Another CFO blogger I follow, (they’ve been busy this week) writes at CorpFinCafe. Over the past few weeks, Jeff has been writing about Jeremy Hope’s book, “Reinventing the CFO.” This week, he covered the “CFO as Master of Measurement.”
Many of these same principles that you, as the senior finance leader in your organization, implement and measure in running your company can … and should … be adapted to your marketable value proposition (MVP) and marketing collateral. Jeff cites these (from the book) as examples of fulfilling the Master of Measurement role:
–Measure to learn and improve
–Choose the right measures
–See measurement as patterns, trends, and abnormalities
–Provide external reality checks
–Use a range of measures to inform a dialogue about management performance
From a marketing perspective, there is little, if any, value in contributions that can’t be measured. Reducing costs, driving profitability, strengthening financial operations, reducing risk, enhancing shareholder value, turning around a failing organization … these are vague generalities. How many finance executives do you know who aren’t using at least some of those terms?
Those words, without quantification, delegate candidates to commodity status … one of many who all say the same thing, sound like, and therefore look alike. What will differentiate you and propel you to the front of the pack are two things. Why you did what you did and what the measurable and/or long–term impact was as a result.