Category: Leadership Page 1 of 2

Car being driven by a robot goes off a cliff.

AI in Finance Is a Governance Problem — Not a Technology One

On February 26, 2026

In Accounting and Reporting, AI, CFO, Finance, Leadership

For the last year or two, every CFO conversation eventually drifts into AI. Sometimes it’s framed as excitement, sometimes as anxiety, and sometimes as an awkward silence followed by, “Well, we’re looking at it.” What’s striking is that most of the tension around AI in finance has very little to do with the technology itself. The models work. The tools are improving fast. The vendors all have slick demos.

The real issue is governance.

Finance teams are wired around controls, auditability, and repeatability. AI systems, by contrast, are probabilistic, opaque, and constantly evolving. That mismatch is where most CFO discomfort comes from — and it’s why “let’s just automate this” often stalls once it hits a real finance process.

The first mistake I see is treating AI like just another system implementation. ERP projects taught us how painful that mindset can be. AI requires a different framing: not “what can this tool do?” but “what decisions are we willing to delegate, and under what constraints?” That sounds abstract. It isn’t.

Over the past year I’ve pushed AI tools on real finance questions: revenue recognition edge cases, SEC disclosure interpretations, covenant calculations, and technical accounting memos. The patterns that show up are not technology failures. They are governance failures waiting to happen.

1. AI doesn’t fight back.

If you have ever debated an accounting position with a strong controller or technical accounting lead, you know what conviction feels like. You push. They push back. You test assumptions. They defend them with chapter and verse. That friction is healthy. Same thing for a forecast analysis. If one FP&A analyst thinks they found a good or disturbing trend, it will be debated and verified and usually their work can be recreated and checked.

AI does not behave that way.

If you tell it, “I think you’re wrong,” it often apologizes and produces a different answer. Sometimes an entirely opposite answer. The confidence level remains high. The tone remains polished. The data is processed inside the model, and the AI often struggles to explain — or even remain consistent in — its answers.

In a live finance organization, that would be a red flag. If a manager flipped their view that quickly under mild pressure, you would question the depth of analysis. With AI, the flip can look like responsiveness rather than fragility.

That is a governance issue. It means you cannot treat an AI output as a position that has survived adversarial testing. It hasn’t. It has survived prompt engineering. And the prompt may have been poor.

2. The praise problem.

Most AI agents are relentlessly deferential. “Great question.” “Excellent point.” “You’re absolutely right to focus on that.” In a consumer context, that feels pleasant. In a finance context, it is dangerous.

Finance works because of tension — between risk and growth, between conservatism and disclosure clarity, between what management wants and what GAAP allows. When the “advisor” in the room is constantly affirming the user, it subtly reinforces bias.

I’ve seen this firsthand when asking an AI to pressure-test a disclosure approach. Rather than aggressively identifying weaknesses, it often validates the framing of the question. The tone can make a marginal position sound well-supported. In other words, the user’s confidence can rise faster than the quality of the analysis.

Governance must assume that AI will not naturally challenge you the way a seasoned audit partner or skeptical board member will.

3. The citation illusion.

This one should make every CFO uncomfortable.

Ask an AI to provide citations to accounting guidance or SEC commentary, and it will often comply — confidently. Paragraph numbers. Codification references. Even plausible-sounding excerpts.

The problem is that some of them are fabricated. They look right. They read right. They are formatted correctly. But they do not exist.

In finance, citations are not decorative. They are the backbone of defensibility. When you write a technical memo on revenue recognition or stock-based compensation, the citation is the bridge between your judgment and the authoritative literature.

If an AI invents that bridge, and a team relies on it without independent verification, the failure is not the model’s. It is the control environment’s. Any AI-assisted accounting memo must include a verification step where a human independently confirms the authoritative source. Not “glances at it.” Confirms it.

4. Rule changes and historical drift.

Accounting rules change. Constantly.

Revenue recognition under ASC 606 replaced a patchwork of legacy guidance. Lease accounting under ASC 842 upended decades of practice. The SEC updates disclosure expectations over time, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically.

Meanwhile, the SEC’s EDGAR archive goes back decades. There are scanned paper filings from eras when the rules were materially different. There are thousands of examples built under superseded guidance.

AI models trained on broad corpuses struggle here. They can blend old and new regimes. They can cite legacy practice as if it were current. They can rely heavily on the abundance of historical examples rather than the correctness of modern policy.

I have seen AI answers that lean on pre-606 revenue language as though nothing changed. Or that reference lease accounting concepts that no longer apply post-842. To a non-expert, the answer looks sophisticated. To someone who lived through the transition, the seams are obvious.

Governance means you assume the model does not instinctively know the effective date of your accounting framework. You have to constrain it.

5. Finance is not plain English.

Financial reporting language is precise. “Probable” does not mean “likely” in a colloquial sense. “Material” is not a synonym for “important.” “Reasonably possible” has a defined meaning.

AI systems are trained on massive volumes of plain English. That is a strength in many domains. In accounting, it can be a weakness.

I’ve seen answers where the model drifts into narrative explanations that sound sensible but subtly misapply defined terms. In a board deck, that might pass. In a 10-K, that is a problem.

When language itself carries regulatory weight, small deviations matter.

So what does governance look like in practice?

It is not banning AI. That is neither realistic nor wise. The productivity gains are real. Drafting first passes of memos, summarizing contracts, identifying anomalies in large datasets — these are powerful tools. AI can be properly trained on your data and become more accurate. Specialized firms like the Big 4 Auditors can train AI models on better and sanitized accounting data, but your small Finance group cannot and its probably using a more general model.

But they must sit inside a control framework.

At a minimum:

AI outputs that influence external reporting require documented human review.
AI conclusions about trends must be independently tested and verified. Don’t order another $1M of a part because a model suggested it.
Authoritative citations must be independently verified.
Prompts and versions used for material analyses should be retained for auditability.
Use cases must be categorized: drafting support is different from judgment replacement.
Responsibility for the final position must be clearly assigned to a human owner.

Most importantly, the CFO has to set the tone.

Let me make a direct observation: most leadership team members are not finance experts, but AI can create the illusion that they are. You need to make sure they understand the risk.

If AI is positioned as an infallible oracle, teams will over-rely on it. If it is positioned as a junior analyst — fast, helpful, occasionally wrong, and requiring supervision — behavior adjusts appropriately.

The question is not whether AI will be used in finance. It already is.

The question is whether it will be used inside a governance framework that protects credibility.

Investors do not care how you produced your numbers. Auditors do not care how you drafted your memo. Regulators certainly do not care that a model was “usually right.” They care that your disclosures are accurate, supportable, and controlled.

AI in finance is not a technology problem. It is a governance problem. And like most governance problems, it lands squarely on the CFO’s desk.

I don’t want to sound like Cassandra warning of inevitable doom. Nor do I want to be the boy who cried wolf while your competitor quietly figures this out and gains an advantage.

In future posts, I will outline where I believe AI can genuinely add value inside a disciplined finance organization.

Runner dressed in an S-1 races to the finish line made of money.

