284. Finding your Rodman: The quiet specialists holding your company together with Jack McCullough

0:00Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance. The CFO role is changing rapidly, moving from cost controller to strategic visionary, and with every change comes opportunity. We are here to help you take advantage of this transition, to win at work, drive your career forwards, and lead with confidence. Join Hannah Munro, Managing Director of ITAS, a financial transformation consultancy, as she interviews key experts to give you real-world advice and guidance on how to transform your processes, people and data. Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance.

0:48Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of CFO 4.0. Now, you may recognize this voice because we have a repeat offender on the podcast. So Jack has been on a number of hours. But for those of you that don't know him, he is the founder and president of the CFO Leadership Council. And he's actually recently written a book on the Rodman paradox. And he's going to explain that to us UK folks because he's obviously based in the US. So welcome, Jack. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. No, it's my pleasure, Andrew. It's been too long. I've missed our conversation. So really excited to be back.

1:27No, it has been a while. And so, you know, tell, let's talk to the audience and talk about your new book. So what inspired it? Yeah, it was, well, the inspiration, it was named for an athlete named Dennis Rodman. He didn't really inspire it, but he was the perfect metaphor for it. Um, he's, I've, he's, he's not like a Michael Jordan level of, of athlete, although he and Michael were teammates and famously were part of one of the best teams in history, but he, um, he was only good at two different things in basketball defense and rebound. And he defied every conventional metric of winning. And yet there was an argument that he's the greatest winner in the history of the NBA.

2:12He won five championships and he has a higher winning percentage than any player in the history of the game. And yet people didn't really appreciate his contribution to all this winning during the course of his career. And so the book, the idea is that companies have these specialists who aren't natural leaders and don't sit high on the org chart, but if you lost them, they may actually be the most valuable person in your company because their skill set is so irreplaceable. And one thing, like with Dennis Rodman, people don't know him for his basketball exploits. They know him because he dated Madonna.

2:51He was married to Carmen Electra for a whopping nine days. And oddly enough, he's friends with Kim Jong-un. It's bizarre. He's certainly the most interesting man in American sports. So that's an interesting context. How would you define a Rodman equivalent in today's workplace? A lot of them do work in creative types of jobs, engineering, science, the arts. But let's talk, like say at a biotech company, a Rodman might be the person who really understands the product code or the science behind it. and isn't a particularly, you know, but they have no managerial aptitude or really any interest in pursuing that line of work.

3:40They tend to be individual contributors. They can only do one or two things well. So a scientist, you know, again, I don't know a lot about the science and biotechnology, but sort of a lab rat, the person in the white coat, keeps to themselves. But if you were to lose them, the company would lose its most valuable resource because nobody has, what they do. Maybe a little bit closer to your audience might be, say, like a cybersecurity attack. A lot of people will recognize, say your company gets hacked, right? You bring in a consultant to fight the hack and you're only down for 12 hours, minimal damage, no reputational loss.

4:23Everybody applauds the consultant. But where a Rodman would have fit in is a Rodman is the type person who might have prevented the attack from happening in the first place. They work quietly in the background. They build the internal controls and the infrastructure to make sure that there is no hack to begin with. It's the type of thing people don't notice it though, right? How do you reward somebody for attack that never happened? And that's where Rodman's fit in. It's just very challenging for managers to recognize their contribution when a lot of it is actually focused on prevention. And what was it that actually inspired you to write an entire book about this category of individual?

5:01Was there a particular event that triggered that or was it a piece of research or where did it come from? Yeah, it actually came from a conversation I had with a friend of mine and he's a CFO and unfortunately his company was struggling a little bit so they had to do some layoffs and we were talking about that and the toughest one that he had to let go as a controller. And he described her as the best controller he'd ever worked with. She was fantastic. She's a great leader. She was fantastic in the role of the controller. She was well respected throughout the company. And yet he had to let her go.

5:37But he kept a person who only had about one year of professional experience, like 18 months. But she had one skill that he'd really come to rely on. She was really good at taking financial data and using Gen AI to help the executive team make better, faster business decisions. Now, this was two years ago when this happened, maybe a year and a half. But his thinking was, if I lose her, I can't replace her. There's nobody, certainly there's nobody in the company with the skill set. Maybe we could hire somebody, but it might take a year and a half, two years. So even though she contributed nothing to the monthly close and didn't really have a solid foundation and didn't supervise anyone.

6:20He deemed her to be the more valuable member of his team than this controller who we thought had CFO potential. And it just got my brain going. And you know me a little bit, Hannah. I'm like a dog with a bone, as they say, once an idea is in my head. I just started wondering, is this sort of thing common where we pick a specialist over a versatile leader? And it turns out, yes, it absolutely is. and what so tell us a little bit about i guess the material that you use to put this together you know what what did the research look like for this book you know a lot of it of course was anecdotal just you know being the president of a 3 000 member organization i i just have easy access to a lot of senior decision makers without going too hard but a lot of it i sort of got into okay how important is the c-suite really are they are they as valuable as we think they are And the answer is, and I'm not suggesting CEOs and CFOs and folks like that aren't valuable.

