Few executive roles are scrutinised as quickly as a new CFO. The board wants confidence in the numbers; the CEO wants a partner; investors want signals; the finance team wants direction; the auditors want answers; and the regulators — in Nigeria, an unusually crowded field — want timely, accurate filings. The first 100 days set the tone for everything that follows.
This is a practical 100-day plan for a CFO joining a Nigerian business — public, private or family-owned. It is the framework Outliers uses with newly-appointed CFOs in advisory engagements, and it is structured into four thirty-day phases plus a closing ten-day board readiness window.
Days 1–30: listen, count, map
The temptation in the first month is to act. Resist it. The most consequential mistakes new CFOs make are made in the first thirty days, almost always because they acted before they understood the business.
Listen — structured, not casual
In the first two weeks, hold one-to-one conversations with: the CEO, every member of the executive committee, every direct report in the finance function, the audit committee chair, the external auditor's lead partner, the company secretary, the head of internal audit, the head of tax, the treasurer, the head of FP&A, and the three or four operational leaders whose decisions most affect the P&L. Use the same five questions in every conversation:
- What does this business do well that I should not disturb?
- What is broken that I will be expected to fix?
- What do you wish the previous CFO had done?
- What financial information do you not trust today?
- What would you want from me in twelve months?
Take notes. Patterns emerge by the tenth conversation.
Count — the trust audit
In parallel, run a trust audit of the numbers. Pull the last three years of audited financials, the last twelve months of management accounts, the working capital schedules, the FX exposure register, the debt schedule, the tax provision and the related-party transaction register. Reconcile every material balance to source. Disagreements you find here — and there will be some — become the early agenda.
Map — regulators, returns and risks
Build a one-page map of every regulatory filing the company owes: FIRS, state IRS, NPF, NSITF, ITF, NDPC, FRC, SEC if listed, CBN if regulated, sector regulators if applicable. Note the next filing date for each. The Nigerian regulatory calendar is dense and unforgiving; a missed filing in your first quarter is a story you do not want.
Days 31–60: stabilise the basics
By day 30 you should know the business well enough to start fixing. The second month is about stabilising the finance basics so that everything afterwards has a reliable foundation.
Close discipline
Nigerian SMEs and many mid-market businesses close the books slowly — sometimes more than thirty days after month-end. If yours is one of them, the second month is when you set a closing calendar: working day five for transactional close, working day seven for management accounts, working day ten for the executive review. Publish the calendar. Hold the team to it. A faster close is the single most visible early win a new CFO can deliver.
Cash discipline
Build a thirteen-week rolling cash forecast if one does not already exist. Review it weekly with the treasurer or the most senior cash-aware person in the team. In a Nigerian context, where FX availability and bank-line conditions can change quickly, a thirteen-week forecast is not a luxury — it is the most important management report the CFO owns.
Controls walkthrough
Walk the three or four most material processes end-to-end: revenue-to-cash, procure-to-pay, payroll, and treasury settlement. Sit with the people who do the work. You will find control gaps. Some will be material; some will not. Document what you find. The walkthrough is also the most efficient way to earn credibility with the finance team — you become the CFO who understands how the work actually gets done.
Tax and compliance triage
With the head of tax (or the external tax adviser), confirm the position on the current FIRS audit cycle, any open assessments, the transfer-pricing documentation, the VAT reconciliations and the withholding tax position. Establish what is exposed and what is defended. Nigerian tax controversy moves faster than many CFOs expect; the second month is when you find out where you stand.
Days 61–90: choose the agenda
By the start of the third month, you have listened, counted, mapped and stabilised. You now have a defensible view of what the finance function and the wider business need from finance. The third month is when you choose the agenda for the rest of year one.
The three priorities
Pick three priorities. Not five. Not seven. Three. Typical Nigerian CFO priorities at this stage fall into recognisable categories:
- A reporting and analytics priority — for example, a re-platforming of management accounts, the introduction of a board-level financial dashboard, or the rebuild of the budgeting cycle.
- A balance-sheet priority — for example, refinancing of short-term debt, renegotiation of supplier terms, or the resolution of a long-standing related-party exposure.
- A capability priority — for example, the recruitment of an FP&A lead, the upskilling of the tax team, or the establishment of an internal audit function where none exists.
Each priority should have an owner, a quarterly milestone path, and a board-visible measure of success.
Investor and lender narrative
If the business has external investors, lenders or rating agencies, day 75 is a good point to draft your version of the financial narrative. What is the company's financial story in three slides? What are the metrics you will be asked about repeatedly? What is the trajectory you are committing to? The narrative will evolve; having a written version of it forces clarity.
The finance team plan
By day 90, the finance team should know — formally — what is expected of them in year one. Roles, responsibilities, reporting lines, development plans. Where there are gaps, the recruitment brief is written. Where there is over-capacity, the redeployment is planned. Nigerian finance teams often carry under-utilised mid-level talent; surfacing that early is one of the most useful things a new CFO can do.
Days 91–100: the board readiness window
The final ten days are about presenting the agenda to the people who hold the CFO accountable.
The 100-day board paper
Draft a short board paper — six to eight pages, no more — covering: the state of the finance function on arrival, the actions taken in the first 90 days, the three priorities for year one, the resources required and the risks the board should be aware of. The paper is candid about what is broken; boards lose patience quickly with CFOs who oversell the inheritance.
The audit committee conversation
Separately, hold a private conversation with the audit committee chair. Share the paper. Walk through the control walkthrough findings. Discuss the tax position. Be explicit about anything you want the audit committee to take on as an item. This conversation, more than any other, sets the audit committee's trust in the new CFO.
The CEO alignment
In the last week, agree with the CEO — in writing — the year-one objectives and the cadence of CEO–CFO interaction. The relationship is the single most important determinant of CFO success or failure, and an early written understanding prevents a year of avoidable friction.
Common first-100-day mistakes
Restructuring the finance team in the first month. Changing the chart of accounts in the first quarter. Replacing the external auditor without a clear, board-approved reason. Promising a new ERP. Committing to a savings number before understanding the cost base. Each of these is a story we have seen end badly; each is avoidable with patience.
How Outliers can help
The Outliers CFO Excellence Centre publishes the CFO 100-Day Plan in a working template form — the calendar, the checklists, the templates and the board paper outlines that newly-appointed Nigerian CFOs use to structure the first 100 days.
If you have just been appointed, or you are about to appoint a CFO, the CFO Excellence Centre is the place to start. The full CFO resources library hosts the assessments, dashboards and frameworks that support the first 100 days and the months after. The CFO 100-Day Plan itself is the document we recommend new CFOs download on day one.
The first 100 days do not determine everything. But they determine how much room the CFO has to do the work that matters in the years that follow. The plan exists to protect that room.