The CEO/CFO Partnership
Monday, November 26, 2007
A marriage made in heaven?
If not, what's missing?
Recently, I've had referrals to coach companies' CFOs. What's missing? Typically, it's the CFO's ability to think like a CEO.
If your CFO isn't, or you as a CFO aren't, continually asking "If I were running this company, what information would I want to manage more effectively?"; you're missing the boat.
The answer to this question requires a level of knowledge about business, the interdependency of the various aspects of business and the financial impact various operating decisions have on the customers, vendors, employees and the departments affected by those decisions.
The CEO's and CFO's breadth of business background should parallel one another. The CEO often is stronger on business development and engaging people in a cause. The CFO is often stronger is his/her understanding of the financial impact that operating decisions have. Other than that, the CEO and CFO should be roughly equal in terms of their understanding of all aspects of business.
Step 6 of The 7 Steps to Becoming Invaluable is gaining an eclectic education. If you're a CFO and you're not actively expanding your knowledge of all aspects of business, you're limiting your future.
It's counter-intuitive, but a CFO's ability to think like a CEO isn't a threat to the CEO (assuming the CEO is confident in his/her abilities); it strengthens the relationship. When the CFO can't or won't adopt the CEO mindset, divorce looms in the wings.
If there are topics you'd like me to address, email me at dale@furtwengler.com
Salary Information
Monday, November 19, 2007
Public knowledge or personal business?
A telling tale.
Should salary information be public? The person making the inquiry was familiar with situations in which everyone in the company knew each other's salaries and were fine with that knowledge. In other companies, salary information was private and employees doubted the fairness of compensation.
The question, while thought-provoking, doesn't address the real issue "Does fairness exist in the organization's pay structure?" Which begs another question "What does it take for compensation to be fair?"
Let's deal with the second question first "What does it take for compensation to be fair?" Fair compensation must: - be based on a quantifiable measure of performance
- be commensurate with the value produced
- be consistent with performance standards and pay scales which are public knowledge
- provide access to the training/coaching/mentoring employees need to achieve higher levels of performance and pay
- assure adherence to minimum levels of performance after the probationary period
If these conditions exist in your organization, there's no need to hide salary information. Employees' knowledge of what's required to improve their pay can actually help them make more conscious decisions about the lifestyle they want. These conscious decisions will eliminate the frustration that many employees have by helping them understand whether the effort required to improve their pay is worth the lifestyle trade off they need to make. It's counter-intuitive, but the decision to publicize or withhold salary information can be a telling tale about the fairness of your compensation structure. Please share your experiences when salary information became public by posting a comment. If you have other topics you'd like me to address, email me at dale@furtwengler.com.
Take Note!
Monday, November 12, 2007
It will protect your future.
Why memory isn't to be trusted.
Have you ever wondered why courts place greater value on the written word, especially contemporaneous notes, than on the memories of the parties involved? We don't even have to get to court to realize that if the other party has notes and we are relying on memory, we are at a disadvantage
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Instinctively we know that our memories, at times, are faulty, even though we are reluctant to make that admission publicly. Why, then, do we do such a poor job of taking notes? Why do we continue to rely on our memories?
Harvard psychologiest, Daniel Gilbert, in his book, Stumbling on Happiness, blames it on a misperception of how memory works. Most of us view memory as if it were DVD, recording every detail of what we experience for later retrieval.
The reality is much different. Gilbert explains that memory is like a hologram. It contains a few critical elements, but not all the details. When we retrieve memories, we are retrieving those critical elements. Our minds then fill in the blanks. I find that frightening. Why?
The greatest problems seem to revolve around the tiniest details - the things we agreed to without much thought, the items we thought insignificant, the ones we didn't document. Those are the ones that come back to bite us. Advantage note takers!
The holographic nature of our memory is counter-intuitive, that's why we should document all of our agreements.
If there are topics you'd like me to address, please email them to me at dale@furtwengler.com.
Have Anything You Like!
Monday, November 05, 2007
Is the world a place of abundance?
If so, how can you tap into that abundance?
One of my practices is to look for the commonality in seemingly diverse situations. It's also one of the 7 Steps to Becoming Invaluable. Recently I read three books on what I thought were completely different topics only to find that they all carry the same message. They are:- The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
- Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill
- The Classic of the Way and Virtue, a Tao-te ching of Laozi translation, translated by Richard John Lynn
Each of them offers the same message, there is abundance in the world. We can have anything we like. There are, however, things that we must do to acquire what we want of life. Fortunately, those steps are laid out for us in great detail in easily understood language. None of these books, even Hill's, places emphasis on acquiring money although they all agree that you can have as much as you like. In Think and Grow Rich, money is considered a byproduct of the attainment of spiritual success, of the joy of living a life in which we enrich our lives by enriching the lives of others. It's counter-intuitive, but creating abundance does not involve self-sacrifice. Indeed, the more we enrich the lives of others, the more we enrich our own lives. Let me give you an example. For many years I've set a goal for myself each morning. My goal is to leave everyone I meet that day better off than when we met. That might simply mean that I've given them a reason to smile; it might be the only chance they've had to smile all day. At one point the psychic rewards I received through returned smiles, kind words and friendly bantering caused me to question my motive. Was I doing this to help others or was I doing it for my own personal gain? All three of the books tell me that my practice is creating abundance that allows everyone I meet to share with me in that abundance. It isn't an either/or proposition; you can have whatever you want. I'm fortunate to experience that abundance everyday. Please share sources of similar messages with our readers by posting a comment, you'll create abundance for all of us.
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