The best CFOs are prioritizing customer feedback, not just financial statements, to drive tangible business value.
The Intake
Operator intelligence for your mid-week. The playbooks and practices you need to run your business better, distilled for the arena.
This week's scan:
• Intelligence from:11 leadership conversations across 9 top podcasts
• Total runtime analyzed:412 minutes of operator experience
• Featuring voices from:26 executives and builders including Alex Louisy and Charly Kevers
The Playbook
The CFO's Guide to Driving Value Beyond the Balance Sheet
For too long, the CFO role has been stereotyped as the bean counter, focused purely on retrospective reporting and cost-cutting. But for modern operators, particularly those scaling from Series B to G or navigating complex markets, that vision is outdated. Today's high-impact CFO is a strategic partner, deeply embedded in operations and customer outcomes, leveraging finance to build, not just optimize.
The old approach treats finance as a back-office function, separate from the customer and product. This leads to finance teams becoming roadblocks rather than enablers, failing to connect numbers to operational reality. The result? Missed growth opportunities and a reactive, rather than proactive, strategic posture.
The Operator's Playbook for the Modern CFO:
- Customer Obsession (NPS First): Shift your primary metric from traditional finance KPIs to customer satisfaction. Understand that positive customer signals are the ultimate leading indicator of business health and future revenue.
- Embed Finance Cross-Functionally: Break down silos. Integrate finance professionals with engineering, sales, and product teams. Encourage your finance team to understand the levers of the business beyond their spreadsheets. At Carta, the finance team even includes engineers to better understand technical operations.
- Drive Creativity with Constraints: Embrace financial constraints as catalysts for innovation, not limitations. This forces teams to find more efficient ways to deliver value, becoming capital efficient instead of purely reliant on external funding.
- Leverage AI for Operational Efficiency: Automate mundane financial tasks (like month-end close and reconciliation) using AI. This frees up your finance team to focus on strategic analysis and partnership, rather than historical reporting. It also provides real-time insights for daily forecasting.
- Build Long-Term Investor Trust: Focus on consistent execution and proactive communication with investors. Trust and conviction, built over sustained periods, are more critical for long-term investment than short-term gains.
"The best CFOs, you would forget that they're a CFO when you're talking to them. They'd be talking like someone from product or from sales or operations. They understood the different levers of the business and they also understood the incrementality once those levers were flexed."
— Alex Melamud, CFO of Engine
This playbook transforms the CFO from a scorekeeper to a growth engine, aligning financial strategy directly with customer value and operational excellence.
The Rundown
① AI Adoption Is Failing to Deliver Measurable Value. Despite 88% of companies using AI, less than 6% are realizing tangible business value. Many CIOs lack a deep understanding of their own business, leading to technology-first approaches that miss strategic objectives. This insight comes from a conversation on CXOTalk).
- The Operator's Take: Don't just implement AI because everyone else is. Your CIO needs to move beyond a "layperson's understanding" of your business and focus on specific, measurable outcomes. Demand a clear value proposition, not just "efficiency."
② Your First 10 Seconds Determine Your Authority. Non-verbal cues, especially body language, are far more potent than words in forming initial impressions and establishing credibility. A simple hand gesture can drastically change the perception of even a financial statement, making verifiable numbers seem exaggerated. This insight comes from a conversation on SPEAK LIKE A CEO).
- The Operator's Take: Invest in understanding and practicing your non-verbal communication. In high-stakes meetings or presentations, your confidence and trustworthiness are judged before you even open your mouth. Avoid folded arms or hands in pockets. Consider the power of an open palm at navel height for conveying trust.
③ Talent Density is Paramount for Scale. For venture-backed growth businesses, the focus for finance leaders shifts from mere optimization to actively building the team and company. The biggest lesson from accelerated growth scenarios is that "talent matters quite a bit" and every hire should be someone you believe can achieve at least one promotion. This insight comes from a conversation on GrowCFO Show).
- The Operator's Take: In a growth environment, hire for trajectory, not just current role. Assess potential for promotion within your organization as a key hiring metric. This ensures you're building a team that can evolve with the company's scaling needs.
