Jakarta, Indonesia, September 28, 2026 — For Namit Kamra, CFO of Indorama Polychem Indonesia, finance leadership today is less about having an unobstructed view of the numbers and more about understanding everything happening around them. In a capital-intensive, globally connected industry, geopolitics, energy markets, supply chains, people, technology and capital can all collide with the P&L at once.
That reality has fundamentally changed what it means to sit in the CFO seat. Kamra’s day can begin with developments thousands of kilometres away, from geopolitical shifts in the Middle East to changes in trade policy or logistics disruptions, because each can quickly become a financial issue closer to home. Financial performance, as he sees it, is ultimately the accumulated result of hundreds of operational decisions made across an organisation every day.
It is a perspective that moves the CFO well beyond conventional stewardship. In conversation with DigitalCFO Asia, Kamra shares how finance leaders can navigate structural uncertainty without becoming paralysed by it, why resilience needs to become measurable, how financial discipline can actually create room for growth, and why the next generation of CFOs will need to be strategists, operators, communicators and human leaders all at once.
The Spreadsheet Is the Starting Point, Not the Destination
There is an old image of the CFO as the executive behind the spreadsheet: focused on reporting, controls, forecasts and financial accuracy. Those responsibilities have not disappeared. But for Kamra, they no longer capture where much of the real work happens.
“The spreadsheets remain important, but they are now merely the starting point of the conversation, not the destination.” He puts it even more plainly: “If someone still thinks a CFO spends most of the day looking at spreadsheets, they are probably looking at a CFO job description from twenty years ago.”
Behind the numbers is a constant exercise in switching perspectives. A CFO may need to protect liquidity in one moment, assess an operational bottleneck in another and then determine whether the business should continue investing despite difficult market conditions.That is why Kamra describes the job through a deceptively simple tension: “the CFO’s job is to optimise for the long term while surviving the short term.”
It captures one of the central contradictions of modern finance leadership. Preserving cash can be essential, but excessive caution can leave an organisation poorly positioned for the next growth cycle. Investment can create future value, but only when the business has sufficient resilience to withstand what happens in between. The CFO therefore cannot operate entirely at either end of the spectrum. The job is increasingly about knowing when to protect and when to move.
From Technical Excellence to the Power of Influence
Kamra’s background as a Chartered Accountant and CPA gave him the technical foundations expected of a finance leader. Earlier in his career, he viewed strong financial leadership largely through that lens: impeccable controls, accurate reporting, tax efficiency and sound treasury management.
Those capabilities remain essential. What changed was his understanding of what makes them useful. “The biggest mindset shift has been recognising that effectiveness as a CFO is increasingly defined by influence rather than authority.” That distinction became particularly clear during periods of significant market disruption, when the financially “correct” answer did not always translate into the best decision for the organisation.
Capacity utilisation, workforce retention, customer support and strategic investment can rarely be resolved by financial logic alone. Each decision involves consequences that may not fit neatly into a model: employee confidence, customer relationships, future capacity and the organisation’s ability to recover when conditions improve.
For Kamra, this is where the CFO’s influence becomes particularly important. “Today, I believe great CFOs shape behaviour through narratives as much as numbers.” Finance influences what gets funded, how performance is measured and which risks the organisation is willing to accept. It can also influence culture. Incentives designed exclusively around quarterly results can encourage short-term behaviour, while leadership that consistently reinforces accountability, collaboration and longer-term thinking can gradually shape a different organisation.
His distinction is particularly telling: “Technical competence earns credibility; strategic judgement earns trust.” The modern CFO needs both.
When Uncertainty Stops Being Temporary
For petrochemical and polyester businesses, volatility is hardly unfamiliar. What has changed, in Kamra’s view, is its permanence. “Uncertainty is no longer episodic; it has become structural.”
That changes the purpose of financial strategy. Rather than building an efficient organisation for relatively predictable conditions and responding when disruption arrives, businesses increasingly need financial models designed around the expectation that disruption will continue.
Kamra describes this as a move from efficiency-focused models towards resilience-oriented frameworks. Liquidity remains the first line of defence. Robust cash forecasting, diversified banking relationships and adequate committed facilities can provide crucial optionality when conditions deteriorate. Yet Kamra is equally cautious about confusing resilience with conservatism. Protecting the balance sheet at all costs may reduce immediate exposure, but it can also erode competitiveness.
