Good morning. Upskilling is the job that never ends. I recently had a fascinating conversation with Sandeep Aujla, EVP and CFO at software giant Intuit. He takes a novel—and proactive—approach to training leaders on his team and allowing them to develop new skills. He has them constantly try different roles. “If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, at some point it becomes muscle memory,” Aujla explained. “I was deliberate about every two years on the dot, moving them into new roles.”
“Intuit wants to view the finance role as a co-owner of the outcome,” Aujla told me. And that means being a core part of the operating team, and not just a support function or an accelerating function to the business. “It all starts with talent,” he said.
Coming from Visa, Aujla joined Intuit, the Fortune 500 company known for products like QuickBooks and TurboTax, in 2015. He previously served as the SVP of finance for Intuit’s Small Business and Self-employed Group and the Technology Finance organization.
During the eight years that he ran the Small Business and Self-employed Group, he narrowed it down to three factors he sought in talent: “intellectual horsepower, intellectual curiosity, and ambition to have an impact.” Aujla hired leaders who previously worked at firms like McKinsey and Bain, along with engineers, and marketing experts, for example. He asked the leaders in his organization what they hoped to achieve in the next three to five years. Then he had them try different jobs within the group.
However, it wasn’t always a promotion. “It’s like rock climbing, sometimes you have to move laterally,” he said.
And in asking what his team leaders wanted to learn, sometimes they just wanted to join certain meetings with him. For example, one leader wanted exposure to credit ratings and joined him during meetings with S&P Global and Moody’s.
But there were some instances when someone’s aspiration required leaving Intuit, for example wanting to become CFO of a startup, he said. But Aujla doesn’t take that personally as he sees his job as working to “develop world-class leaders,” he said. “Even if you go outside of Intuit, all that changes is the company name on the W2; our friendship and the relationship continues,” he said.
Aujla is part of a leadership team at Intuit that’s diving deep into the sentiments of employees. Fortune’s Paige McGlauflin recently spoke with Emily Pelosi, who was given the title of “head of employee listening” at Intuit in 2022.
Now, as CFO since August 2023, Aujla intends to explore the two-year job swap with his global finance team. Earlier in his career, he worked in investment banking roles at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, where they made sure employees were working on different things, internally referred to as “always feeling your brain hurt,” he said.
“I'll make sure my leaders are always feeling the brain hurt because that makes sure you're growing,” he added.
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Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
