The CFO Bookshelf weekly podcast is geared toward global financial leaders who are serious about lifelong learning and reading widely.
The show's 200-plus podcast catalog features well-known authors who are experts in finance, pricing, marketing, sales, operations, organizational health, and leadership.
Episodes are released weekly, and the host responds to every message he gets about the shows on LinkedIn.
He's been called the grandfather of gamification. He's also the best-selling author of The Game of Work and Scorekeeping for Success . Behind his back, I'm calling Chuck Coonradt the owner, general manager, and MVP head coach of The Game of Work who is a Hall of Famer.
You probably know about the best-selling book entitled American Icon which explains how an outsider turned around an ailing automotive company. But what set Alan Mulally apart from any other CEO? Why didn't he bring his Boeing managers to Ford with him? Is he as humble as we see him in the many interviews he conducts? Bryce Hoffman is the author of American Icon , and we learn more about this fascinating CEO along with his newest book about red team thinking....
My favorite book about OKRs is Radical Focus by Christina Wodtke. Christina recently updated her book with a second edition which is the topic in this episode. We also talk about her dream job at Stanford University, why OKRs are not for every business, why some CEOs go wrong with OKRs, and why having a healthy culture is the starting point for implementing OKRs of any scale.
Geraldine Carter is a consultant to small CPA firms around the country, and her message is niching down and burying the billable hour by implementing value pricing. Geraldine is also the host of the Smart Strategy for CPA's podcast. But her message is not unique for CPA firms - it's universal - all professional services firms can gain meaningful insights from Geraldine's expertise.
While Simon Wardley is the creator of the visual strategy mapping construct called Wardley Mapping, I consider Ben Mosior one of the greatest teachers of this framework. In this show, we discuss how to get started with Wardley Mapping and the mindset to stick with it.
The host of CFO Bookshelf bumped into Simon Wardley's writing on mapping strategy several years ago, and he couldn't put his content down. In this conversation, we talk about the strategy circle, the OODA loop, the 'why' of purpose, doctrine, and many other key concepts related to Wardley Mapping.
Greg Graves is the former CEO of the employee-owned engineering firm, Burns & McDonnell. In this show, he talks about going 'all in' regarding ESOPs and his book Create Amazing .
Brad Chase was the marketing mastermind behind one of the most successful software launches ever - Windows 95. He replicated this success while serving at Microsoft on several other high-profile projects. Brad is the author of Strategy First: How Businesses Win Big . In this episode, we discuss the big ideas in his book including the E-Strategy and simple formula that's simple, impactful, and memorable.
Jack McCullough is the CFO of all CFOs. He's the founder and President of The CFO Leadership Council with a membership of more than 1,800 financial leaders. Jack is the author of Rock Star CFOs which lists 9 traits of a great CFO, our topic in this fascinating and insightful interview.
Everybody Ought to Be Rich by David Farber is now one of my favorite books in the business history genre. It's the story of one of the greatest number 2 men of the modern business era, John Jakob Raskob - a name that every financial leader should know about.
If I'm going to listen to a data science and analytics expert for nearly an hour, that person better speak a language that I can understand and who is relatable. That person does exist, and his name is Jon Daniels of Bamboo HR. In this episode, he talks about data lakes, data warehousing, ETL, and data governance. He also provides simple strategies to go from no intelligence to business and artificial intelligence.
While this is CFO Bookshelf where we generally interview book authors, there's no way I want to read a book on ERP planning and implementations. I believe this is a better topic addresses through doing and listening to the sage advice of others. One such person is Ed Kless who is an expert in software implementations. He's also the co-host of my favorite podcast, The Soul of Enterprise. You can also hear him several times a week hosting the Sage Thought Leader Podcast. In this show, we...
As a financial leader, I enjoy any conversation with a CEO, especially one that's co-founded a business generating more than $100 million annually. Jeff Morrill is the co-founder with his brother of Planet Subaru based in Boston. His new book is Profit Wise, and we hit on many of the big ideas in that insightul read.
Some of my favorite words in the CFO lexicon are momentum, acceleration, velocity, drive, and even thrust. Coincidentally, Mike Berland is the author of Maximum Momentum - How to Get It, How to Keep It . And it's those very words we focused on during our conversation. Mike is the founder of Decode_M, a research and analytics firm that decodes data into momentum for clients. In this episode, we talked about how businesses gain momentum, and how it can jumpstart our strategic initiatives....
If you liked The Big Short by Michael Lewis where we learn about the financial meltdown of 2007-08, then you will probably like the stories behind the financial revolution that took place during the 10 years that followed. | Daniel Simon has weaved more than 150 interviews with technologists that he calls misfits | or financial hackers - the men and women who shaped Fintech after the global financial crisis. Daniel's book is entitled The Money Hackers. He writes about the personal stories b...
