Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance. The CFO role is changing rapidly, moving from cost controller to strategic visionary. And with every change comes opportunity. We are here to help you take advantage of this transition to win at work, drive your career forwards, and lead with confidence.
Join Hannah Munro, Managing Director of ITAS, a financial transformation consultancy, as she interviews key experts to give you real-world advice and guidance on how to transform your processes, people, and data. Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance.
Did you know that 70% of CFOs still make decisions based on gut feeling rather than actual data? Join Hannah Munro, your host of CFO 4.0, for an online presentation where she discusses what you need to truly become a data-driven finance leader.
This session will not only talk about the why, but also identify how you can automate your financial operations and get meaningful data to drive your business forwards. Check out the link in the show notes
So welcome everyone to this episode of CFO 4.0. With me today is Sydney Finkelstein. So he is the author of 25 books, 90 articles. He is a professor at the School of Business at Dartmouth.
He is for a couple of his books that I have read is Superbosses, How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent and Why Smart Executives Fail and What You Can Learn from the Mistakes.
His resume is so long it's going to take me a few minutes to go through it but he's also the host of the Sidcast and a really interesting podcast all about people's stories and yeah there's a massive long list of your achievements Sydney so thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Oh
thank you so much for inviting me Hannah.
It's wonderful to have you. So you are known as one of the top 50 thought leaders, particularly around leadership. And I'd love to know, what's your story? How did you end up there?
Yeah, well, it wasn't a plan, that's for sure. Even though I've studied and worked with many leaders on strategic issues over the years, I didn't really have a strategy. It was maybe like a lot of people, one step after another, I turned out to be really, really good at school and loved it and just kept on going.
I did take a detour since you have an audience of finance professionals. They might get a kick out of this, which is that I started in accounting in an auditing firm and Uh, and I did, I did fine. Um, I did well, but I, I do recall that, uh, in one of my, um, evaluations from, uh, from the manager, uh, he said, you know, you're, you're doing great.
You have a great future here, but there's really one thing you need to, uh, work on is really one thing. It's not that you got, you gotta pay attention to. And I said, well, what's that? What's that? And, and, uh, and he said, well, you asked too many questions. I thought, wow.
Yeah.
Really? Okay. And that was my last day in accounting.
And isn't that interesting in that, you know, that shift from, you know, being told not to ask questions and actually now it's kind of one of the leading parts of the role for a finance leader moving forwards.
It's ironic. For me, it was even at that young age, I was still in my early 20s at that time. I just knew everything.
um intuitively that this is not the right career for me if that's the advice or that's not the right boss or firm but i i took it broader than that and i ended up uh after a couple of other stops, going for a PhD at Columbia University and then starting an academic career and a big consulting and speaking career as well along the way.
And the funny thing is that I make my, I mean, what's my job? My job is to ask questions, ask good questions, questions that others haven't quite thought of the same way, and then go try to find answers to them. And when you find answers that are helpful to fundamental questions, There's a lot of people want to know about that.
And that's kind of what's happened through books and, uh, and some speaking and other things that I've done. So it turns out to be central to my career.
Yeah. And. And talking of questions, I guess one thing that our audience might ask is, you know, as the role of a CFO changes from sort of typical cost controller, I think is the term, to strategic visionary, what questions should they be asking either of the team or of the business?
Well, you know, when your job becomes a strategic job, in addition to financial discipline and capital management and resource allocation, those kind of core things, you really are asking what's going on in the business, in the industry, what's coming around the corner, what are your competitors doing, what's changing and what's not, and what should I do differently?
So innovation becomes a central component of what your job is. And I think we all know that the words innovation and say accounting don't always go together because you can get end up in big trouble if you're too innovative right but you
know I remember seeing in one of your articles that you mentioned that innovation comes with the openness you know with openness and being able to make mistakes and that's that's not something finance people are comfortable with is it
yeah no and there's certain things you cannot make mistakes on but when when you put on your strategy had. There's no one who. There's no one who's always right about, first of all, about anything, but certainly when we talk about competitive strategy and trying to position your own business in the best possible light for the future, there's no one who's always right.
