Kurt Binder
Vizio Inc.
Irvine
As a whole, the Vizio executive team strives to sustain an open, inviting corporate culture that promotes ideas and encourages a strong work-life balance.
Orange County is a great location to run a business, with a great population of hard-working individuals, not to mention great weather and activities. Throughout the year, Vizio hosts a wide range of company activities, from small group yoga sessions to companywide picnics to participating in regional events like the annual Ragnar Race. As CFO at Vizio with responsibilities over human resources and business planning for Beyond TV product categories, I am also in a unique position to align internal corporate culture, processes, and resources to create efficiencies across all departments in support of our brand promise to build value for the Vizio customer.
Nicole Carrillo
Opus Bank
Irvine
Because the CFO has a full view of a company, I believe we are uniquely situated to influence corporate culture. CFOs partner with executives and teams in all areas, which provides the opportunity to directly impact more than just our own department and lead by example to broadly reinforce our company’s value system. As we continue to grow Opus Bank, I constantly find that we are discussing whether we are creating and reinforcing the corporate culture that is going to enable us to achieve our business goals. While many people understand the goals of their own departments, the CFO understands the goals of the whole company and can provide valuable insight into where there may be gaps in the culture of the company or individual departments that could be a hindrance.
I believe that CFOs also have the ability to help create a performance-driven culture within their companies by clearly communicating and providing transparency into relevant financial metrics at the department level, as well as companywide. Employees are more effective when they understand how they fit into the larger picture of the company and how they directly impact the bottom line.
While Opus is headquartered in Orange County, we have locations and people up and down the West Coast. We are constantly working to build a clear corporate culture in our diverse team here in Orange County and identify how best to communicate that to our broader network. It is critical for us to make all team members feel connected to the culture here in our Irvine headquarters to ensure we are all working toward the same goals. A clearly defined and communicated corporate culture is the only way we will be able to achieve “one Opus,” whether you are in Washington, Arizona or California.
Ann Fong
Incipio Technologies Inc.
Irvine
I believe CFOs should be more involved in developing a company’s corporate culture. However, this is something that doesn’t come second nature for most trained CFOs because they come from an environment where everything is black or white. When was the last time you heard someone say that a CFO was a “people person”? I think a healthy corporate culture is one in which what you represent, the talent you hire, and the desire to make a company great are aligned.
I have seen that happen with companies like Volcom or startups like Stance Socks. The role of the CFO is to understand what support the company needs in order to develop a great corporate culture. This “secret sauce” will help build a great company and increase profitability because you have a higher employee retention. And you can maintain a higher-level talent pool for a lot less money because these employees want to be at the company, and money isn’t the sole driver of retaining them long term.
Orange County has a lot of entrepreneurial companies, including a lot of startups that develop lifestyle brands. This is an advantage for any entrepreneur who wants to build a company from the ground up, because you have a talent pool to pick from. You won’t find that in Middle America, which the big companies call home. The disadvantage is that sometimes “home-grown” doesn’t always bring the best talent. I remember reading a quote that said, “15 years’ experience can just be one year’s experience repeated 15 times!” This is true, I am sure, in many instances, and the key is to find the right talent that can balance between profitability and creating a corporate culture that helps the company thrive. This is not always an easy task, but if you can find a CFO who can support such an initiative, it can be a key driver in developing a corporate culture that most of your competitors would be envious of. I think Incipio has a great corporate culture, but then again, I could be biased.
Mike McGee
Discovery Cube
Santa Ana
The CFO’s role in developing corporate culture is central to its success. Let’s face it: Everything an organization does eventually ends up in the financial statements, so you probably want the person in charge of the numbers at the table when you’re defining how you want the organization to behave. I see many factors about Orange County that influence how corporate cultures are built. My favorite is that OC is full of progressive, cutting-edge companies that have found success by embracing change and being different. Constant culture development in these organizations is not only accepted, it’s expected. These factors are why you will probably never see the words “rust belt” and “Orange County” in the same sentence.
Larry Rosolowski
Razor USA LLC
Cerritos
CFOs can have a very significant role in developing a company’s corporate culture. Employee performance is enhanced by driving accountability and a commitment to good performance. Making employees feel responsible for the quality of their work radiates from the finance area, which is typically very data-driven. Finance, under the leadership of the CFO, should create and update the various measures that help employees see the results of their work, both positive and negative.
