CFO THOUGHT LEADER Discipline at the Heart of Innovation - A Planning Aces Episode
Nov 15, 2025
Glenn Hopper, a finance author and tech strategist, joins Steve Sutter, CFO of Celigo, to discuss the intersection of finance and disciplined innovation. They delve into how finance shapes AI strategies, emphasizing the importance of metrics and structured processes. Sutter shares insights on aligning financial guardrails with scalable go-to-market strategies, while Hopper advocates for treating AI as a tool for growth. Together, they explore creating dedicated AI teams, fostering change management, and utilizing staged experiments to ensure operational success.
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Discipline Makes Innovation Work
- Innovation succeeds when run like a managed process with ownership, metrics, and feedback loops.
- Glenn Hopper emphasizes discipline as the organizing principle behind scalable innovation.
Creating An AI Ops SWAT Team
- Chris Sands formed an "AI Ops" team by identifying power users and moving them into a dedicated function.
- He backfilled their old roles and gave the team a mandate, budget, and KPIs to drive adoption.
Set Go-To-Market Guardrails Early
- Coach go-to-market leaders on unit economics like quota-to-OTE and sales-engineer ratios before scaling hires.
- Use these guardrails to align talent mix and preserve efficient growth during rapid scale-up.
