How short-term financial control can silently dismantle long-term technical capability 

You can tell when Finance has taken over. The strategy starts sounding like an accountant’s spreadsheet. Engineering gets sliced at the knees. Innovation is paused until “next quarter.” Procurement becomes the battlefield, and the product becomes a cost centre. Boeing? 

I’ve seen it in large aerospace firms, in defence procurement departments, and even in promising medical technology startups: when financial control becomes the cultural dominance, the very systems designed to build the future begin to cannibalise themselves.

A healthy organisation needs fiscal discipline. But when Finance becomes the de facto powerbase, the product loses its soul - and the engineers who once shaped its future become spreadsheet support staff. Often this is clearly seen in the aerospace industry.

In any system, constraints shape behaviour. Budgetary constraints are real, and necessary. But in a well-designed system, constraints are subordinate to purpose.

When the purpose of a system—say, delivering world-class engineering, or human-centred care - is redefined solely through financial optics, the system begins to optimise for the wrong outcome. It seeks efficiency without function. Margin without meaning. Control without creation.

Many CFOs are brilliant. Thoughtful, strategic, often the quiet realists in the room. But something changes when the CFO becomes the cultural centre of gravity. Risk appetite drops. Technical leadership is muzzled.

This isn’t finance behaving badly. It’s leadership ceding stewardship to financial orthodoxy - forgetting that the point of a business is not to save money, but to build value.

This isn’t a war between engineering and finance. It’s a call for balance, not blame.

•  Let Finance manage constraints.
•  Let Strategy define direction.
•  Let Engineering shape feasibility and design.
•  Let the Customer define value.

When money leads the conversation, instead of enabling it, the organisation forgets what it’s here to do. The tail begins to wag the dog. 

Prompt 1: What capabilities would you re-enable today that were previously shut down in the name of financial “efficiency”?  Discuss the reasonableness and tangible benefit.

Prompt 2:  In the light of answers to Prompt 1, how would your investment rhythms, decision structures, new product development and leadership conversations need to change?