And I remember talking to a CEO years ago, we were talking about decision-making and he said, you know, Sidney, I don't have to be right all the time. If I'm right 50% of the time, I'm gonna be okay. And then he pauses and he says, as long as I know, that when it's not going right, I'm gonna do something about that.
I'm not just gonna stick my head in the sand or forget about it. And that's a critical component. If we set up our goal, for your listeners to be perfect, then there's no conversation, right? No one's going to do it.
And from a strategy point of view, you know, whatever we decide right now is not necessarily going to be the right answer six months from now or a year or two years from now also, because the world is changing and it's been changing quite dramatically in our era of COVID as well.
And I think that's the interesting piece about COVID is that not only the unexpectedness of it, but the fact that we thought we were able to cope with change and the pace of change, but it's thrown a whole new set of scenarios at us. So what do you think a finance leader needs at this time during volatility to be able to react well?
Yeah, it's something that I know pretty much every CEO needs.
that i've spoken to is worrying about and thinking about and doing and and i think as uh especially for senior financial finance people but for anyone in finance who wants to move up and have a have a seat at the table which is probably everyone listening um you you uh you you want to ask the question how is the world going to be different and what do we
need to do to be different? How do we need to redefine our business? I'll give you a couple of examples. There's a beer company in the northeast of the US that's very well known as a microbrewery. It's not one of the global giants.
But when I was talking to the CEO there, he said, you know, in the space of three months over this past summer, they accomplished more in those three months in terms of marketing and brand development and new product introductions than they thought. They thought it would take them three years to do what they did in three months.
And so speed all of a sudden means something really different. And And I think that's something I'm hearing and seeing from a lot of senior executives, the pace that we're going. I mean, take another example is telemedicine. You know, the NIH in the UK, right? Not NIH, National Health Service. NIH is the research group in America, NHS. They moved to telemedicine.
so fast and such a bureaucratic organization. They've been studying it for a long time and they probably would have gotten to it in another three or four years, but they had no choice but to move towards telemedicine. And so this is happening in industry after industry.
And if I'm a aspiring or senior finance person, I'm asking what do we need to be doing differently? Because when we get to the other side of this COVID thing, and hopefully that won't take another year, uh, The nature of competition, the nature of the way the world is going to look, it's going to be different.
It's going to be a watershed moment that people are going to remember for the rest of their lives. And so why would we assume that we'll go back to business as usual? It's not going to happen. And that's what I'd want.
I mean, if I was a CEO and I was talking to my finance people, that's what I'd be looking for, people that can step up and start thinking about what that would be and start figuring out how to be successful in that world.
Absolutely. And I guess the pace of change then opens up another conversation, isn't it, about visibility of what's happening, because it's really hard to make good decisions if you don't have access to the right information. And that's for me is where that's where I have a particular interest in the data and the analytics side.
But what we're seeing is that actually people aren't willing to wait for the typical month end close date. process and that they're having to, they're basically having to do it on a weekly basis because no one knows what's happening within the business without it.
And are you seeing any shifts in terms of the reliance on information or are people making decisions without necessarily having all the facts? What are you seeing when you're speaking to executives?
Well, you know, there's that old expression about paralysis and analysis, right? That you can keep on looking for more information. Everyone wants more information. Of Of course you want more information.
You know, when I teach MBA students and when one of the MBA students raises his hand in an issue on what to do about a company situation and says, well, we should collect more data. I said, well, you're wrong. Of course you should collect more data. That's a given. But at what point do you have enough data? And you never have enough data.
You always want more. And so what do you do? And now in this world today, with this lack of visibility, you need to be, I think, there's a couple of things. You wanna be as creative and enterprising as you can in data collection. Analytics has become a giant field in so many areas.
