CFO Survival Guide: Plotting the Course to Financial Leadership Hardcover - 2004 - 1st Edition

From the jacket flap

"The CFO and finance practitioners need to acquire and apply a new set of competencies and skill sets. Being technically proficient is still of paramount importance, but it is not nearly enough. In the CFO Survival Guide, the Stenzels clearly detail the new requisites."
-From the Foreword by David L. Shedlarz

You're already a technical expert in accounting, and probably finance, or you wouldn't occupy (or be aiming for) the CFO chair. However, accounting experts now acknowledge that technical competency alone isn't enough to be competitive. You need more to stand out in the field.

The CFO Survival Guide helps you become a superior financial officer by assisting you in better understanding your relationships with your CEO, peer executives, staff, and other people who make up an organization at large, including its customers, suppliers, and community constituents.

From financial reporter to financial leader and visionary, CFOs must wear many hats. In the CFO Survival Guide, practical, sensible coverage explains the new role of the CFO in the post--Sarbanes-Oxley era, outlining why short-term, numbers-oriented goals are limiting and how focusing on the people and processes within a company can ensure long-term growth.

Helpful material demonstrates how to shore up weaknesses and maximize strengths through self-assessment checklists and practical examples that illustrate key points on:

• How a CFO moves from risk-averse follower to proactive leader, from control orientation to fellow-learner, and from focusing on cost to cost-value
• What CEOs really expect from their CFOs
• The skills and competencies required to succeed as a CFO
• What it means for a CFO to lead from the finance function in value creation
• How to lead and shape change rather than reacting to and tracking it

Through a diligent and enlightening examination of progressive concepts related to human development, leadership, ethical behavior, and interdependent relationships, the CFO Survival Guide assists financial professionals in facilitating organizational success by precisely identifying leadership competencies and articulating unambiguous, fundamental ethical values based on principles of human well-being, accountability, and integrity.