Mark Gandy

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.

If you liked The Big Short by Michael Lewis where we learn about the investors who bet against the housing market before its massive plunge in 2007-2008, then you might like reading about the financial revolution that emerged the following 10 years. Daniel Simon weaved more than 150 interviews with technologists whom he calls misfits for his book, The Money Hackers which reads fast in its narrative-driven arc.

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. That’s where Judy Johnson and her other consulting team members played a role in the cultural turnaround. Judy is the co-author of SwitchPoints which addresses this journey and their tools.

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.

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.