I tell young managers: Follow the people, not the role
ALUMNI |

I tell young managers: Follow the people, not the role

MARGHERITA DELLA VALLE, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER OF THE VODAFONE GROUP AND BOCCONI ALUMNA OF THE YEAR 2022 TALKS ABOUT HERSELF: FROM HER BEGINNINGS IN WHAT WAS THEN A STARTUP BETTING ON THE FUTURE OF TELEPHONY, OMNITEL, TO FINANCIAL LEADERSHIP OF VODAFONE IN AN EXECUTIVE ROLE STILL PREDOMINANTLY MALE

Margherita Della Valle asked her niece, also a student in Via Sarfatti, to be present at the ceremony where she was awarded as Alumna of the Year, to underline a continuity of Bocconi women graduates that began with her mother and has now reached the third generation. The issue of female empowerment and women's access to STEM degrees and the professions associated with them is felt as her own by the Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director of the Vodafone Group, not only because she herself is still an uncommon example as a female CFO, but because she has always devoted a part of her time and effort to working for a reduction of a gender gap which is still too large in some professional areas.
What prompted you to enroll at Bocconi? Did you imagine you would pursue a professional path in a traditionally male discipline like finance?
The example of my mother, who studied here and recommended a program like DES, greatly influenced my choice of Bocconi. I didn't know what to expect initially, but I approached the University with a very open mind and with the idea of ​​building a career that would let me achieve independence rapidly. I was also lucky, of course, because in 1993 I bet on a small startup, Omnitel, which had made its debut in an unknown business such as mobile telephony at the time and then ended up becoming a large company. I worked in various roles at Omnitel, from marketing to data analysis, the sole common denominator being the habit with numbers and quantification that has always accompanied my days as a business executive.
Today is still possible to develop your career by staying in the same company? Under what conditions?
When I started at Omnitel, there were thirty employees and we had six months to launch a new cell phone service from scratch. One can only imagine all the different jobs I had to do during startup phase. With the growth of the company, of course, everything changed, but the curiosity to discover and explore all the facets of my job has stayed with me. For this reason, despite being offered other career opportunities, I always found more interesting the new challenges the company was offering me periodically, choosing to follow the right people rather than the right tasks. What I feel like saying to young people is just this: follow the people, not the roles.
How has the role of CFO changed over the years and what is its primary function within a large group?
The fact that I am CFO speaks volumes about how the role has changed. Not only because I'm a woman, but because I come from business management rather than, as is customary especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, from administration or auditing. Today the CFO is increasingly the person who sits on the board with the CEO and sees the whole business at 360 degrees. For a curious manager like me, this was an almost irresistible attraction. Over the years, the aspect that has evolved the most is the importance that data has taken. Even 25 years ago at Omnitel, I was doing what today would be called data analysis, creating the analytical infrastructure of the company for what was possible then. The quantitative attitude is therefore part of my DNA, but it had to grow enormously to keep up with what is happening today. The use of data has completely changed the functions of finance: in a company nothing can be managed instinctively anymore, all decisions, at all levels, are data driven and finance has precisely the task of maintaining this discipline. From the CFO down, everyone must know not so much how to read data but how to ask the right questions to financial and data analysts to bring all corporate functions to decisions based on the actual figures. Also, knowing commercial aspects is a valuable plus for anyone working in finance. For this reason, in my teams, I try to mix numbers specialists with less technical profiles.
In an interview you said that: "The financial function is also able to answer questions that have a social nature". What is the contribution of a CFO to a company's ESG strategy?
ESG principles represent a great opportunity for the entire world of finance because they offer the possibility of aligning the economic interests of investors with those of stakeholders and society. In addition, they are an important element of attraction. Especially young people are very sensitive about environmental and social issues. At Vodafone we are at the forefront of the transformation of society and we really have the possibility to shape the purpose which is at the heart of the company. The development of mobile money services, for example, is having a major impact in Africa, opening the market for financial services to segments of the population that could not access the banking system. From the transfer of money between smartphones to the payment of wages, almost 50 percent of the GDP of African countries in which we operate goes through our platform, which has therefore spurred growth and opened up market access in these countries.
Of all executive roles, CFO still has the largest gender gap. Out of the top 100 companies in the FTSE index, only 15 have women in your position. What explanation do you give yourself for this fact and what type of initiatives have you implemented to bridge the gap?
There is still a lot to do in companies from this point of view, but I think the most complex aspect to change is the so-called unconscious bias, which are the implicit forms of prejudice that are present throughout society. The leadership characteristics in the light of which women are evaluated, and on which many women compare themselves, are mostly drawn from male profiles. As long as this is the case, change will be slow and tiring. Even today, many companies that are intervening to favor women push them to adopt the behavior and skills of male models. Instead, we need to change the paradigm from the ground up, starting with the young. With the mentoring program that I established together with other thirty female CFOs of large European multinationals, we are selecting and training the next generation of Finance executives, making our time and experience available to young female graduates. It is a rewarding project that allows for a two-way exchange, because we too benefit from absorbing the novelty, enthusiasm and stimuli coming from the young people we mentor. Furthermore, it is a project that is already inspiring similar initiatives. During the awards ceremony at Bocconi I was approached by three young managers who want to replicate this form of mentoring in Asset Management, an area where the presence of women is even smaller, if that’s possible.
 

A Bocconi DES graduate (1988), Margherita Della Valle is currently Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director of Vodafone Group. She joined Omnitel when it was founded in 1994 and held various roles within the cell phone company to reach executive positions in Finance. “I owe a lot to my experience at Bocconi and in particular to DES which, at the time, was still a fledgling program”, says the Bocconi Alumna of the Year 2022. “We were like a class, we had a very close relationship with the professors and also between us. And then there was an ideal combination of social and natural science which at that age is very important to open the mind in all directions. The most important aspect was precisely this: not having studied a trade but having built your professionalism". Elected Chairman of 100 Group, the association that brings together the CFOs from the top hundred companies listed in the FTSE index, Della Valle is also the founder of NXT GEN Women in Finance.

by Emanuele Elli
Translated by Alex Foti


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