CAREER OVERVIEW
Former Dentsu International executive Andy Leck is Flight Story’s Chief Financial Officer.
Earlier in his career, Andy was Financial Director of the IT transformation programme at WPP, working across areas of media, advertising, and market research.
Prior to joining Flight Story, he was a CFO at Dentsu International, where he supported the establishment of shared services for operations, technology, finance, and HR in a complex global organisation, including negotiating significant global contracts with Microsoft, AWS, Google, Adobe, and Salesforce.
He has agreed to share some of his experience and insight with Partner Executive.
WHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO MOVE FROM A GLOBAL LISTED COMPANY TO A GROWING BUSINESS?
It has been an ambition of mine for a number of years to be honest, but it wasn’t until the Flight Story role was being discussed that I found the right combination of founding team and proposition that I really believed in.
HOW HAS YOUR PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE PREPARED YOU FOR THIS ROLE?
I’d say both my early career and more recent experiences have helped, but in very different ways.
My first role was in a relatively small family-owned group of companies, which gave me a good understanding of how finance worked ‘end to end’ and also how to work with company owners.
In the last 15 or so years of my career I have worked for large multinational companies who have all been going through major transformational journeys (as the saying goes, change is the only constant). This has meant I’ve been able to work on many large scale, complex change programmes (acquisition due diligence and integration, consolidation of capabilities, systems implementations, etc) which required a different set of skills – understanding complex problems and facilitating solutions across multiple teams, cultures and stakeholders.
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE YOU HAVE ENCOUNTERED TO DATE IN YOUR NEW ROLE?
Initially, not having a team. After many years of managing large teams where your role is to motivate and provide direction, influence, support and guidance rather than ‘doing’ the work, suddenly there was a lot of ‘doing’.
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST POSITIVE SO FAR?
Two standouts for me so far.
Firstly, the tone set by the Board continues to be inspiring – they are self-proclaimed as ‘delusionally ambitious’.
Secondly, the ability of the team to make things happen – every day sees new challenges with no established blueprint, and they simply figure it out and learn from it.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST SURPRISE IN JOINING FLIGHT STORY?
Everybody seems to prefer coming into the office to work, and I don’t think it’s just because of the ping pong table.
It does make it easier to get to know the team and what is happening on a daily basis. It seems at odds with what we see daily in the media.
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT QUALITY TO MAKE THE TRANSITION SUCCESSFUL TO A SMALL BUSINESS AFTER SPENDING YEARS OF WORKING IN SIZABLE AND COMPLEX COMPANIES?
I’d say understanding ‘fit for purpose’.
Experience of working in large corporation’s conditions you to the importance of systems, policies and procedures – all the things you need to ensure consistency and predictability in a public company – which just aren’t in place in a start-up type environment. Figuring out the minimum you need at what time to be able to scale rapidly is key.
WHAT ARE THE TOP PRIORITIES FOR THE EXECUTIVE TEAM OVER THE NEXT 12 MONTHS?
So far it’s been about testing and refining the hypothesis with real clients, and this has refined the direction of the company. The next 12 months is around developing our existing capabilities into scalable, repeatable solutions, acquiring some key capabilities where we identified that we currently have some gaps and integrating them successfully into the team.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO IS CONSIDERING MAKING A SIMILAR MOVE?
Firstly, do your due diligence so that you are confident it’s the right team and the right proposition that you are looking to move to.
The right team is the most important – the proposition will inevitably evolve.
Secondly, talk through the pros and cons with your family – it’s a lifestyle commitment with somewhat higher levels of risk so be upfront about any potential impacts to your family life.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/qa-andy-leck-cfo-flight-story-partner-financial/?trackingId=B3Kqd2S0P66khAZ6SdpGkw%3D%3D
