Another post crossed my feed today drawing a line between a “strategic CFO” and a CFO in name only, someone doing “controller” work for CFO pay. The implication whether intended or not is that companies with CFOs involved in the close, setting processes for year end and ensuring reconciliations are done are overpaying for glorified bookkeeping. Real CFOs operate at a higher, more visionary level.

That framing always makes me uncomfortable, not because strategy is unimportant, but because the distinction itself feels sloppy. It flattens very different ideas into buzzwords and, in the process, pollutes the market for what a CFO actually is.

It made me stop and ask a more basic question: before we argue about who is or isn’t a strategic CFO, are we even aligned on what strategy means. How does it differ from tactics?

Maybe the right place to restart the conversation is not with job descriptions or LinkedIn headlines, but with the concepts from back in business school – to check whether the current rhetoric still holds up.

“Strategic leadership” is used widely and casually but it seems with undefined precision. Nowhere is this more apparent than in commentary on the role of the Chief Financial Officer. Organizations are told they need a “strategic CFO,” in contrast to a CFO who “acts more like a controller.” Implicit in this framing is a distinction between vision and execution, between thinking and doing.

This distinction is rhetorically convenient, but conceptually flawed.

The confusion arises not from disagreement about outcomes, but from a loss of rigor in the underlying definitions of strategy and tactics. When we return those terms to their scholarly meanings – think Henry Mintzberg and Michael Porter – the supposed separation between a “strategic CFO” and an “operational CFO” collapses.

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Strategy as Pattern, Not Pronouncement

Mintzberg’s most influential contribution to strategy theory was to shift the concept away from abstract plans and toward observable behavior. His definition described strategy as a pattern in a stream of decisions. Importantly, strategy is not what leaders say they intend to do; it is what the organization actually does over time. Strategy cannot exist independently of the decisions that form a pattern. The individual decisions— capital allocations, pricing choices, cost trade-offs, risk tolerances, and performance constraints—are what reveal strategy only after the fact, viewed as a series of decisions that form a pattern.

In this framework, what are commonly labeled tactics are not subordinate to strategy; they are the building blocks of strategy. Remove the decisions, and there is no pattern. By the same token, remove the pattern, and there is no strategy—only aspiration.

CFO’s who distance themselves from “tactics” distance themselves from the very decision streams through which strategy is formed.

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Porter and the Misreading of Operational Effectiveness

Porter’s work is frequently cited as reinforcing the difference between strategy and operational tactics. Doing similar operational activities better than competitors is not, by itself, a source of sustained competitive advantage.

However, Porter’s argument is frequently overstated. He did not claim that strategy exists apart from operations. Rather, he argued that strategy requires choice and trade-offs; competitive advantage depends on fit across activities; and a position must be supported by a consistent configuration of operational decisions.

Operational effectiveness is not strategy, but strategy is impossible without operational decisions that make the positioning real. Porter’s framework does not diminish the importance of tactics; it assigns them discipline and coherence.

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The False Elevation of “Vision”

Using Mintzberg and Porter’s description of strategy and the detail that comprises it can cloud what is implied in the common portrayal of a “strategic CFO.”

When pundits suggest that a CFO becomes strategic by moving away from the mechanics of finance—controls, cost structures, capital discipline, performance measurement—they are redefining strategy as visionary narration. But strategy, properly defined, is not a speech or a deck. It is an emergent property of sustained, disciplined decision-making.

A CFO who claims to “lead strategy” while disengaging from the tactical levers of the business is not operating at a higher level of strategy. They are operating at a lower level of accountability.

Conversely, a CFO who rigorously manages what some dismiss as “controller work”—trade-offs, constraints, incentives, and resource allocation—may be among the most strategic actors in the organization, because they are shaping the pattern from which strategy emerges.

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Strategy in a World of Change: Steering, Not Straight Lines

The misconception deepens in dynamic environments, where strategy is wrongly assumed to imply linear execution toward a fixed end state. Mintzberg again provides insight: strategy often emerges, especially under uncertainty. Tactics must change as conditions change. Tactical adaptation feeds back into strategic understanding. The path forward appears jagged—sometimes sideways or even backward

Observing strategy focused only on short-term consistency looks incoherent. In reality, it is frequently strategic steering – successive decisions adjusted to context, yet directionally coherent over time.

This is where the CFO’s role becomes most critical. Financial and operational tactics are the primary instruments through which the organization navigates uncertainty. A CFO capable of continuously fitting tactics to a shifting environment—while preserving long-term coherence—is not abandoning strategy. They are practicing it in its most demanding form.

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Reframing the Strategic CFO

When definitions inferences on the role and tasks a CFO performs change. A CFO cannot be strategic without owning tactics. And a CFO who claims to lead strategy without shaping operational decisions is not, in fact, strategic.

The truly strategic CFO is not the one who retreats into abstraction, but the one who deliberately governs the decision stream so that, over time, it forms a coherent pattern aligned with long-term objectives. Vision matters—but only insofar as it is translated into disciplined, adaptive action.

Strategy does not sit on a shelf. It lives in the choices that are made, revised, and reinforced every day.

And that is where the CFO belongs.