Last week I asked if your strategic plan was for real. It was noted that one of the ways to bring it to life is an operating plan that spells out what gets done each year in support of the long-range plan. This week I want to take that idea a step further, based on a...
As we experience a strong year in our business, new clients always have a list of questions to guide our client-tailored task list, and one question that appears on more than half of those lists is this one: “We’re making a profit, why isn’t our cash flow reflecting...
This post is for privately owned companies and nonprofit organizations that have Boards that they want to make more effective, or those that don’t have Boards but realize they should have. This applies equally to advisory boards as well as fiduciary boards, except...
This article was first published about 20 years ago. It’s even more relevant today: Leadership is the art of inspiring people to undertake an adventure in the pursuit of a common goal. Management is the disciplined process that provides the infrastructure that enables...
I was asked last week to explain the value of a CFO to a young entrepreneur who had started from scratch with a great idea, and built a pretty solid business before hitting the glass ceiling (no, not that one) where the financial infrastructure he had in place just...
Accounting is a foreign language. Or at least that’s how many CEOs and business owners see it. If they get monthly financial reports, they may only look at two numbers on the income statement – the top number (sales) and the bottom number (net profit). That...