In order to enhance the opportunity to achieve the results desired for a given person’s position, the CFO can encourage the company to provide reasonable compensation, plus other benefits that allow employees to do a good job while having a higher-quality work life.
In my experience, and this is also supported by research, employees are not motivated only by making more money, which makes the benefits of employment a very important part of the equation. This is particularly true in Orange County, where people typically are more focused on family life and family values in addition to work commitments. These benefits can include flexible work schedules, fun activities in the workplace, enabling some to work from home, and creating a family-oriented work environment where people support each other, ultimately enhancing their sense of commitment and leading to improved overall company performance.
Finance is the one department that touches all other departments in the company. It is my view that the CFO and the finance team can and should encourage departments to work together to understand the impact of their actions on others outside their department and to work as one team.
Research has shown that people have a higher degree of job satisfaction in environments where they are able to be self-directed. The Orange County population typically is more educated and more professional than the average and thus more capable of performing well while being self-directed.
This works to the advantage of companies who hire from OC, since these folks fit well in “not so closely supervised” environments. These people are often able to run projects and solve problems in their own way, with their own ideas. Work environments that encourage and reward those that are more self-directed can expect better productivity, improved company performance, and increased employee satisfaction. Employees from Orange County generally fit quite nicely into this kind of corporate environment.
Robert Weening
Quick Bridge Funding LLC
Irvine
Organizational culture is unique for every organization and is one of the most important ways a company can recruit and retain the best people. At Quick Bridge Funding, our culture includes our expectations, experiences, philosophy and values, and it is expressed in our corporate pride, internal policies, and our external interactions with our trusted network of professional sales organizations, customers and vendors.
As CFO, it’s important for me to be involved in a lot of things, not just finance and accounting. Transparency throughout our organization is a key component. We want to make sure everyone knows what’s happening, not just in the finance and accounting world, but how operations affect finance and accounting and how finance and accounting affect sales. My role is to foster communication. We have established feedback loops between departments. As new loan products are developed, we are aware of the impact across the company. With human resources accountable to me, I make certain that we have top-of-the-line employee benefits, including health and life insurance.
At Quick Bridge Funding, we encourage the development of new ideas and personal expression. In addition to an open-door policy, I manage by walking around. I do have staff meetings, but it’s more important for me to get out and talk with the team during the day. I want people to feel comfortable in asking me questions and giving suggestions.
One of the key advantages of Orange County is its great pool of talented job candidates. The county has five universities and five community colleges. With UC Irvine, CSU Fullerton and Chapman University, to name a few, we have the ability to attract quality people right out of college. Since our founding in 2011, we have grown from two to 94 employees—from 1,000 square feet in Orange to our current 17,000 square feet of new office space in Irvine and a satellite office in New York City. We know our workplace environment affects both our productivity and performance. Our team members like living in the county—there’s lots to do. In addition, our Market Place Center location is ideally located off Interstate 5, the major north-south route. It makes our employees’ commute easier. We’ve also found Orange County attracts a lot of great businesses. We have customers, suppliers and vendors in close proximity.
Adrian S. Griggs
Pacific Life Insurance Co.
Newport Beach
In my position within Pacific Life, being a champion of our culture is extremely important. Culture is driven by the values and the people of a company, and it is imperative that I as CFO support and develop a culture that best sustains our business goals and financial objectives. Pacific Life has a “do the right thing” mentality, so ensuring that our culture allows and rewards openness and honesty is of utmost importance. To achieve and maintain the right culture, it is necessary that I communicate our values and culture explicitly and frequently so our employees and internal clients understand the culture and why it’s important. In our corporate finance area, we have established strategic priorities and goals that align to our company mission statement, as well as our employees’ performance objectives. Through communication and alignment, the employees can take an active role in maintaining and promoting our culture. Not only does having the right culture impact our business performance, it also allows us to retain and attract the right employees.
There are several advantages to Orange County for building corporate culture. First, it’s a very desirable area to live and work, and this provides a good opportunity for us to find talented professionals that align with our business needs and company values. In addition, as a nearly 150-year-old company, Pacific Life continues to have a long-term financial focus, so we will need a sustainable pipeline of talented candidates, and the local universities have and will play a significant role in filling our future talent needs.
One disadvantage right now is the tight job market in, which is good for the local economy, but it does make for more competitive recruiting.