Doing the IPO – Closing the Sale

By Michael

On February 17, 2026

In CFO, Investor Relations, Leadership, Working With Investment Banks

Up until the point where the underwriters give their nod and your lawyers tell the SEC to declare the S-1 effective, there has been a very large burden on your shoulders as the CFO. As important as the final sales push is, once you get to this stage most of the remaining work shifts away from you and onto the banks and, more importantly, to your boss — the CEO.

There are two activities that typically happen before the roadshow itself formally launches.

The first is any “wall crossing.” This is a process where the banks preview the deal with a small number of qualified institutional investors. It does not happen every time, but when it does, the goal is to gauge demand, see how well the marketing message resonates with the target audience, and infer valuation. Valuation is not supposed to be discussed explicitly, but both the banks and the investors involved know how to read and give signals.

Wall crossing usually happens before the S-1 is declared effective, but typically when it is close to ready. Other than the fact that these are often among the first presentations you will do — so you may not sound as polished yet — they are not materially different from the presentations you will give once the roadshow officially begins. If something has gone seriously wrong earlier in the preparation or underwriting process, an overwhelmingly negative reaction could stop the IPO. But if you are this far along, that really should not happen.

Even if you enjoy conspiracy theories and think the banks are just looking for a graceful exit, the reality is that the funds you are talking to do not have time for games. What you usually get instead is constructive feedback, some tightening of the pitch, and an early indication of how strong demand — and therefore valuation — might be.

The other common special presentation is the recorded version of the deck that can be shared with accounts where an in-person or live meeting cannot be scheduled, usually due to geography. Some investors will watch the recording simply to get the canned material out of the way so that they can spend their live meeting time asking questions and engaging with management. The banks almost always have a preferred vendor for this. Other than being prepared to be on camera, there is not much additional advice to give.

At the end of this phase, your Board will need to meet to formally accept or reject the banks’ offer, so that meeting needs to be scheduled in advance. Sometimes pricing authority is delegated to a committee, but for IPOs the full Board often votes.

Then your lawyers ping the SEC, the S-1 flips to effective, and you are officially off.

Well before this point you will have selected your lead bank — usually referred to as the “lead left” bank, which reflects their position in the underwriting syndicate. They are almost always the stabilization agent as well. You probably relied on an external advisory firm to help with this selection process.

Once chosen, the lead bank becomes the primary administrator of the IPO and controls the master order book. In my experience, they bring in the majority of the orders. The other banks generally make a good-faith effort, attend meetings, and provide advice, but because the lead controls the book, the investors they want to prioritize tend to take precedence.

Interestingly, I have found that smaller banks often punch above their weight. They tend to be hungrier and try harder, and it is not uncommon for them to deliver more orders than their share of the fees would suggest.

The IPO I worked on was during COVID, so it was conducted entirely over Zoom. Today, roadshows have largely shifted back to in-person meetings. Zoom is still used for geographically isolated investors, but many meetings now take place at investor offices or group venues, often over lunch. This reintroduces a meaningful amount of travel planning, which the banks will manage. Having done enough deal and non-deal roadshows in person, I have a healthy respect for the logistics.

My first piece of advice is to rest before it starts and stay away from alcohol during the roadshow. You will likely be changing time zones and dealing with jet lag. The less additional stress you put on your body, the better you will perform in meetings. You can have all the drinks you denied yourself once it is over.

Eat well. Stay hydrated. You will be talking a lot, and a raw throat will absolutely work against you. This is an important trip — or series of trips — and you need to stack the odds in your favor. Expect planes, cars, and possibly trains (New York to Boston). For larger IPOs, expect travel to Europe and a week or more on the road.

The second piece of advice is to be prepared to sit through many meetings where you say very little — but also be ready to carry the meeting if needed. You are the CFO, traveling with your CEO. A tremendous amount rested on your shoulders before the roadshow launched, but once it starts, the burden shifts heavily to the CEO.

This varies by individual, but most CEOs who make it this far are good at selling what makes their company special. Your role is to support them, handle the details, and do whatever you can to help them succeed. It is common for people to lose their voice or have their energy dip over the course of a roadshow, so you may need to step in more than expected — but you should not plan on it.

The meetings themselves feel very much like the wall-crossing meetings. Most are cordial, with a back-and-forth Q&A. Styles vary widely among analysts and portfolio managers. Some questioning styles can feel combative or dismissive. Do not take it personally, and warn your CEO in advance if you sense that style emerging.

Some of the largest orders I have seen came from firms that sounded the most negative in the room. Maintain an even keel, but do not become expressionless. Investors expect some passion from management. Unlike routine IR meetings, IPO roadshows tend to involve a higher proportion of portfolio managers — actual decision makers — rather than just analysts.

At the end of each day, the order book will be updated and you will get a snapshot of how many orders are coming in and from whom. The ECM team at the lead bank will be increasingly directive about allocations, assuming demand warrants it, but that becomes more important later in the process.

For now, the rhythm is meeting, limo, meeting, limo, eat something, meeting, limo. It all blurs together. I have a good memory, but if I do not take notes, I struggle the next day to recall who said what.

As the book grows, you will see which banks are delivering orders. It often looks like the lead bank is doing all the work, but that is partly an artifact of book control. Non-lead sales forces may push less aggressively because investors know which ECM team controls allocations, so they route orders accordingly. Analysts across the syndicate are usually working hard, and smaller banks often bring in smaller accounts that larger banks ignore, earning their place in the book.

Eventually, the meetings end and the banks tally the orders. If things went well, they will tell you they have enough demand to put a deal together. I do not work on an ECM desk, but I do know that accounts routinely inflate orders in expectation of being cut back.

If you assume roughly 100% order inflation, the common rule of thumb that a deal should be 3–5x oversubscribed really means you need something closer to 6–10x in raw demand. This varies based on market cap and, more importantly, the quality of the orders, not just the quantity — but as a rough guide, it is about right.

In my final post on the IPO process, I will cover allocation, the pricing committee, and what happens when trading begins — including how the banks can step in if early trading is choppy.

IPO – How to Grab This Holy Grail

By Michael

On January 22, 2026

In CFO, Finance, Investor Relations, Leadership, Working With Investment Banks

In the first year of my most recent job, I finally managed to get an IPO done. I had been close a couple of times in the past, but in each of them the market took a dive right when we were close to launching. One time the 2008/2009 financial crisis hit and the window slammed shut. The next time the leading company in the space suddenly imploded and almost instantly went into a hard bankruptcy. The market as a whole was still open, but there was zero investor appetite for the type of company I was trying to get over the finish line (yield co).

We had done all the work in each case with the S-1 done and the banks lined up, but if the market is not taking deals, no one cares about all the work you did. That is my first caution about doing an IPO, a lot is not under your control.

I want to expand that idea to the career of being a CFO. There is really no guarantee that an IPO will happen. I have been approached many, many times by recruiters looking for a CFO for a pre-IPO company. Many are said to be 3 to 5 years out. Others within 2. Over the years it has to be 30 to 40 different approaches. 2 companies actually made it public and I worked for both. One after I left and then the window opened again and the one I just left and I succeeded at taking it IPO.

