The Dennis Rodman Paradox And How CFOs Can Protect Irreplaceable Specialists With Jack McCullough

You want to encourage a culture of what I call the three C's: communications, curiosity, and courage. Intellectual curiosity is the greatest asset you can get from your team.

Our guest today is Jack Mukalla, the founder of the CFO Leadership Council, a global community of over 2,500 senior financial executives, also served as CFO across multiple organizations, the host of Secrets of Rockstar CFOs podcast. He is the author of three books. And he joins us today just ahead of his fourth release, The Rodman Paradox.

So the Rodman Paradox is there might be people that on the surface seem like they have a limited skill set, but because there are so few people who can do it well, they may actually be more important to your organizational success than executives. Gen Z entering the workforce, and I don't want to paint the brush too broadly, but they love specialization. They just want to do meaningful work that they think is exciting.

What do you think is the most important thing an FP&A leader can do to create a high-performing FP&A team?

It's tough to come up with one.

Welcome to another episode of FP&A Unlocked. Are you tired of being seen as just a spreadsheet person while others get a seat at the table? Well then, welcome to FP&A Unlocked, where finance meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A Guy, and each week we bring you Conversations and practical advice from thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who are reshaping the role of FP&A in today's business world. Together, we'll uncover strategies and experiences that separate good FP&A professionals from great ones, helping you elevate your career and drive strategic impact. This week's guest needs no introduction. He's been on the show before, and I'm thrilled to welcome back Jack McCullough. Jack, welcome to the show.

Great to see you. Excited to be back.

Yeah, I'm excited and looking forward to our conversation. So for my audience, I'll give a little bit of Jack's background and then we'll jump into questions. Jack is a respected authority on financial leadership and the founder of the CFO Leadership Council, a premier global organization with more than 2,500 senior financial executives. A seasoned CFO himself, Jack has advised and led companies across industries. Helping redefine the CFO role as a strategic driver of business transformation. He's also the author of 3 books: Secrets of Rockstar CFOs, my favorite, The Psychopathic CEO: An Executive Survival Guide, and his latest, MBA for Lunch, concise, practical advice to core business concepts for busy professionals. So gotta ask, when does the book come out?

Yeah, the next book, The Rodman Paradox, is coming out in July. So really excited about that. July 21st is the exact date. In fact, if you look over the corner, you can see the author's copy, which literally arrived about 2 hours ago. So I was, uh, like a kid at Christmas. I was actually tracking the Federal Express package.

That's exciting. I like the name, The Rodman Paradox. I just, I'm a jazz fan. It's hard to like Rodman.

Well, I get it. You know, I'm a Bostonian, and I— when he was playing, I hated Rodman. So my friends were like, what? You know, because, you know, I'm— he's the Larry Bird era, right? It was a glorious time to be a Boston Celtics fan. And, you know, we didn't hate Magic Johnson, but boy, did we not like Dennis Rodman.

So, yeah, I don't know many fans outside of those that benefit from that really liked Rodman. He was a unique player.

Yeah, very unique. But, you know, the one thing about him is as a basketball player, He seemed limited, right? All he did was rebound and play defense, but he won an awful lot of games. In fact, he has the highest winning percentage of any player in the history of the NBA. More than Michael Jordan, which is surprising to people. More than Bill Russell, who won 11 championships. More than Steph Curry. More than anyone. And, uh, you know, he just, he wasn't just a passive, you know, just happened to be at the right place at the right time. He was a key contributor on those teams.

Well, I think what people forget is everybody remembers the Bulls years when he pretty much said, I'm not going to shoot. All I'm going to do is rebound and defend. But you go back to the Pistons years, he was playing 4 different positions on defense. He was scoring double digits. He wasn't— it was never a great scorer. That was never his strength, but he scored at a decent clip. So I think sometimes all anyone thinks about— and he was great in the Bulls era, don't get me wrong. But he was a much more complete player than I think people realized when he chose to be.

Yeah, he, he definitely was. He became kind of obsessive with rebounds as his career went on. In fact, he had a— there's one game and people think he was kind of doing it on purpose, but he had 28 rebounds and zero points. And he had like a couple of really open shots towards the end of the game, but people were theorizing he knew that this might be historic. He couldn't have known for sure, but he's like, I bet nobody's ever had 25 rebounds without scoring. So he intentionally gave up scoring opportunities to—

I vaguely remember that.

And he actually did that twice, which is just because, you know, as you might guess, that's never been done by anyone in, you know, whatever number of tens of thousands of NBA games in history. And he did it twice within 6 weeks. So he was an impressive rebounder. You gotta give, give the guy that.

Oh no, he was, he was a great defender, impressive rebounder, very complete player. Player. I mean, people forget he won titles with the Pistons, you know, he won titles with the Bulls. I mean, he won— I think he won 5 titles in his career, if I remember right.

You're good. Yep, that's correct.

So played for 5 teams, I think, 4 or 5 teams. The Spurs was a disaster, the Mavericks were a disaster, but the Bulls and Pistons were a lot of success.

