CFO’s
Leading transformation through performance, precision and people
As CFO, you’re the guardian of financial integrity and the architect of sustainable growth. You balance strategic investment with risk management, ensuring the organisation delivers returns while protecting its future.
In periods of transformation, this responsibility intensifies. You must fund ambition, prove value, and maintain control, often with incomplete data and competing priorities. Many programmes demand significant capital yet deliver returns only over time. Nearly 40%** of finance leaders admit they don’t fully trust the data driving those decisions.
The challenge isn’t just managing numbers; it’s aligning the people, systems and incentives that turn investment into impact. Transformation succeeds when finance enables progress across the organisation, combining disciplined governance with empowered, capable teams who know how to make change stick.
That’s where changemaker helps: bringing structure, transparency and confidence to transformation while keeping the human factors that drive performance firmly in view.
Change management consultancy for CFOs
changemaker is a UK-based change management consultancy that partners with CFOs and finance leaders to turn strategy into measurable results. We combine delivery rigour with human-centred insight to create financially sound, people-ready transformation.
Our approach connects three essential disciplines – Change Design, Change Delivery and Human Change – giving finance leaders visibility, control and confidence that investment is driving real value, not just activity.
Change Design – building the business case for value
Through our Change Design practice, we help CFOs and executive teams structure transformation for measurable return on investment (ROI).
We identify high-impact opportunities, stress-test assumptions and build robust business cases that link strategy to outcomes for both the organisation and the teams delivering it.
Our Navigator mode aligns leadership on financial guardrails, governance and decision rights, ensuring every pound spent has a purpose and a proof point.
Our Explorer mode supports ambiguity, clarifying priorities, exploring options and modelling financial and human impacts before committing spend.
The result is a transparent roadmap that balances ambition with affordability, sequencing transformation to deliver early wins, spread cost and build belief across the workforce.
Change Delivery – controlling spend while engaging people
Once strategy moves to execution, our Change Delivery services bring governance and assurance that keep transformation financially disciplined and culturally engaged.
We establish a single source of truth for programme data, embed transparent reporting and set flexible stage gates so funding is released only when value – financial and behavioural – is demonstrated.
Our delivery leaders work alongside your finance and PMO teams to maintain clarity, capacity and communication. We help people understand the “why” behind change so control doesn’t feel like constraint.
The outcome is disciplined delivery that strengthens trust between finance and the wider business, ensuring that teams stay aligned, informed and motivated.
When internal bandwidth is stretched, our Resourcing for Change network provides interim finance transformation specialists who share your values and pace, ensuring continuity without permanent overhead.
Human Change – empowering finance to lead transformation
Transformation works when finance becomes a proactive partner, not a back-office observer.
Our Human Change practice builds the confidence, capability and mindset for finance teams to lead through uncertainty.
We use Lumina Spark and Prosci’s ADKAR® to help leaders interpret data, communicate with authenticity and model the behaviours that keep people engaged.
Training and coaching build technical and interpersonal capability, equipping finance teams to influence across the organisation and make change a positive human experience rather than a compliance exercise.
The result is a finance function you can trust to enable progress: analytical, adaptive and connected to the people who turn plans into performance.
How we support your change journey
At changemaker, we take a comprehensive and holistic approach to change, offering a wide range of services across four key areas:
Change Design
Supporting you in exploring what change might look like, or navigating your way to realising the change you desire.
Change Delivery
Implementing the governance and skills to plan and deliver change in an ambiguous world.
Human Change
Supporting the human being in understanding why and how to change to realise their full potential.
What this means for you as CFO
When changemaker partners with a CFO, we bring clarity to investment, confidence to decision-making and transparency to delivery, while keeping people at the centre of execution.
You gain independent visibility into financial and human performance across programmes: where value is being created or lost, how teams are coping, and where targeted support will maintain momentum.
You stay focused on steering enterprise performance, knowing governance, capability and culture are aligned and working in tandem.
Outcomes for CFOs
Working with changemaker, CFOs tell us they gain: king with changemaker, CEOs tell us they gain:
- Visibility – one view of cost, benefit and adoption across change initiatives.
- Control – governance that ensures financial discipline and consistent communication.
- Confidence – data integrity and stakeholder trust built on transparent reporting.
- Capability – finance teams skilled in analytics, collaboration and influence.
- Value – transformation that delivers measurable ROI and sustained human performance.
We help finance leaders turn change from a cost centre into a value engine, strengthening financial integrity, cultural alignment and organisational resilience.
Video resources
Watch our experts share real-world insights and proven strategies to help you strengthen your organisation’s change delivery approach.
Video
What is the most Common change delivery challenge?
Sign up to our changemaker newsletter to receive our latest insights and industry focuses
"*" indicates required fields
Frequently asked questions
Here are some common questions about how we help organisations deliver change more effectively, with the right governance and approach.
How do we build a business case for change?
Identify the pain points (manual reconciliation, delayed reporting, rework) and quantify benefits such as time saved, risk reduced and engagement improved. Include both financial and human metrics; adoption and morale directly affect ROI.
How do we control costs during transformation?
Establish clear stage gates and release funding in phases tied to outcomes. We help CFOs balance financial discipline with transparent communication, so teams understand priorities and remain invested in success.
How do we measure intangible benefits?
Use proxy metrics like cycle-time reduction, improved data accuracy and employee engagement. Link them to working-capital efficiency or revenue growth. We show finance leaders how to quantify culture as a performance enabler, not a soft metric.
How do we maintain regulatory compliance?
Embed compliance from the start. Our frameworks integrate audit and risk checkpoints into design and delivery, making adherence routine rather than reactive, and freeing teams to focus on adding value.
How do we transform the finance team itself?
Invest in automation, analytics and business-partnering skills. Rotate talent across functions. Use our Resourcing for Change to recruit specialists, and coaching to help leaders model collaboration, communication and calm under pressure.
How can finance drive change beyond budgeting?
Use finance’s cross-organisational view to spot where process improvements reduce risk, increase margin or create new value. Lead visibly, automate core processes, communicate progress, and show that good governance and good leadership go hand in hand.
Related resources
Our perspective on doing business and industry insights… we’d love to hear your thoughts too.
