Managers in every business are expected to use financial data to make decisions, allocate resources, and budget expenses. But the truth is, many are uncomfortable applying the most basic financial tools in their day-to-day work. Even managers who consider themselves financially savvy may not understand what goes into a financial statement, and so may take the numbers as gospel when they should be questioning them.

In Financial Intelligence, Karen Berman and Joe Knight present the essentials of finance, but with an extra dimension. Succinct, easy-to-read chapters teach the fundamentals in a way that everyone can understand and put to work right away. But the authors also take you behind the scenes, to show where the numbers come from. Since nobody can quantify everything, accountants and finance executives always rely on estimates, assumptions, and judgment calls, which can skew the numbers in one direction or another. This book helps you recognize and understand those biases, challenge or correct for them when necessary, and use this information to be a better manager.

Based on their work training tens of thousands of managers and employees at many leading organizations, Berman and Knight provide readers with a deep understanding of:

* The basics of financial measurement: reading income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, and more
* The art of finance: separating hard data from assumptions and estimates
* The mechanics of analysis: calculating ratios, return on investment, and working capital
* Cash and profit: knowing how these terms differ, and why cash is suddenly the “hot” number in corporate boardrooms and on Wall Street
* Financial literacy and transparency: recognizing how they can boost performance

Accessible, jargon-free, and filled with entertaining stories from real companies, Financial Intelligence will help nonfinancial managers add substantially more to their companies’—and their own—success. If you have ever wanted to “talk numbers” confidently with your colleagues, this is the book for you.

 

 Joe Knight Interview [21:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this interview,  Allan Cox challenges us to understand the fundamental forces underlying our behavior. These are forces that lead to either success or failure. Since these forces are fundamental, they don’t apply just to business, but to all relationships. Your Inner CEO isn’t a book that you simply read, it’s one you live. Living it will not only maximize your potential for success, it will provide a better life for all those who surround you.” Dr. Robert Genetski, Economist and Publisher, Classical Principles

If you are a board member or report to a board, you need to listen to this interview.  “Allan Cox gets it right on all accounts and gives great advice on how to make potentially difficult relationships both collaborative and productive.” Howard Behar, Board of Directors of Starbucks, Gap, Anna’s Linens

“Allan Cox knows and shows what it takes to become a superior CEO.” William A. Roper, Jr., President & CEO, Verisign Inc.

“Allan Cox helps nurture people and corporations the way perceptive executives treat a great brand.” Wally Olins, Co-Founder & Chairman of London-based Saffron Brand Consultants; author of On Brand

 

 Allan Cox Interview [23:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The vast majority of small businesses stay small—and not by choice. Only the most savvy and persistent—a tiny one tenth of one percent—break through to annual sales above $250 million. In The Breakthrough Company, Keith McFarland pinpoints how everyday companies become extraordinary, showing that luck is a negligible factor. Rather, breakthrough success turns out to be associated with a clearly identifiable set of strategies and skills that anyone in any business can emulate—from small startup to industry leader.

Encouraged by experts such as business legend Peter Drucker and Good to Great author Jim Collins to identify the drivers that enable a company to push past the entrepreneurial phase, McFarland spent five years building and analyzing the world’s largest growth-company performance database and interviewing more than 1,500 growth-company executives on four continents. His goal was simple: to identify the secrets of breakthrough.

The Breakthrough Company is the result. Winnowing a study pool of more than 7,000 companies down to nine that have made the transition to major-player status, McFarland highlights real-world tools and myth-busting insights that can be used by anyone wanting his or her business to join this exclusive circle. Among the book’s takeaways:

• Common wisdom holds that the founders and core entrepreneurial leaders of a company must step aside for the business to reach the next level. Not true—as long as founders “crown the company” instead of themselves.

• It’s not reckless to make ever-escalating bets on your company’s future, even going nose to nose with competitors many times your size. In fact, it turns out that the only safety comes in constantly upping the ante in exactly this way.

• A Business Bermuda Triangle does exist, gobbling up companies on the verge of breakthrough. Presented are three ways to navigate this potentially deadly hazard successfully.

• However good you are—or think you are—you can’t do it alone. Learn how to surround your company with networks of outside resources, aka “scaffolding,” and how to enlist the aid of “insultants”—people who are willing to question a firm’s existing assumptions and ways of doing business.

With powerful and specific action steps concluding each chapter—and invaluable advice on virtually every page from business leaders who’ve taken their companies to extraordinary levels of growth and profitability—The Breakthrough Company is one of the most provocative, inspiring, and instructive business books you’ll ever read.

 

 Keith McFarland Interview [23:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download