Nick Thomson will be leaving Reunert in the 2025 financial year after he has completed a successful handover to his successor, who has not yet been announced.
Nick Thomson will be retiring from his role as group CFO and executive director of Reunert.
In an interview with CFO South Africa in 2021, Nick spoke about the fundamental principles that have stood him in good stead throughout his over 40-year career.
The first is to operate within a personal value system: “I would advise young finance professionals to identify their own set of beliefs and join companies that align with them.”
He says values alignment is crucial, because a key requirement in finance, beyond simply driving performance, is having integrity and doing what’s right. “Very often doing what’s right is not that easy, so your strength of character, combined with the organisation’s sense of right and wrong, become very important,” he said.
Another key element of longevity is clarity around issues. “I avoid jumping to conclusions and always make time to understand issues and think through solutions before offering an opinion. Very often, people talk before they think; the older you get and the higher up you go in your career, you realise that it’s more important to think before you speak and to listen.”
Additionally, he urged anyone growing their career to be guided by their interests and not a paycheck. “Ideally do not join an organisation just to make money, but rather because they solve problems and provide solutions/products you identify with, and because you think there’s an opportunity for you to make a difference in the organisation. By having meaningful work that you excel at, you are likely to make the money you want,” he said.
“Solely chasing money can disrupt the choices you make, and in the longer term you may find fewer opportunities for learning or advancing your career. This is because when you go on to new jobs you are constantly changing the environment and contact bases and not developing the deep skills and the industry understanding needed to help develop the success of that organisation, which is where you really start to add value. So, it’s important when joining an organisation to understand how you are going to grow in it, and the different roles you could potentially take on, so you have the opportunity to change your role frequently but not the company you work for,” he added.
Nick also advised periodically taking a step back and seeing how you can put the skills you are building along the way into play in a different or expanded role, thereby ensuring that you do continue to use your skills and add to your arsenal of your competencies. When the time is right based on your self-assessment, you should actively seek the new role you are ready to challenge yourself with.
“The great thing about being a CA is that there are so many career paths you can pursue,” he said. “You can stay in the profession working in areas such as business consulting, tax, auditing or technical advisory and have many different roles within the same business, or if you so choose and depending on how you chart your course, you can find yourself in the C-suite participating in the strategic decisions and managing performance and capital allocation, which impact the success of the company you are with. Alternatively, with all the skills you have built through becoming and practising as a CA, you can start your own business or buy into a business.”
Nick joined Reunert in June 2015. He is a CA(SA) and holds a diploma in accounting and a BCom from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
