Mark Gandy

One of my favorite business books doubles up as a leadership manual on getting a large, but failing business to pull together until success finally arrives, but not without hardship and economic headwinds. Alan Mulally, the former CEO of Ford, might still be a relatively unknown business icon had Bryce Hoffman not written about him in his best-selling book, American Icon. Bryce is also the author of Red Teaming.

The most downloaded show on CFO Bookshelf is our 2020 interview view Ben Lamorte on OKRs. It was Ben who introduced me to Christina Wodtke’s work on OKRs years ago which included her great presentation entitled, Executioner’s Tale and her book Radical Focus. Christina recently released the 2nd edition of Radical Focus, our topic on this episode of CFO Bookshelf.

In 2004, I first encountered the name, Ron Baker. I have Gary Boomer to thank for that at an event held in Kansas City for CPA practices. He recommended the book, The Firm of the Future. I couldn’t put it down while vacationing in North Carolina. While I consider Ron the (very young) grandfather of value pricing for CPA and professional services firms, many acolytes are sharing his message with zeal and effectiveness. One such person is Geraldine Carter.

Once I started getting the general idea of Wardley Mapping, I still wanted to learn more. And that’s when I kept bumping into the great teaching of Ben Mosier who runs Learn Wardley Mapping (LWM) as well as his YouTube videos at ben at hiredthought. Behind his back, I’m calling him the Ryan Holiday or Shane Parrish of Wardley Mapping.