④ Profitability Doesn't Equal Survival. A surprising 70% of companies that go bankrupt are actually profitable when they close their doors, simply because they run out of cash. This highlights a critical, often overlooked, distinction between profit and free cash flow. This insight comes from a conversation on Strategy Meets Finance).
- The Operator's Take: Don't get lulled into a false sense of security by your profit and loss statement. Implement a rigorous focus on the eight cash flow levers (pricing, cost of goods sold, payment terms, etc.) to ensure your business has the liquidity to sustain growth, even if it's profitable.
"70% of companies that go bankrupt, they're actually profitable when they close their doors because they run out of cash."
— Steve Coughran, Host at Coltivar Group, LLC
The Bench
What your peers are putting in the game. A real-time look at the operator's toolkit.
🟢 WORKING — Proven Practices
• CFOs as Strategic Business Partners: Essential for organizations scaling through hypergrowth, driving both aggressive growth and clear paths to profitability. (Charly Kevers on The Growth-Minded CFO)
• Customer NPS as a CFO Metric: Prioritizing positive customer signals as a leading indicator of business health and future revenue. (Alex Melamud on CFO THOUGHT LEADER)
• Cross-functional Finance Teams: Integrating finance professionals with other departments like engineering, sales, and product to drive a deeper understanding of business levers. (Alex Louisy on The Growth-Minded CFO)
🟡 TESTING — Emerging Approaches
• AI Champions Program: Proactively managing company-wide AI adoption and employee sentiment towards new technology. (Sue Vestri on CFO THOUGHT LEADER)
• Product-Oriented IT: Shifting from project-based IT to a product mindset for continuous value delivery and real business transformation. (CXOTalk)
• Agentic AI: Balancing fully autonomous systems with human-in-the-loop approaches in AI implementation. (CXOTalk)
🔴 RETIRING — Outdated Moves
• "Traditional" CFO Role: The idea of a CFO solely focused on retrospective reporting and cost-cutting is giving way to a more strategic, growth-focused role. (Manu Diwakar on GrowCFO Show)
• Memorized Presentations: Adrenaline impairs short-term memory, making this an ineffective strategy for high-stakes communication. (Mark Bowden on SPEAK LIKE A CEO)
• "Straddling" Generic Strategies: Attempting to combine differentiation and cost leadership in broad markets leads to underperformance. (Strategy Meets Finance)
The Debate
Should CIOs Maintain a "Broad" Understanding or Deeply Embed in Business Operations?
✅ The "Deep Understanding" Case: The enterprise AI promise remains largely unfulfilled because most CIOs possess only a "layperson's understanding" of their own business. This limits their ability to connect technology to measurable value and prevents customer-centric AI implementation.
"I don't believe that most CIOs truly do understand their business at the level that they need to. I think that they think they do, but in many cases they have a layperson's understanding of how their business operates."
— Tim Crawford, CIO Advisor, Former CIO at AVOA
❌ The "Broad Oversight" Case: While not directly contrasting, other operator insights emphasize that a leader's role often involves managing inputs and empowering teams, rather than deep diving into every functional detail. A CFO, for example, gives functional leads "enough information so they can go make the best decisions." This implies a strategic oversight, not necessarily direct operational embedding, as the optimal path.
"My job now as CFO is to give them enough information so they can go make the best decisions to continue to support the business."
— Charly Kevers, CFO at Carta
The Operator's Read: For CIOs, a "layperson's understanding" is no longer sufficient to unlock the value of enterprise AI. The IT function *must* move beyond an inside-out, technology-first approach. This means the CIO needs to be as fluent in customer outcomes and business objectives as they are in tech stacks. While delegation is key, the CIO's personal understanding of the business needs to deepen significantly to drive strategic value, not just manage projects.
The Bottom Line
Your financials tell a story, but your customers and your cash flow write the ending.
Your Move
- Audit your leadership team's knowledge: Ask your CIO/CTO to articulate the top 3-5 specific business outcomes their tech strategy is driving, then cross-reference with your customer feedback data.
- Implement "Hands at Navel Height" in your next presentation: Consciously adjust your body language to project trustworthiness and authority for the first 10 seconds of any high-stakes conversation.
- Review your cash flow levers: Challenge your finance lead to identify the top three under-optimized cash flow levers in your business and propose concrete actions for each.
