company\u2019s workforce, Narula tells us that he believes that 80 to 90 percent of the company\u2019s roughly 1,000 employees likely know the company\u2019s current scores, whether by geography, industry, or customer segment.  

To support his claim, Narula reports: \u201cAt our townhall meeting this morning, 20 of the 60 minutes were devoted to the Net Promoter Score.\u201d

Still, like many tech companies, FinancialForce has a work environment that has evolved in recent years to accommodate more remote workers through a hybrid model that has at times put management practices as well as servant leadership goals to the test.

According to Narula, it\u2019s now up to leaders to extend their reach in order to connect more often to capture the insight required to help an employee succeed.