The Art of Finance: Joe Knight on Demystifying Numbers to Empower Businesses

FP&A Today

When any finance business partner–a CFO or an FP&A professional–wants their counterpart across the table in marketing, sales or HR, to understand the essentials of numbers, they hand them the business classic, Financial Intelligence, A Manager's Guide to Knowing what the Numbers Really Mean.

First published in 2006, the book has been named in the Top 100 Business Books of all time and remains a word of mouth sensation and continues to sell rapidly nearly two decades on. The classic was authored by former CFO, Joe Knight and Karen Berman. Until her untimely death 10 years ago, Karen, was also a force in engaging all employees in improving a company’s finances

Based on the principles of the book, Joe Knight, Partner and Senior Consultant with the Business Literacy Institute, trains execs at some of the biggest companies in the world including NBCUniversal, Electronic Arts, and McKesson on business partnering and the importance of getting a business to understand and embrace their numbers and works. He has also been a guest on Bob Brinker’s Money Talk show on KABC ratio and CNBC’s Morning Call program.

In addition his engaging keynote addresses, include "The Love affair with EBITDA" and "The Secrets of Finance Revealed". As CFO of Setpoint Companies, he spearheaded the financial education of engineers in this automation and roller coaster company and tells us some of his adventures from this journey and secrets to finance business partnering at the highest level.

In this episode

• The origins of the writing one of the most famous business books
• Why I hated my time in finance at Ford Motor Company and how it shaped my thinking and journey
• Busting the fallacy you shouldn’t share your numbers with your business
• Why actuals are not actual but just a guess (accountants close your ears).
• How business partnering has changed
• The metric of Financial literacy has stayed at 38% in companies for large companies nearly 20 years on
• Why it hurts operators if they don’t understand the numbers
• Focusing on three to five numbers
• My experience with GE and NBC
• The art of using limited data in finance
• Harry Potter roller coasters and what it taught me about the ridiculous focus on EBITDA
• Having seven Kids
• Not being a “numbers” person but a accretive person with numbers

Business Literacy institute: https://www.business-literacy.com/

Contact: [e-mail]