Christina Thomas-Lewin, FCMA, CGMA, is now assistant financial controller for a US company, but she got her start in finance in the UK. In this podcast episode, Thomas-Lewin discusses her career moves, the value of lifelong learning, and the meaning behind the phrase “block it out to knock it out.”
She also talks about the importance of delivering potentially negative feedback and how that skill can help both employees and managers.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
- An overview of Thomas-Lewin’s career path.
- The overseas destinations that she had in mind before moving to the US.
- Why lifelong learning is one of Thomas-Lewin’s passions.
- More about her advice phrase “block it out to knock it out.”
- What she learned from being a trampolining coach.
Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:
To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.
Neil Amato: Welcome back to the FM podcast. This is your host, Neil Amato. I’m joined by Christina Thomas-Lewin. She is a CIMA-qualified finance leader working in the US. Christina holds the CGMA designation. She’s someone I met late last year at the Future of Finance Summit in Austin, Texas. We’re happy to welcome her to the show. Christina, first, can you introduce yourself a bit and explain your current role?
Christina Thomas-Lewin: Hi, Neil. I just want to say thank you. I’m very grateful to be here today. I am Christina Thomas-Lewin, originally from the UK. I have been living in the States for just over nine years now with my husband; we just celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary last month. I am the assistant financial controller at the Will-Burt Company. I’ve been working there for just over seven years now. I was originally asked to just cover the three months while they found an accountant, which proved to be very difficult where we’re from in Ohio. So I’ve been there ever since, and it’s a great job. I love it.
Amato: Well, that’s an interesting story and we’ll probably come back to that in just a little bit. I’d first like to ask you about the concept of lifelong learning. My thought is that most people go through droughts where they don’t learn anything new. Then they get on this one exciting topic and they have this burst of energy, only to return to that drought level where maybe you’re just sitting around staring at YouTube videos. But I was hoping you could talk some about your enthusiasm for lifelong learning.
Thomas-Lewin: I would love to. I am an enthusiast for lifelong learning. I like to help others reach their goals as well. I think everything I’m learning, I can then teach that to other people. It just helps me to adapt my skills towards others as well. It probably started in high school where I was offered the opportunity to take my maths exam early. From doing that, I then got to do my A level early as well.
That’s where I got introduced to accountancy because I have a huge passion for numbers. Numbers were always my thing rather than speaking or writing. I found accountancy, and then I went on to do my bachelor’s in accounting at university. I don’t think I’ve actually had a gap from learning because I then went straight in to do my CIMA. I was one of the first CGMA designations in 2012. Then during my time of doing my CIMA qualification, I was also learning to be a trampolinist and gymnastic instructor as well, which helped pay for me to get through college and university. Then I went to the government. When I got my job at the government, they were actually who put me through CIMA. It was a fantastic opportunity for me. I had the option to do a different qualification as well, but I chose CIMA because in the long run, I knew I wanted to move and work abroad. I didn’t know where. I always had a tendency to lean towards America, but I also quite liked the idea of Australia as well or Europe.
But within my role as finance business partner in the government, I was always looking for ways to improve what we were doing, so I became a continuous improvement champion. From that, my husband’s promotion actually got us over to the States. From there, I’ve done two leadership courses. One was actually through my company. They actually suggested doing this course because it would help me learn the area and get to network with other people in and around where I live and get to learn about where I have now moved to.
Then I’m now currently finishing another class through the same organisation. In between that, I became an organisational development coach because I just love the idea of helping organisations be better. I didn’t know whether I wanted to become my own consultant and actually go out into the world and use my certification as an organisational development coach. But where I’m working now, I get the best of both worlds. I still get to do my accounting. I get to lead this amazing team, and I get to use my worldwide experience because we have offices in the UK, Germany, Singapore, and Turkey. From that, I just keep learning, trying to learn the German language. It’s fun and exciting.
Neil Amato: It sounds like it, and you made it fun and exciting by all of these things you’ve done. I think even if listeners who are hearing this don’t think of themselves as lifelong learners, I’d say that many in our audience of global finance professionals, they have to be continuously learning to do their jobs well, right?
