Mark Gandy

In any Amazon book search, one can find some 200 titles about Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger or Berkshire Hathaway. Yet, the book Adam Mead was searching for never existed – a complete listing of every purchase that Berkshire Hathaway made from its very beginning. Even Hagstrom doesn’t come close in his great book, The Warren Buffett Way. It took him 5 years to write it, and Adam Mead finally has the book he was wanting to read himself.

[Read more…] about The Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway

One of the best books I’ve ever read on LEAN from a CFO’s perspective is Real Numbers by Jean Cunningham, one of the co-authors of that book. I was deeply thankful we could pull Jean out of retirement for this insightful and informative discussion about the mindset and methodology of LEAN, which is about continuous improvement with respect for people. We discuss the goals of lean, plain-language financial reporting, the one-day close, kaizen, unit costs, her other books, and much more.

[Read more…] about Jean Cunningham, a Former CFO’s Perspective on Lean

Stacey Barr is the author of Practical Performance Measurement and Prove It!. She’s also the creator of the PuMP® framework which I believe is by far the best mental construct for learning and implementing performance measurements successfully in any organization large or small. This Australian-based teacher and consultant did not set out to be a performance measurement specialist. While she had a strong penchant for math and statistics, she first had her sites set on the medical profession.

[Read more…] about Practical Performance Measurement with Stacey Barr

I read some 100-120 books annually, I skim probably a hundred others. I read dozens of whitepapers and journals just to keep my mind sharp during any 12-month period. While FP&A bleeds every beautiful color in my veins, books on the topic generally range from being dull to lifeless. That’s why our team started scoping out FP&A Directors to interview for our podcast. Our first selection included some luck and did not disappoint.

[Read more…] about A Global FP&A Director Talks Technology, Methods, and People

When it comes to OKRs thought leaders, only two people come to mind. One of them is not John Doerr although he’s influenced both in their thinking about OKRs. The first is Ben Lamorte who has already been on our podcast. He’s an author and coach of OKRs consultants. The other person is someone who Ben said, “Mark, you need to watch Christina’s Wodtke’s, The Executioner’s Tale.” In this episode, her OKRs roots and her last book, The Team That Managed Itself are the key themes of our discussion with both Christina and Ben.

[Read more…] about An OKRs Doubleheader