Five takeaways from sitting in two chairs, where CFO and CEO roles meet

Listening at the dinner table as a child, I would often overhear my father, John Maizey, talk about how important his CFO, Lanzi van Rensburg, was to his business, Maizey Plastics. That stayed with me. He understood that building a real company required more than commercial ambition. It required a genuine partnership between the person pushing growth and the person protecting durability. In some form, I believe the role I play today is an echo of that.

There is a conversation I have with myself regularly. It goes something like this.

The CEO in me sees a site, a market gap, a customer who is ready. The CFO in me asks whether the unit economics are proven, whether the supply chain can support it, and whether the working capital exists to absorb the risk. Sometimes the CEO wins. Sometimes the CFO wins. The discipline is in knowing which voice should win, and when.

I hold both roles at Starbucks South Africa, and while that is an unusual structural arrangement, I have come to believe it reflects something that is true of any well-run emerging market business: the CEO and CFO cannot afford to operate at a distance from each other. In developed markets, those roles can sometimes function with healthy separation. In emerging markets, that separation is expensive. The operating environment, currency volatility, infrastructure gaps, long supply chains, uneven management depth, and thin capital markets — punishes misalignment quickly and quietly.

What follows are five lessons I have arrived at through that experience. They are not theoretical. They are the product of building a business in conditions that rarely match the assumptions of the model you started with.

1. Scale the unit economics first, not the brand

The CEO instinct in emerging markets is often to move fast. Brand momentum feels real, the category is growing, and competitors are watching. The CFO instinct is to ask a harder question: does each new store, route, or customer add profit faster than it adds complexity?

Those two instincts are in genuine tension, and neither is wrong. But in my experience, the CFO’s question must be answered before the CEO’s ambition is given full rein. A business cannot scale sustainably if the underlying unit is not profitable. Brand strength and international reputation can buy time, but they do not fix broken economics. They merely delay the reckoning.

This means finance must be part of commercial design, not just commercial measurement. In our business, the CFO perspective shapes store format decisions, pricing architecture, labor models, and inventory policy before commitments are made, not after. If finance only reports on performance retrospectively, it has already lost the most important part of its job.

2. Localisation is a financial decision, not just an operating one

Global brands arrive in emerging markets with systems, standards, and ways of working that were built under different assumptions. The CEO’s instinct is often to protect the brand by holding those standards firm. The CFO’s instinct is to ask what those standards are actually costing.

Both are right to a degree. Some things must remain fixed because they are the brand. Others must be adapted, because the cost of carrying a model that does not fit local conditions compounds quietly and dangerously over time. Imported inputs priced in hard currency against revenues earned in a weaker local currency. Distribution infrastructure that adds lead time and safety stock requirements. Management depth that is genuinely scarce in certain markets. These are not exceptions to plan. They are the operating environment.

This is where Peter Thiel’s idea from Zero to One becomes useful. He distinguishes between going from one to many — simply replicating a model that already works — and going from zero to one, which means building the first version of something that genuinely works in a new context. In emerging markets, that distinction is critical. The challenge is rarely rolled out. The challenge is designing the first version of the model that actually works under local conditions.

In our case, the earlier years were necessarily more rigid. Over time, and with Starbucks’ genuine support, we have worked to localise the model, refine the format, and build something we believe is durable for the South African and broader Southern African market. That work does not always produce the fastest visible growth in store count. It is, however, how a business moves from zero to one in the real sense: not replicating a model, but building the first version that genuinely works on local terms.

The CFO must be central to that process. Localisation decisions presented as operating matters are almost always capital and margin decisions in disguise.

3. Supply chain is strategy, not administration

Here, more than anywhere else, the CEO and CFO need to force themselves into the same room.

The CEO sees the supply chain as an enabler of growth. The CFO sees it as one of the primary determinants of margin, working capital, and store-level productivity. Both are correct, and both perspectives are needed simultaneously because in an emerging market with long shipping routes, foreign-currency input costs, and limited local alternatives, a missed demand forecast is not merely a planning error. It becomes obsolete stock, emergency freight, lost sales, or a weaker customer experience. Each of those has a direct financial consequence.

The practical lesson is that finance, procurement, and operations must function as one system. Demand planning, inventory visibility, and ordering discipline are not back-office concerns. They sit at the centre of gross margin performance. A spreadsheet does not fix a supply chain. Repetition, accountability, and clear decision rights do.

4. Capital structure determines what kind of business you are building

Here the CEO and CFO tension is most visible, and most consequential.

There is often a temptation in emerging markets to favor structures that produce faster rollout: franchise models, asset-light formats, licensing arrangements. These are legitimate and often intelligent choices. But they are not the same as building a company-owned operating business with direct control over the customer experience, the unit economics, and the value chain. Those are different paths with different trade-offs, and they should be chosen deliberately rather than by default.

In our case, we have taken the view that long-term value creation matters more than the fastest possible footprint growth. Company-owned stores are slower, more capital-intensive, and they make the J-curve more visible. But they build institutional capability inside the business itself: operating knowledge, consistency, control, and the muscle memory that comes only from doing the work directly. That capability is retained within the enterprise rather than held at a distance from it.

The longer-term objective is not simply to participate in the market, but to build enough operating depth, market relevance, and pricing authority to become a genuine market leader — one that can shape pricing, push back on landlords and suppliers, and help create a healthier industry rather than simply competing within a fragmented and margin-thin one.

The CFO must be willing to defend the J-curve to investors and boards. The CEO must be willing to resist the pressure to accelerate before the foundation is ready. When both do that together, the business builds something durable.

5. Cash discipline matters more than reported growth

Emerging markets can be deceptive. A business can report attractive top-line growth while becoming more fragile underneath. Currency pressure, slower stock turns, rising working capital requirements, and underperforming stores absorb cash in ways that do not always surface quickly in reported results.

The CFO’s job in this environment is to ask difficult questions early and without apology. Is this new site truly strategic, or merely available? Are we opening in the right locations, or too broadly? Is working capital being consumed by poor planning rather than genuine growth? Is the cost structure justified by the local market economics?

The CEO’s job is to ask the same questions, and to mean it. One of the most common mistakes in emerging market expansion is confusing movement with progress. Opening stores, growing revenue, and hiring teams can all happen simultaneously with a business becoming weaker. Sometimes the right decision is to slow down, fix the engine, and then scale from a healthier base.

That requires both roles to be genuinely aligned: not the CFO as a brake on the CEO’s ambition, but both working from the same understanding of what growth is actually worth.

The real test:

Scaling in emerging markets is not achieved by copying a model built elsewhere and assuming time will resolve the gaps. It requires a business designed around local truth — in its site selection, pricing, supply chain, controls, and capital allocation. It requires patient capital and a willingness to build depth before chasing breadth.

I think back often to those conversations about John Maizey and Lanzi van Rensburg at Maizey Plastics, and to what my father understood so clearly: the true measure of success is not speed. It is endurance. He built a business that has endured long after his passing. I can only hope, one day, to build something with that same kind of strength.