The Spurs were interesting because he was like pre-Duncan, and, you know, the only year that David Robinson won an MVP was when he had Rodman as a teammate. And it's because, you know, he could focus on some other things. And, you know, for those who don't know David Rodman— David Robinson, excuse me— just an absolute athletic freak. He was like a generation ahead of the centers of his era. So.

All right. Well, everybody's probably like, we came to an FP&A podcast. We didn't expect to hear nothing but basketball talk. So for those that are— you are like, what in the world are they doing? Well, we'll get into a little bit more of the show, but there's a reason. We'll get back to that in a minute. The Rodman paradox. We are going to talk a little more Dennis Rodman. So you're just— if you don't want to hear any of it, you can turn off now. But we will also talk FP&A and finance and leadership, and there'll be a purpose to all this. But before we jump into the book and some of those things, I want to ask you a question. I've already asked you what great FP&A is. You've been on the show before, so I want to start with this question. Similar line. What do you think is the most important thing an FP&A leader can do to create a high-performing FP&A team in a company? What's the most important thing they should be doing?

It's tough to come up with one, the type of thing, you know, if you ask me tomorrow, I may give you a different answer. But, you know, I think you want to encourage a culture of what I call the 3 C's, which are communications, curiosity, and courage. You want to have a team that communicates well, that it's not just the data. Don't give me a bunch of numbers. Tell me the story behind these numbers. Curiosity. And FP&A people, generally speaking, they tend to be curious by nature. They may have picked a different career path if not. But encourage curiosity. Intellectual curiosity is the greatest asset you can get from your team. And then courage. If you're making a mistake or even the president or whatever is making a mistake, and you get some data that suggests it, you don't want them to sit on that type of data. You want to have them the courage to share the data to say, this is what I've learned. You need to listen to me. This is the direction I think you should go in. And you know what? Occasionally they're going to be wrong and that's okay. But you know, you don't want to punish them for, you know, the strength of their convictions and doing the right thing.

I like that. The 3 C's: communication, curiosity, and courage. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it. So we talk a little bit about your new book. We can see the author's copy there in the background. Tell people what the Rodman Paradox is. You and I talked a little bit about his basketball career, but I'm sure the book is about much more than just his basketball career.

Yeah, the book was named for Dennis Rodman, but it's, it's not about Dennis Rodman.

Sure.

It's the idea. And, you know, and he was a specialist, like, he was great at two things. And yet, as you mentioned, he won 5 world championships and he just was an incredible, incredible winning percentage. And I was just sort of wondering, you know, is that applicable in business? And what happened, it actually is sort of an FP&A type of thing. A friend of mine who's a CFO, he was doing some restructuring in his company and we had a conversation after and he shared with me he had a controller that he really liked. She was, you know, versatile, good leader, understood the business, well-respected throughout the company. And then he had a relatively junior FP&A type of person. And he actually ended up, you know, letting go the controller, but kept the FP&A person who was fairly limited. However, the FP&A person was really good at generative AI. And, you know, this was a couple of years ago too. So that skillset was pretty rare at the time, more so than it is today. And he just made the decision, I can replace a controller, but my FP&A person has a skillset. It's gonna take me a year to replace it. And there's no one on the team that can replace it. Even 3 people pitching in don't have her expertise. So it got me thinking, you know, is there a role for specialists? And you know, how important are specialists to the company? So the Rodman paradox is there might be people that on the surface seem like they have a limited skillset. But because there are so few people who can do it well, they may actually be more, more important to your organizational success than executives.

Yeah. So it's really that idea that sometimes there's somebody that's very narrow in their focus, but is incredibly valuable.

Exactly. And it's across all industries. I, you know, I'm a, I'm an MBA, so I can say this, but you know, I, you, you have a CEO who's an MBA, smart person from elite school, blah, blah, blah. You know, that, that's great, but there's 120,000 MBAs graduate off the college campuses every single year in the United States alone. If you've got a design savant, say you're an art company, you know how many of those are there, right? If you had to pick between the design savant or the CEO with an MBA, who's more replaceable? Probably the CEO.

So I started my career working for the government. I was a procurement in the US Navy and generally, you know, to reach highest level, almost everybody had management, managed a bunch of people, except for at the base. There were several people who were that highest pay band that were the PhD, one of the only ones in the world that could do the rocket science type weapons stuff they were doing. And they were paid like they were almost running the whole base. You know, that same type of level, I think it was GS 16 equivalent or whatever. Even though they didn't manage anyone, right? So that's kind of that Rodman. It's like, okay, they're key to this project, even though we don't want them to manage anybody. They'd be terrible at it, but they have a skill set and a knowledge that almost nobody does.

You're right. Exactly. And that makes them invaluable. It makes them a little bit dangerous, right? You know, nobody wants a single point of failure, but sometimes these people, their skill set is so unique and You know, they're not, you, they become irreplaceable, not 'cause they're selfish. I mean, they're willing to share what they know, but there might just be nobody else in the company or the organization that can do what they want, even if they share exactly what they do.