IPOs are pretty rare and never a sure thing. Even the company I succeeded at had tried once before and had the bad luck of immediately following Facebook and that initial attempt failed.. The market reaction to Facebook’s IPO created real hesitation for anything adjacent. As much as it is exciting and potentially pretty lucrative, be thoughtful before accepting a job where a lot of the attraction is the IPO. The further away the expected IPO is, the lower the chance it will happen when it is expected. Usually you are not taking pure start-up risk if the company is seriously considering an IPO, but it is riskier than average, so can you recover from failure? Remember that the consequences of failing typically fall most heavily on the CFO, even if the real issue is not financial.

Why Do an IPO?

Earlier in my career I went to a CFO interview for a pre-IPO opportunity and ran into a founder CEO who did not want to do one and wanted to argue with me about it. Once I got past the annoyance of the disconnect between the recruiter’s pitch and the job the hiring manager had, the discussion basically boiled down to the company was cash positive and had no barriers to growth because of a lack of capital. Ultimately that company stalled a little and got bought out by a larger public company and the CEO / Founder was let go, but at the time, it was doing well and we had a hard to and fro about the pros and cons of being public vs. private.

For me, it only makes sense for a company to go public if the weighting of these five factors clearly points in that direction. This is not a checklist exercise—circumstances vary, and the Board and management team must deliberately weight each factor to determine whether being public truly strengthens the company.:

The company needs access to permanent scalable capital
Shareholders, including early employees, need liquidity that the private market cannot provide
The company requires acquisition currency
The extra credibility, brand augmentation and market positioning is a big positive
It is needed for talent attraction and retention

There are real downsides to being public, including a potential lack of flexibility because you now need to meet external expectations and in a way that there is no hiding from timing and execution. You also need a robust financial reporting system and a strong forecasting ability. Your ongoing audit, legal and insurance expenses will jump in a pretty significant manner.

So if you are part of the management team and looking at it or interviewing to join to be part of the process, you can sum up the choice into one question, “Does being public make the company strategically stronger five years from now – net of cost, distraction, and loss of flexibility?” Or, in my case having lived off and on in Silicon Valley for several decades and not done an IPO “Do you want to take the chance and just do it so you join many others here in the experience?”

Years ago and still embedded into some foreign stock exchanges is the profitability criteria. However, there are so many unprofitable and earlier stage companies that have gone public (common in drug development and many tech companies) that profitability is often just a valuation footnote.

How do You do an IPO?

There are actually quite a few ways you can get public in the USA, and these are some of the main ones:

Traditional Underwritten IPO – One (usually many more) investment banks take a risk position and then bring the company public.
Direct listing – The company lists their shares directly on an exchange.
Reverse Merger (may be a de-SPAC) – Merge with an already public company in a way that results in you controlling it. Has become much more of a tailored transaction using SPACs.
ADR/ADS – Package up foreign shares in a compliant instrument and list on a USA exchange.
Stumble into it – have enough shareholders that you qualify under SEC rules. Could be Reg A+ or Reg D.
Spin-offs from already public company.

I don’t want to try and make a comprehensive document of all the different ways to do it. There are much better sources via law firms that explain the legal mechanics in detail. Instead I will concentrate and discuss the ones I know the most because of personal experience, and the one I was successful at was a traditional IPO.

To start with, I will make a sweeping statement: in almost all situations, a traditional IPO is best.

Being underwritten by banks and going through the full SEC registration process forces a level of rigor that most private companies simply have not needed before. Drafting and refining the S-1 is not just a disclosure exercise; it is an operational stress test. Financial reporting, controls, forecasting discipline, risk articulation, and internal processes all get examined, challenged, and tightened. Companies that survive this process emerge far better prepared to operate in the public markets than those that try to shortcut it.

Equally important is the role of the banking syndicate itself. The lead and co-managing banks bring together investment banking, equity capital markets (ECM), research, sales, and trading into a coordinated effort. The ECM team, in particular, has deep, current knowledge of the IPO investor universe—who is allocating capital, what themes are working, what valuations are realistic, and how demand is actually forming across different types of funds. This is not theoretical insight; it is informed daily by live deal flow and constant feedback from institutional investors.

That knowledge is critical in shaping the equity story and preparing management for the roadshow. The banking team helps refine the narrative, pressure-tests messaging, and ensures that management can clearly and consistently articulate strategy, growth drivers, risks, and capital allocation priorities. The roadshow itself is not just a marketing exercise; it is a real-time discovery process. Investor reactions feed back into pricing, sizing, and allocation decisions, all with the goal of creating a stable, high-quality shareholder base from day one.

One additional advantage that should not be overlooked is ongoing analyst coverage. As part of a traditional IPO, the underwriting banks initiate research coverage after the quiet period, providing the market with a structured, independent framework for understanding the company’s strategy, financial model, and long-term prospects. This coverage helps educate a broader investor base, supports liquidity over time, and creates an ongoing dialogue between the company and the market—something that is difficult to replicate without a full underwriting syndicate.

Finally, a traditional IPO provides a tool that alternatives simply do not: stabilization. In volatile markets—or when sentiment shifts unexpectedly—the underwriters have the ability to support trading in the early days after the offering. This is not about propping up a weak company; it is about managing technical pressure and ensuring an orderly market while the investor base settles. That option alone can materially reduce downside risk in the most critical period of a company’s life as a public entity.

Taken together, underwriting discipline, rigorous preparation, informed investor access, ongoing analyst coverage and the availability of stabilization create a framework that maximizes the odds of a successful transition to the public markets. In most cases, that structure is not a burden—it is a competitive advantage. You need to pay for it via underwriting fees, but I think you get more than what you pay for.

I will explain my views on the other methods of going public in my next post and then have one more post to weave in my experience to what typically happens in an IPO.

Strategy, Cadence, and Winning — Lessons for CFOs from Miyamoto Musashi

By Michael

On January 19, 2026

In CFO, Finance, Leadership

The word “strategy” did not originally come from business. Its roots are military. In fact, the widespread use of “strategy” in a business context only seems to have emerged in the 1960s. Before that, it referred almost exclusively to warfare. The Greek root of the word relates to generalship and battlefield leadership.

Wikipedia offers a good summary of strategic thinking, drawing on military theorists like Carl von Clausewitz and B.H. Liddell Hart. Stripped down, the idea is simple: strategy is the use of all available and appropriate resources to achieve political—or, in our case, organizational—objectives.

Sun Tzu famously said in The Art of War:
“If you know yourself and you know your enemy, you will not lose one fight in a hundred.”

I personally find Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings even more instructive, particularly for business. In the Earth Scroll, Musashi discusses strategy at length, including its application to commerce—remarkably, in the 16th century.

“In the way of business, there are cadences for making a fortune and cadences for losing it. In each way, there exist different cadences. You must discern well the cadences in conformity with which things prosper and those in conformity with which things decline.”