Thomas-Lewin: Absolutely. I think through our organisation, we’re very lucky that they encourage learning and development as well. We actually had a professional coach come in and would put many of the leaders on classes to learn how to handle conflict or time management and how to be a better leader. Trust and radical candor as well, which is a fan favorite of [mine]. I just love that topic of radical candor. Yes, it’s actually been very interesting. The fact that our company encourages it means a lot to me because being a lifelong learner, that’s what I like to do.
Amato: You mentioned one of those other topics: time management. I’m going to go to that in a little bit. But since you brought up radical candor, first, I would like for you to say, how would you define that and how has it worked well for you professionally?
Thomas-Lewin: Radical candor was created by a lady called Kim Scott. We learned about it through one of the development courses that we did through the company. Now she goes on to say about how to speak to people in a way where you are caring about them. You are direct with them, but in a caring way. It’s finding that balance. She gives a good example about this person within her organisation who she has to let go. But everyone’s always so nice to him and just covering up for the fact he wasn’t able to complete his job, but everybody just loved him.
When he was fired, he couldn’t understand why. He was just, why did nobody tell me that I wasn’t doing my job right? I think we can all relate to that in our companies where you may have that person where you’re just always nice to them and saying, “you’re doing a great job,” but really you’re not helping you or yourself or them, because they need to know that, “Hey, you’re doing a great job, but maybe next time you could do this.” It was just how to speak to people and in a pleasant way, but getting them still to help them to reach their goals. But also you’re getting your work done as well.
Amato: That’s a really good point. I think it is something that is hard for people to do, is deliver that message, those difficult conversations. Back to time management. You attended a time management course and you ended up coining a phrase that to me says, you probably should have been teaching the course. Can you tell me some about that phrase and how you yourself have put it to good use?
Thomas-Lewin: It’s funny how I ended up on the course, because I just qualified as an organisational development certified professional. My coach asked me to observe this class, observe this other tutor. I was actually only there for observation purposes, but with everything, I always take away something and learn something from it. With time management, this is a huge thing for me. I love breaking down projects into smaller tasks and milestones. It’s just always helped me conquer the inevitable, I would say. I coined this term, block it out to knock it out. I tell my team this all the time because it’s so hard to get stuck in the day-to-day grind of work, just trying to get everything done that your boss is asking you to do. There’s all these conflicting deadlines.
Your manager is just putting more and more on you and I said to them: “Just block out time.” Just put it on your calendar, block it out, then nobody is going to put a meeting there. You have focus time, you can just concentrate. I think it’s so important. One of the things I’ve also found is converting emails into meeting invites so they go onto your calendar and block it out. You have that time available just to work on an email because with accounting, all emails tend to have work in them now. It just helps, I think. And I think people appreciate that. Also, I can go onto my team’s calendar and say, I can see that really busy with something. I’ve either got to ask them to prioritise this task and take something away from them. Or I can say, “Hey, they’ve got capacity. I can give them this task and not worry about it.”
Amato: Is there anything else, just on the time management front beyond blocking out the time that you think is an important aspect to pass along?
Thomas-Lewin: I think breaking down the tasks into smaller, bite-size – that is critical for me. We have a lot of reporting and accounting. Someone might easily say, “Hey, just write this 5,000-word report” and it’s like, “Gosh, where do I start?”
I think breaking it down is critical in all our roles. You need to have the summary, you need to have the introduction, you need to have the conclusion and I think that’s all things we’ve learned along the way from learning in schools and colleges and exams and everything. But I think that’s just key. Just take a minute to set it aside.
I mean, I’m a huge spreadsheet enthusiast as well, so I will always use one of those to write down the milestones. What do I need to achieve, when do I need to achieve it by, and what other things are going to conflict with that that I also need to get completed at the same time.
Amato: We’ve talked about it some, how you ended up in the US after starting your professional career in the UK. So I guess I’ll ask this, what do you really miss about the UK, and what do you love about being in the US?
Thomas-Lewin: I have to say I do miss my family and friends. I mean, they are my world. I’m very close. We have a big family, and my children live there, my grandchildren live there. I have nieces and nephews who I helped to raise, and I have a younger sister as well and so when I moved out here, she was still so young, so I felt like I haven’t been part of her life much.
