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Elon Musk by Walter Isaascson

Leading Blog

Entrepreneurs are actually not risk takers,” says X.com CFO Roelof Botha. It made his engineers engage in first-principles thinking. The biggest change Musk wrought was to put the design engineers in charge of production, like he had done for a while at Tesla. They’re risk mitigators. But not Musk. “He

CFO 354
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An Effective Business Review Meeting?

N2Growth Blog

Another common complaint about Business Review Meetings is that nearly always the time gets hijacked with discussions on day-to-day operating or tactical issues, especially when we have a room full of engineers turned managers; they quickly dive down into trying to fix the problem right then.

Review 388
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10 Reasons Why Every Manager Should take a Finance Course

Great Leadership By Dan

The audience was mostly engineers – program and project managers, the ones in charge of designing and making complex stuff. Yes, you too can speak like a CFO! We just finished a “ Finance and Accounting for the Non-Financial Manager ” program this week for a large client. They will call you on it.

Finance 246
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Let’s Stop Pushing “Development” as a Cheap Replacement for Training

Great Leadership By Dan

Sales reps were trained in their products and how to sell them, scientists went to conferences, engineers were offered continued training to keep their skills up to date, and new managers were trained how to manage. A new CFO came on board and decided that training was a luxury that could no longer be afforded.

Training 230
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How Technical Debt Opens the Door to Cyber Attacks—and Steps to Protect Your Small Business

Strategy Driven

Months of investigation by a cyber consulting firm finally determined the source of the vulnerability to Azotrope’s network: a combination printer/fax machine in their testing and QA area that engineers regularly used to fax lunch orders to a local Chinese restaurant. How would your CFO or CIO handle this? An excerpt is below.

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B2B versus B2C Marketing Adjustments

Coaching Tip

Think about the Boeing Engineer evaluating a GE jet engine for a new airplane…a CIO evaluating a new Enterprise Resource Planning System software provider…or a CFO reviewing audit firms. . Domain knowledge — The B2B buyer has the expertise and experience in the offering being considered.

B2C 95
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Leadership and Product Management

Lead on Purpose

Here are the key roles that are crucial to your success as a product manager, and why they are important: Engineering/QA: The relationship with the engineering/development team is paramount for product managers. Smart product managers know the value of having allies in the CFO’s office.