CFO Bookshelf

Professor Edward Hess is one of our all-time favorite business authors who has written 12 books. His newest is Hyper-Learning: How to Adapt to the Speed of Change.Ed states that hyper-learning is a high-quality effort that requires learning unlearning then relearning at the speed of change.

What job did you have when you were 20 years old? Imagine starting a complex sales position during one of the most challenging economic environments our country has ever experienced. Yet, 20-year-old Alex Dickinson overcame overwhelming odds that he would not succeed in his father's company.

If you were asked to cook the books, would you? That's the situation Aaron Beam found himself in when his CEO told him to fix the numbers to appease Wall Street investors. Aaron is the author of HealthSouth: The Wagon to Disaster. Aaron joins us to talk about his role in the fraud, ethics, intimidating CEOs, and so much more.

Paul Downs is the author of the highly-popular book, Boss Life, and is a former guest columnist of The New York Times.Paul in this insightful interview talks about the ups and downs in running a small business and getting the help he needed to stay on track and even begin to thrive.

The co-hosts of The CFO Bookshelf Podcast have been fans of Ron Baker for years, and our favorite podcast is one that he co-hosts with Ed Kless, The Soul of Enterprise.Ron is a recovering CPA who is probably the father of value pricing for professional services firms. We talked about pricing at length plus many other of Ron's favorite topics.

Dave Kellogg is the former CEO of Host Analytics now called Planful. Dave is a brilliant writer on his blog called Kellblog and he's outstanding behind a mic too. Since leaving his CEO post, Dave has been consulting SaaS-based businesses in Silicon Valley, and we hit on many of the topics that are near and dear to him.

Maybe the name John Boyd does not ring a bell, but perhaps the OODA Loop will, the mental model created by one of the most gifted military strategists since Sun Tzu. I was so mesmerized by Robert Coram's biography on John Boyd, I reached out to the author to talk about his book.

After reading two of Dan's books, The Read Rose Crew and Kelly, CFO Bookshelf jumped at the chance to interview the author, Dan Boyne.Dan shares how he got started in rowing, what he does now as a coaching instructor at Harvard, and the two aforementioned books.

Many business students and most strategic analysts are familiar with Porter's Five Forces competitive framework.Katherine Gehl is a former CEO and was frustrated with the lack of innovation and competition she was noticing in our two-party political system. After successfully publishing a white paper on the issue and a solution with Michael Porter a few years ago, she recently released her first book with her research partner entitled The Political Industry. Katherine is our guest on this installment of CFO Bookshelf.

Last week, we heard from the President of Kolbe Corporation, Amy Bruske. We enjoyed that conversation so much, we decided to unpack much of what she had to say on conative strengths.Mark and Bruce addressed the relevance of Kolbe in the business and smaller work teams and that this is an assessment that will have a major impact on your life personally and professionally.