So why is that? Why do you think they're so much harder to, to replace? 'Cause you have someone you think of, hey, this is the star performer, but that other person that's doing a narrow thing may be so much more valuable. So why is that?

Yeah, it could be. I mean, I, I don't wanna keep going back to the basketball metaphor, But you know, if you look at those Chicago Bulls teams that were great, you know, their starting center was Luke Longley, who, you know, he's about as athletic as you and I are, I think, right?

He was an average NBA player. I mean, he wasn't bad, but he wasn't something to write home about.

He wasn't awful, but there wasn't, you know, Jordan of course was good at everything. You know, there was no aspect of the game back then that he wasn't at least above average at. He was an above average rebounder. Pippen was average, but he was really— Rodman was the only person who could actually go up and rebound. And get them. And you know, there's an argument to be made in the '96 Finals that Rodman, even though Jordan was given the MVP award, that Rodman was actually the most valuable player. The Seattle Supersonics have come out and said as much, that Rodman was the guy we really didn't have an answer for. But yeah, there's just some people, either it's a unique skill set or, you know, it might be just something nobody else really wants to do. They like to do the dirty work. And you know, there are people, we live in a world of stars and, you know, nobody says, geez, I want to have a career doing the dirty work. But the people who do, who, who like it and become good at it can make a really good living and find themselves invaluable.

So, yeah, I've never seen a salesperson's like, I want to do the dirty work. They want to be the diva.

Yeah, exactly. But you know, some in the sales world, there might be, you know, the inside salesperson that it's not glamorous, but You know, they're capable of making 300 outgoing calls day after day, every day. They're really good at doing it. They can get the message across. Doesn't seem that hard, but you get someone that does it at an elite level, you've really got something. So it might be more important than the VP of sales in some scenarios.

So, no, there's some truth to that, which kind of leads me to a question. How do you identify or how do you know there's a Rodman in your organization? You know, 'cause some people may specialize in something and not be valuable. And I don't wanna say not val— but you know, you could let go and they're not critical. They're not valuable at that level where, hey, if we replace them, it's critical to the whole organization.

Yeah. Not every specialist is a Rodman. You, it, it has to be.

Yeah. That, that's a good way of saying it. I was trying to think of the way to phrase it here.

But yeah, I mean, the way to look at it, you, you know, the single points of failure, and there is a thing Often crises reveal who your Rodmans are because at the C-suite, you don't necessarily have full visibility into the company. I mean, if it's a small company, presumably you would, but you can determine from who do people turn to during crisis? Who is it that's getting invited to all of the meetings? Are you familiar with the ONA, the What Network Analysis tool?

I don't think I am.

It's okay. But you've seen that the traditional org chart, the president's at the top. Of course.

And it's pyramidal.

You know, that was actually created by a railroad company in the 1850s. And the guy who created it, his memory was failing him, and he just set that up so he could remember who was who within the company. It's a little bit outdated. It has its place, but what that shows is hierarchy. The ONA, the Network Analysis Tool, that shows influence. And it's just a way, you know, whose name keeps popping up on the Slack message boards. Who gets invited to meetings outside their own department all the time? Who do the customers call during a crisis? These are your Rodmans. They're sort of quiet. They don't bring a lot of visibility to themselves. Yet your rank-and-file employees and other people know exactly who to go to during a tough moment.

So, so what I'm hearing is they're often the people that your customers, your other employees look to during crisis. Not necessarily for leadership, but could just be for answers.

Yeah, that's a fair thing to say. They have an expertise. In fact, most of them aren't very good leaders. They eschew management type of jobs, but they're harder to find because like there's a little bit— a lot of what they do is prevention. And if I can do the metaphor within the metaphor, you think of a firefighter, right? We all respect firefighters. They're brave. You know, when there is a fire, they're highly visible. We love them. I mean, there's a reason they're amongst the most respected of our citizens, but there's the role of the fire preventer. You know, that's the people who check the batteries in the smoke detectors, who, you know, make sure that there's no faulty wiring in the building, who make sure that the fire extinguishers are properly placed, things of that nature. Dullest job in the world. It's just as important and just as valuable to prevent a fire as it is to put one out should one break out. Just how do you measure that and how do you recognize that, right? They're just kind of doing it quietly in the background.

Yeah, no, I, I appreciate that. That makes a lot of sense. It's good analogy there. What are the traits? We've mentioned that they tend not to be always great managers. They tend to be quiet. What are some of the other traits that kind of help identify these individuals? What are other things that You know, if I'm a CFO or a CEO and I'm trying to figure out if I have one or who it is, you kind of mentioned a little bit looking at who people go to, but are there certain like character traits that you've seen as you did your research?

