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. How to Do Strategic Planning Like a Futurist
I recently helped a large industrial manufacturing company with its strategic planning process. With so much uncertainty surrounding autonomous vehicles, 5G, robotics, global trade, and the oil markets, the company’s senior leaders needed a set of guiding objectives and strategies linking the company’s future to the present day. Before our work began in earnest, executives had already decided on a title for the initiative: Strategy 2030.
2. 5 Key Principles of Business Ethics
Effective ethics and compliance programs make it easy for employees to "do the next right thing, rather than the next thing right." This may come as no surprise, but a new survey of corporate ethics and compliance managers indicates that companies are trying hard to get their employees behave in an ethical manner.
3. Creating high-performance innovation teams at scale
For innovation initiatives to succeed, they must be staffed with the right combination of talent. In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, McKinsey senior partner Erik Roth, partner Matt Banholzer, and communications director Sean Brown discuss how to put together winning innovation teams.
4. 6 Reasons We Make Bad Decisions, and What to Do About Them
Research has shown that that the typical person makes about 2,000 decisions every waking hour. Most decisions are minor and we make them instinctively or automatically — what to wear to work in the morning, whether to eat lunch now or in ten minutes, etc. But many of the decisions we make throughout the day take real thought, and have serious consequences.
5. Insight for CFOs struggling with agility
Experts’ advice can help finance professionals cope with rapid change. Finance has become one of the most exciting and value-adding parts of a company as it develops a more digital approach and the more agile structure needed to go with it, according to a report by Accenture.
6. Why Negotiators Should Be on Social Networks
The mere presence of a Facebook connection increases trust and forgiveness in negotiations. Although social networks can mine people’s data and invade personal privacy, the debate about potentially nefarious aspects of online platforms has not deterred most people from joining them. As it turns out, for all the mistrust surrounding social networks, they can increase their users’ mutual trust levels and forgiveness, according to new research.
7. A Guide to Leveraging Financial Cost Controls to Drive Better Reporting, Faster Delivery, and Fewer Flaws
As a finance leader, your team is under intense scrutiny and demands. Financial cost controls provide measurable outputs that help you to trust your numbers and drive more efficiency in the close process.
8. How finance leaders can deliver successful change projects
Tony Riches, an experienced consultant, reveals some of the key areas finance professionals should focus on to deliver change projects successfully.
9. Insight into the state of small business
Small business owners have plenty of reasons for optimism but also some concerns moving forward, according to Jeff Hofmann, the managing director of small business lending at Chase. In this episode, recorded at AICPA ENGAGE in June, Hofmann shares the pain points of small business owners, how interest rates affect their plans, and where small business sits on the disruption curve.
10. Survey Shows Tensions Between CFOs and CIOs
Fewer than a third of finance chiefs are deeply aligned with their IT leaders, whom CFOs see as growing less able to track the impact of new technologies.