I'm a big sports fan and to see how analytics has revolutionized many, many different sports makes me wonder Why is it not having as big an impact on some companies? Some for sure. Obviously, tech companies, this is their lifeblood. But for many others, not quite as much. So, yeah, you want to do that.
But also, you know, being innovative requires some degree of experimentation. And an experiment is by definition a project, let's call it, that you have no certainty that it's going to work. And that's where I think a lot of finance people get nervous.
But Jeff Bezos, who's, you know, Amazon's kind of familiar with innovation, he He testified to the Congress in the U.S. maybe a month or two ago. And I read his testimony. You can find it online. And it's so, so interesting. And he talks about experimentation as being part of the lifeblood of Amazon. That's what they do.
And he made clear what an experiment is and what it isn't. And what it isn't is when you know what the answer is going to be, it's not an experiment. And so somehow that's what we need to be able to do. And you collect data like crazy as you're going along.
But If you wait to have certainty in a world of tremendous kind of opaqueness that we're in now, I don't see how you're going to be in good shape.
And the truth is that it becomes a competitive advantage to be able to make and manage decisions in a way that lowers your risk in case they go wrong, that enables you to make adjustments and fix what's not working.
And if it's working to make it a little bit better and collect data along the way, it becomes and maybe it's going to become even a bigger competitive advantage to be able to. It's called decision making under uncertainty.
That's that's a big that's a big and that's probably a big learning for people in finance where that's that's not necessarily at least stereotypically the comfort zone.
No, absolutely, and I think a lot of finance.
teams and leaders are they are known for being the one that's supposed to give the certainty that's supposed to be concrete and that's a big shift for them having to put forward suggestions and ideas I guess in this environment of opaqueness I like that where you can't actually see what's happening and what's going on and I think what I've just taken from your
conversation and just correct me if I'm wrong here is that what you're saying is that if you've got the data amazing and it can give you a competitive advantage to have that visibility and that information but But what you shouldn't do is let it define the speed at which you make decisions, because the speed of the decision is actually more critical in this in
this day and age in this environment. Have I have I summed that up or is there anything you'd like to add to that?
So, Hannah, that that's exactly right. But I will add one other nuance, which is really. But how do you make decisions? a really great decision. There's no certainty ahead of time or else not much of a decision. It's easy. It's a rubber stamp. And so what do you do?
You know that there's some potential flaws or risks, let's call it, that are related to that decision, there always are. And so what do you do? Well, you try to mitigate those risks. And that's a language that finance people understand.
You wanna mitigate that risk, but identify what they are ahead of time, recognize that you might not figure them all out ahead of time. So you're always scanning what's going on and being open-minded. And then if it goes wrong, If whatever you decide to do goes wrong, make sure that the downside is very low.
So in a sense, it's almost like a hedging, if I can use that term, a hedging strategy. a hedging approach to strategic decision-making. Because there's so much uncertainty, in the same way that you wouldn't want to make an investment that's completely uncovered if there's high risk, you wouldn't want to do that from a strategic point of view as well.
And you could hedge that in a variety of different ways.
And you mentioned you could hedge it in a variety of different ways. Can you give any examples of what you mean by that and particular strategies that people might take to reduce the risk?
Yeah, sure. So one thing you can do, and this is a way of thinking, I'll say, and I think it should be standard practice for any important decision, is that people... When you're ready to make a decision or you're on your way to making that decision, you identify the underlying assumptions.
Because I found that smart and people that are really good communicators can make almost anything sound reasonable. And that's not a good thing, is it? And so you want to push people on your team and yourself to identify the underlying assumptions.
What assumptions are we making that says that we can introduce three new products or product extensions over the course of the next six months when we haven't been able to do that over the last three years?
There'll be assumptions about investment costs, return on investment, what competitors are going to be doing, what the environment is going to look like, what the economy is going to look like. I mean, they'll vary depending on the decision, but they'll be there. Identify what they are and say, okay, let's put into our calendars a date, let's say a month from now.
where we have a meeting specifically to look at those assumptions and say, okay, well, we know the world's changing and it's never changed any faster than it is now. To what extent have any of these underlying assumptions changed as well so that we have to adapt what we're doing?
