CFO Bookshelf Blog

David Farber’s Everybody Ought to Be Rich is now one of my favorite books in the business history genre of narrative non-fiction. Who helped the DuPont family take their business public? Who introduced DuPont to Billy Durant and General Motors? Who built and found the funding for The Empire State Building? It was the $10-a-week clerk who became the first CFO of the modern business era, John Raskob.

[Read more…] about John Raskob – The First CFO of the Modern Era

If I’m going to listen to a data science and analytics expert for nearly an hour, that person better speak a language that I can understand and who is relatable. I got lucky and found that person, and his name is Jon Daniels of BambooHR. In this episode, he talks about data lakes, data warehousing, ETL, data governance, no intelligence, BI, and AI.

[Read more…] about A CFO’s Playbook for Data Science and Analytics

I have no desire to read books on ERP project planning and implementation. This is a topic where I believe we learn by doing and by listening to the sage advice of others. One such person is Ed Kless, the co-host of The Soul of Enterprise podcast. In this show, Ed talks about what we do before, during, and after ERP implementations.

[Read more…] about ERP Implementations with Ed Kless

I always jump at the opportunity to visit with CEOs as I come away from those discussions energized and a bit wiser. When I learned that I had the opportunity to interview the author of Profit Wise by Jeff Morrill, I jumped at the chance. Jeff and his brother co-founded Planet Subaru based in Boston. They call their business an undealership.

[Read more…] about The Wisdom of Profit Wise with Jeff Morrill

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.

[Read more…] about Strength Versus Corporate Momentum With Mike Berland

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.

[Read more…] about The Origins of the Fintech Money Hackers

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.

[Read more…] about The Tools and Frameworks Behind a Massive Cultural Turnaround

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 that 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