They do tend to be quiet and they actively avoid the spotlight. You know, if you, if there's a company meeting and you recognize them for something they did, you know, they may just absolutely find that appalling, right? They, they don't want something like that. They just, they're the types that kind of wantly, want to quietly do their work and do it really, really well. They, I don't wanna say they're poor communicators because that's not really fair, but they are unconventional communicators where, you know, um, do you remember the movie Office Space? The, uh, TPS reports or something like that. They're not gonna fill out a bunch of TPS reports no matter how nicely you ask them, but you know, they'll communicate. You just need to come up with a little different if you want 'em to give you a weekly status report, that's not really something that they're going to be particularly good or mindful of, but they will communicate. It's just a different type of communication. But, you know, again, they like to work cross-functionally. They're big-time system thinkers. They know a lot more about the company than you might think. But, you know, they mostly, they kind of want their work to speak for themselves. That's one of the dominant traits, that they want to do good work and the rest of the world needs to figure out if it's good or not. And pay me.

So you mean we like to be paid for good work even if we're a Rodman?

Even, yeah, Rodmans, that's the one thing they share with conventional performers. They do, they do value getting paid. So, but yeah, they, you know, another trait is we've touched a little bit on, they really don't want to manage, you know, they don't mind mentoring and they don't mind advising, but they don't want the responsibility of managing a team. They make terrible department heads. They're not even really good at project management. I like to say they don't like to go high. They like to go deep. They like to dig into things and learn things.

So, so the traditional approach of, oh, hey, they did really well on this project. We should promote them to manage a team is a bad idea.

Yeah. I mean, you know, it's bad on multiple levels. One, they don't want it. And, you know, you, you're giving, it seems like it's nice. Hey, promote your best employee. And, you know, they don't want it. They're not likely to be very good at it. And the other thing is. Who's gonna replace them, right? You know, if, if they were in like a critical role where they were doing something, whoever replaces them may not be as good as them. So you've, you've got a bad manager and, you know, you, the, the person doing the work on, on the ground is, you know, not as effective as the Rodman that they replaced. Again, going back to basketball, hey Dennis, we want you to score and pass more. Don't want to, but I'll do it. But now you've got a big glaring hole in, in you know, there's, there's no one to rebound and, and no one to defend like him if he's focused on scoring and passing.

Yeah, so there's something to be said if they're really good at something, to focus them there. How do you know— so it's a question, you have a Rodman doing a great job in something, how do you know when they're ready for a change? Like, I think, all right, even Rodman sometimes want to do something new or different just because they're really good at something. So they may not want the promotion, they want— they don't want the limelight, but how do you I'm guessing kind of where I'm getting is how do you manage their career?

Yeah, it, it's unconventional. And I, I said they were unconventional communicators. And, but you know, you, you do need to be proactive with them. Take time. They, they'll listen. They don't want you to tell them how to do their job, but find out, you know, what motivates you? You know, what makes you tick? You know, okay, you wanna take on this project. How do you define success? How's the company gonna benefit? What do you personally want to get out of it? You know, what are the things I'm doing that are making your life more difficult? You know, shield them for any bureaucracy. That's the one thing they hate above all else is a lot of bureaucracy. Just find a way to, you know, to make sure that they don't have any, that they can just go and do the amazing things that they're capable of doing.

Yeah. So it's really kind of clearing the roadblocks and letting them work and then communicating so you make sure you're continuing to give them engaging projects and rewarding them accordingly, which promotions are typically not the reward path. There may be exceptions to that, but it's probably more compensation. It's not company-wide recognition, but that acknowledgement that they're important. Are those some of the things I'm hearing here? Is that kind of how to think about this?

Absolutely. And they do— let's say it's an engineer— they do want their fellow engineers to recognize their worth. And the engineers often do. They just don't really want the broader company or the C-suite directly.

Yeah, they don't want to have to stand up in front of everybody and be the show pony.

Yeah, yeah, the other ones, the brilliant person that, that's working during the company holiday parties.

So yeah, I, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Yeah, we've, we've all worked with some. Just, you know, put them at the highest level of competence that you can.

So, okay, no, that all makes sense. So, you know, often these Rodmans, I've, I've seen a few, they can tend to be eccentric. Let's take Dennis Rodman as an example since that's the book. We all know Dennis Rodman was combustible. I think he threw ice, a bag of ice one time on the court when he was with the Spurs, showed up at a press conference marrying himself, you know, partied all night in Vegas and would show up to a game the next day. I think he did that during Game 4 of a Finals, you know, things that most people would be like, screw it, I'm done, you're fired, it's not worth the headache. And a few teams did that with them. So how do you manage You know, somebody that's combustible, eccentric, maybe high maintenance. I don't know if that's quite the right word to use here, but you know what I'm talking about. I do.

And, you know, it's interesting, like, he had two great runs, the Pistons and the Bulls. And he had— he had an okay start with the Spurs. And he, he was with the Lakers. He had an interesting run with the Lakers because they He, it was, he was only there for one season.

The game, I forgot, he was one season there and what, 20 games with the Mavericks, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. And, but when he was at the Lakers, I mean, they, he missed a lot of games perhaps because of injury, perhaps because he didn't, just didn't feel like playing. But the games he played, they had the best record in the league and the games he missed, they, they had less than a .500 record. But the, the two teams that he, that really played well with them, Chuck Daly, the coach of the Pistons, Phil Jackson, the coach of the Bulls. They're both Hall of Fame coaches.

