CFO Plus: Five Important Steps for Effective Growth

Step 3: Financial Literacy Training

This next step involves educating your team about the link between the financial realities of your business and their individual and team performance. Financial Literacy Training is an essential element in the development of an entrepreneurial mindset within your company culture.

Many companies who embrace this philosophy do so for the purpose of translating traditional financial measurements into meaningful management information for each and every player on the team.

This approach addresses the question on every team member's mind, "What's in it for me?" By making your team financially literate and translating financial measurements into Key Performance Indicators, you'll find your team will take "ownership" of their performance and contribute to your company as innovators and entrepreneurs as never before.

One of the leading authors on this subject, John Case, explains it this way:

Execution is where the rubber meets the road. Generals, football coaches, and the harried managers of Subway sandwich franchises know the truth: No matter how brilliant the plans, no matter how smart the strategy, nothing gets accomplished unless people execute.
In business, execution is what happens (or doesn't happen) everyday in offices and shops and warehouses and factories, in management meetings and on the sales calls and on the front lines. It's about what people do on the job everyday. It's what they think about and how they work together. . . get people working together productively creatively toward common purposes, without too much lost effort. All the big-picture stuff, the mission and the strategy and everything else, is critically dependent on getting individuals working together.

On to Step 4: Designing and Establishing a "Report and Reward" System

Back to Step 2: Key Performance Indicators