This idea of cadence is critical. The CFO sits at the center of the organization as cash is converted into reporting and analysis. That position gives you a foundation for understanding the rhythm of the business. But numbers lag reality. Recognizing patterns early usually requires looking outward—to Sales, Purchasing, Operations, and the market itself. Being strategic is not about owning multiple functions; it is about understanding the rhythm of the business and knowing when to act.

Musashi outlines nine principles for practicing strategy:

Think of that which is not evil.
Train in the way.
Take an interest in all the arts.
Know the way of all professions.
Understand advantages and disadvantages.
Learn to judge quality.
Perceive what is not visible on the surface.
Be attentive to even small things.
Do not perform useless acts.

Much of this applies directly to leadership. Do not cross legal or moral lines—doing so can derail an entire organization and your own career. Avoid useless busywork. Focus on actions that actually create value. Learn broadly, not just within your own discipline.

Musashi also emphasizes people and leadership at scale:

“In grand strategy, you must be victorious through the quality of the people you employ, through how you utilize them, through ruling correctly, and through applying the law of the world in the best way.”

Individual skill matters, but victory at scale requires leveraging others. This applies directly to the CFO role. Your job is not to win every fight yourself, but to enable the organization to win.

He reinforces this idea repeatedly:

“It is necessary to know ten thousand things by knowing one well.”

And:

“You should not have a predilection for certain weapons.”

In business terms, this means not relying on a single tool or framework. CFOs often try to win purely with numbers. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Even if you dislike leverage, borrowing may be the right decision. Strategy requires adaptability, not ideology.

Musashi is also very clear about the ultimate purpose of strategy: to win.

“The true Way of strategy is to fight and win.”

In business, winning does not always mean aggressive expansion. Sometimes winning is surviving a down cycle. Sometimes it means conserving resources until the cadence shifts. But consistently winning requires deliberate strategy and execution. Not losing is not the same as winning.

If you want to be a strategic CFO, you must help your company win. There are no shortcuts. Finance tools alone are rarely sufficient. A strategic CFO understands how to marshal internal capabilities and leverage external resources when it matters most.

As for how to become that kind of CFO, I’ll admit I don’t have a perfect formula. I’ve been fortunate to work at companies that grew and succeeded, but I still see myself as being on the path rather than having arrived.

Musashi’s advice resonates here:

“Temper yourself with one thousand days of practice, and refine yourself with ten thousand days of training.”

When you are not executing, you should be practicing—developing skills, developing people, debating scenarios, and rehearsing decisions. When the moment comes, you will act faster and with more confidence if you have already thought through the possibilities.

This post is only a broad overview of strategy and how it applies to the CFO role. In future posts, I plan to go deeper into specific actions and real-world examples from my career. I’ll also return to Musashi from time to time—both as a strategist and, for those interested, as a sword fighter.

Strategy, at its core, is about winning. A strategic CFO understands the cadence of the business, knows when and how to act, and helps the organization use all of its available tools to prevail.

That, in my view, is what the title should actually mean.

The Five Rings: Miyamoto Musashi’s Art of Strategy

Above is an Amazon link to a translation of The Book of Five Rings.

CFO looking thoughtful gazing out a window

Being a Strategic CFO (and Why the Term Is So Often Misused)

By Michael

On January 15, 2026

In CFO, Finance, Leadership

I think the term I hear most often when a recruiter calls me about a CFO opportunity is that their client is looking for a “strategic CFO.” I also see no shortage of articles in the finance trade press on the importance of being strategic, or on how the modern CFO must go beyond the traditional role.

I’ll start by saying that many of these articles rely on a very narrow—and frankly inaccurate—definition of what a “traditional CFO” is. In many cases, what they describe sounds more like a Controller or Head of Accounting than an actual CFO. I can forgive this to some extent; claiming to offer a bold new insight makes for a more clickable article. Still, many of these pieces feel shallow and suggest a limited understanding of what CFOs have always done.

One of the most common claims is that a strategic CFO must be “forward looking.” This one puzzles me the most. Even basic accounting is inherently forward looking. The going-concern assumption alone requires analysis of the future. Budgeting, forecasting, cash flow modeling—these are core finance skills, not optional add-ons. Some finance leaders are better than others at building relationships outside the department and therefore get better insight, but that too is a foundational finance skill. Finance typically sits at the center of the company’s information flow, particularly because it monitors cash. That position actually makes relationship-building easier, not harder. Being forward looking, by itself, does not make a CFO strategic.

Other articles encourage CFOs to “go beyond finance” and take on broader operational roles. That advice is also somewhat puzzling. A CFO is already part of the senior leadership team and is often one of the primary internal and external faces of management. Most CFOs have worked across multiple functions earlier in their careers, and some of us even came to finance from other disciplines.

That experience is valuable—but trying to run other functions can be disruptive. Everyone already has one clear boss: the CEO. They do not need a second one. A good CFO keeps the organization accountable to its goals, especially financial ones, while enabling success rather than trying to personally run everything. The CFO is often the bearer of bad news by default, acting as the reality check when plans miss their targets. That role already requires enough political and interpersonal skill without creating unnecessary confusion about authority.

This advice also varies by company size and stage. In smaller or earlier-stage companies, the CFO (if that is even the title) often has all administrative functions reporting to them. IT reporting to the CFO is not uncommon. As companies mature, however, functional leadership becomes more defined. At the same time, the CFO role becomes more complex—venture funding, capital markets, investor relations, treasury, and fundraising all consume significant time and energy. There is limited usefulness in trying to run every function once the organization reaches that level of complexity.

That does not mean the CFO should stay locked inside the finance department.

A CFO can help Sales close deals by structuring contracts properly, reducing currency risk through hedging, and ensuring revenue is recognized correctly from day one. That only happens with strong working relationships. CFOs can help Purchasing negotiate better supplier contracts, often playing an effective “bad cop” role, and sometimes bringing financing relationships to the table to ease pressure on terms. Legal and IT are often natural allies. COOs usually appreciate help driving down costs or evaluating locations for new facilities. CFOs are also frequently asked to lead large, cross-functional initiatives.

All of this makes you a better CFO. You make better decisions. Your team does too. Communication improves. You build credibility, which makes difficult conversations easier. When you later complete a major M&A transaction, integration and synergy realization are far more achievable because you already understand how the business actually works.

But none of this, by itself, necessarily makes you the “strategic CFO” that your CEO or board says they want.

At this point, you may be a very good CFO—just without the label.

To understand what “strategic” really means, I think we need to go back to the root of the word itself. I will explore that in my next post.

Learning by Doing

By Michael

On January 13, 2026

In 3D Printing, CFO, Leadership, RPG

When I joined my most recent company as CFO, I realized fairly quickly that there was one area where my direct experience was thinner than I would have liked: online and retail sales. I understood the numbers well enough—margins, contribution, customer acquisition cost, lifetime value—but understanding something conceptually is not the same as having lived it.

I’ve always believed that the fastest way to truly understand something is to do it yourself. Reading, asking questions, and reviewing reports are all useful, but there is a different kind of learning that only comes from personal accountability. When it’s your time, your money, and your decisions, the lessons tend to stick.