Yeah, I was just going to say they're two of the probably top 10 coaches of all time.

And exactly. And they didn't try to change him, you know, and there was a lot of skepticism. Like, you know, Rodman's reputation was, you know, he— after Daly left the Bulls, he kind of soured on the Pistons. The Spurs, the end of the Spurs era was considered a disaster. So Jackson was taking a big chance bringing him on board, but he and Michael Jordan took the time to get to know him a little bit. What motivated him? Look, these are the things we're gonna give you, okay? These are things we just can't live with. Can you live with that? If so, I think we can win a lot of basketball games. I suppose having Jordan as a teammate's not a bad carrot, but you know, manage the situation so you can optimize them. Don't try to change them. That's, that's a fool's errand.

What happens if you try to change 'em?

Yeah, I mean, you know, maybe it's gonna work in the short run, but their attitude's gonna sour. You know, they're kind of gonna go through the motions because a lot of them are like really technically astute. It may actually take you a while to figure out that they're going through the emotions— motions, excuse me. Say you're a CFO and this is a tax person. It appears that there are a lot of Rodmans in the tax world.

Interesting.

Yeah, they, you know, they've, well, a lot of loners, right? Um, but they want to do the deep research. Yeah, you may, you know, it, it, it might take you a while to figure out that they're not really putting in their best effort every single day and they can sour, you know, I mean, it's like, yeah, if you're performing well, that's going to buy you a lot of latitude, you know, for a short period of time. But you know, when you, when the behavior of the Rodman starts to hurt the whole system. No matter how good their work is, that's not a good thing. If they're no longer a Rodman, you know, they just become a liability. So at some point, you know what they are is they're the great enablers. Rodman made Jordan and Pippen better. They take care of the dirty work so the CEOs and the CFOs and the VP of sales can, you know, do their thing really, really well and not worry about certain issues. But, you know, at some point you're enabling factor or you're an exhausting factor. Right. You don't want to wait too late.

Yeah. So basically you got to monitor it. And when it's really— if it's negatively impacting the system and it doesn't seem to get better, you have to do something.

Yeah. And the Lakers, to their credit, I mean, they let Rodman go in the middle of the season. Had they been able to, you know, kind of coach him up, they may have won the championship that year. I mean, they did have the best record in the league. This was a team with a Shaq and young Kobe. Right. Imagine those two with Rodman playing his best basketball. Can't rule it out. But, you know, there's a reason the Lakers have won so many championships over the years. And they just said, you know what, it's just not worth it. It's not worth it.

Yeah, there are certain organizations that have done a really good job of basically saying, hey, we're not dealing with drama. And that's in the business world, in the sports world. You know, I think sports, you know, I think Miami Heat have done a pretty good job. You know, Pat Riley was kind of known that way of not dealing with drama. But then you have others like Phil Jackson that says, as long as I can tap into this person and they don't cross certain lines, I'll deal with it.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, I think some of the best managers to get the most out of organizations when at the highest level have the ability to manage both. But there are also some great winners that just say, I'm not going to deal with it at all, but they can still get the best out of the remaining group they have. So I don't know that there's a perfect right answer here. Would love your thoughts on that.

Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. I mean, if the person has a toxic personalities, these poison people, you know, I refer to them in the book as irreplaceable, but you know, nobody is actually irreplaceable, right? I mean, there's, there's some people that have come close, you know, historically, but even like when Bill Gates left Microsoft or Steve Jobs left Apple, I mean, historically those sound like as close to irreplaceable employees as you're ever going to get, right? But they were replaced and the companies actually performed better after they left, arguably. Occasionally you get somebody like a, you know, when Walt Disney retired, you know, he was irreplaceable. He was like the creative engine of the company and what, I mean, he was a, he wasn't a bad citizen. I didn't mean to, to lump him in that category, but there's, there's very few people in your career that are going to be truly irreplaceable. And, you know, you plan in advance too. You have the mentor young people, you take the time to understand what it is that they're doing. Maybe the replacement isn't going to be as good and as effective, but, you know, if they're a better citizen and they're competent and get the role done, that might be a trade-off you have to make.

Jack, I can only think of two things that are irreplaceable. Your visible head and my beer.

That's it. Yeah. You know, those might be, that might be it.

So now everything else that goes around it, they can replace.

Absolutely. Wrigley Field would be irreplaceable.

So do you see this whole era of AI changing anything around kind of Rodman, how we should manage him, how we should think about him? Right. Just feel like the world is changing so much. Do you see anything there?

Yeah. You know, and let me give the caveat that every AI-related prediction I've made has proven to be incorrect.

All right. Well, then we don't want your answer. I'll move on to the next question. I'm just kidding.

No, but what seems to be happening is it's not eliminating Rodman. It's, it's actually probably making them more valuable, oddly enough, because they're kind of almost the interface between the technology and humanity. And that's a critical role, right? I mean, 5, 10 years down the road, ask somebody a little bit more digitally savvy than me, but domains are getting a little bit more narrow. General knowledge is really being commoditized.

