David Blansfield: How did you become treasurer? What was your career path?
Catherine Lesjak: I came up through treasury. I joined Hewlett-Packard right out of business school in treasury, and I was in treasury for twelve years. But our CFO at the time basically told me that if I wanted to be considered for the treasurer role, I'd need to have a broader set of experiences. And so eight years ago, I became the controller for our channels business -- which managed sales and distribution for printers and PCs -- and after serving in that role I became VP of finance for our software business unit before becoming treasurer three years ago.
I think my experience is instructive. The number-one thing that's changed for finance executives is the need to have broad-based experiences. They can all be in finance, but they need to be across a variety of different financial positions -- in different businesses, or in a cost center and a profit center, or in a corporate function. Different sets of experiences really set you up to be able to take on a much more senior, broader financial role. I think that's absolutely critical.
DB: How are you trying to facilitate career growth for your staff?
CL: I try to encourage people to do whatever they can, take as broad a role or as many different roles within treasury or outside of treasury as possible. If they want to specialize in treasury, they may have to leave the company in order to get a different set of experiences within treasury, or to take advantage of a promotional opportunity. I encourage them to do that and help them to do that. If they've moved on to a good position at another company, when we have an opening down the road, we keep an eye out for them in the hopes of bringing them back in.
DB: What sets you apart from other finance executives, and what kind of traits do you look for in your staff?
CL: One of the things that sets me apart is that I am very direct. I deal very candidly with people about performance, about things that need to get done. As a result of that, I have a high-performing group. The other thing that sets people apart in general, and me specifically, is strong analytical skills. As we evolve from just doing transaction processing into business decision support, whether it's in treasury or broader finance, good strong analytical skills and a real interest in the business make a huge difference.
DB: HP's done a world-class job of moving away from the transactional to more value-added services and activities in treasury. What were the key leadership lessons you learned in that process?
CL: When we started the transformation process eight or nine years ago I had in my mind from the start what I thought the answer was and the best way to move forward. Through a lot of discussion with people around the world, I had to realize that what I had in my mind was not optimal. You've got to listen to people carefully, because sometimes it's just resistance to change, and other times it's really good feedback.
DB: HP made a significant treasury technology investment. How did you approach that decision?
CL: The primary justification for the investment was ROI. The company was growing tremendously at the time. We looked out over the horizon and we asked, "Are we going to be able to scale our expenses? With the manual processes we have, how many people are we going to need as the company grows? And if we put in a more automated set of processes with a treasury management system, what will the cost savings be?" In fairness, it was a good time to do it at the company. Things were going really well. And it's turned out to be a wonderful benefit to Hewlett-Packard to have done that.
DB: What is the most important objective of your treasury organization today?
CL: The number one objective is to add value and contribute to Hewlett-Packard's bottom line. That can be accomplished in a variety of ways, but primarily through risk reduction -- less volatility around earnings -- or good, smart hedging.
DB: Treasury staffs have been shrinking. How far can this trend go?
CL: I think it's highly dependent on how much you've already automated. If you haven't done as much automation, as much achievement of straight-through processing, there's probably more room to go in terms of downsizing in treasury.
DB: Will straight-through processing be a guiding principle for treasury organizations moving forward?
CL: I think it has to be. You can get labor arbitrage, you can move it to a cheaper location and have it be manual, but at some point that labor arbitrage goes away. The best savings is to move it to more automation, where you don't need the person to touch it at all.
DB: Are you fully there yet?
CL: We're about 80-to-85 percent on straight-through processing, but that's just looking at the treasury end-to-end processes. We've got a little bit more that we can do there, and we're working on a number of projects this year to even increase that within treasury. But that's not where the biggest bang for the buck is. If a company can get to the point where you've got order processing at a supplier level all the way through to the customer in a straight-through way, you're going to save a tremendous amount. Our support of the concept of the "e-supply chain," and our involvement in standard-setting bodies related to it, is indicative of how important we think this is companywide.
DB: What advice would you give an undergraduate interested in a career in finance in corporate America today?
CL: Just pick out good, challenging jobs, ones where you're not comfortable for a good part of the day to start, and then as you get more comfortable, move on. Get as broad a set of experiences as you possibly can, and make sure you're constantly growing and being challenged.