Understanding Before Acting: Amrish Shah, CFOO at Enviu
Experience can provide perspective, but it does not remove the need to understand the organisation in front of you.
For Amrish Shah, CFOO at Enviu, that means taking the time to understand the people, culture, expectations, risks and capacity for change before deciding what action is actually needed. It also means recognising that not every problem requires immediate intervention, and that stability can sometimes be as important as change.
In this edition of Precision Perspectives, Amrish shares his perspective on judgement, decision-making and organisational change, and why experienced leaders still need to challenge their assumptions before acting.
When you stepped into your role at Enviu, what became clear in the first
few weeks that you could not have fully understood from the outside?
It is the usual things that unravel in those first few weeks. Firstly, the exact state of your team. How are they feeling about the transition and change and how is their motivation. Secondly, how the organisation works in practise – call it the operating model in practise. And related to that whether there is a sense of one culture or multiple cultures within the organisation. And lastly, legacy issues that either are needing to be addressed asap or remain to be tackled at some point in the future.
There is often pressured to deliver quick wins early on. What did you
consciously choose not to act on in your first 100 days, and why?
In a small organisation like Enviu that has experienced quite some change in recent past and especially also in the finance and operations team, it is easy to be swayed by the opinions of people about what needs to be addressed immediately and what is both important and urgent. I tried to let that somewhat wash over me and suspend as much judgement as I felt necessary to allow time for myself to observe, listen and to make sense of what was going on. I think it is important to understand before acting, unless it is completely unavoidable. Starting new, especially in a people business like ours, it is important to not take the risk of hasty judgements about people and to allow the space to build a good picture. However, sometimes there are also decisions that need to be made which requires a judgement to be made as to what is the right thing to do, in a role such as mine that is unavoidable given the natural cadence of the financial and HR cycles and deadlines.
At board level, early alignment is critical. How do you approach building
trust and credibility in those first months?
Although the Board had not been involved in my recruitment, I had the fortune to meet the Board before I started. Even though that was informal, it helps to start to build a connection like that. Understanding quickly what the most pressing concerns have also been key to building trust. The most important thing for me in these few months is to be able to form my own view about where we are as an organisation and, in particular, our financial performance and outlook in the short to medium term. Tackling this with urgency and seriousness has been critical to build both the trust (that there will be transparency) and the credibility. We have also had some further board changes in the first part of 2026, all in the service of strengthening our governance. This means that the alignment picture becomes more nuanced. It is not just about me as the “newbie” but also others who are also new to Enviu at the supervisory level of the Board. On balance, I think that makes the journey of building that trust and credibility easier.
You made a deliberate move into a more purpose-led environment.
From a finance perspective, what feels different in that context, and what remains consistent?
This is a great question. I don’t think it is only the fact that the environment is more purpose-led that brings a difference. It is the combination of being in a not-for-profit environment, being a small organisation that has had to hustle for a long time, a project delivery and a venture building organisation and purpose drive that matters.
Because of this what feels different is the level of investment that has gone into building a solid enough back-office infrastructure that can support scaling up. This is due to the resource constrained environment that Enviu works on – there is normally not so much direct funding to help provide resources to build internal organisation capacity.
And if an organisation has not been able to crystallise meaningful resources from venture exits, it also leaves the war chest somewhat bare. And in this environment, there are no public capital markets nor private equity financing that can be relied to step in. And debt always carries a risk of over-leverage.
What absolutely stays the same is that even with limited resources, making good resource allocation decisions is critical. So, understanding where we want to invest in, setting good milestones to judge if we are succeeding or not, creating flexibility to respond due to negative development – all these remain the same. As does increasing the capability of the finance team (to be more than just administrators) and to increase the general financial awareness in the organisation.
In a new role, there is always a balance between listening and acting.
What signals do you look for to determine when it is the right time to make meaningful decisions?
Of course, a lot depends on how important the decision is in terms of its potential impact on the organisation. Assuming it is an important one, the main signals that I look for are whether there have been sufficient perspectives considered and whether there is sufficient alignment and commitment to the decision about to be taken. So, the process of getting to a decision point matters a lot.
Another signal is whether more information or analysis or advise would make a significant change to the decision. Does it take our confidence level from say 60% to 90%? I don’t believe that taking more time than necessary to decide is useful, especially if the process has been well run. Of course, if a decision cannot be taken earlier it may be smart to take all the time available to fine tune, if it doesn’t distract the organisation unduly.
One thing is important to state. The decision culture of an organisation matters. In an organisation, where swift action is expected from senior personnel and decisions are always expected to be taken up the chain, coming in and adopting a more listening and empowering approach may be counterproductive.
Changing an approach to decision making in an organisation is a challenging change management task, because it will inevitably lead to demanding that people change how they do things, how they think about things and how uncomfortable they are willing to be.
Your scope extends beyond finance into operations and organisational
leadership. In the early stages, how do you think about prioritisation across such a broad remit?