Applied expert.

And specialized expertise, it's priceless. So, you know, they, uh, they seem like they're in a good position. And what's interesting is, you know, Gen Z entering the workforce, and I don't want to paint the brush too broadly, but they love specialization. There's— it's almost like a generation with a lot of Rodmans. They just want to do meaningful work that they think is exciting, that they're learning, they're intellectually curious, and they're not into corporate careers in the way baby boomers might have been, you know, climbing the ladder, Right now that's not appealing to them. You know, I mean, 10 years from now, you know, before becoming a parent, I had, I was a little bit different in my career objectives as well. So, but right now they, they're a little bit more purist. They just really want interesting work and they don't want a lot of corporate BS.

Nothing changes you like marriage and a child.

No, absolutely not.

So, but all of a sudden you realize, oh, I really am responsible for everything.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, you hold that baby, it's like, oh my God, what's next?

So wait, someone trusted me to take care of this thing?

What were they thinking?

So I know everybody is like, when they ask questions, what is it? It's like, you just have to experience it. No matter what I tell you, you won't know till you go through it. And there's just some things like that in life.

Absolutely.

So, all right. So tell us when the book comes out, how people can get it. All those fun things.

Yeah. Uh, July 21st. And, uh, I don't wanna sound like a commercial, but available everywhere books are sold type of thing. Uh, but you know, certainly Amazon would be—

I'll do the commercial for you. Amazon, Barnes Noble, Target, Walmart, and every other major distributor of books. Did I cover it?

That covers it. You know what I'm kind of excited about, and I'm not gonna sell very many that way, but it'll be at like airport bookstores. So I think that's going to be really cool if I happen to walk by an airport bookstore and see my own book.

You know, I don't think I've ever bought a book from an airport bookstore because I look at the prices and I'm like, not going to do it. But if I saw yours, I just might, just to say I did it once. If I do, I'll snap a picture.

I think what happens is it makes people buy it later. Um, but yeah, people don't want to—

I would agree. I've definitely seen a book at an airport and thought I need to pick that up. Rarely do I think I want to pay this price.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Maybe if you're on a 9-hour flight and you know your laptop's on the fridge or something, but yeah.

And you forgot your book or your, yeah, exactly. Or you're just one of those people that doesn't care. There are those that, hey, it's whether it's $20 or $25, I don't care and I'm just going to buy it. And good for them.

Yeah.

That's generally not finance people.

No, probably not. Yes. Even the rich finance people are a little, little more discerning than that with their money.

So we're tight. Let's just call it like it is. Oh wait, did I say that out loud?

I think you might have.

So, So I want to ask a couple questions, because obviously you have, uh, been a CFO more than a few times. You talk to CFO people all the time. Many of our listeners want to become CFOs. We have some people that are earlier in their careers, maybe starting their careers, that listen to the show. What advice would you give them?

Yeah, and you may know, you know, I predicted a few years ago that in a few years more CFOs are going to be coming from the FP&A track.

Yes, you did that on the show a few years ago. I remember that.

Oh wow, how about that? So, but you know, so I would, you know, I, I think if you're an FP&A and you like doing it, you're already pretty well positioned for that sort of thing. But, you know, take the opportunity, learn the business, accept every opportunity for growth that's before you, you know, take on stretch or challenging assignments given the opportunity, learn from them, develop communication skills. As I said earlier, don't present numbers, present the story behind the numbers and why these numbers matter. I always encourage people, find a mentor, somebody that you can learn from who has a genuine interest in your career. And then the last one is, and you know the story 'cause I've shared this with you once, but always be nice. And I don't know if I believe in karma. I probably do not believe in karma, but just always be nice. It sort of has a way of building It's part of your brand and it's just going to open up opportunities for you.

People notice.

Yeah.

It may not be karma, but when you treat people right, people are more likely to treat you right, to want to work with you. There's just something to be said to being nice, being authentic, being true. And does that always mean you're going to be rewarded? Absolutely not. There are some horrible people, at least from world standard, that are rich and appear to be rewarded. Doesn't necessarily mean they're happy. That's a deeper question. But from a worldly standard, you can be doing all the wrong things and be what's considered highly successful.

Yeah. And, and by the way, being nice for its own sake's not a bad thing either.

So, no, I, I think it's a good way to live, right? The studies are there. You mentioned Greenleaf is the one who, uh, the publisher of your book, and you know, they talk about servant leadership, which, you know, servant leadership is a good form of leadership. In general, but there's also an internal reward of knowing that you've been nice, you've been a good person. That in and of itself is a reward, even rewards that can come beyond that because it's a good way to lead.

Yeah, absolutely. So, and you know, it just, it's a more pleasant way to go through life to be nice to people. And by the way, I don't know if I, if I shared this with you, but a restaurant in my hometown just opened named Kama. Oh, fun.

Is it good?

Well, you know, they don't have a menu. Everybody gets what they deserve.

