One of my favorite 25 business books is The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig. During this conversation, Phil explains the halo effect, along with several other delusions business leaders are bombarded with daily from the press, business authors, and consulting gurus. Other highlights include: remedies for overcoming the halo effect heuristic research flaws in Good to Great backward causalities business culture and financial performance "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." gr...
Aug 25, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 185
As I search for books to highlight on the show, I'm looking for unique and interesting content and an author who has probably slipped under other podcasters' radars. Take, for instance, the title Rasputin for Hire by Michael Goodman. Michael is a marketing expert who has been consulting since 1979. In this conversation, we hear about the story behind this fascinating title and: the difference between his book and Dan Pink's first title, Free Agent Nation why new consultants have t...
Aug 18, 2023•24 min•Season 1Ep. 184
I never knew there was a consulting niche for advising directors for public company boards of directors until I met Denise Kuprionis. She founded The Governance Solutions Group (GSG) based in Cincinnati, where she helps boards apply effective governance practices and achieve their most pressing objectives. In this conversation, some of our topics include: The way Denise finds clients to work with The biggest difference between her board work today and ten years ago - there are not many Board ass...
Aug 11, 2023•49 min•Season 1Ep. 183
After reading a book by a successful commercial developer who moved his family to France for two years, I wanted to learn more about setting up shop in a foreign country. That's because the real estate developer faced obstacle after obstacle because he wasn't used to the vast cultural divide between his home country and France. Accordingly, I felt I struck oil when I found the book, The Business Accidental Nomad by Kyle Hegarty. Kyle shares his experiences in building a marketing and s...
Aug 04, 2023•48 min•Season 1Ep. 182
One of my favorite business authors has just released his 15th book. The title is Own Your Work Journey by Ed Hess. Fans of Ed Hess will be treated to a mini-memoir in the introduction of the book, and we spend the first ten minutes of this conversation talking about some of the mentors in Ed's life during his upbringing as a youth. Other key points we hit are: the quiet ego and the wild stallion that's brought under control emergent thinking inner peace while having an open mind the k...
Aug 01, 2023•51 min•Season 1Ep. 181
The best book I've ever read on the topic of growth is by Ed Hess, and it's aptly named Smart Growth . It's not an anti-growth book, but through research, it dismantles the mental model of what I call Wall Street Growth which is: 1. Businesses have to continually grow or die 2. All growth is good 3. Growth has to be continuous and smooth 4. Quarterly growth is the primary measure of success In this conversation with Ed Hess, we discuss some of his favorite case studies in the book...
Jul 29, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 180
According to cognitive psychologist Gary Klien, people with a seemingly high sixth sense become experts at pattern recognition through years of experience in their respective fields. But where does that experience come from? How does that person achieve such experience? Soren Kaplan is the author of the 2023 book Experiential Intelligence . Soren explains the differences between experiential intelligence (XQ) and IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence). In this show, we also hit topics such as: curio...
Jul 21, 2023•52 min•Season 1Ep. 179
One of the most intriguing and thought-provoking management books I've ever read is the 1993 book, Maverick by Ricardo Semler. Ricardo took over his father's business Semco not too long after he graduated from college. He knew he didn't want to run the business as his father had, so he started in small steps by getting his staff involved in all decisions of the business, not just small ones. The results were phenomenal. In less than ten years, Semco grew 6x in spite of inflation, ...
Jul 14, 2023•57 min•Season 1Ep. 178
Gareth Pronovost is my go-to expert on his YouTube channel, GAP Consulting, where he teaches his subscribers about Airtable, SmartSuite, automation techniques, and other great insights on no-code solutions. In this conversation, Gareth discusses how to break spreadsheet addiction. Other topics include: Gareth's interesting entry point to no-code apps the best definition for no-code applications what no-code is not the best starting point for no-code applications combining no-code apps with ...
Jul 08, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 177
Technology with the advancement of generative AI is seemingly moving at a pace we've never seen with other innovations. How does any organization step back and figure out how to adopt digital and AI technologies to support its strategic objectives? That's where Rewired comes in. The subtitle for this new book is The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI . Our guest is Eric Lamarre, one of the co-authors of this practical playbook. In this conversation, we address:...
