A CEO will often hear something like this from a board member: “I don’t think your CFO is as good as the CFOs of other companies whose boards I’m on.” This is an extremely tricky statement to deal with. The CEO doesn’t know those other CFOs, and she can’t interview them and compare. How does she respond? The CEO’s common—and wrong—move is to go tell her CFO to be better in front of the board. She is trying to be what the board member wants, but failing, because she has refused to have a point of view. Her CFO will be confused, because he has no idea what he’s done wrong. He will try to
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