So instead of just studying e-commerce from the sidelines, I opened a small Etsy shop: myrdin3d.etsy.com.

The intent was never to build a meaningful business or side income (although it did and continues to do fairly well). The goal was learning. I wanted to experience firsthand what it actually takes to market and sell products online, from the ground up, without a team or infrastructure to hide behind.

I leaned into one of my hobbies and selected products that I believed would do well based on personal experience and observation. That alone was an education. It forced me to think like a customer instead of an operator: what problem does this solve, why would someone buy it, and what alternatives already exist?

From there, the real learning began.

I had to write advertising copy. Not board-level messaging or investor narratives, but short, direct descriptions that had to earn attention in a crowded marketplace. Writing copy that converts is a very different discipline than writing a memo or a strategy deck. You learn quickly what is clear, what is confusing, and what simply doesn’t matter to the buyer.

I had to take product photos. That sounds trivial until you try to do it well. Lighting, angles, backgrounds, consistency—it all affects perception and conversion. Seeing how dramatically presentation influences demand was a useful reminder that value is not just created; it is communicated.

Pricing was another area where theory met reality. I set prices with explicit margin targets in mind, but I also had to respond to market expectations, competition, and perceived value. It’s one thing to talk about gross margin in the abstract. It’s another to watch a product sit unsold because you missed the price by a few dollars—or to realize you left money on the table because you underpriced it.

I also learned more than I expected about intellectual property and commercial rights. Selling physical products forces you to think carefully about what you can legally sell, what designs are protected, what licenses are required, and where the boundaries actually are. This is the kind of knowledge that is easy to gloss over until you are personally exposed to the risk.

Perhaps most importantly, the experience gave me a better appreciation for the operational friction that exists in online sales. Order flow, customer questions, fulfillment issues, returns—all small individually, but very real when you are responsible for every step. It reinforced how easy it is, from a leadership position, to underestimate the cumulative load placed on teams closer to the customer.

None of this turned me into a world-class e-commerce expert or even close to in skills to the experts we had that did it every day. That was never the goal. What it did was give me a much more grounded perspective. When discussions come up about pricing strategy, marketing spend, product positioning, or margin pressure, I’m no longer relying solely on secondhand knowledge. I have context. I’ve felt the tradeoffs.

This experience also reinforced something I believe strongly about leadership: intellectual curiosity matters, but it has to be paired with action. Curiosity alone is passive. Doing something—even something small—forces discipline, humility, and learning in a way that observation never will.

As CFOs, we don’t need to be experts in every function. But we do need to understand the cadence of the business and the realities our teams face. Sometimes the best way to do that is to step outside your role and try something uncomfortable, imperfect, and very real.

For me, that meant opening a small Etsy shop and learning by doing.

Presenting Well From Home

By Michael

On April 2, 2020

In CFO, Investor Relations, Leadership

I have not written a blog entry in a while, but I decided that I had a few things to share since many of us are working from home and are spending a lot of time on video conferences.

Here are the three most important areas to focus on to make you look better when you are on a video conference using a webcam.

First, get the webcam to the correct position. You want it eye-level or slightly higher and looking down. If the webcam is embedded into your laptop, elevate the laptop until it is at a better angle. it is much more flattering to have the image being recorded looking straight ahead or slightly down that it is to be recording in an upward angle. When talking to people, look into the camera lens as that is makes it appear that you are looking at the person you are speaking to.

If you can, try and get your camera control software to zoom in and adjust where you appear on the screen. Many good webcams cameras are fairly wide angle, and that makes you look smaller and picks up more of the background.

Should Look Like This (video is not mirrored but appears correctly to viewer)

Try to wear a plain shirt and shirts with lines or a plaid pattern can “swim” when being recorded on a webcam.

The second important area to focus on is lighting. You want to be lit the most from in front and slightly above is better than straight on as looking directly into a bright light can make you squint and cause eye strain. Some side lighting helps, especially if it is diffuse and a specific back light can also help to separate you from the background. Most people look better with side lighting just from one side to provide a little bit of shadowing as it adds definition to your face.

I use an elgato keylight as my main lighting source. It is behind my camera and elevated. I like the clamping mounting system as it takes up very little desk space. If you think you will move where you do the video conferencing pretty often, the key light air might be a better choice.

If you do research on lighting for video shooting, you will see the above advice echoed. Most professionals use three point lighting. The closer you can emulate that, the better you will look.

The last area to focus on to look as good as possible is the background. Where possible, try and have as plain a background as you can. I use an elgato green screen as it sets up quickly and it easy to store when not in use.

If you can’t be close to a plain background, or create one via a green screen, you end up with something that looks more like this, which is not as good looking on video:

We all don’t have complete control over what is in the background, that is why a pop-up green screen helps. Note how distracting the window in the background is. Try and avoid that as much as possible, especially if you do not have a good light in front as it will back light you and make you look dark with your face hidden in shadows.

With a green screen, the virtual background feature of zoom is much better. If you are not using zoom with its built in virtual background, you can use a program such as XSplit Vcam that will take your webcam feed and insert green screen/virtual background functionality into pretty much any video conferencing software.

As a more advanced topic, if you want an even better video feed than a standard webcam, elgato makes a device called a camlink, which is a USB interface between a DSLR camera with clean HDMI and your computer that allows you to use the superior lenses and sensors in the DLSR camera as a web cam. You probably want to pick up a magic mount by elgato as well.

As it is a little more advanced, here are 2 videos on camlink and using a DSLR camera. They are from the point of view of streaming, but the advice applies to video conferences.

I also provided link to the various product pages below.

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/key-light

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/green-screen

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/stream-deck

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/cam-link-4k

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/multi-mount

If you want to sound better, the microphone that comes with this headset is quite good.

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Gaming-Headsets/Wireless-Headsets/VIRTUOSO-RGB-WIRELESS-High-Fidelity-Gaming-Headset/p/CA-9011180-NA

CFO Pay

By Michael

On August 9, 2016

In CFO, Leadership

One question I get pretty often from people starting in Finance as a career is how much does a CFO get paid, and how do you make sure you are getting enough. In many ways, that is a very puzzling question to me. In a US-listed public company (not a foreign private issuer), executive pay is public and normally can be found in the proxy statement that is filed annually. So it is no secret what CFOs get paid, everything is laid out in their contract (material contract and a copy is filed with the SEC) plus broken down in some detail in the proxy statement.

These are my general rules on pay and they really apply to every position, not just CFO, but I will use CFO as my example.

No one will take care of your pay except for you and you will only get what you negotiate for. Hoping that you’re doing a good job and that the pay will just be adjusted accordingly is a false hope. You need to be your own advocate here. Maybe your boss needs to carry it to the compensation committee. Maybe the head of HR needs to go argue on your behalf with your boss. Whatever the case, if you are not making sure that more pay is needed, chances are good that nothing special will happen.

The best and only clear time to negotiate is before you accept the job during the hiring process. Once you are on board, it will become much harder. You need to know what a fair price for the position is. You need to know what you would accept to take the job. You need to negotiate for that up front. Some negotiation is not only expected, if you do not, it may hurt their perception of you as a good Finance leader as they may wonder what you will do as CFO.