Jun 30, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 176
More Than a Numbers Game is rich in business and accounting history. We learn about the Merchants of Venice and why they had a strategic advantage. We also learn about the many flaws and imperfections of financial reporting, where completeness and consistencies are impossible. This conversation is geared toward non-accounting students and professionals where additional topics include the one-page report by the early railroads, what was included in the first modern financial report in 1903, the m...
Jun 24, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 175
When I finished reading Next Generation Retail by Deborah Weinswig and Renee Hartmann, my first thought was that the great ideas in this book apply to direct-to-consumer manufacturers and professional services firms. In this conversation, co-author Renee Hartmann helps us to understand better the following technologies that are not just for big companies: metaverse blockchain live streaming social commerce data and the CORE framework retail media quick commerce supply chain Headless CaaS Health ...
Jun 16, 2023•47 min•Season 1Ep. 174
Derek Lidow is a former business founder of a major global semiconductor company that he ultimately sold. Today, he's a professor at Princeton, where he teaches entrepreneurship, the topic of his newest book, The Entrepreneurs . This book is rich with historical stories of entrepreneurs doing the same things in the past as they are doing today. In this deeply insightful conversation with Derek Lidow, we learn the three major traits of entrepreneurs, the origin of the term creative destructi...
Jun 10, 2023•57 min•Season 1Ep. 173
When Walter Chrysler built his New York skyscraper in the early 1930s, his critics stated the building was a monument created for himself. The same comment could have been applied to John Jakob Raskob's justification for building The Empire State Building. In this book club-style conversation, John Coe and I dissect the book, The Birth of a Building . The author's book addresses how a book is conceived, financed, designed, and constructed. Unlike Chrysler and Raskob, this book starts w...
Jun 02, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 169
Curiosity drives much of the content on this podcast, and when Erik Hanberg's book, The Little Book of Boards, showed up in my email, I felt compelled to buy it for several reasons. Of the six or seven boards I've served on, some have been boring experiences, others have been exceptional. I was curious if this book would have been valuable to me during my first board experience, which wasn't great--it definitely would have been. While Erik's background is in the non-profit wo...
May 26, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 168
Not only is Neil Dahlstrom the author of the business historical narrative Tractor Wars , but he's also the Branded Properties and Heritage Manager at John Deere. Before that, he was Deere's Corporate History and Archives Manager. Neil admits he wanted to be Indiana Jones when he grew up and even worked in a museum in high school. During this conversation, we learn what a corporate archivist does, how to start a company archive, and how to start a career in this field....
May 22, 2023•17 min•Season 1Ep. 167
All of us have heard of the cola wars, the tennis shoe wars, and certainly the PC wars. But the tractor wars? Neil Dahlstrom is a historian and archivist for John Deere, and he's the author of Tractor Wars , a historical narrative of the race to be the top manufacturer of power farming at the turn of the twentieth century. Will it be International Harvester, Ford, or the much smaller player, John Deere? Neil's book is a story of what-ifs, including pricing wars, business rollups, marke...
May 20, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 166
Derek Sivers was an accidental business founder. All he wanted to do was put his music online and sell it online before the dotcom bubble when PayPal did not exist yet. During one four-year period, his revenues jumped from $1 to $20 million while his staff count surged from 8 to 85. He eventually sold CD Baby for $22 million in 2008. Derek tells his founder's story in the book, Anything You Like . Since it's a book I recommend to every CFO, I invited Hannah Munro, the host of the CFO 4...
May 13, 2023•46 min•Season 1Ep. 165
One of the best books we've read in 2023 is the story of Dame Stephanie 'Steve' Shirley, who started a business of women freelance programmers in a male-dominated world in the 1960s based in London. The bookends of this remarkable story include an escape from the Holocaust from her homeland in Austria to her new adopted country in England, thanks to Kindertransport. While there are many business insights in Steve's book, Let It Go , she pulls back the curtain to reveal the ma...
May 05, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 164
We learned many linear frameworks in business school to help us solve simple to complex problems. Yet, systems thinking was probably missing from that curriculum. The Fifth Discipline (Senge) and Systems Thinking (Meadows) are typical starting points for learning systems thinking. However, those books are not written from a business person's perspective. Simple Complexity , by Dr. William (Willy) Donaldson, is the most readable and pragmatic book I've read on systems thinking. The auth...