It's a way of increasing your nimbleness, your agility, your adaptability as a leader and definitely as a strategic thinker. And I like the idea of looking at these first principles, these assumptions, because that's what's behind any type of strategy. And so if you were to do that, that's a form of hedging actually, because what is hedging? Reducing your downside risk.
And that's what you're doing here. You're creating a method that enables you to be adaptable and agile in a world where you know you have to act, but you don't know for sure if it's the right thing to do.
And that's a really, we talk a lot about innovation and adaptability. And from your perspective, what makes an organisation, and in this specific instance, a finance team, adaptable and innovative? What are the structures that a finance leader needs to put in place to allow that to happen?
Well, it's a really great question. I have seen through some of my super bosses work, which is about leaders that help develop other leaders and the process become among the most successful in their companies and in their industries, in fact. I have seen kind of a cultural thing going on. So you use the word structure.
I don't know that you can create I don't know that you meant this necessarily in such a precise way, but I don't think you can create formal organizational structures that all of a sudden make you become more innovative. You can create incentives, certainly you can do that, to encourage some degree of innovation.
You could put into the KPIs, key performance indicators, some metrics associated with innovation. You can do all that, but I think And they're not bad things to do. But I think the most important thing to do is to create a culture where it's okay to do this. And how do you do that? First of all, you gotta model the behavior.
If you've played your cards really, really close to your vest forever, And anyone who comes up with any idea that sounds a little bit different than the straight line you think you're going on, and that person's been hammered for that idea, you've given up the chance to build an innovative team, an innovative organization. It's gonna be hard.
It's gonna be really hard, because people will pay attention to you as a leader. And so you wanna be able to model that type of behavior. You wanna hire, when you're hiring, when you're adding to your team, and you want to encourage people to To believe that, to give them that, I say that seat at the table, to almost unleash their creativity.
Now, you put some bounds around that. You don't want people being creative in all sorts of ways that just cost you money and time. You set in motion a series of principles, whatever they happen to be, about your company. You could even have do's and don'ts if you wanted to, if you wanted to really be precise about that.
But you have to leave some leeway for smart people to come up with new ways of solving problems. You have to allow that to happen because if you don't, well, two things are going to happen. One is you're not going to be, uh, innovative in the way we're talking about.
And number two, those people that are more inclined to try to push the envelope, to try to, to try to be better and change things. Those people are not going to thrive in, in that type of culture. And you may end up losing some of those people. Some of them may be very high performers as well.
So, um, uh, I think, you know, you got to, you got to create a, uh, you got to give people permission to, uh, to come up with new solutions and you have to create systems or processes that enable you to do that. And I think that's the key. And it starts with you as a leader, modeling the type of behavior.
It's one thing to say, yeah, I want all you guys to start being innovative. And that's not enough. This is one of those stories where you gotta walk the talk and not just talk.
And I guess one of the challenges is how do you encourage those ideas but still be able to give feedback when they're not right? Because like you said, some ideas that just won't be practical or could cost money and you've evaluated. So how do you encourage the evaluation of ideas in a way that doesn't become a barrier to innovation?
Yeah, that's a hard thing to do because feedback is a very powerful tool and a useful one. I think when people really believe that they have a voice where their boss wants to hear from them and wants them to be innovative, they have to believe that, and they believe that usually because there's evidence of that in the past.
Because you've also been a leader that's inspired other people to believe they can accomplish great great things I think people be more open or willing to Accept some of that feedback, but I'm not a believer in dialing down the feedback.
I think You know there are ways of doing feedback There's a you can provide negative feedback to someone and they never they never come back to you again, and that's not what you want so In a way, it's just being smart and nuanced about that. If someone's got an idea, an innovative idea, it's not a good idea, well, you have some choices.
