CFO Bookshelf

With the passing of the 20th anniversary of WorldCom filing bankruptcy in the aftermath of the whistle being blown on its reporting of fraudulent financial statements, I wanted to revisit Cynthia Cooper's page-turner, Extraordinary Circumstances.

Why was the fraud committed? How? What was internal audit's role in detecting the fraudulent entries created by the CFO and four members of his staff?

In this episode, Aaron Beam helps me to answer these questions as he draws on his experience in the financial statement fraud at HealthSouth. Aaron is an author and sought-after public speaker at major universities around the country.

What is the best book on negotiation you've ever read?

Many business readers who have read Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss would probably pick that title.

What if I said there is another title that's far more practical, ideas that you can put into practice right now? That book is Negotiation Simplified by Jim Reiman.
 
In this fast-paced conversation, we talk about the core four concepts of negotiating, the best discussion I've ever read about goals in the context of negotiating, and the 3 classes of people we have to consider in any negotiating process, Also, we hit on how to deal with bullies in the negotiating process.

The legendary Bill Campbell is called the trillion dollar coach by his biographers. Campbell coached and mentored larger-than-life business leaders Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, Marissa Mayer, and many others.

If Bill was the trillion dollar coach, then I'm not sure what to call Joe Ehrmann and his friend and fellow coach, Biff Poggi who are central pillars in the book Season of Life by Jeffrey Marx.

Little did Jeffrey Marx know that his life would be transformed forever once he stepped on a Baltimore Colts football field during training camp as an eleven-year-old. Years later, he would reconnect with Joe Ehrmann who took him under his wing during those earlier years. What was supposed to be a newspaper article about the demolition of a football field turned into a book about the building up of young men not just in football, but in the bigger game of life.

Season of Life is one of the best books I've read in years. Central themes include false masculinity, revolving integrity, the best definitions of coach and success, and a young football player's reflection on a huddle.

Can you name any recent descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt who didn't build one but two massive fortunes during the Gilded Age? After the third and fourth generations, the money started evaporating quickly, but why?

Katherine Howe is the co-author of Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. During this conversation, we explore some of the fascinating stories she uncovered with her co-author, Anderson Cooper that spans six generations of the Vanderbilt family.

Rob Hart's book, The Warehouse, is a speculative dystopian thriller.

The central character is an online retailer called Cloud - think Amazon in the distant future dominating its rivals which has devastating effects on small retailers across the country.

Cloud's founder is dying of cancer, so he's on a farewell tour visiting all of the company's distribution centers. Is he a hero or is he delusional?

Two other characters find out how far Cloud will go to make the world a better place, but for whom? Paxton starts his employment at the very place that robbed him of everything. What's his story? And Zinnia seems like she's a better fit for a CIA operative, not a warehouse order picker. What's up her sleeve?

Rob is the first fiction writer to be interviewed on CFO Bookshelf.

We learn from Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from their point of view … until you climb into their skin and walk around in it."

Elvis Pressley used to sing, "Before you abuse, criticize and accuse, walk a mile in my shoes."

What may seem so apparent to many is not to others. In this conversation, we unpack the big ideas and linkages between business success and customer empathy with Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, the co-author of Empathy in Action.

Jeff Sands is the author of Corporate Turnaround Artistry. Before fixing and mending other companies' broken income statements and balance sheets, he had to fix his own.

During this conversation, we also learn about the debt stacks, myths of bankruptcies, the five stages of a turnaround, the three types of turnaround CEOs,  and what Jeff calls the salvation process. 

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.

Alan's 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.

If I could only pick one book for any financial leader to read about company culture, it would be Patty McCord's book, Powerful.

In this episode, two CFOs break down the big ideas in Patty's book which include the role of the culture-centric HR professional, making decisions on facts vs. data, annual performance reviews, variable pay, learning every aspect of a business, and teams vs. families.

Have you ever worked with a software vendor who said their solution would save you as much as $1 million annually?

Or how about the big data warehousing project where the lead consultant says this project could lead to significantly more revenues?

When you accept projects with these types of claims, have you gone back one year later to find out the actual cost savings you thought realized?

Our topic on this show is the book entitled, Project Profitability by our guest, Reginald Lee. We explore project salience, mental models for project prioritization, and informational and instructional-centric projects.