We are a small organisation, so next to Finance I have IT, HR, Legal and Facilities in my scope. These can be expected to be under a CFO remit, especially in smaller organisations from a pragmatic perspective as well as an affordability perspective.
What is unusual is that I also have Impact under my scope (can also be referred to Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning or MEL in our sector). So, this has taken some time to get used to. Of course, ultimately as Enviu is all about Impact, this is one of the fundamental accountabilities of the whole Board. And if I sense that our capabilities in Impact monitoring and evaluation can be served better if housed elsewhere, then that is a piece of critical thinking that would need to happen.
Organisation Leadership I think comes as a given for any C-suite role – as ultimately the Leadership Team owns the accountability to set the tone for culture and leadership.
From a prioritisation perspective not a lot of changes in principle than how one would make prioritisation calls within the different parts of the whole finance portfolio (say between Accounting Operations or Internal Control, or Business Control, or Treasury etc). It is about understanding what the status of each area is at present and where we may be running risks that make me uncomfortable. Where I have prioritised my own time in these first few months is to spend more time building up my understanding of these areas – as it is further away from my understanding of finance.
Looking back, what assumption do finance leaders often carry into a
new role that tends to be challenged early on?
Simply put, the “I have seen it all before and this is exactly the same, so I have the answer”. This is never the case because each organisational situation is very different. The history is different, the people are different, the culture is different, the state of the finances and financing is different. So, finance leaders must be very cognizant to be fully open minded and really understand the whole territory of the organisation as fully as possible. Unless of course there are immediate risks that present a clear and present to the wellbeing of the organisation.
Transformation has been a consistent theme in your career. Early on in a
new environment, how do you distinguish between areas that require change and those that benefit from stability?
I think it comes from cultivating a deep enough understanding of the past, the present and the future. And the role change and stability has played in this narrative. Very few things are guaranteed to work out exactly as desired or expected. So, we can only look back after a while and see if some change has succeeded or not.
The other thing to note is that in the real world, it is impossible to do a controlled experiment. So, it is hard to tell if we had been better of changing something that was held stable or vice versa. Understanding the reality of where an organisation is right now, how its past has brought it here and where it want to dare to go is important to then assess what are blockers to get in the way (so how to change that) and what exists that can support that journey (so to keep that stable and leverage it).
Another important factor for me is what level of change has the organisation gone through recently. It’s like any living organisation – there is only so much change it can absorb at any one time, so sometimes bringing a level of calm to an organisation by holding things steady (even if it is not ideal) is the best thing to do to allow an organisation to recover, recharge, replenish before the next set of changes.
In your experience, what is most commonly underestimated about the
first 100 days in a senior finance role?
I would say two things. Assuming most senior finance roles come with people responsibilities, one is the amount of time needed to be taken to understand where your team is at. In terms of their motivation, ambition, capability, what do they believe their role is and how do they approach this and the responsibilities that come with that.
The second is trying to build a picture of what stakeholders expect of finance. And how consistent and coherent this picture is. Especially in smaller, less organised, more ambiguous organisation environments where finance identity and capability building has not happened in a structured way or for a long time or finance has started from basic administration and not developed much beyond that, this takes time to collect, analyse and synthesise into something that will help give valuable direction for any future finance vision and roadmap.
Looking ahead, what does success in the first year typically look like
from your perspective, beyond the financial metrics?
I would say typically if the finance team has adapted well to the transition and change and is feeling (more) energised by the challenges at hand, then that for me would give a good feeling of success and pride. A second measure of success for me would be if there has been good progress in establishing a business partnership dynamic between all parts of finance and the internal business partners. And thirdly, if there is increased transparency of the financial performance and a positive acknowledgement thereof within the organisation.
If you could share one “Precision Perspective”, a lesson, insight or
guiding belief that others could carry into their own careers, what would it be?
There is this thing that I carry around with me, which is as applicable to life as to work. “Nothing is as good as it looks and nothing is as bad as it feels”. In other words, it allows me to stay healthily sceptical, it forces me to not just trust but to verify and keeps me grounded in having a healthy perspective around balance in how I approach my role and how I hold myself accountable for my own personal impact on others at work.
Amrish’s reflections throughout this conversation point to a consistent theme: experience does not remove the need to understand the organisation in front of you.
Whether considering people, decision-making, organisational change or the balance between action and stability, context matters. What worked before will not necessarily work again, and knowing when to listen, when to question assumptions and when to act remains an important part of leadership.
Our thanks to Amrish Shah for sharing his experiences and perspectives as part of Precision Perspectives.
Precision Perspectives is an interview series by Talent Precision Global, giving CFOs, Finance Directors and senior finance leaders a platform to share the experiences, perspectives and leadership thinking shaping modern finance.
To discuss finance leadership, transformation or hiring across Europe, contact Talent Precision Global at michael@talentprecisionglobal.com or +31 20 323 0444.
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