Strategic investment in productivity, sustainability, digital capabilities and supply-chain resilience may put pressure on near-term earnings while creating stronger returns across an economic cycle. The question is therefore not simply whether an investment costs money today, but whether it strengthens the organisation’s ability to perform tomorrow.
Stop Trying to Predict One Future
This uncertainty also changes how investment decisions are evaluated. Rather than depending on a single forecast, Kamra increasingly looks towards scenario-based approaches, testing decisions against different assumptions for feedstock costs, foreign exchange rates, demand and financing conditions.
The distinction is important. The objective is no longer to prove that one forecast is correct. It is to understand what happens if it is not. “The emphasis shifts from predicting the future precisely to building an organisation capable of adapting quickly.”
That philosophy also expands the financial measures considered when allocating capital. EBITDA remains relevant, but Kamra points towards return on invested capital, cash conversion cycles, economic value creation and downside resilience as increasingly important indicators. In other words, a strong investment is not necessarily one that performs exceptionally under the base case. It also needs to be understood under pressure.
Measuring What Has Not Happened Yet
The same thinking is changing performance management. Manufacturing organisations have traditionally relied heavily on lagging indicators, including revenue growth, EBITDA margins, production volumes and cost variances. They remain valuable, but there is an inherent limitation: by the time they identify a problem, the problem may already have occurred.
Kamra therefore sees greater value in complementing them with signals that reveal where the organisation could be heading. These include forecast accuracy, inventory ageing, working capital velocity, employee capability development, project milestone adherence, customer concentration and safety performance.
Some of the most revealing indicators are not purely financial at all. Collaboration between functions, speed of decision-making, ownership of outcomes and the willingness to challenge assumptions can materially affect execution. This is why Kamra believes finance should encourage constructive debate rather than passive compliance.
It also leads to a broader definition of performance. “In today’s environment, resilience itself has become a performance metric.” How quickly can the organisation respond when supply is disrupted? How effectively can resources be redirected? Can customer service be maintained during volatility?
For finance, that requires another evolution: from scorekeeper to strategic sensing function, identifying risks and questioning assumptions before their consequences appear in the financial statements.
Financial Discipline Should Help the Business Say “Yes”
Financial discipline often carries a defensive connotation. Budgets need to be protected, spending controlled and proposals challenged. Kamra sees the principle differently. “Growth without discipline destroys value. Discipline without growth destroys relevance.” For him, the CFO and CEO have to find a way to achieve both.
The best finance functions are therefore not defined by how often they reject ideas. Instead, they create enough clarity for the organisation to understand where it can confidently invest. That requires financial understanding to extend beyond the finance department. Commercial teams should understand customer profitability. Operations teams need visibility into the consequences of yield losses and working-capital inefficiencies. Manufacturing leaders need to see how maintenance decisions influence the productivity and economics of an asset over time.
Transparency is central to making this work. When people understand why capital is being allocated in a particular way, finance becomes less of a gatekeeper and more of a partner. Kamra also argues for experimentation, provided there are clear guardrails around it. Not every investment will succeed. But eliminating risk entirely can become a risk of its own. “The role of finance is to ensure risks are deliberate, measured, and aligned with strategic priorities.” Strong financial frameworks, in this sense, do not necessarily constrain agility. They can give leaders the confidence to act decisively when an opportunity appears.
Precision Over Across-the-Board Cost Cutting
That philosophy becomes particularly relevant when organisations are under pressure. Today’s CFO is managing overlapping exposures, including inflation, energy insecurity, financing costs, regulatory developments and shifting demand. Credit spreads remain elevated even as benchmark rates turn higher again, with the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank both raising rates in September 2026, and Bank Indonesia’s policy rate up a cumulative 100 basis points since May, adding to working-capital financing costs. Kamra argues that interconnected risks require an equally integrated response, using scenario planning, rolling forecasts and cross-functional risk reviews rather than treating individual risks in isolation.
“Resilience begins with visibility.” Understanding liquidity, customer concentration, supply-chain dependencies, refinancing obligations and regulatory developments allows leadership to respond earlier. Yet the more difficult question often comes when cost action is unavoidable.
