Transitioning from CFO to CEO: Jeremy Burgin’s Natural Progression

Having started his career with little idea of where or how he wanted to work, Jeremy Burgin enjoyed an inspiring career progression, traversing professional services as well as corporate and private equity-backed environments. Along the way, he’s worked in accounting, investment banking, mining, and technology sectors and is now ensconced in the healthcare industry.

Despite some of his experiences being “deeply dissatisfying”, others have been “remarkably rewarding” and when wrapped up with “incredible mentors” and significant personal experiences, they’ve all contributed to him becoming the leader he is today.

As Chief Executive Officer of Imaging Associates, a successful radiology group with clinics throughout Victoria and New South Wales, Jeremy is a leader who values what employees can bring to the team as people, rather than seeing them as costs. He creates teams that are motivated, committed, and energised, and who can be trusted to do the right thing.

“Seeing employees as people, finding out what they are capable of, providing them with opportunities and pushing them to get there is a really important pillar for me. I believe it is a critical shift that finance professionals need to make early in their career if they aspire to broader leadership roles.” Jeremy said.

Time for Change

Sometimes opportunities fall at your feet and so it was for Jeremy, when at the age of 25, he was sitting in a café feeling dispirited about working in investment banking. So dispirited in fact, that he’d quit and was planning to travel overseas.

“I got talking to the guy sitting next to me… he was starting his own business with colleagues from one of Australia’s largest mining companies, and needed a finance person, one day a week… he said, why don't you come down?

“A couple of weeks later I was doing a day a week and then a couple of weeks after that I was the Chief Financial Officer of an Australian consulting firm in the mining sector, which I knew nothing about, but it was heaps of fun… we worked crazy hours and built a brilliant business. About four years later, we sold.”

Jeremy took the opportunity to complete a master's degree in finance before joining the same team again to joint venture with an American company and launch a systems applications and products company in Australia.

“I started as the finance director for the Asia Pacific region and because we were launching a new business, the role was very operational, very hands-on,” he explained.

Through a process of multiple acquisitions by increasingly large-scale private equity (PE), Jeremy’s role organically grew until he found himself appointed global CFO of the software integration platform Rizing, launching and transforming businesses in Asia and Europe.

“At no point had I chosen to be a CFO on this journey, other than at the very beginning. I just sort of kept falling into it… I was very actively involved in a lot of strategy pieces and played a very operational role in executing strategy.”

Jeremy said the key to successfully transitioning from CFO into the role of CEO was taking on key transformational leadership roles.

“Leading large scale transformation projects across the company, such as large acquisitions, sweeping operating model redesigns, and transformational technology programs, gave me the experience I needed,” he explained.

Additionally, he said partnering cross-functionally with HR and operational initiatives, marketing plans, and spending time working directly with customers, gave him experience working outside the “finance bubble”, which created “opportunities to think and see the world a little bit differently”.

And that proved to be an advantage.

Bringing it all Together

When Rizing was sold, Jeremy took time out to consider his next step. “It was probably the first time in well over 15 years that I'd actually stopped and reflected on the kind of professional I wanted to be, and the kind of leader I wanted to be. I spent a couple of months at Harvard Business School refining some of my thoughts and skills, and I took on an executive coach.”

Sadly, it was around that time, that Jeremy’s mother passed away following a cancer diagnosis. “It was pretty sudden, and it added another lens to my reflection – I started to consider my purpose. I decided I wanted to become a CEO, but not in the technology sector. I wanted to work in healthcare, to do something in the value chain of cancer diagnosis and early detection.”

When a private equity-backed role as CEO in radiology came up, everything fell into place.

A Natural Move

Jeremy said moving from CFO to CEO was eased because he was given the unique opportunity to step into Imaging Associates as COO, shadowing the CEO who was transitioning out.

“I'll thank Andrew (Smith) and the team at Allura Partners for making that happen. I got this incredible opportunity to really get my feet under the desk over a couple of months, which allowed me an enormous amount of time to talk to people, build trust, and build an understanding of what they were trying to achieve as individuals, but also what the organisation was trying to move towards.

“And so, by the time I came into the role of CEO, I was ready to go. Having never been working on the detail of the organisation, it allowed me a very smooth transition.”

Likewise, he said transitioning from technology into healthcare “seemed natural and easy, particularly because radiology is so dependent on technology and is “right out in front” in terms of the application of artificial intelligence to healthcare.

“I've never really pigeonholed myself in an industry. I look at the types of businesses I work in. They’re all high growth, people-focused and they use a lot of technology. They're all very similar from that perspective,” he observed.

“Over the years, I’ve borrowed, built, and adapted models for change management, for organisational design, for strategic planning, and for agile decision making day-to-day.

“So, I’ve built models and frameworks that I can deploy successfully time and time again.”

Of course, these models and frameworks, by necessity, must differ slightly for different businesses and so he said, “I don't try and force the fit, I apply a little bit of flexibility. But with established models and frameworks, I’ve always got something to go back to and something I can use to clearly articulate what I’m trying to achieve”.

The Fundamental Differences

When asked about how he has navigated the change from CFO to CEO he said, it’s all about the mindset. “The fundamental underlying transition, when you go from a CFO to a CEO, or from a financial controller to a senior executive, is to step away from thinking about people as a cost and instead, to consider them as an asset. It’s about changing that lens,” he said.

Another fundamental shift has been to “move from a model of command and control to a culture of trust” so that people treat the business as if it’s their own.

“You’ve got to set an example and be hard on those who breach your trust, but for the 99.9% of people, life is so much better in that type of model”.

When you trust people and they trust you, he said you can “throw enormous amounts of opportunity, work and situations” at them, and in doing so, allow them to show what they’re capable of so they can move to the next level.

“This culture of trust and respect has been so important to me,” Jeremy stressed. “With trust you can ‘step on to the balcony’ and focus more on the big picture knowing the operational detail is being well looked after. I strongly believe that this has been the cornerstone to me being able to build and grow businesses, and some exceptional teams”.

Speaking about his approach to team development, Jeremy said he has always been criticised for not having formal career plans for his staff, but he has good reason.

“In organisations with high growth, it can be hard to know what the career opportunities will be in 12 months, or 18 months.

“So, when considering prospects for career progression with my team members, I emphasise the need for agility at a personal and organisational level, and I create an environment of opportunity. Some people come in and they just get it, and they love it and they run with it. For others, it doesn’t work.”

Since joining Imaging Associates, Jeremy has worked with Allura Partners to add to his team, filling capacity gaps that will enable the company’s strategic plan to be executed.

“I haven't changed anybody’s roles. I've come in making the assumption that these are capable people, they know what they're doing, and they just need leadership and structure, as well as the direction and resources to achieve the objectives of the organisation.”

Back to the Future

Reflecting on his career to date, Jeremy said much of it has been about being exposed to the right people at the right time, about pursuing experience, gaining knowledge, and about being open and agile to change.

And looking to the future of his career he said, “I'm a builder. I like to build things, I like to grow organisations and people. I really, really want the opportunity to take a great Australian business global. I think that's something I have a lot of unique skills and exposure in, so I'd love to do that and there are some amazing Australian companies out there that could do that, including the one I'm in right now.”