Are you compensated fairly for the value you are contributing? How does your pay (given your performance) compare to your peers in the same organization regardless of what department they work in? Compared to peers doing a similar job and performing at a similar level to you in other companies? …

(sign up to get my weekly posts @ https://thereluctantcfo.substack.com/) “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ―made famous by Maya Angelou What change, caused by everyone working remotely, is not getting adequate…

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde This piece was written in collaboration with Chris Bruno. As we discussed in our first piece on pricing published 10 days ago, pricing and pricing strategy is an…

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” ― Voltaire We value confidence over uncertainty. We want answers to our questions and we expect them to be right. Google (and Alexa and Siri) don’t just organize information for us. They are expected to point us to the…

“Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.” – Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President, Gartner Research Being able to use numbers to tell an accurate, insightful and thoughtful story is a critical skill for all leaders, particularly a senior finance executive. The ideal is…

(this piece was written jointly by Chris Bruno and Adi Dehejia) In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. Theodore Roosevelt Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, CEOs…

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.” — Herman Melville Community and connection matter to all of us. Humans have evolved as fundamentally social animals. Being connected with others and “in community” helps us feel good. …

“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.” Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being I am fortunate in having the opportunity to meet a number of entrepreneurs who are building interesting businesses. The ability to tell the story of their business (the “why” and the “how”) to both prospective customers and investors is critical to success. …

If I had to run a company on three measures, those measures would be customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and “cash flow”. (my quotes) Jack Welch We are seeing turmoil in the financial markets due to fear and uncertainty. Businesses are experiencing demand reductions and supply constraints from the COVID-19 global…