Well played. Well played.

Thank you. Thank you. I'll be here all week.

As soon as you said they didn't have a menu, I'm like, I set that one up perfectly for you.

Yeah, it's an old joke. And no, we did not rehearse that.

I've heard it before, but it's been years, so I totally forgot it. Well played. All right. One more question here, and then we're going to move into a couple just general sections we have. So we talked about early in their career. Would that advice change at all, or what advice would you give someone a little later in their career? Maybe they're, you know, 10, 15 years in, manager, director, level, so they've, you know, they've moved up a little bit. Any different advice you'd give them if they want to be a CFO?

Yeah. You know, hopefully you, you built on that sort of thing, but at the risk of being the, you know, start to think like a CFO and even start to think like a CEO, be a business partner to people. Try to understand the business holistically, not just the financial piece of it. And I do tell people whether they're controllers or an FP&A and other things, there's a lot of people out there who are smart enough and have the skillset to be a successful CFO, but the ones who are gonna get the opportunity and the ones who are gonna flourish once they're in the opportunity are the ones with the people skills, you know, the leadership, the communication, the empathetic people, the collaborative workers. When I was young, those things were, you know, referred to as soft skills. And, you know, I'm CPA, MBA, those are, Those are hard skills, right? I mean, the quantitative stuff is, I don't wanna say it's easy for me, but it's intuitive for me at least. But you know, being empathetic, you know, working collaboratively, those are things that it took me a while to get there.

See, there's a reason I'm doing podcasting instead of finance leadership.

Yeah, we did actually make some similar career choices along the way.

So we did. You went a lot farther on the leadership track before the podcasting, But we both went into the business side for sure. So, all right, we're going to ask a couple, um, first FP&A questions. And so I'm going to change this question up for you a little bit because I've asked before. What are the top 2 or 3 skills an FP&A professional should develop if they want to be a CFO?

You mean beyond— I guess that the 3 C's are more personality traits, right?

I think there's a little personality. So what were the, you know, the would you say are the soft skills? I think communication could also be a soft skill. So obviously you could say that one. Courage, I think, is a little more of a personality trait than necessarily a skill you develop. Yeah.

And curiosity, I don't know that you're, you're born curious, but you know, at a relatively young age you're gonna be curious.

Yeah.

So let's say outside of those, you know, we obviously, you gotta be able to communicate. You should be curious. You should be courageous. Let's take those ones off the table. And what would you say?

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I, at the risk of The one that, you know, probably all your guests are going to say is AI fluency. Make sure that you're up to date on the current AI trends and more how they impact business, not the technical, you know, behind the scenes type of stuff, but how you can use this as a business productivity tool. But the main thing with tools is they're always going to change. You know, I'm old enough that my first job, I was in college, not post-college, there was actually a debate whether or not spreadsheets were the way to go versus keeping those old green ledgers. I'm pretty old if that's the debate, but oh, we can do the same thing on our routing machines. We don't need spreadsheets. You know, crazy to think back about it now. Right.

But yeah, now nobody would ever hire somebody that I'm going to do all the work on the green ledger paper.

Yeah. But yeah, I'm untraceable. But yeah, the tools change, but thinking does not. So, you know, in terms of skills, you, you know, try to develop that strategic thinking. And, you know, again, if you're in FP&A, you don't need to know accounting as well as a controller needs to know accounting, but the best CFOs know just enough accounting that they, you know, that they don't get into trouble during it because, you know, GAAP still is, you know, the language of business and it's a rules-based system. I wouldn't say take the CPA exam and become a master, but know just enough to know what's going on.

So, all right. We're going to go to the get to know you section. I have a couple of fun questions for you. I know you enjoy music. Now you're a music guy. So if your life had a theme song, what song is it going to be?

Yeah, that's interesting. And yeah, I'm a headbanger. I take the stage to Metallica's Enter Sandman. And, but that's not the song though. It is a Metallica song. Do you know the song The Unforgiven?

I'm sure I've heard it, but it, I, once I heard, once I heard it, I'm not one to remember names well. Since I've heard it, I'm sure I know what it is. Yeah.

It's not a hit. You know, most Metallica songs, they, they weren't exactly a, you know, top 40 type of band, but The Unforgiven, it's a song about just a person who's really struggling, doing the best that he or she can. I mean, it's a he, a guy wrote the song and, you know, I sort of feel like that as a special needs parent. One of the things we have in common. And we, um, you know, I'm a, I'm a father of two autistic children. You know, I just, I sometimes wonder if, you know, if I'm the right person to be the father of two special needs kids or if it was a mistake. And, and I, I struggle with mastering that role. So I think when I, when I heard the lyrics to The Unforgiven, I just very much related to it because it's, it's just a person doing the best that they can do. It's not always great. And, you know, can they forgive themselves or can they not forgive themselves? So I'd probably go with that.

So I like that kind of that idea of, can, can you give yourself mercy and grace?

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. And I almost said Goody Two Shoes by Adam Ant, but, uh, and I just pulled up Unforgiven.

