When I joined Mezzetta as the CSO, one of the first things he did was sit down with Sales and Marketing to build a sales plan that could actually be defended, not just a number that had been handed down and repeated year after year. He pushed us to test our own assumptions the same way he tested his.
What I appreciated most was that he was willing to challenge the status quo, including ideas the CEO had already settled on in his own mind. That is not a comfortable thing to do, and not everyone is willing to do it. Thomas did it anyway because he cared more about getting to the right answer than about being popular in the room.
He also made sure Finance was an asset to Sales rather than a bottleneck. His team gave us the analysis, reporting, and tools we needed to actually run the business, not just report on it after the fact, and that support was there whenever we needed it.
Above all, Thomas calls a spade a spade. When a conversation needed to happen, even an uncomfortable one, he had it directly instead of letting it fester. I always knew exactly where I stood with him, and the business was better for it.