Exclusive to Innovation America by Dr. Janice Presser, CEO, The Gabriel Institute
John Marshall once served on the board of a start-up organization with me and since he was the only person with CFO credentials on tap, I asked him to do the budget. That didn't make much sense, he quickly pointed out, saying “Janice, there’s no income to budget.” Never one to waste talent, I said, “Well, John, go figure out where to get some.” Whereupon he enlightened me thusly:
"CFO’s don’t bring in money – we force others to bring in money. We then complain that it is not enough and force them to go back out and get some more. When we get the money, we hate to part with it and we arm wrestle with those in the organization who seem to think money grows on trees. This is pretty much what we do – and should anyone ask about this at a cocktail party, we try to get them to buy our drinks."
Okay, he was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But I got the point. If you want a great CFO (like John) you’d better make sure you have a great marketing and sales team to bring the money in. And a great operations team to make sure there aren’t great big piles of wasted resources. And equally great everyone else, to fill the rest of the seats, because the more you give a great CFO to work with, the more value they add to your enterprise!
And yes, I did buy him a drink.
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Dr. Janice Presser, CEO of The Gabriel Institute, is a behavioral scientist and the architect of Teamability® – a completely new technology that measures how people will perform in teams. Dr. Presser has been engaged in the research and development of talent science and team analytics for over 25 years and is the author of six books, including the new @DrJanice: Thoughts & Tweets on Leadership, Teamwork & Teamability®.