I almost put it on the screen. I'm like, should I play it for a couple seconds?

But there you go. But, uh, yeah, Goody Two Shoes is a little more bit of an upbeat song.

So, but, uh, All right, so there you go. Everybody go out and go to YouTube and listen to Unforgiven and give us your thoughts. I'd love to hear from you. All right, next one. I know you've done several podcasts. I know you're kind of phasing out the one you have, but you've done a lot of podcasting. If you could interview any one person in the world, you got that shot, anybody, any topic, any subject, anywhere you wanted, who you gonna interview?

A person alive today or—

Yeah, we'll go with the live.

Yeah. If it's historical, it's Jesus or Muhammad. But living person today, I would like an hour to, assuming he would be candid and he's not the most popular fellow with everyone, but I think picking Elon Musk's brain for an hour would be an absolutely fascinating exercise.

I agree. I mean, yes, he's controversial, no question. There are people that hate him. There are people that love him. There are some that try to ignore him, but just about everybody has an opinion on him. And he's a brilliant man. You can't argue that he's been successful at many things. You can not like his tactics, you can disagree with whatever, but he's fascinating. I agree.

Yeah. For an hour, no matter how, I just think I would learn so much from there and just be fascinating. You know, I'd, I'd come with 5 questions and just let him talk. Right.

Yeah, I agree. I think someone who would be fascinating. If they would be completely candid as almost any US president.

You're not going to believe this. I actually wrote that down in the prep notes. I said, if I could know that they would tell the truth, it would be a US president. But, and this isn't a referendum on the current president or anyone else. No. I just don't know that a president could or even should be honest with the questions I want.

I would agree. Some questions they shouldn't be.

Yeah.

There are some secrets, but yeah, if you could get the unfiltered truth, that would be a fascinating conversation and pick any of them. I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. It would be fascinating.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And it would just be, you know, they've, what they went through and their vision for the world. What an exercise that would be. So, but yeah, you, yeah, unfortunately you might not believe a thing they say.

So, yeah, that, that's why I say you gotta give 'em a truth serum beforehand. Right. All right. So what's a belief of finance or business, maybe a professional belief you hold that most of your peers would push back on or question?

It works out well because it is sort of the central premise of the book, of the Rodman Paradox, that there are specialists who have a very limited skillset who don't supervise people or processes, and yet they're so good at their job that they may be more valuable than any member of the C-suite. And, you know, most of the people I work with, as you know, you know, I, a lot of CFOs and other members of the C-suite, you know, they don't necessarily want to hear it, but you know, they're also open-minded and persuadable. But I just think there's people with these unique skill sets that they're irreplaceable. And there's also a body of research that we do tend to overvalue stars in business.

Did your first book say like half of the C-suite are psychopaths? I'm just kidding.

Not quite half, but yeah, it was—

No, I put that number out there on purpose.

Have a little fun. Well, there is a statistic I like that amongst American CEOs, the psychopathy rate is 19%, and amongst American prisoners, the psychopathy rate is about 19%. So it's almost, you know, I joked if, if you worked in a prison all day and then went to a banquet for CEOs after work, you'd be surrounded by about the same number of psychopaths at each event.

So I guess since I haven't got myself sent to prison or become a CEO, it's a sign I'm not a psychopath. Is that what I take from this?

That's exactly the lesson I'm making. So yes.

All right. So if you, any of you listening, if you haven't gone to prison or become a CEO, there's a good chance you're not a psychopath. Yeah.

I mean, people who go into finance and accounting, psychopaths wouldn't find it a very fulfilling career path.

They might like the money, but other than that, maybe investment banking where they can, yeah, take a lot more risk.

But yeah, I mean, you know, like Michael Douglas played Gordon Gekko as a psychopath and you know, there are a lot of psychopaths on Wall Street. In fact, one of his great frustrations is a lot of times young investment bankers said they went into banking because of him. And, you know, he's like, I played a psychopath. He's like, dear God, what have I done? You know, but his performance was so charismatic and compelling. You know, you look at it as a teenager, you're not gonna figure out that he's a psychopath. I, I didn't until I saw it 20 years later.

Yeah, I know.

Love it.

That great example. Well, I think this is kind of a good spot to wrap up. I appreciate you joining again, Jack. It's always a pleasure. Congratulations on the book. I know people can find you on LinkedIn. CFO Leadership Council is out there as well. You got a lot of great events. I know you travel from time to time, so, you know, audience, feel free to reach out to Jack if you need to, but pick up his book or pick up one of his first books that he has. He has several out there, but congrats on the new book. Even if I don't like the title, I'll give you a congratulations. No, I'm just kidding.

Always great to see you, Paul. Thanks for the time.

Hey, thank you so much, Jack. That's it for today's episode of FP&A Unlocked. If you enjoy FP&A Unlocked, please take a moment to leave a 5-star rating and review. It's the best way to support the FP&A Guy and help more FP&A professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app, and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education education credits for the FPAC certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A Guy, and I'll see you next time.