Future-Proof

Our guests this week have a challenge for all accounting and finance professionals: start thinking in terms of moonshots.   Now, you might be asking yourself, what in the world is a moonshot? It’s a huge, seemingly insurmountable quest that is ultimately inspirational and game-changing in nature. It’s something that , when achieved, changes the boundary between possible and impossible – just like...

Our guest this week is Brian Solis, who you’re probably already familiar with if you’re conference nerds like us. He describes himself as a digital analyst, an anthropologist, and a futurist; he has studied the effects of emerging technology on business, marketing, and culture; and he’s written best-selling books like Engage , The End of Business as Usual , and What’s the Future of Business?   His...

This week we’re talking about the role of the CFO – a role that is changing, and pretty radically. Thanks to advances in technology and other disruptions, organizations are expecting their CFOs to play an increasingly strategic role; to actually help drive strategy in the organization, rather than just leading their department and crunching numbers.   It’s a fairly recent phenomenon, but it’s happ...

Today’s topic is A.I. Artificial intelligence. You might have heard about it? It’s that thing everyone’s been talking about for the last five years or so. Yeah, the hype is out of this world.   But here’s the thing, and there’s really no getting around it: this isn’t something entirely new or groundbreaking. The technology itself is new, but we’ve been through this before. Excel was supposed to ki...

A lot of folks talk about this notion of becoming future-ready as if it’s some sort of magic trick. They paint a picture of a future where we need to learn all kinds of new stuff — new skills, new technologies, new strategies, and new business models — in order to out-maneuver the machines and remain relevant. And to some extent, that’s true. We’ve got some serious work to do from here on in.   Bu...

Over the past year, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about how the accounting and finance profession is changing – but we haven’t spent nearly as much time talking about how those who regulate our profession are changing.   So, on today’s episode, we sit down with Terri Polley, (outgoing) president and CEO of the Financial Accounting Foundation. The FAF is an independent, not-for-profit, private-...

We’re headed back to Annapolis for this week’s episode, where Maryland’s General Assembly recently put a bow on its 2019 legislative session. It was another busy one, including some CPA-related legislation that will impact accounting and finance professionals, not just here in Maryland but throughout the country.   Legislative advocacy, according to our members, is the most important thing that th...

Where are we going to find tomorrow’s leaders?   We’ve been doing these podcasts for almost a year now, and as much talking as we’ve done about the future, the missing ingredient in all of those conversations has been leadership. We just haven’t spent much time talking about future leadership, and with 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day, that’s a critical part of becoming future-ready.   So th...

If you ask most people — not all, but MOST people — outside of the profession what an accountant does, they’ll probably say “taxes,” or “auditing,” or some variation on the tasks of people who work in public accounting.   But they’re missing about half of the profession, of course. You’ve got educators, you’ve got accountants who work for nonprofits and governments, and you have those who work in...