Do you want to let them run a little bit with it under significant resource constraints so it doesn't cost you too much, so there's some learnings going on? Maybe yes, maybe no, and this environment's a little bit scary. Do you want to explain to them why it is and then maybe go back to them and say, What's the good part in this?
What did you get out of this? Is there any element of this idea that has potential? Or if it's just flat out not something that you're willing to entertain, you still have to come back and explain whether that's the case now. But I don't want this to end here.
And in fact, let's set up a meeting for two weeks from now where I want to hear two or three other ideas from you. So there's lots of ways of signaling you really want to get that innovation at the same time as you're not letting up on serious discipline and feedback. I love... I love feedback. I think it's critical is how people get better.
And what you really want when you know that this is starting to click on your team is when people value that feedback, even if it's negative feedback, it helps them get better and they value that. But you have to people have to believe that that you as a boss have their best interest at heart.
And that that takes some work to do if you've never done that before.
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Absolutely.
I guess it's even harder to do um in a new role and and i think there's a lot of chopping and changing at the moment in terms of jobs um and you know role definitions and what have you so if for you know for a new um finance leader going into a new role what are your sort of top tips for their first 100 days what what should they be thinking about
in terms of getting up and running and making that you know that critical first impression
yeah so
uh
There's no replacement for spending the time truly getting to know your team. So if you have, I'm presuming you will have some direct reports, you want one-on-one meetings, they're going to, of course, be wondering what it is you want, what it is you want to accomplish, and that's okay. But, you know, you always hear this about leaders that start in a new position.
You hear they go on a listening tour, and maybe that's a bit too... too highfalutin for the average job that you're going in and you have two or three or four people that are reporting to you. But as a matter of principle, it still makes sense, which is to get to know the individuals on your team. I call it setting the ground rules in place.
And the ground rules mean that if you know Let's say, for example, Hannah, I just got a new job and you're on my team and you're one of three or four people. And so we're going to have a meeting, we're going to talk, and I want to get to know you and I want you to know a little bit about me and my background.
But I also want to know what your aspirations are. I want to know what you want to do with your own career. Maybe you're happy with what you're doing and you want to keep doing that for 15 years. And that's fine as long as it's at a high level. But maybe you wouldn't mind having my job one day or actually having my boss's job one day.
Well, I want to kind of understand what those aspirations are. And this is really amazing where I've seen this in leaders that I've interviewed for the Superbosses research.
When they actually lay out the career track of a direct report, And they say, okay, well, if you want to get there, and you could change your mind anytime, it's your life, but if you want to get there, these are some of the skills and capabilities you're going to need.
And let's figure out how to enable you to enhance those skills and capabilities along the way. And all of a sudden, you have now become an ally. to somebody in your team.
They're not just someone who's reporting to you and you're evaluating them, that's still going on, but now you're actually being a, and this goes beyond being a mentor, you're being a, almost a sponsor, you're being an ally that's gonna help them think about, not just think about, but accomplish their goals in the next three or four or five years or whatever they
happen to be. And, you know, That's setting the ground rules. That's spending the time to get to know someone. And you can bet when you do this, and there's evidence to support this, strong evidence from many of the interviews that I did, and I interviewed over 250 people for this particular research, of the loyalty you get. Because it's so unusual.
It sounds like such a simple thing, right? It's not complicated what I just said, but it turns out most people don't do that.
And therefore, if you were to do that, all of a sudden, know your direct report uh is aligned with you they they they value the fact that you want to help them improve their own career and at the same time they that enables them to do their job even better for you and that of course helps helps you now there's other things you can do that's that type of
customized approach to each person on your team i think is a very is a critical thing and it's almost a first step if i were to start a new position
And so that's very much speaking with your individual team members. And what about the rest of the organization? Could you use a similar style of approach with perhaps peers in operations? Or how would you approach the rest of the organization as a finance leader?
So if you, you will almost certainly need the support in some form. people that are lateral to you and obviously people more senior. And so what do you do?