And my friends as well. I have friends that I’ve been with my whole life. But weirdly, my best friend lives in Portland, Oregon, so she’s following me. It’s just perfect for me, but it’s just funny that I have these lifelong friends and we still keep in touch. We’re in each other’s lives still and I just value that so much, but I miss my job there. I worked for the government. I had worked there for years. I was just making my way up the ladder. I had a fantastic team and honestly, I would try to do everything to keep my job there and then we move to the States. But back then, you couldn’t work remotely. The time difference as well being five hours ahead, that just would not work.
But now, you never know. If it was to happen today, I might have had that opportunity to keep my job. I do miss all of that, but the States is my dream come true. I always knew I wanted to live here. I’ve been coming out to America as soon as I got a passport when I was 17 years old.
I went to San Diego and I planned out my whole trip on a spreadsheet. It was me and my best friend at the time, we are still best friends, but this was back in 2009, and we did a road trip from San Diego to LA, San Francisco through Death Valley — which I didn’t really catch on to the name at the time when we were so young — and then Yosemite and then up to Las Vegas. I wanted to do everything within those states that were the fan attractions, and now I’ve been there several times, so it’s so funny.
I’ve done Alcatraz and I’ve done the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but it’s still fantastic to me. I love being here. I love exploring. The ultimate goal is to do all 50 states with my husband, and we’re about 16 maybe through now, so we’re getting there.
Amato: Yeah. Well, you’ve got some ground to make up, but still plenty of time to do it, so that’s cool. That’s great. One bit of your CV that, while not finance-related and you did mention it and this pun is totally intended, but it certainly leaped out at me — you’re a qualified trampolining coach. Tell me about that.
Thomas-Lewin: I was working at our local leisure center. It was actually across the road from college, so I was there to pay for myself to go through college and university and what started off as a hobby job. I was a birthday party supervisor and then I was a supervisor for one of those summer camps that you send your children to a holiday work scheme.
Then I was their receptionist as well. While I was talking to some of the girls there one day and just happened to come across the fact that I used to compete locally in trampolining. And they said, well, we’re looking for an assistant trampoline coach. Is that something you’re interested in? At the time I thought no, I’d be a terrible teacher. I’m not even sure I could stand up in front of a class and be responsible for these people’s lives and their learning opportunities. But my gosh, it taught me something about not only time management, but just seeing the reactions in people when they learn that new skill, or they pass their exam, and just seeing their faces light up. And I thought this is what I want to do in life.
I want to be an accountant, but I also want to help people to get that moment in their lives where their faces just light up because they’ve achieved something they’ve worked so hard to get and I had people in my class from age 2 to 65.
Amato: Oh my gosh.
Thomas-Lewin: It was fantastic. It was such a great experience for me and something I will always treasure.
Amato: Is there anything specifically about that, that you can apply to your role as a finance leader?
Thomas-Lewin: Absolutely, because everybody learns differently, so how you teach something to one person is going to be five times different to how you teach it to somebody else. As I said, breaking things down, if I was to say to one of my people at work, “I need you to do this report,” they would probably run off and go and do it and wouldn’t have any other questions for me. But then somebody else might need, I don’t want to say hand-holding, but just a little bit more information and the task broken down.
It’s just finding that balance and I think that’s something I definitely learned through trampling coaching is because you’re teaching the same skill, but they’re learning it in a different way so I definitely think that came from trampolining and of course, time management. It comes right back to it. I had, I think there was 12 people and by each trampoline, so I had 12 people on my trampoline and then the other coach had 12 people.
It’s making sure those children – sorry, participants, because some were older than that – make sure they all had a fair amount of times. You’re constantly looking a stopwatch to make sure you get through that 60 minutes and all the children and participants have the same amount of time on the trampoline.
Amato: Yeah, definitely good lessons. This has been a great conversation. I’ve had a lot of fun. I’ve learned a few things. Is there anything you’d like to add in closing?
Thomas-Lewin: No, I think that is everything. I appreciate your time today and the opportunity to be on one of your podcasts.
Amato: Christina, thank you. We really appreciate it.
Thomas-Lewin: Thank you.
