Mark Gandy

One of my favorite CFOs is Bob Lung. For the past 33 years, he’s been chauffeuring players and dignitaries at the NFL’s annual Hall of Fame weekend activities in Canton, Ohio. In this fast-paced interview, we talk about Bob’s favorite moments at the Hall of Fame ceremony, what it means to be a driver during this event, and a couple of special stories. We also discuss whether your business should have a Hall of Fame.

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What is the best book on negotiation you’ve ever read? Many readers might suggest Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. What if I said there is another title that’s far more practical with ideas that you can put into practice right now? That book is Negotiation Simplified by Jim Reiman. In this fast-paced conversation, we talk about the core four concepts of negotiating and the best discussion I’ve ever read about goals in the context of negotiating.

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Bill Campbell was a legendary business coach who mentored larger-than-life business leaders such as Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and many others. I agree with his biographers calling him a trillion-dollar coach. If that’s true, we need to call Joe Ehrmann and Biff Poggi trillion-dollar coaches too. Jeffrey Marx in his impactful and transforming book, Season of Life, reveals how these two coaches have made a difference in the lives of young football players, which applies to all areas of life.

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Imagine trying to capture the family history starting from your grandfather’s grandfather through today. How would you construct the narrative over those six generations? Would you take a timeline approach by filling in important details over the course of those hundred-plus years? Or would you try a different approach the way Katherine Howe did with her co-author Anderson Cooper in their book, Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty?

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Rob Hart’s book, The Warehouse, is a speculative dystopian thriller. The central character is an online retailer called Cloud – think Amazon dominating its rivals in the distant future, which has devastating effects on small retailers across the country. There’s a dying founder – is he a hero or delusional? Why did Paxton and Zinnia take jobs at Cloud? Is it for the paycheck? Rob is the first fiction writer to be interviewed on CFO Bookshelf.

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Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird states, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from their point of view … until you climb into their skin and walk around in it.” Elvis Pressley sang, “Before you abuse, criticize and accuse, walk a mile in my shoes.” In this conversation, we unpack the big ideas and linkages between business success and customer empathy with Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, the co-author of Empathy in Action.

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Jeff Sands is the author of Corporate Turnaround Artistry. Before he started fixing and mending other companies’ broken income statements and balance sheets, he first had to fix his own where he learned how friendly banks could be. During this conversation, we also learn about debt stacks, a few myths about bankruptcies, the five stages of a turnaround, the three types of turnaround CEOs,  the role of luck, and what Jeff calls the salvation process.

[Read more…] about A Turnaround Expert Learned His Craft the Hard Way