Apr 28, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 163
David Axson is called a CFO whisperer, but I'm also calling him an expert on calling the flaws and weaknesses of some of the biggest name management tools and systems from the past that are still influencing our decision-making today. David is the author of the 2010 book, The Management Mythbuster. In this conversation, we hit on a variety of topics, such as: annual budgeting performance pay calendar-driven reporting informational vs. analytical data EBITDA management GURUs cost allocation ...
Apr 21, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 162
Behind his back, I call him a Peter Drucker. He's the co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, 2Bobs . He's also the author of six business books. His name is David C. Baker, and I could listen to him all day with his pearls of wisdom on accumulating and sharing expertise with others. David's newest book is Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors . You do not need to be a third-party business advisor to appreciate this conversation. The content of this book applies to anyone who is a k...
Apr 14, 2023•34 min•Season 1Ep. 161
Are you curious about the origin story of the CFO Bookshelf podcast? The great people at Oracle NetSuite wanted to know that about a year earlier when they asked that question during one of their webinars. In this recording, the Head of Marketing at Netsuite, Ranga Bodla, asks the host of CFO Bookshelf why he started the show, who his favorite guests and been, and even some conversations that didn't turn out too well. Health Supplement Business Mastery Grow your dietary supplement D2C eComm...
Apr 14, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 160
I enjoy reading books by transparent business founders who are not afraid to let their guard down in the stories they share. Titles quickly coming to mind are Boss Life by Paul Downs, Anything You Want by Derek Sivers, and Wild Company by the founders of Banana Republic. High on my list in this genre is What it Takes by Raegan Moya-Jones, the gritty and successful co-founder of aden + anais . Like many startup arcs, this book reveals many obstacles encountered by founders: necessary startup capi...
Apr 07, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 159
Do you know what a donor-advised fund (DAF) is? Until this conversation, I knew very little about DAFs. Jake Wood founded Groundswell, whose mission is to democratize and revolutionize philanthropy for everyone. They do that through technology and DAFs. In this conversation, we find out what DAFs are, how to set them up, who can sponsor a DAF, and why they offer tax advantages to donors. Health Supplement Business Mastery Grow your dietary supplement D2C eCommerce business. Listen on: Apple Podc...
Apr 01, 2023•26 min•Season 1Ep. 157
Mad Men's Harry Crane has found that his colleague makes $100 a week more than he does. He believes he deserves a raise, and through some fear and trepidation, he gets an extra $25 more per week from his intimidating boss. But do you think he's happy? How about you? Are you paid fairly? If not, how do you know? What are your thoughts on minimum wage vs. a living wage? Do you believe in pay transparency and salary surveys? In the compensation world, David Buckmaster probably needs to in...
Mar 25, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 156
CFO Bookshelf does not sit in the seat of judgment, nor does it play the role of pundit in the midst of the 2023 banking crisis we are witnessing. We'll let the regulators and the media handle those duties. Instead, CFO Bookshelf is about old and revolutionary ideas that we can put to work right now in our organizations. As I have been monitoring the news of the Silicon Valley Bank closure and similar banks that are failing, four mental models or frameworks have come to mind. In this episod...
Mar 21, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 155
I've heard some startup founders say that every graduate should spend a year or two working in government before embarking on their chosen career path. For business students, I believe every new graduate should consider running or managing a restaurant for one to two years because of the people, financial, and entrepreneurial skills needed to keep the store afloat. I'm thrilled to have Ken McGarrie on the show to talk shop about his industry and his book, The Surprise Restaurant Manage...
Mar 17, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 154
Author and HBR contributor Peter Cappelli asserts that accounting and financial reporting are wreaking havoc on damaging HR decisions by corporate leaders. In this conversation, Peter reveals that 90% of all company vacancies were filled internally prior to 1980. Today, that number is just over 20%. He adds that there were very few layoffs more than 40 years ago. Today, layoffs make headlines weekly. Peter believes these results are being driven by accounting and financial reporting. In this epi...
Mar 11, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 153
I'm periodically scouring the podcast universe for other shows focusing on business books. I recently found Business Books & Co. founded by three buddies who went to school together. Within three weeks, I listened to their first three seasons of episodes. As a fan of the show, I'm thrilled to hear the origin story of this podcast with their moderator David Kopec. In this show, we learn how a book club turned into a podcast, how books are selected, their favorite episodes, the books...
Mar 02, 2023•44 min•Season 1Ep. 152
