Archive for February, 2019

Using words like “power” or “success” to describe a company can sometimes make it easy to imagine a cutthroat environment. However, a competitive workplace shouldn’t run on employees’ fear or feel like a real-life Hunger Games. A powerful and successful company operates best and with the most longevity when employees work with a team mentality, each filling a needed role and fulfilling long-term goals. Here’s what you can do to make sure your team is as strong as it can possibly be for your company. 1. Focus on roles. A thorough selection process for picking your team members has greater long-term benefits, even if this means you spend more time recruiting than you’d like to. Hiring someone just to have bodies in the room can harm your team. Companies that do this wind up becoming a revolving door, whether it’s because prospective employees see the role as a temporary landing pad and are less interested in learning, or because you decide later on that they aren’t the right fit. This winds up costing you more money in the long run. Investing your time and money in people who truly specialize in the role your company needs will have immense payoffs later….

If you run a startup or a small- to mid-size company, you probably can’t justify hiring a full-time chief financial officer.  But, you do need some level of financial help from an expert, someone who can cast a trained eye on your cash flow, margins, key performance indicators, and overall profit picture while you concentrate on your team and your strategies for growth. If you run a midsize business, you probably have a CFO. But what happens when you have to navigate a period of financial disruption and that CFO isn’t the right person to see you through it? Or your CFO leaves abruptly in the middle of a critical time? In both cases, you need a CFO, just not a full-time one, so the question is, when should you hire an interim (temporary) CFO, or a fractional (part-time) one? First, let’s be clear on the difference. Interim CFO vs. Part-time CFO: What’s the difference? Interim CFOs are finance experts who come in, usually on a full-time basis, typically for one to three months, to help steer a company through a financial crisis, an operations change, preparation for a sale, or the gap between one CFO’s departure and the hiring…