CFO Bookshelf Blog

If you think Netflix was the cause of Blockbuster’s failure, you’ll change your mind after you hear Alan Payne explain the reasons for this company’s demise. Alan was a longtime owner of a chain of successful Blockbuster stores. He was also featured in the Netflix 2020 documentary, The Last Blockbuster. His new book is Built to Fail, and we learn four reasons for Blockbuster’s eventual bankruptcy which started with poor leadership at the CEO level.

More than twenty-five years ago, I knew next to nothing about the concept of company culture. Treating others the way I wanted to be treated. That’s what I did and hoped others would do the same. I never worked for a CEO before 2004 whose primary focus was building and developing great teams. One of my favorite books on culture is Powerful by the first HR leader at Netflix. This is the book I would have enjoyed reading in the 1990s.

Have you ever worked with a software vendor who said their solution would save you as much as $1 million annually? When you accept projects with these types of claims, have you gone back one year later to determine the actual cash savings you realized? Our topic on this show is the book, Project Profitability by our guest, Reginald Lee. We explore project salience, mental models for project prioritization, and informational and instructional-centric projects.

Glenn Hopper is the author of Deep Finance: Corporate Finance for the Information Age. Glenn is a likable expert who helps the rest of us better understand artificial intelligence, data science, and ERP solutions.  As a hands-on, self-taught digital expert, his writing is still easy to understand. In this conversation, we cover machine and deep learning, practical applications of data science in smaller businesses, and comparing comprehensive ERP solutions with best-of-breed tools that are stacked together.

Looking back on my financial career, given the chance for a do-over, I would have focused on forensic accounting or corporate turnarounds. Turnarounds have the edge. Instead, I focused on intense scale-ups while studying and reading about those in turnaround management. One of those experts is Professor James Shein of the Kellogg School of Management. Reversing the Slide is one of the best books in the turnaround genre I’ve read, our topic on this episode.

Periodically, I come across a short book with a simple message that gets its point across quickly and compellingly. For more years than I can count, I’ve been listening to How to Become a CEO by Jeffrey Fox at least once every year. Jeffrey’s book includes about a dozen recommendations for anyone seeking the top spot in a company. However, the advice applies to nonprofits, the military, and any other organization.

Do a Google search on the words CFO and storytelling, and you’ll find many articles that will supposedly enhance this communication skill. Yet, most of these articles merely scratch the surface on how to tell better stories in the appropriate context. My suggestion is to learn from an expert on analogies, a former presidential speechwriter and the author of Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas.

I’m going to make the bold statement that Roger Martin is this era’s Peter Drucker as a prolific business writer. Roger has co-authored my favorite book on strategy, Playing to Win which is simple, concise, pragmatic, and has plenty of sticky concepts. Roger’s newest book is A New Way to Think. If you like Adam Grant, Dan Pink, the Heath brothers, or Matthew May, this book belongs in your book queue, the topic in this conversation.