You want to know what they want, maybe not so much for their career because you have less control over their career, but you do know or can find out what are their goals, their own KPIs, what are they interested in, what do they want, what do they want to accomplish?
And then you think about, well, how can I help them do that so that they'll be more willing to cooperate and work with me? And it's almost like you become an internal salesperson. I don't know whether this is a natural feeling for people or not, but I've seen it again, time and again.
If you want people to support whatever it is you're doing and you don't have direct authority over them, which is usually the case, you want to figure out what it is they want and you want to sell them on the idea in a sense.
You want to sell them an idea and the idea that working with you and cooperating with you and supporting you is actually going to help them accomplish their goals. And that actually is true for your own bosses. We call that managing up. You can't say it the same way because they're your boss. And often your boss lets you know what it is they want.
But people have asked me many times, You know, my boss says this and this, and I think she's wrong and I want to do this. And how do I get her to understand? And I said, well, the number one way to get your boss to do what you want to do is to become invaluable to them.
When you become a key component of their own success, all of a sudden there's always time in their calendar to talk to you. They're always ready to hear what you have to say because you become so important to them. You don't get this automatically, you have to earn it.
And so, you know, now we're talking about not just your team, your team members, but lateral people, and even your bosses. You got to do the legwork. And notice everything I said here is not just doing your job well. That's a given. Of course, you do your job well.
But now we're talking about managing your relationships with people below you, ahead of you, and at the same level as you. And if you're not going to manage those relationships, it's going to be very difficult to get things done at the level that you might want.
Absolutely and I think that whole piece around working with your CEO to understand what it is that they want from you, there was some really interesting research from Gartner actually that I read recently about how exceptional CFOs that they class them as spent a lot of time in the first few weeks of their role actually understanding what it is that is needed from
them and i because there's lots of different roles that cfo can play but i think that was that was one of the critical elements and that they have those regular touch points to make sure that they are aligning themselves with the ceo and with the board um in terms of delivering on what it is that they've been brought in to do um so which i find really
fascinating um as a concept so And so in terms of, we talked very much about innovation in this podcast. And are there any, we talked about the fact that, you know, you need to nurture openness, you need to align them. And I think one of the elements that you talked about in Superbosses was about establishing a vision.
And how do you do that when you're a team within a wider organisation? You know, what makes a good vision for a team?
Yeah, so I think every team, no matter where the team is in a company, even if you're at a low level in a company, like first-line manager, first-line supervisor, all the way up to obviously CEO, but we're talking about middle, upper level in finance, it is your responsibility as a leader to develop a vision for your team.
Of course, that vision has to be aligned with the overall vision that the CEO has laid out for the overall company. But if I'm working for someone, I want to know why I'm there. And there's a simple answer. That's my job. I get paid for that. That's fine.
But if that's all you got for me, then, you know, if I'm really good, I might want to go somewhere where I feel like I'm having more of an impact and where we're trying to accomplish something greater. In other words, you have to explain, and this is a tough question.
Yeah.
And I've used it in a lot of groups and it doesn't always go over well until you get into it because it's challenging. But the question is, why do we exist or why do you exist as a company or as a team? And that's not the friendliest question to ask.
But if I'm a leader, I think I need to answer that question, whether they ask it or not, for people on my team. Why do we exist as a team? Why are we here? Why is our entire job not being outsourced or not being done by some other group? Why is it so essential? And when you answer that question, it should be inspiring for people on your team.
They should get excited about it. Yes, we are essential to what this company is trying to do and what the purpose of the company is and the mission and the vision of the company is. And that's a great thing. And that's what I mean by vision. A vision answers this question, why do we exist as a team? And vision And then at the same time is inspiring.
for the people on my team, on the team is aligned, completely aligned with the overall vision that the CEO has laid out for the company and helps us kind of set the boundaries around what it is we do and what we don't do. Your vision helps you say, we're gonna do this, but maybe we're not gonna do that.
And that's useful when we get back to that conversation we had earlier about innovation and setting the ground rules and the do's and the don'ts.