Most companies are not interested in hiring a leader that is too mercenary and you run a risk of being too demanding and setting yourself up to fail from the very beginning. This needs to balance with the point above about the best time to negotiate is when you are being hired. It is my view that there is more to life than being paid cash and the opportunity to learn and to work with a good team is important. I also do not get paid as much as some of my peers and their setting a higher bar up front never seemed to hurt them, so I might be wrong there.

There are a few immediate sources of what pay you should be expecting. The first is the proxy statements of the hiring company and its peers. Look at what the CFO you are replacing received. Look at what peers or companies of similar size and complexity are getting paid. That will set a baseline. The second source is the recruiter that approached you (assuming that is how you heard of the opportunity). You need to keep in mind that their client is the hiring company, but they also play a role in setting the right expectations with the company. Don’t be afraid to be upfront with what you are making now, they deal with attracting talent as a living, they are used to that type of discussion. If what you want is too much, they will tell you. If you are asking for too little, then you did not do your homework and maybe lack some confidence.

Once you are set on the base salary, you need to make sure the bonus is appropriate. The same two sources you used for salary are good for this as well. You should not only focus on the base bonus, you need to understand when it will be paid and in what circumstances it will be larger than base. My normal expectation is that by working hard, 80% of base bonus should be very achievable. As I have worked in several turnarounds, there have been years when no bonus was paid. Again, it might be somewhat of a failing in my views as I have always accepted the same targets as the other team members when I have started. Quite often the company is having a bad year and that is why they are changing CFOs and that approach means zero bonus for me as that is what the existing team is getting. It is not uncommon to negotiate for a set bonus for the first year. In many cases you would earn a good one if you stayed where you are and part of recruitment is overcoming such obstacles, so the hiring company often will make you whole.

The final “pay” part is the equity you will receive. This is a question of how much the initial amount is, what can you expect on an annual basis and will you receive stock options or restricted share units. You certainly should try to be made whole for whatever you would give up to join the new company. You probably cannot replace the vesting, but the value should be on the table for negotiation. Annual grants are important. Over time, your base pay and your bonus will help to let you pay your mortgage, pay for your kids to go to school and save for retirement, but it is unlikely to change your life. Stock compensation can change your life.

The normal choice between RSU and Options is certainty versus upside. You really cannot control the overall stock market and there always is a risk that you do well but the stock cannot perform well because of general market conditions. In that case, RSU are much better as payment, even if smaller, is at least going to happen. Sometimes you are not doing all that well but the market takes off and your stock moves with it. In that case, Options end up much better.

In the long run, as a responsible CFO you should tend to prefer RSU as dilution is smaller and expenses are more certain and predictable. For pay, if the company is stable and growing then RSU will give you certain return. If you are doing a turnaround and you want the biggest pay you can get, then Options have the most possibility.

One smaller item to consider is retirement savings. I am sure that you will save the most you can into the 401(k), so any matching is a plus. You also need to understand if the plan is top heavy and what happens if executives cannot save via the plan.

The pay factors to consider do not end with salary, bonus and equity. Pay attention to the complete package and the contract they are offering you. Vacation time is important. You do not want to have a seniority-based system where you start with one or two weeks like any other new employee and only increase the longer you are there. Clauses like this tend to be boilerplate and the same for all new hires and you need to pay attention to it.

You also need to pay attention to the severance clauses. In the USA, at will contracts are typical. So you need some protection if you are let go without cause. It takes a while to find a senior management job and you should negotiate a buffer. Look at what the comparable are as in all other pay items, but 6 months is about as little as I would accept and one year is not unusual. Change of control clauses are usually somewhat linked to severance clauses. Make sure you understand what the standard equity programs give all participants if there is a change of control. If your equity does not vest on change of control, then try to at least have it vest if you are let go as a result of a change of control. If your company is being bought they probably do not need another CFO and you are likely to be let go. So make sure you are protected here.

Make sure there is a clear “Good Reason” clause in your contract that would be triggered and your severance pay become due for several usual circumstances. For example, a forced move over 50 miles because your place of employment is changing, a drop it title or responsibility or a drop in pay, all of these are typical “good reason” clauses and you should make sure that you are protected.

Your contract will probably contain many clauses restricting your ability to compete if you leave, stopping you from hiring co-workers, making anything invented while you are there company property and defining what is considered to be confidential information. Many of these are boilerplate and in most employment contracts for the new employees of the company. Make sure that the requests are reasonable.

Finally, look at miscellaneous items like travel policies, restrictions on you being a Board member at another company and other anti- “moonlighting” clauses.

You would be well served to have a lawyer, especially a lawyer experienced working with employment law and employment contracts review your contract before you sign. Make sure you understand what you are being asked to sign and that it is worded properly so that you are protected.

That really is all the top level advice I have on CFO pay. Knowing what the market price and standard terms and conditions are is the most important. The rest will come down to your ability and just how attractive you really are to the company trying to hire you.

My Technology Life – An Update

By Michael

On August 2, 2016

In 3D Printing, CFO, Computer hardware, General, Hobbies, Leadership

I recently built myself a new computer after using the last one for almost 5 years. My old computer was able to run all the programs I had without any real issues, but it was slowly getting more unstable over time, and the update to Windows 10 had been rough.

The Computer

This time I wanted to build a computer that could run the latest virtual reality headsets and I wanted to have something that again would last me quite a while. I typically buy the second fastest consumer CPU that is available as the fastest is normally at a high premium in cost but with little extra speed, but the Intel 6700K had finally come down to suggested retail price. I wanted the modern chipset that went with it so something on the Z170 chipset was what I looked for in a motherboard. My timing was not that great for a video card in that both NVIDIA and AMD were about to release their latest generation, so I actually waited over a month after buying the rest of my components before fully setting the computer up. The motherboard did have built in graphics and the CPU did as well, so I was able to test everything except for the new card.

I will make two observations. The first is that I have always felt it important to be agnostic about brands when making choices on most of the components. Years ago there was a great deal of variety in motherboards and how features were implemented on them. Today, the two main CPU makers (Intel and AMD) release a new chipset with each new CPU generation and that chipset is very full featured. I have almost always used Intel CPUs because for many years, they have been the best performing. AMD often wins on the cost to performance basis, but it has been quite a while since they have had a chip that can compete for pure performance. I did build an AMD-based computer a few computers ago because that generation they did have the best CPU.

CPUs are fairly quiet, but there often are techie “holy wars’ over video cards. I admit to have fought a little in them back when 3DFX and their voodoo chips revolutionized 3D, but I got over it. Now I just buy the card that I think does the best for me. The two main graphics processor unit (GPU) providers are NVIDIA and AMD (they bought ATI years ago). My last generation computer has an AMD video card (a 370) and that was based on AMD having better multi-monitor technology at the time as I like running 3 monitors. There are edge cases where AMD has had better chips, but for the most part, NVIDIA has had the highest performing chips for a while.

