Do you want to keep up to date with the latest developments in finance, but you are short of time? Don't worry. CFO South Africa weekly collects 10 of the most important articles from international media for your convenience.
1. What Science Tells Us About Leadership Potential
Although the scientific study of leadership is well established, its key discoveries are unfamiliar to most people, including an alarmingly large proportion of those in charge of evaluating and selecting leaders. This science-practitioner gap explains our disappointing state of affairs. Leaders should drive employee engagement, yet only 30% of employees are engaged, costing the U.S. economy $550 billion a year in productivity loss. Moreover, a large global survey of employee attitudes toward management suggests that a whopping 82% of people don't trust their boss
2. Four Ways Every Business Needs To Use Artificial Intelligence
The field of artificial intelligence got its start at a conference at Dartmouth in 1956. Optimism ran high and it was believed that machines would be able to do the work of humans within 20 years. Alas, it was not to be. By the 1970's, funding dried up and the technology entered the period known as the AI winter. Clearly, much has changed since then. In 2011, IBM's Watson system beat the best human players in the game show Jeopardy! More recently, Google's DeepMind had similar success against Go Champion Lee Sedol. Microsoft has also opened a cognitive services division and others are sure to follow
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3. Innovation Killers - 3 invisible factors that stifle innovation in ...
Most companies struggle with innovation due to ingrained assumptions that are invisible barriers to Intrapreneurs. Here's how to get rid of the innovation killers to get more innovation. Intrapreneurship is a competency that can be cultivated within companies under the right conditions. Having the proper Culture of Innovation allows for Intrapreneurs to grow, thrive and add value to the organization. Unfortunately, many actions from Senior Leaders drive innovation away from their teams. Here are the most common mistakes that destroy innovation within companies:
4. 4 Easy Tips to Improve Your Brainstorming Sessions
When you hear the phrase "brainstorming session," what do you think of? For most people, these two words inspire visions of a meeting that looks something like this: A group of people bouncing suggestions and ideas around -- ideas that will then just sit and collect cobwebs immediately after the conclusion of that meeting. Yes, brainstorming can be effective for encouraging innovation. But, in reality, most people walk away from those sit-downs feeling as if their time was wasted. Why? Because all too often the ideas that are generated don't ever end up being implemented or utilized. No more!
5. 5 steps to strengthen internal controls at small businesses and not...
Internal controls may lag at smaller organisations as managers sacrifice them for the sake of service delivery, particularly at cost-conscious not-for-profits and start-up organisations. Yet the risks are too great to ignore. Consider that the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) in its Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse: 2016 Global Fraud Study found that businesses with fewer than 100 employees are more vulnerable to occupational fraud. The median annual fraud loss for religious, charitable, or social service organisations was $82,000. This amount does not take into account the cost to the organisation's reputation
6. A new path for cyber risk management
A new framework that businesses would use to evaluate their cybersecurity risk management programmes is one objective of two exposure drafts issued Monday by the American Institute of CPAs Assurance Services Executive Committee (ASEC). The proposed frameworks are designed to lead to a common set of criteria for management to use to design and describe their cybersecurity risk management programmes and the introduction of a new engagement that public accountants will be able to use to serve boards of directors, senior management, and others as they evaluate the effectiveness of an organisation's cybersecurity risk management programmes.
7. Growing Globally From Local Beginnings
For Intuit today, global sales are a small part of overall revenue. But as part of our shift to cloud-based services, the global small business market represents a big growth opportunity over the next decade. We've introduced our QuickBooks Online small business accounting software in France and Brazil this year after rollouts in Canada, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia. At a pace of one to two new markets every couple of years, ultimately we can see the ecosystem built out and integrated in 20 markets around the world.
8. Building the right organization for mergers and acquisitions
The internal organization that manages a company's M&A processes has always been a major contributor to the success of its deals. Today, as companies increasingly choose to manage their M&A processes internally, without the support of financial advisers,1 it's all the more important to have the right team in place. This team must not only be skilled at screening acquisition targets, conducting due diligence, and integrating acquired businesses but also have the size, structure, and credibility to influence the rest of the company.
9. These Startup Founders Swear By The ROI Of Reading
For the executives of growing companies, devoting the time to read for a few hours a week adds value in more ways than one. Jessica Mah, the CEO of inDinero, a San Francisco-based accounting software startup, sees reading as so important to the growth of her company that she reads two books a week. In the tradition of executives being avid exercisers and meditatorsbecause it's both good for them personally and as business leadersfounders who have a reading habit find that it helps their cognition and, by extension, grows their companies.
10. Why You Should Love Rejection
Okay I know. Nobody likes being rejected. No one wakes up in the morning saying, "I would love to hear plenty of no's today!" I get it. This article isn't actually about loving rejection (though I get to that a little later). It's about not being afraid of it. Lately, I've been hearing the word "hustler" a lot. I've heard various entrepreneurs, go-getters and myself described as a "hustler." Hustlers are successful, I'm told. Gary Vaynerchuk's newsletter is called the "Hustler's Digest." If you want to run a business, you have to hustle. In fact, if you want to do anything with some modicum of success, you have to hustle.