What We Listen To
The Growth-Minded CFO: "Revisiting: Charly Kevers (CFO @ Carta) On The Role Of The Finance Team In Scaling"
• Runtime: 45 min
• Guests: Alex Louisy (Co-host of The Growth Minded CFO; Fintech CEO and Y Combinator graduate, Upflow), Charly Kevers (CFO, Carta), Lauren Pearl (Host, The Growth-Minded CFO)
• For Operators: This episode is a masterclass in evolving the CFO role from a traditional back-office function to a strategic growth partner, particularly in hyper-growth environments. Listen for insights on embedding finance cross-functionally and leveraging constraints to drive creativity.
"The job of the CFO is much harder because you are expected to push growth aggressively while proving that you have a clear path to profitability at the same time and that both are non exclusive."
— Charly Kevers, CFO of Carta
CFO THOUGHT LEADER: "1163: The Discipline Behind Transformational AI | Sue Vestri, CFO, CRIO"
• Runtime: 40 min
• Guests: Sue Vestri (CFO, CRIO), Howard Wilson (CFO, PagerDuty), The Future of Finance is Listening (Host, CFO THOUGHT LEADER)
• For Operators: Get a direct blueprint for integrating AI strategically across your organization, moving beyond buzzwords to measurable impact. Sue Vestri details how to champion AI adoption and centralize data for efficiency, even in small teams.
"The CFO role used to be about reporting the past. Today it's about shaping the future, often in real time. And nowhere is that more evident than in industries where data is massive, complex and mission critical. Clinical trials are one of those arenas."
— The Future of Finance is Listening, Host of CFO THOUGHT LEADER
CXOTalk: "CIO Agenda 2026: The Enterprise AI Promise | CXOTalk #909"
• Runtime: 56 min
• Guests: Michael Krigsman (Host, CXOTalk), Tim Crawford (CIO Advisor, Former CIO, AVOA), Isaac Sacolick (CIO Advisor, Former CIO, StarCIO)
• For Operators: This is a must-listen if your AI initiatives are stuck in "pilot purgatory." It highlights the critical shift for CIOs from internal technology focus to external, outcome-driven business partnership, and why most enterprise AI isn't delivering.
"If you are thinking I should have a seat at the table, you have failed. You have failed. You should be asking yourself, how do I earn a seat at the table? And the title does not get you there."
— Tim Crawford, CIO Advisor, Former CIO at AVOA
CFO THOUGHT LEADER: "1164: From Boardroom Lens to Operator Reality | Alex Melamud, CFO, Engine"
• Runtime: 56 min
• Guests: Alex Melamud (CFO, Engine), The Future of Finance is Listening (Host, CFO THOUGHT LEADER)
• For Operators: Learn how a CFO prioritizes customer NPS first and leverages AI to drive both customer satisfaction and internal efficiency. This episode offers concrete examples of strategic cost management and investor relationship building.
"The first one that may surprise you as a CFO that I look at is actually NPS. At the end of the day, we focus on the customer and if the customer is giving us positive signal, we know that we're moving in the right direction."
— Alex Melamud, CFO of Engine
Technovation with Peter High (CIO, CTO, CDO, CXO Interviews): "No AI Without Clean Data: Inside Caterpillar’s Platform Transformation"
• Runtime: 30 min
• Guests: Ogi Redzic (Chief Digital Officer, Caterpillar), Peter High (Host, Metis Strategy), Augie Ghosh (VP of Digital, Analytics, and AI, Caterpillar)
• For Operators: This episode provides a blueprint for large-scale digital transformation and platform consolidation, crucial for any organization looking to leverage data and AI effectively. The insights on retiring legacy systems and building customer-centric digital culture are invaluable.
"When you embark on a journey [of retiring legacy platforms], and I want to share that with anybody that's going through that journey, just do it. It will be worth it. You got to do it. I mean, if you don't do it, you will feel the pain and it will not be easy to bring the apps that you really want to bring to market."
— Ogi Redzic, Chief Digital Officer of Caterpillar
SPEAK LIKE A CEO: "312: The Body Language Expert: You’re Losing Authority in the First 10 Seconds"
• Runtime: 48 min
• Guests: Oliver Aust (Host, founder, Speak Like a CEO Academy), Mark Bowden (World’s #1 Communication Keynote Speaker and Body Language Professional, Truthplane)
• For Operators: This is a powerful episode on the neuroscience of first impressions. Learn how to project confidence and trustworthiness non-verbally, especially in high-stakes presentations where your message needs to land with authority. Practical, immediately applicable advice.
