Enjoy this series of shorts on Leadership from Jim.

I know, the title is clumsy…but it got your attention. That’s the problem: following up, the power in leadership, is a plain, quiet skill languishing in the shadow of strategy and starting.

Strategy is sexy and fun. It’s the subject of endless articles, videos, and debate. It’s what CEOs are supposed to do, according to folks who’ve never been a CEO. Strategy is vital when it’s time, but most of the time (years, actually) it’s not on the table, and looking at it sooner qualifies as pulling up the plant to see how its growing.

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A business’ value is generally based on the present value of expected future cash flows. Unfortunately, forecasting these cash flow streams can be difficult. The most common method of valuation, the Market Approach, derives a business’s value by looking at transactions for businesses within the same industry that are of similar size and operational characteristics. In theory, this is similar to how you might value your house, except that there are a lot more variables and comparable data is not readily available.

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The Cash Velocity Calculator estimates how long it takes on average to convert a dollar paid for inventory into a dollar received on sales. Using some basic figures from your financial statements you’ll have a transparent view of where your working capital is invested and how improvements in terms or operations will impact cash. Use this tool to teach your executive team and staff about working capital and cash management.

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Our Managerial Reporting Scorecard is designed to add high value to this key CFO responsibility area - Timely reporting that drives keen insight into how your business is operating.

We have distilled the survey that drives the scoring into 6 section with only 26 questions.The questions are framed in a way that minimizes your time investment while maximizing the worth of the results.

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I enjoy maturity and evolution models of all kinds, especially for business. There is a stages of maturity model for information technologies and others such as for sales teams and their customer relationships. What I like about stages of maturity models is they provide confidence that regardless what stage one is at – low or high – there is a next step further up that can be attained in an evolutionary way.

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