On corporate planning...

 Jim mentioned in passing that corporate planning was a difficult thing for K. B. to handle.  He said "Planning is hard.  And it is hard by design.  When you consider the interconnect points between goto market planning, product strategy, financial planning, and all other related pieces, it is hard by design.  It is hard because you are forcing conversations. you are forcing trade offs and making people align with a broad array of functions.  That is hard and people don't want to do it."

"To make it somewhat easier, you need to have the intellectual horsepower to understand the business, and the interest to understand it.  If you don't business leaders can either fool you, or won't trust you, or won't respect you enough to listen to you."

On hiring direct team...

It is not possible for a CFO to be an expert in everything.  The CFO should have the ability to identify and pick leaders in his/her team who can compliment him/her.  These leaders should be able to handle the noise so that the CFO can focus on important elements that enhance the value of the asset (Akamai, in Jim's case).  And because taking over this noise is so important, it becomes critical to have clarity about the kind of person and skills you are looking for, and be selective in hiring.

Jim explained with an example:  I wasn't an accountant.  I know accounting, know the right questions to ask, but I am not an accountant (nor does a CFO need to be one).  When I took over as CFO, we had a functioning accounting group.  But we needed to upgrade the leadership skill so that the function can be built without me being overly involved.  The existing controller was a fine accountant, but he couldn't build the function holistically.  He was good for smaller setups, plugging holes and getting things done.  But to build scalable processes, you needed someone who I could trust, delegate and be methodical. That's where I hired C. A. I could trust him, he was reflective and knew how to build an efficient and effective function.

K. B. played a similar role for me.  She took over lot of the noise in business finance and the leaders there.  Sure she was probably a taskmaster with her people, but she could handle the leaders.  Her challenge was planning.  (ref. JB on Corporate Planning)

On Major in the majors (Part 2)...

I told Jim yesterday that when he coached me about "major in the majors" back in Akamai, I understood the concept, but couldn't relate to it entirely.  But in my role in Glance, it is becoming more apparent.

Jim explained, "this is an extremely important concept because it is easy to get sucked into noise when you are responsible for a lot of things.  You need to do two things:

1) you need to hire people who can take over the noise and keep it away from you.

2) It becomes very important to be deliberate about how you allocate your time.  You need to be able to get into a discussion, get what you need to make a decision, make it and move on.  You can't get sucked into it."

He went on, "in Akamai, my criteria was - what areas can I get into to increase the value of the Akamai asset.  Housekeeping areas are always important.  They play a role in hygiene.  But don't necessarily enhance the value of the asset.  So you need to find people who take care of these areas - they need to have the attitude and aptitude to do it for you".

On approving projects and investment asks

Recently, while speaking with Jim, we started talking about some of the investment asks that came to him over his career. He broke his explanation down in two parts.  

One, any technology company has to experiment with ideas.  Not all will succeed, but till you don't invest in some, you won't really get innovative new directions.  He said 'investors often asked me about our wasted spends on areas that didn't pan out.  and I always responded, show me a company whose investments and experiments pan out exactly as they outlined.  it doesn't work that way.'  He repeated his older phrase again: you have to light some sparks to ignite some fires.

Two, if the investment ask is modest, I am generally ok.  When I prodded some more, he outlined his mental model.

He said, typically, I look at four things:

1) is the idea interesting?  As finance professionals we obviously can't know (and don't need to know) all the technicalities and specifics.  But does the idea seem interesting, and with some chance of success?  we need to ask appropriate questions for that understanding.

2) is the return compelling?  this is more straight forward and based on some math model.

3) is the investment modest?  this is important.  You obviously can't run several experiments.  So you evaluate tradeoffs and assess how much incremental investment is needed.  As long as it is few engineers, and some ancillary expenses such as marketing, gtm, etc., to assess the success possibility, you should let it happen.

4) will this idea distract the leader from the core business?  this is the most critical criteria.  Experiments have to happen.  but unless your job is to experiment, the focus needs to be on the core business.  

In larger companies, there is more latitude to get distracted from the core business.  But in smaller companies like yours, building the core business becomes even more important.  If the experiment distracts the leader from core business, then it is probably required to hire someone else to handle the project under the leader.