Across-the-board reductions can produce an immediate improvement in profitability, but they may also remove capabilities the organisation will need later. Kamra instead advocates precision, eliminating low-value activities while protecting investment in safety, talent development, digital capabilities and strategic growth initiatives.
There is a human dimension here too. During uncertain periods, employees look towards leadership for consistency and clarity. Transparent communication about the challenges facing the organisation and the reasoning behind difficult decisions can become part of resilience itself. As Kamra puts it, resilience is not an organisation avoiding shocks altogether. It is its capacity to “absorb disruption, adapt rapidly, and emerge stronger without compromising its long-term strategic trajectory.”
Energy Is Now a Strategic Question for the CFO
Few issues illustrate the interconnected nature of modern finance as clearly as energy. “Energy has transitioned from being primarily an operational input to becoming a strategic determinant of competitiveness.”
For energy-intensive industries, price and availability can influence margins, pricing, investment returns and even decisions about where operations should be located. As a result, energy scenarios increasingly belong inside capital-allocation discussions rather than remaining solely an operational concern.
Kamra points not simply to high energy costs but to uncertainty around price and availability as the deeper challenge. Such volatility can affect working capital, supply-chain lead times, capacity utilisation and the broader economics of manufacturing. In 2026, Brent crude has swung from around US$63 a barrel in January to a peak close near US$118 in April, driven by Middle East tensions and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, before easing to around US$102-104 a barrel in recent weeks.
This is also changing the economics of sustainability. Energy efficiency, alternative energy and investments that reduce exposure to external shocks can increasingly be justified not only through an ESG lens but through resilience and cost stability. At the same time, localisation and diversification strategies are gaining importance as organisations reassess concentrated supply chains and seek shorter lead times and greater responsiveness.
Across Asia, Kamra expects manufacturing ecosystems to become more regionalised, supported by stronger digital visibility and risk-management capabilities. The key is not to treat sustainability, resilience and competitiveness as three unrelated agendas. Increasingly, they are different dimensions of the same strategic problem.
The Future CFO Must Be a Multidisciplinary Thinker
So what separates a technically strong finance professional from a transformational CFO?
Kamra begins with an important caveat: technical excellence remains non-negotiable. The difference lies in what leaders build on top of it. First comes intellectual curiosity. Technology, transformation, sustainability and geopolitics increasingly intersect with financial decisions, meaning the future CFO cannot afford to understand finance in isolation.
“The future CFO must be a multidisciplinary thinker.”
Second is comfort with ambiguity. Leaders will frequently have incomplete information, multiple plausible scenarios and competing priorities. Waiting until uncertainty disappears may simply mean waiting until the opportunity has passed.
Third is communication. Kamra describes the ability to translate complexity into clarity for investors, boards, frontline employees and cross-functional teams as a defining leadership capability.
And finally, there is something considerably less technical: empathy.
“Organisations do not execute strategies; people do.” High expectations and human leadership are not mutually exclusive. Kamra argues that authenticity, humility, respect and genuine concern for people can help build the cultures capable of sustaining performance through difficult periods.
Protect Your Technical Foundation, But Do Not Let It Become Your Ceiling
Kamra’s advice to aspiring finance leaders ultimately brings the conversation full circle. “My advice to aspiring finance leaders is simple: protect your technical foundation, but do not allow it to become your ceiling.”
For the next generation of CFOs, knowing the numbers will remain essential. But leadership will increasingly be defined by what they can do with that knowledge: how they allocate capital when there is no perfect answer, how they communicate complexity, how quickly they adapt when assumptions change and how effectively they bring people with them.
“The CFOs who will shape the future are those who can simultaneously think like strategists, act like operators, communicate like diplomats, and lead like human beings.” Perhaps that is the clearest description of where the role is heading.
The transformational CFO, Kamra concludes, will not necessarily be “the person with the best answers”, but the leader who “asks the right questions, who embraces new technology, allocates capital wisely, and brings people together to navigate uncertainty.”
For a profession built historically around certainty, accuracy and control, that may be one of its biggest evolutions yet: learning how to lead confidently when certainty is exactly what the business no longer has.
For more of his perspectives on finance leadership, resilience, strategic decision-making and the evolving CFO mandate, connect with Namit Kamra, CFO of Indorama Polychem Indonesia, on LinkedIn.