So a good vision can do all of that, kind of set the framework, the framing for what it is we do as a team, but fundamentally inspire people to believe this is really critical what we're doing and then be aligned with the overall CEO's vision.
And are there any other sort of top tips you have for those, those, those either new to role or in an existing role about how to become, I love the term super boss, to become a super boss. Is there anything you think we've missed in terms of the elements we've talked about today?
Well, let's see. So we've talked about inspiration and inspiring people. We've talked about setting a vision. We've talked about, I use the term, unleashing the creativity of the people around you. The word creativity is not a business term, and I use it purposely. You could use the word innovation if you're uncomfortable with creativity.
But it does mean getting more out of the people that work for you in terms of their own ideas and trying to solve the problems that are around the corner. I think all of that is important.
I will say that one thing super boss leaders do, and I don't know if it's obvious from what we've said so far, but it should be highlighted, is it's not that easy to work for a super boss leader in the sense that the performance expectations are high. You are expected to produce and produce big. It's not a walk in the park.
And, you know, because when we talk about innovation and inspiration, you know, these are kind of soft words. Well, yeah, that's what it takes to be successful. But you still have your week by week, month by month, quarter by quarter KPIs, key performance indicators. You've got to do your job and do it at a high level. And there's no excuse for not doing that.
And so they drive their teams to have these high performance expectations. The fact that they can do that at the same time as inspire them. is actually kind of inspirational that you can do that. And I know you can do that because I've seen it and I've worked with people and I've helped them do that.
But sometimes we forget that as managers, we forget that there's these two sides to motivation. There's the inspirational side, but there's also the demanding side great performance side, this creating a performance-driven culture side. Both are important. One without the other is really incomplete. And you can see that.
If you have the inspirational leader that doesn't have the discipline and the purpose and pushing people to achieve great things, you're never going to be successful. It's going to sound great, but you're not going to make it. But the reverse is true also.
Creating this performance-driven culture where people just feel like Ottomans and and robots and just have to do their job, you're gonna lose great people along the way.
And in our era now of COVID with so many things in flux, and I just saw the other day a factoid that there are more new companies, new entrepreneurial companies being created in America today than ever before in the history of the whole country, which is kind of mind-blowing to think about.
That in a world of ferment and uncertainty and uncertainty And well, just those two words are good words. There's so many people ready to jump in to redefine, recreate what's going to happen. Well, you want to inspire people to give them that chance to do that within your own organization.
So I think that's a really critical component of what of how super boss leaders motivate people on their teams.
And you know what, I think that's a really interesting point. And if I just sort of go back to what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, where you said one of your first roles in accounting was when you were told that you were asking too many questions.
Perhaps if they'd handled that and inspired you in a way, you might be in a very different role today, which is an interesting concept, isn't it?
Yes, although I'm quite happy that's turned out the way that it did.
Yeah.
Yeah, and maybe, you know, you look back and you go, actually, imagine how many people wouldn't have heard all the incredible work and the research that you've done if they hadn't told you to stop asking so many questions back then. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much, Sydney. I would love to just keep asking you questions.
Your knowledge and your experience is just incredible. So thank you so much for joining us today and for taking part in the podcast. If people want to learn more about becoming a super boss or get some insight into more about your work, what is the best place for them to go? Where would you suggest they start?
Well, There's a website, www.superbosses.com. That also will connect you through there. to a lot of the other work that I've done at Dartmouth and my website there.
And as you mentioned earlier, the podcast, thesydcast.com is a great source to see kind of my latest work and thinking and conversations, which are with lots of interesting people in different walks of life and how they've accomplished what they've accomplished and the mistakes made along the way and the learning along the way.
I'd say those are two of the best places to look.
Brilliant. And for all of those listening that are keen to learn more, we will put links to those websites and some of the books that I mentioned earlier as well. And I can honestly say it's definitely worth a read. So thank you so much, Sydney. It's been an absolute pleasure. And yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you, Hannah. I loved it.
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