Unlike CPUs, the price jump to the most powerful GPU to the second best is still enormous and unless you really are a power gamer or power user, there is little need to get the best GPU. For the computer I just built, I ended up with an NVIDIA 1070 based video card (the board maker was MSI). I had considered the AMD RX 480 as it was a lot less expensive, but the demand was so high that cards were hard to find and the custom cards had not come out yet. So I went with the 1070.

I could write pages and pages on the latest and greatest differences between the board makers and the different CPU and GPU you could choose, but this blog entry will exist for a long time and tech sites are always much more current (I go to anandtech.com but ownership changes have made it less useful in the last year). So I will give some more general observations.

The premium priced components in the consumer space are all aimed at gamers. This tends to result in multi-color LED lights and a black (and usually red highlights) color scheme. There actually is very little value add from what I can tell from my research for the extra price you pay. There certainly is much less bang for the buck. The video card I bought is branded as an MSI “gaming” card and it looks nice but does not really offer any performance improvements over non-gaming cards.

Motherboards are similar. The Z170 chipset has plenty of solid boards that cost around $150 (can be found for less during sales). You can spend $250 to $300 and just get a few extra bells and whistles that you may never use.

One final comment, if you build the computer yourself, be prepared to troubleshoot yourself and to have to refresh your knowledge. I had a faulty power supply and it took me quite a while to track the problem down. Google and technology forums are your friends here.

This is the system I ended up putting together:

Intel Skylake Core i7-6700K
– the fastest CPU currently available. Depending on luck, can be overclocked a fair amount
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO – CPU Cooler with 120 mm PWM Fan
– One of the bestselling coolers. Quite tall, was interesting to install
ASUS Z710 – AR
– all of the modern features of the chipset and none of the “gamer” bells and whistles that jack up the price. PCI-e sharing (which is common for the chipset) so might be a concern for dual GPU use but I plan on only using one GPU.
GPU – MSI Gamer NVIDIA GTX 1070. As I mentioned, both the main GPU companies just released new cards and it is hard to find cards priced at regular retail prices.

G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3733 (PC4 29800)
– this is actually somewhat of a waste. Super-fast RAM that I probably would not need and I could of gone down a few notches in speed and double the amount for the same price as I will not heavily overclock
CM Storm Scout 2 Advanced – Gaming Mid Tower Computer Case with Carrying Handle and Windowed Side Panel – Black
– This is an updated version of the case I have been using the past 5 years. Roomy and has a handle on top which comes in handy more often than not. Plenty of room for fans, and a good front panel for USB
Antec 750 Gamer power supply. I originally had a corsair power supply but it was faulty.
– Should be way more power than I need, especially if I do not have 2 x GPU
SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 256GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 NVMe Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
– Very fast SSD (motherboard supported) that will be my boot drive and will have some applications on it
Mushkin Enhanced Reactor 2.5″ 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
– Secondary SSD for often accessed files and other applications
Seagate 3TB Desktop HDD SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive
– Should be plenty of room, especially since I have a 16TB NAS
LG Black 16X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 12X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner
– I debated if I really needed an optical drive and finally decided to get one as I can see myself watching movies on the computer and I have a lot of Blueray disks (PS4 is my main player)
Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Stealth 2016 – Backlit Quiet Mechanical Gaming Keyboard with 10 Key Rollover
– Decided to try a mechanical keyboard. These have Razer designed mechanisms, not sure if as good as Cherry-MX switches. Quieter version.
Logitech G600MMO Gaming Mouse – Black
– Will move over from my existing computer. I do not use all the buttons and may look at another mouse

VR Headset

The latest technology that is just starting to go mainstream is Virtual Reality. There are two main contenders for the headset market right now – the Oculus Rift (which is backed by Facebook) and the HTC Vive which has teamed up with Steam (owned by a company called Valve and the main marketplace to buy PC games online).

If I had to sum up the main differences between the two headsets, I would say that the HTC Vive comes with two controllers and can be used standing and moving (called room-scale) and sitting down while the Oculus Rift is mainly meant to be used sitting down and does not as of now come with VR controllers. The Vive has a lot more content available for it now, but many programs are made for both headsets and there are not many non-game programs available.

I got to try out the Vive at uploadvr.com ‘ s offices in San Francisco when I was there for a meeting with a McGill University representative who wanted me to help in their entrepreneur program. I had read that the room-scale made a big difference and when I tried it out I agreed.

The experience in both headsets is pretty good and you do really get a sense of immersion far beyond what looking at a screen will give you. The Oculus Rift is about $600 and the HTC Vive is about $800, but the Vive comes with two controllers and two sensor boxes that enable the room scale VR.

I picked the HTC Vive as it has more software available today and because the built in ability to move around instead of just sitting down sold me on the system. The actual graphics capability is about the same between the two controllers and both are just emerging, so the “best” choice may change rapidly.

I have only used the headset for a few days., so I will hold off on a detailed review, but I can tell you that the base experience lives up to the hype.

I am waiting to see what non-game uses there are for the headsets. There is a fair bit of work being done to develop approaches and applications for the virtual world the headsets put you into that make it useful for non-games, but there are not that many real life examples yet. I will be attending a meeting on that topic in a few weeks and will update and right a new blog after I have more information.

Getting the headset to work was somewhat of a struggle and the programs are all new and very much “early access”, so I hesitate to recommend it for everyone, but it has been quite fun so far. One of my friends brought his young son over (son is around 10 years old) and the son was fascinated with the headset and wore it for hours.

3D Printing

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, 3D Printers are technology that is still not quite ready for mainstream use. They still take a lot of fiddling with to get to work well and consistently and you need to be comfortable with at least some light mechanical work. I recently bought another 3D printer, the Wanhao Duplicator 6. It is over twice the price of the Wanhao Duplicator i3 I started with (and that is an excellent starter machine), but it is much more capable as well. I will do an update just on the new printer and what I have learned since I bought my first one. This update will include using a raspberry pi mini-computer to remotely control and monitor the printer.

The raspberry pi mini-computer part of my coming update will be extensive as well. Quite remarkable what you get for around $50.

Why Bother?

This is a blog on being a CFO and I usually have Tuesdays are purer “CFO” topics and Thursdays are where my occasional other blogs show up. So you may be wondering why I am writing on building a PC or VR headsets or 3D printers.

My reasons are quite simple – career growth and personal growth. I live in the Silicon Valley area and there is a lot of interest in the technology around computers, VR and 3D Printers. More and more, companies are looking for CFOs that are more than just the accounting and numbers person. IF I don’t expand my mind and learn by doing in areas like this, then how can I be credible when I claim to be a good fit for a technology company CFO role?

I get personal satisfaction on learning new things, but with the competition out there today, I really think that you need to keep actively learning. If you stop and rest on your laurels, you will be passed by. I often have had staff ask me how I got to know our company’s products, and it is the same drive that makes me want to understand VR Headsets that made me dig into how electricity comes from a solar panel.

So try not to dismiss other people trying to learn and very importantly, encourage your staff to do so.

