Blog – 2 Column

Treasury Contrarian View: Everyone Is Replaceable — But Some Are More Replaceable Than Others!

We’ve all heard it: “No one is indispensable.” In corporate finance, especially in treasury, the phrase gets tossed around as both a comfort and a warning. But as the function evolves — becoming more strategic, more tech-enabled, more integral — the truth gets murkier. Are treasurers truly replaceable? The answer is yes. And no. Let’s unpack it. The Case For Replaceability Systems Don’t Need Heroes In a well-run treasury, excellence doesn’t hinge on individual memory. It’s embedded in systems, processes, and shared knowledge. If the function collapses when one person leaves, that’s not loyalty — it’s a design flaw. Knowledge Hoarding Isn’t Power — It’s Risk We sometimes confuse being the only person who knows how things work with being valuable. But monopolising institutional knowledge increases operational risk and discourages team growth. A truly resilient function thrives on transparency, not dependency. The Market Has Moved On The rise of fractional CFOs, interim treasurers, and on-demand expertise has shifted the power dynamic. Treasurers are no longer the sole guardians of cash and risk. Expertise is mobile. Insight is portable. If someone leaves, someone else can step in — often faster than we’d like to admit. Boards Expect Replaceable Structures Good governance demands succession planning, bench strength, and process documentation. The question isn’t if a key person might leave — it’s when. Replaceability isn’t a threat; it’s a requirement for continuity. The Case Against Replaceability You Can Replace a Role — Not a Mindset While a new hire can fill the org chart slot, replicating a treasurer’s judgment, risk appetite, or strategic instincts is another matter entirely. Some decisions — when to hold your nerve in a funding negotiation, how to pivot a hedging strategy mid-crisis — come from hard-won, situational intuition. That doesn’t live in a playbook. Trust Is Earned, Not Transferred Bankers, auditors, execs — they trust individuals, not job titles. When a treasurer with deep institutional and external relationships exits, it doesn’t just leave a gap in process — it leaves a vacuum in influence. That’s not something interim cover can immediately fill. Culture Is Carried by People The best treasurers don’t just execute — they shape the ethos of their teams. They model curiosity, rigour, pragmatism, and calm under fire. That cultural imprint is hard to replicate. You can replace a function; it’s harder to replace a standard. Leadership Isn’t Modular You can outsource processes. You can document controls. But you can’t modularise leadership. The ability to lead through ambiguity, drive transformation, and push finance into new territory isn’t mass-produced. It’s grown over time — and it sticks with the person who grew it. The Paradox: Replaceability as a Sign of Strength Here’s the irony: the best treasurers actively make themselves operationally replaceable. They invest in automation, delegate meaningfully, and document the hell out of their workflows. But that’s precisely why they’re so valuable. They’ve built something bigger than themselves. Being “replaceable” in day-to-day execution isn’t a weakness — it’s a strength. But being irreplaceable in strategic influence, judgment, and trust? That’s leadership. And the two can — and should — coexist. So What Should Treasury Leaders Do? Being replaceable doesn’t mean being irrelevant. It means you’ve done the hard work of building a function that will outlast you — and earned the credibility that means people hope you’ll stay anyway. What Do You Think? Is treasury truly plug-and-play — or are we undervaluing the irreplaceable qualities great leaders bring? We’re featuring views from across the profession. If you’ve built a treasury team that balances system resilience with human leadership, we’d love to hear your story. COMMENTS Lee-Ann Perkins, Treasury Masterminds Board Member, comments: Every worker is replaceable – some just take longer and are more expensive to replace. In theory, any treasurer is replaceable; in practice, it’s an uncomfortable truth that those who translate strategy into fit-for-purpose structures and cultivate deep stakeholder trust are anything but interchangeable. For boards and CFOs, the lesson is clear: if you’re lucky enough to have a strategic treasurer, invest in retention, because replacing that caliber of leadership can be costly and time-consuming. Elite treasurers align every funding, risk, and capital-allocation decision with the company’s evolving strategy, often pivoting before the rest of the organization senses the need. They redesign bank panels, cash-pooling rules, KPIs, and talent pipelines so that treasury infrastructure keeps pace with acquisitions, technology changes, or any other strategic shift. Seasoned treasurers build crisis-tested rapport with banks, rating agencies, and boards, securing tighter spreads, faster approvals, and looser covenants. When they leave, that goodwill departs with them, raising the true cost of capital. Even with AI automating reconciliations and dashboards, only a treasurer who can select, integrate, and govern those tools ensures they reinforce, not derail, strategic goals. Patrick Kunz, Treasury Masterminds Founder/Board Member, comments: Can you imagine doing the same job for 40 years?I can’t. And if you can, you might be at risk of becoming obsolete. Not just because it sounds incredibly boring (in my humble opinion), but because there’s zero challenge in doing the same tasks over and over again—especially in treasury, where things evolve fast. My longest tenure? Four years. That was my first job. The second? One year. Then I became a freelancer and never looked back. One of the best things I can offer my clients isn’t just experience or knowledge—it’s that I aim to make myself obsolete.Why?Because if I’m no longer needed, it means we’ve really improved their treasury setup.It’s leaner. Smarter. Automated. Scalable. And let’s be clear: making yourself (or a permanent team member) “obsolete” doesn’t mean pushing someone out.It means creating space—space for new projects, new ideas, new roles.Most teams are so caught up in day-to-day operations, they never get time to step back and innovate. But innovation needs time and mental bandwidth. The best treasurers I know?They reinvent. They try new things.They don’t cling to the same job title or process for decades—they evolve. That’s where growth happens. In 2025, with tech evolving faster than ever, the “same…