I’m never surprised when our CFO guests tell us that they don’t read books. Like many senior professionals, they have little time to pursue extra reading, and, well, it’s been my experience that as a group CFOs tend to be dreadfully honest and tell it like it is.
However, when being asked for a book recommendation, such candor can be an occupational hazard in light of the unique opportunity such a request affords today’s finance leaders.
Think about it. Here is an elite class of C-suite executives who have for the past 50 years or more sought to erase the stigma that they are a bunch of narrow-minded bean counters.
What better way to combat such a reputation than recommending a book — one that preferably looks at the world and business at large through a lens other than finance? (Listen to CFOs share their book picks.)
By recommending a book, not only are you revealing a good deal about yourself, but also, with a mere few words, you’re swinging open a door and aligning yourself with an esteemed piece of content that — like the very podcast we’re together creating — will help you to connect with others.
And there lies some dreadful honesty on our part. The fact is that we told our CFO guests that we were creating a piece of content about them, but what we were really creating was a piece of content optimized to help them to connect with others and energize relationships — connections that no bean counter ever had.