Teaching the Business of CFOing for Part-time CFOs
Ready for an adrenaline rush? Come on, you deserve it.
Let’s start with sports and music. The two just go together. Add a high-performing, part-time CFO to the mix, and you’ve got a powerful combination.
And if you agree, you need a theme song for your practice. Tell me you haven’t at least driven down an interstate with the music cranked up headed to a client’s office for the first time (obviously when you are between audiobooks).
If I were asked to speak in front of 10,000 part-time CFOs and was allowed to give just one piece of advice, that would be easy.
“Don’t be generic.”
Each time I read an article telling me to focus more and more on the future, I just roll my eyes. Continually, I’m reading that my peers and I need to be shifting our focus from the past to the future.
This advice is concerning and even misguided because we’re all different. Every person looks to the future, we just process and approach it differently. Accordingly, I believe some of you are past-based CFOs. Others are current-based CFOs. The rest of you are future-based CFOs. Don’t even think about changing who you are, just the desired outcomes.
Remember the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s? Michael Jordan was the ultimate A Player.
What about Pippen, Grant, Paxton or Kerr? Were they A Players or B Players?
In sports, we can easily pin the labels on the players we follow. How about in business? Perhaps some definitions are in order.
Are CFO firms like the cobbler without shoes–good at teaching and delivering strategy but not good at applying it to themselves?
If you run or are part of a CFO firm, does that describe your organization?