The legendary CEO, Hunter Harrison, was making an impact with his tools and philosophies while turning around Canadian National Railway. But he still needed help with a serious problem. The organization's culture was still a problem. Judy Johnson was part of the consulting team who helped with CN's cultural turnaround. She and her co-authors of SwitchPoints talked about their journey and the tools and frameworks they applied during that project. SwitchPoints is by far the best book I&a...
Adam Mead's new book, The Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway was 5 years in the making and started out as a 5,000-page manuscript that was finally shaved to just under a thousand pages. Instead of this being a book about Warren Buffett, it's a complete history of every purchase made by Berkshire Hathaway since the beginning.
One of the best accounting books I've ever read about Lean from a CFO's perspective is Real Numbers by Jean Cunningham, one of the authors of that book. But the audience for that book is CEOs, operating managers, and anyone working on the plant floor. The book is also relevant for health care and other service industry professionals. Real Numbers was written a decade ago, but listening to Jean who is so kind and generous reminds us that the lean message is still relevant, impactful, an...
Stacey Barr is the author of Practical Performance Measurement and Prove It! She is also the creator of the best performance measurement framework I've ever reviewed, and it's applicable to businesses and non-profits of all sizes. The thinking person's framework is called PuMP(R). In our interview with Stacey, we address why so many organizations fail at implementing performance measurements bringing sustainable change and improvement to the organization. We talk about tools, meth...
Daniele Martins is the Head of Global FP&A at ThoughtWorks in Brazil. In this show, we talked about technology, processes, and people. We drilled into spreadsheets, budgeting, forecasting, and the 65% which makes for a great FP&A ideal team player.
Did you realize the first book written on OKRs was Radical Focus by Christina Wodtke? She's our guest along with Ben Lamorte who joins us for his second appearance on the show. We talk about when and when to never use OKRs.
When you think of iconic and successful CEOs, names like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Howard Schultz, Jack Welch, and Sam Walton probably spring to mind. Can you name a 4-time CEO who orchestrated overwhelming turnarounds at each of his stopping points? Hunter Harrison did, and he's the subject of the book, Railroader: The Unfiltered Genius and Controversy of Four-Time CEO Hunter Harrison . Our guest is the author of this biography, Howard Green. We talk about the CEO's childhood, the relat...
I'm a huge fan of the book, The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart. During our conversation, we talk about the business gurus, strategic planning, management consulting, philosophy, and what is a great manager.
Lora Cecere needs no introduction, but she's a global thought leader on supply chain. She is the founder of Supply Chain Thought Leader and also writes for Forbes. She also publishes content on her website Supply Chain Shaman as well as on LinkedIn. Lora is the author of Supply Chain Metrics that Matter which was published in 2015. She is followed by more than 320,000 on LinkedIn, and her organization's Supply Chains to Admire is must-reading each year....
There are only three books I recommend on the topic of performance measurement. By far, the best title is Transforming Performance Measurement by Dean Spitzer. While working for IBM, Dean realized that training was not the path to better and transformation performance. As he started learning the good and the bad of performance measurement, he learned what was needed for organizational transformation - something The Balanced Scorecard could never deliver. The Big Ideas Training alone does not imp...
Steve Cakebread's current CEO at Yext says he is the master of taking technology companies public. Steve published his first book in 2020 entitled The IPO Playbook, and we talk about what happens before, during, and after the IPO.
CFO Dive's, Jane Thier joins CFO Bookshelf to discuss the top business stories of 2020. While COVID and PPP dominated the headlines, other stories and themes developed as well such as automation, pivoting to digital, and working from home.
Tax CPA Jeff Shore gives us some last-minute tax insights for 2020 along with tax ramifications of a new administration in 2021. We also talk about PPP, timing expense deductions, tax credits, and expense classification. Don't worry - this is not boring at all. Jeff is quotable and easy to understand as he demystifies some complex tax topics.
I'm a long-time reader of the great blog posts at Interworks.com. One of those writers is Dan Murray who is their Director of Strategic Innovation. I was so lucky in getting to meet Dan at a Quantrix conference a few years ago - that friendship has continued and led to this conversation about data extraction, ETL strategies, data infrastructure, and BI tools such as Tableau.
I recently heard an S&OP podcaster ask if S&OP is dead, and so I wanted to ask one of the pioneers in this planning space if S&OP was still revelvant. Our guest is Bob Stahl, an S&OP pioneer, speaker, writer, and consultant. You'll enjoy his first answer to my question.
