About CFO THOUGHT LEADER
Our mission is to bring you personal firsthand accounts of CFOs who are driving change within their organizations.
In addition to their company history we also share the career journey of our spotlighted guest: What did they struggle with? How did they persevere? What makes them successful?
We highlight leadership lessons, “Ah-ha!” moments, and the things that finance leaders stopped doing that was sapping value from their work.
CFO THOUGHT LEADER is all about inspiring finance professionals to take a leadership leap. We know that by hearing about the successes — (and yes, also the failures) — of others, today’s CFOs can more confidently advance their own strategic thinking as they chart their leadership paths and take inspired action.
The Journey
About 10 years ago, I was named editor-in-chief of a print magazine for finance executives, one of a succession of business-to-business publications for which I had served as editor over a period of more than 20 years.
It was a tour of duty that careerwise would prove to be both disastrous and transformational: “disastrous” because the business model that had supported print magazines as well as my more-than-two-decade career was quickly collapsing and “transformational” because this collapse finally forced me to look beyond print journalism.
My goal in going forward was to develop an information resource for senior executives and business leaders. Still, I had no idea what type of resource I was going to develop and which group of executives I wanted to serve.
Having attended quite a few finance conferences over the past decade—like you, perhaps—I am well familiar with the theme of “the changing role of the CFO.” It’s a discussion that normally includes a slide or two highlighting the growing number of stakeholders with whom finance leaders have to engage these days.
I was attending one such conference when it occurred to me that many finance leaders were in need of a narrative reboot. In short, they needed to begin explaining themselves and their career experiences in a way that larger numbers of executives could relate to and find more engaging.
At the same time, I realized that mobile technologies could play a big role in the reboot. I was not yet familiar with the podcasting world, but I felt that if my information resource could feature the actual voices of business leaders, we could shed more light on each leader’s emotional intelligence.
As I drilled down on my idea, I became convinced of two things: first, that a narrative reboot would benefit few business leaders more than CFOs, and, second, that few forms of media were better suited to sharing narratives than podcasting.
Along the way, we could inspire other CFOs and finance career builders out there who were looking to advance their own strategic thinking and extend the reach of their thought leadership beyond their own organizations.
As we like to say, The future of finance is listening, and today CFO THOUGHT LEADER is a top-ranked, award-winning business podcast.
Meanwhile, you can take the podcast host out of print publishing, but you can’t always take the print publisher out of the podcast host. After having recorded hundreds of interviews with so many amazing finance leaders, we decided to create The CFO Yearbook, a printed volume profiling the CFOs who so generously participate with us over a 12-month period. So, in addition to inviting you to press Listen, we also can now invite you to step back in time and turn a page. –Jack Sweeney
A Note Regarding our Sponsors: The views, opinions, and perspectives expressed on the CFO Thought Leader podcast are solely those of CFO Thought Leader and its guests and do not necessarily reflect those of any podcast sponsor.