Self Editing

By Michael

On June 21, 2016

In CFO, Leadership

I have two main forms of social media – Facebook and LinkedIn. Plus wechat, but my time in a China in the near future should be much more limited so I probably will not use it as much in the future. I link my blog entries in all three, two automatically and wechat via manual posting. Because I link my blog to LinkedIn, I try and keep it as professionally appropriate as I think is needed. That does not mean that I am afraid to talk about my hobbies and interests there, but I do limit political and social commentary posts.

It is becoming more and more common for future employers to check your social media. I am not incredibly fond of that, but I understand the reasoning. I also am looking for a new job now, so public image and presentation are important as I want a senior and very responsible position. That means that even if there is a temptation to more broadly broadcast my personal views, I am careful.

It started out with the very first blog I wrote in this site, where I said that I would avoid commenting on China. My reason there is not some abstract self-interest where bashing your hosts is bad manners and some countries can take it even more seriously and put your visa at risk. It isn’t even that solar projects can take a lot of government cooperation and talking badly about the country you want to do business in is bad for business. The reason is simple, I honestly feel that I do not understand the country enough to make a post that is informed. I can talk with confidence about doing business in many countries. I can talk about what happens with standard business processes as you cross country boundaries. I think that if I am going to write something here that my audience is going to spend the time to read, I need to offer something that is relevant and useful. As my mandarin is limited and I have only really spent time in the greater Shanghai and Shenzhen areas, I do not think I can effectively comment on the country.

The same thing applies to many subjects that I see other people discussing online. I see so many obviously misinformed comments on political, legal and business topics that I wonder why the people writing them can say it. Your professional reputation and your reputation with your friends is influenced and built by what you say, and posting online means it lasts forever. Off the cuff and obviously wrong statements cannot help.

One common error is see is some fact or story repeated to make some sort of point. You see the same picture or text over and over and you know it is wrong. A recent example for me was about a tip that Bill Gates and his daughter left where the daughter left a big tip and Bill left a small one with the punchline that she is the daughter of a very rich man but he is the son of a woodcutter. Anyone who cares about Bill Gates other than he founded and was CEO of Microsoft knows that his father was reasonably well off and that he was not a woodcutter. I see memes and stories like that continuously and 1 minute fact checking via Google or snopes.com would reveal the problem. Before I make such a post, I always check. You want to present yourself as a credible source of information.

Another issue is see is the posting about drug use or other illegal activities. I have it easier as I do not use drugs (without getting into the debate of alcohol and coffee and such which obviously can be considered to be drugs and I do drink them), but I am puzzled at to why anyone would want to advertise illegal activities that they do, especially on professional media like LinkedIn. The pot industry is starting to become legal in some states, and I can see the rationale why people in the industry would advertise it, but I see little upside otherwise and lots of potential downside. This only increases as you move up the ranks.

I made the choice a long time ago to not make my Facebook account my public face, especially for professional matters. So my actual Facebook friend list is small and almost all are actual friends or at least people that share an interest with me that I know personally. When I do want to post on a personal view, I do not post a blog entry, I post a Facebook entry. Now these can be shared by friends on my Facebook and some have super-wide distribution, so it does get broadcast, but it still is a more personal distribution method. I do not have particularly radical political or religious views and my moral center is certainly firmly in suburban middle class, so there is not much danger in even those views being spread, but I would not post them on LinkedIn or here as I automatically link posts in my blog to other social media and because this is a public and freely available site.

Even on Facebook, I think a little before I post something. An example is a post of a picture of a martini glass or a wine glass. I like martinis and I like wine with a meal and I will post a picture to go with a check-in when I go out. Some writers recommend keeping your social media media completely clean of any sign you drink at all and any sign that you go out. To take it to that extreme seems weird to me and I am not sure I would want to work somewhere that takes exception to employees having a normal social life. However, posting odes to ISIS and discussing overthrowing the government is something that would make me pause in a hiring decision. I would think these sorts of things are self obvious not to post, but people do it anyways.

Political views are always a hard area to discuss. Suppression of political views is counter to the spirit of democracy and I hesitate to argue that anyone should not express their views there. It is always a delicate balance, but even CEOs of large companies campaign for specific parties and candidates. I would say be moderate and reasonable in expression of political views and unless appropriate, keep them out of your business public face. The USA is split about 50/50 in political party support and you always risk alienating potential customers when you take a political stance. I would say for any business related so local media, you should treat it like a social gathering where you do not know the people and where normal etiquette dictates moderating discussions on politics as it is not socially acceptable because of the potential conflict it could cause. In your personal social media, I would only suggest that you take a careful look at what you are posting and make sure it reflects your views in a way that you intend to be public. A good rant may make you feel better, but if you consider yourself an advocate of a party or candidate, does it reflect well on them?

Religious views are similar. The social party rule applies. Some people are deeply religious and their faith is very important to them. I think expression of the views should be moderate in business settings as on average most people do not consider it an appropriate place to discuss religion. Personal social media should just be subject to the test before you post of does this post serve my God well and is it in line with His/Her teachings? If you really think yes, then you should feel secure in posting it.

Both politics and religion are very hard subjects. You can find many people saying not to post about it at all, even in your personal social media and I certainly see lots of scolding in social media when people bring it up. Our society will be a sad and bland one if we suppress and self edit such important things. As long as you feel your post is knowledgeable and in good spirit, I would not recommend not posting it. I would suggest that you should consider a private message versus a public posting and if that is more appropriate, but express your views if it is what you feel you must do, even if in public.

Sexist, racist, or overly sexual and graphic posts always will reflect badly on you. There certainly is room for people to make a living posting about these types of subjects, but an external blog site like this is probably the best place to talk about it, especially for business social media where it may not be appropriate at all in pretty much any circumstances. My reasoning is simple, readers need to make a choice and click a link to go read what you wrote and at that point the reader needs to take some responsibility. I think that sexism and racism belongs nowhere, but some people find it even in posts where you do not intend it. I try and write with gender neutral pronouns and business titles, but I slip up every once and a while.

Profile pictures should be appropriate in that they make you look good but are not overly sexualized. I guess if you are a lingerie or bathing suit model for a living or sell those products as your main business, then you can use different types of pictures in your business posts, but in general a vacation picture in a tight speedo is not the best way to advertise yourself for a CFO job. I personally hold that dumb comments addressed at “pretty” or “handsome” profile pictures are the fault of the people making them, not the account owner who puts up the profile picture and those responses are an example of bad decisions by the poster.

The world certainly is more complicated now because of social media and the global outreach it has, but the rules you should follow are really not that much different than the days before social media. Getting drunk at an office party and slurring your speech while kicking a puppy on stage was bad news before social media and it is still bad news. Do a little self editing before such a post is made.

I also see a potential backlash against increasingly invasive practices in screening candidates. If something is actually public already, then there may not be much right to complain, but requests that company representatives be added as “friends” or that private social media accounts be opened up is more than what I think is fair. And social media posts when you were 18 probably are not a good reflection of you at 40, so I see some small sense in the “right to be forgotten” laws that exist in Europe.

Category: Leadership Page 1 of 2

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