Ep. 79: Chris Wymbs - Innovation and Change with Strong Leadership

Contact Chris Wymbs:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-wymbs-b4b4b789/


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back for episode 79 of Count Me In IMA's podcast about
all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your
host, Mitch Roshong and today we will be hearing from Chris
Wymbs, the Executive Vice President of Finance and Chief
Accounting Officer for AMC networks. Chris has significant
leadership experience at a Fortune 50 company and as a finance
executive with a proven record of success and extensive
background in all aspects of finance. In this episode, he speaks
with my cohost Adam about the leadership qualities needed to
succeed in your career and how one can effectively lead change
and innovation in their organization. Keep listening to hear an
insightful episode about leadership, innovation and business
transformation. 
 
Adam: (00:54)
So, Chris, can you tell us a little bit about your career journey
and how you got where you are? 
 
Chris: (01:02)
Yeah, sure Adam, be happy to. So, it has definitely been a
journey it's a good way to depict it. So if I think of the start
foundationally, it was early days at Ernst and Young progressing
up through the ranks there. Was in the audit realm as well as a
support in the advisory services side, worked in a lot of
different industries, and I deem that to be foundational to my,
as I mentioned to my career progression. From there, I moved on
to a little company known as GE at the time, and to an internal
audit role, in their corporate audit group, which was exciting
and fun and leverage the skills I had from my audit baseline, if
you will, or foundation. And then moved into a, at the time a
controller role, a global controller role of one of their,
financial services businesses, GE Consumer Finance. And there, I
really kind of cut my teeth if you will in the operational
expertise realm. We were very inquisitive. We had a lot of deals
internationally and I got to travel quite a bit, see different
cultures, even though I was based domestically and really built
out, I'd say kind of the foundation of my leadership skills and
more of the executive level, as well as just some financial
skills that I really hadn't gotten involved in in my days at
Ernst and Young and really owning aspects of the finance
organization and building out a team which was exciting and fun.
And from there, I progressed into a company, American Express,
and took a controller role there. And soon thereafter, less than
a year, I moved into more of an operational role. So I was in the
FP&A role for a few years. I was in various segment CFO roles
over the years, three or four of them. And as I progressed in
those roles, it gave me an opportunity to, to steepen and the
realms of operational finance, not only from a controllership
perspective, but from an FP&A perspective, a corporate
finance perspective, and really just continue to build out my
financial tool set. And then that brings me to the current role
as  I'm EVP of finance and chief accounting officer at AMC
networks. And I operate in both the controllership realm as well
as the operational finance realm and have a myriad of
responsibilities. And as I think of the journey I've gone
through, it really has set me up to, to excel in the role I'm in
today. And it's, it's comprehensive and it's wide ranging across
the finance spectrum. And, and I lead a reasonably sized team and
I enjoy that and I am an extrovert by nature. So, being in the
leadership role is exciting and fun to me, and it does get me out
of bed in the morning, although these days getting out of the bed
means just walking downstairs and not getting on a train. So
that's kind of in a nutshell, hopefully that covers the
question. 
 
Adam: (03:52)
So thinking about that journey, could you describe what
leadership characteristics have enabled you to get where you are
today? 
 
Chris: (04:03)
Yeah, another  great question. So leadership, it could mean
different things to different people and means different things
in different cultures and different companies. And as I
mentioned, I've worked in a few different companies, but to me,
leadership, there's just some foundational things that are
absolutely, you know, core given definitions of what leadership
is. And for me, it starts with kind of consistent values, and
some of those, if I were to just dispel some of those fundamental
values, first and foremost, it's integrity. And, everything I do
and everything in the bedrock of my leadership is integrity. So
my actions will match the words I speak. I, you know, I will
always take the higher road whether, you know, whatever issues it
might create. And, you know, if you don't have your integrity,
then it's really questionable as to what leader you are. And I
don't think you can have the right fabrics of a leader without
the key bedrock of integrity. And then from there, it kind of
builds out and you can kind of go different ways. And for me, if
I were to think about the feedback I've gotten over the years
from people who've worked for me, they talk about me being an
empowering leader. So giving them the ability to go out and do
things on their own without my direct oversight, but still
providing them enough oversight and guidance to help them
succeed. So that's hard as a leader to balance empowering people,
but at the same time supporting people. And I think that's
foundational to my leadership approach. And then around that,
it's how do you develop people? And that's giving people an
empowerment, but also how do you continue to develop them and
build their skillset and give them confidence and create a safety
net around them at some level, although you do need to let people
fail at times, and that's how we often learn the best, but, you
know, just giving them an ability to continue to develop and
supporting them in that development, whether it be getting
additional training, having conversations with them in tough
areas, and as they develop and progress and become leaders of
people, that's a whole different dynamic there's leadership in
the entity, as far as driving things forward, but then there's
leadership of your team and those mean different things and
helping people develop skill sets and both project and people
leadership, you know, it takes some effort and some support to
do. 
 
Adam: (06:30)
So what counts as innovation in your organization? How would you
define it, and what does innovation mean to your
employees? 
 
Chris: (06:39)
Yeah, innovation, a tough question. Not unlike leadership. How do
you define it? It's defined quite different people define it
different ways. The way I think about innovation is kind of
through a three-pronged definition, if you will, firstly, there's
technological innovation, that's we all know what that is, right?
It's the next generation of the, whether it be the app or, you
know, the platform where using the next generation of, you know,
Oracle so on, so forth or SAP for that matter. There's also
process innovations. So that to me could be evolving and driving
more efficiency and effectiveness in a process, technology
unchanged. And then thirdly there's, and this is where I think
most people define innovation. It's the new thing. It's the new
app that didn't exist before. It's the, you know, it's the Uber,
it's the, you know, however you want to define it as the
Priceline if you go way back that just didn't exist previously in
the travel realm. It's the ideation of something that didn't
exist and that at its core is kind of foundationally innovation,
but for finance organizations, it's kind of hard to focus and
operate in the ideation realm of innovation. So where I tend to
hone my team and more is how do we ...