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Richard Guest has held senior finance positions in several different companies including Diageo and Burger King, where he was vice president of finance. He recently served as interim group chief financial officer of Travelex and finds time management more critical in such a role.

"It's good experience, because you get exposed to different models and cultures," he says.

Regardless of the culture or the industry in which you are responsible for finance to get things done you need a world class team. You need to set clear direction and empower people to do the job.

"If you don't have a team that can identify the issues and solve the problems for themselves, you'll spend all your time fighting fires," he adds.

Staying in reactive mode will prevent you from moving the important items forward. You'll never get ahead of the game if you aren't free to work on strategic activities. As Guest says, "There will always be five to seven major initiatives that you're trying to drive through. Make sure you stay focused on those things."

On the other hand, you never know what might come up, so a good strategy is to set aside time in your schedule to deal with the unexpected. Guest says, he allocates 80 percent of his time on things he wants to drive through, and keeps 20 percent free to deal with issues that arise.

His advice on meetings: "Don't fill your calendar with meetings. A number of CFOs are in meeting after meeting. I always try to keep at least three hours a day for my own personal work time to work through my inbox, or simply thinking. Otherwise, you're just serving meetings rather than your agenda. You won't be moving those five to seven important things forward."

Guest says no matter what your priorities are, you can't get behind on email. "If you don't respond to a message it goes down badly, even if it's something small. You need to put in a little extra time every day to deal with that."

"It's good to have a smartphone or laptop that allows you to do work while you're waiting around at an airport. If you travel a lot, airports can be a good place to catch up on email."

A fine balance

A peculiarity of the finance function is that you have to strike a balance between serving the managing director and serving the company as a whole. Guest says you have to be thick skinned.

"If you do only what the CEO wants, you'll miss the agenda for finance, and you might get fired for it - or worse."

"You have tough decisions to make. I've been in many CFO forums, where this issue is addressed. You have to be a team player but independent, because you're the one who has to keep the company honest."

Cutting against the grain can be difficult, but there are some techniques that can help. "Read the temperature," says Guest. "Listen to the frustration of the people who oppose your opinion. Try to be persuasive. Try to get buy in for your position instead of completely ignoring everybody. Convincing people requires good listening."

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