"The more that they can see, the more they feel they can trust their prediction. And the more they feel they can trust their prediction, the more positive they'll make their prediction."
— Mark Bowden, World’s #1 Communication Keynote Speaker and Body Language Professional at Truthplane
GrowCFO Show: "#271 How to Scale Without Burning Cash with Manu Diwakar, Chief Financial Officer, Virta Health"
• Runtime: 34 min
• Guests: Kevin Appleby (Host, GrowCFO Show), Manu Diwakar (Chief Financial Officer, Virta Health)
• For Operators: Essential listening for CFOs and leaders in venture-backed companies. Manu Diwakar shares how to balance aggressive growth with capital efficiency, emphasizing talent management as a core driver and challenging the traditional "cost-cutter" CFO stereotype.
"When you come to be a CFO or a finance leader for very mature companies, the name of the game is often optimization and finding pennies in the couch and just thinking through kind of everything and making sure you can find 1% here or 2% there. When you're in these growth businesses that are venture backed, you have to actively think about how to build your team and help build a company at the same time."
— Manu Diwakar, Chief Financial Officer of Virta Health
Secrets of Rockstar CFOs: "Navigating The Ride-Sharing Industry With Erin Brewer"
• Runtime: 40 min
• Guests: Erin Brewer (CFO, Lyft), Jack McCullough (Host, Secrets of Rockstar CFOs)
• For Operators: Learn from a CFO who successfully navigated a company from financial struggles to GAAP profitability and positive free cash flow. Discussions cover strategic investments, AI integration for efficiency, and the vital CFO-CEO partnership.
"When I came in, the company was not generating a profit, was still sort of burning cash on a quarterly basis. It was a very difficult time in this company's history."
— Erin Brewer, CFO of Lyft
Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques: "265. Complexity to Connection: Humanizing High-Stakes Communication"
• Runtime: 24 min
• Guests: Matt Abrahams (Host, Think Fast Talk Smart), Jonathan Berek (Professor, former Chair of the Stanford Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Stanford School of Medicine), Phil Polakoff (Distinguished Health Transformation Advisor, Consulting professor at Stanford School of Medicine, CEO of A Healthier We, A Healthier We)
• For Operators: This episode offers powerful lessons on making complex information accessible and impactful, especially in high-stakes scenarios. It emphasizes storytelling, empathy, and conciseness to ensure your message connects with your audience.
"People feel the emotion when they see a story. In my case, I do a lot of medical related types of films and I use patient stories, which tears at the heartstrings often. And I think that gets the message across more than if I were to just say, well, I'm doing this little science project and there's this molecule and we're trying to do that and people, their eyes glaze over."
— Jonathan Berek, Professor, former Chair of the Stanford Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Stanford School of Medicine
Strategy Meets Finance: "The 8 Cash Flow Levers Every Business Owner Should Know | Ep 215"
• Runtime: 29 min
• Guests: Steve Coughran (Host, Coltivar Group, LLC), Steve (Host, Cultivar.com)
• For Operators: Crucial for any business leader, this episode breaks down the critical difference between profit and cash flow. It provides tangible levers you can pull to improve your company's financial health, ensuring you don't become another profitable but bankrupt statistic.
"70% of companies that go bankrupt, they're actually profitable when they close their doors because they run out of cash."
— Steve Coughran, Host at Coltivar Group, LLC
Strategy Meets Finance: "The 3 Generic Strategies and How to Tell If Yours Is Working | Ep 214"
• Runtime: 10 min
• Guests: Steve Coughran (Host, Coltivar Group, LLC)
• For Operators: A concise breakdown of Michael Porter's generic strategies (focus, differentiation, cost leadership) and, critically, how to measure their financial impact. This helps you identify if your perceived strategy is actually translating into the expected financial performance and avoid "straddling."
"If you're pursuing differentiation successfully, you'll know it because it will show up in one key metric, which is net operating profit after tax as a percentage of your revenue."
— Steve Coughran, Host at Coltivar Group, LLC