Advice for CEOs

Ask an entrepreneurial CEO where they feel they have under invested in their company to get it to its goals. Many will readily point to “above the line” areas of the company as those they wish they could afford to invest more in: product development, marketing, branding or advertising. One area you tend not to hear mentioned is the finance function, specifically the CFO. Based on my many years as a CEO of global consumer goods companies, I believe that this can be a mistake: optimizing the financial group may be the most overlooked step to value creation in entrepreneurial companies.