7:18What I think is that they're probably a little bit overrated in terms of the impact and more about their irreplaceability. And, you know, they were, again, sorry, folks, I've got an American-centric approach to a lot of these conversations. But just for example, when Microsoft lost Bill Gates, people thought that the company was going to be screwed because it lost its leader and its visionary. But in point of fact, Steve Ballmer came in and arguably did a better job than Bill Gates as the CEO of the company. And there's a lot of examples like that. But then there's companies like Versace. When they lost its artistic engine, the company kind of crumbled.

8:03He was the CEO technically. He was replaced by his brother and whatnot. And his brother was actually arguably a better executive and business person. But they lost the creative engine, sort of the visionary behind the scenes. In that role, he wasn't running the company, but he was irreplaceable. That part of him was irreplaceable, and the company just never recovered. So I've learned even the best of executives can be replaced. But sometimes that person working behind the scenes that maybe you can't even identify, they're the ones who are truly irreplaceable because either they do something that no one can do or no one is willing or wants to do.

8:45And so when you're looking at your team, because obviously there's a lot of challenges in the world right now, a really challenging labor market, certainly here in the UK. Okay. So when you're trying to think about, I guess, the makeup of your team, how do you identify those Rodman individuals? Yeah, sometimes they emerge, right? It'd be difficult to say, geez, I want to go and hire a Rodman. But a lot of times they just reveal themselves. You know, for example, in the book, I made mention of somebody. They had a pretty limited skill set. This guy's actually, he's a friend of mine. And he's got a speech impediment.

9:25So he's a very smart guy and a good guy, but he wasn't going to be on a management or leadership type of track. But what he was is a phenomenal forensic accountant. And he was, in many ways, a classic Rodman. He could do forensic accounting and detect fraud and, more importantly, prevent fraud better than anyone you can think of. And yet, if you tried to promote an individual like that, you'd fail on every level. First of all, they're not likely to be a good manager. The other is, you know, they wouldn't necessarily even want to be a good manager. And then the third part is, you've suddenly lost your best forensic accountant by promoting them into the path.

10:06So sometimes they just kind of reveal themselves, you know, and in particular during a time of crisis. but it's difficult to say, geez, I just want to go and find myself an elite specialist and hire them. Most people I spoke to hired them by, not so much by accident, but they were looking for expertise. And then they, they didn't quite fully appreciate what they had until circumstances revealed it. And, and so, you know, we talked about, it's hard to find a Rodman or to even to, to look for a Rodman. How do you know that, how do you actually spot which of your teams are the Because like you say, sometimes what they're doing is hidden in the background.

10:45So is there any tips or tricks you can do to identify who those individuals are? There's a question that you can ask of your employees. And you know how it is. Sometimes the B players know what's going on in a company more than the A players do. That's just kind of a reality sometimes. But you ask them, who is it that you would, that if we lost, would be in a lot of trouble with? and if a lot of people are saying the same person over and over again and that person doesn't necessarily even work in their department and you don't know the person they're like who is that uh you may have just discovered your rodman there is actually a formal tool called the operational organizational network analysis which um i had never heard of and during this journey i've never meant anybody who's heard of it.

11:35But it's a little bit different than your traditional organizational chart. Because what it does is it measures influence within the company, but it doesn't measure hierarchy. Like, you know, those odd charts, they kind of look like a pyramid with the president on top. Well, those were actually invented by a railroad in the 1820s. And the guy who invented it, it's because he was having trouble remembering who is who. So he set up as a pyramid. And here it is almost 200 years later. We're still using that tool as the primary way to represent companies. It's actually a pretty good tool. But, you know, it shows hierarchy and power.

12:15But the organizational network analysis tool shows influence. And it shows who people turn to during a crisis. And there's ways to do it. It might be your company's Slack board. It might just be who gets invited to all sorts of meetings. who has the most cross-functional impact or that question again, who is it that if we lost this person would be in a lot of trouble? Because again, you know, the B players have a better answer to that than the A players a lot of times. So I guess from a sort of perspective, what did this process that you've gone on this journey, what did it make you think about, you know, as a leader yourself or, you know, what advice would you give to other CFOs?

13:00What was the key findings as you went through this process? Yeah, the key finding is, I just kept coming back to the irreplaceability element. And, you know, sometimes the irreplaceability is because no one is willing or able to do the job, you know, sort of the, you know, the dirty work that's critical to make an organization run. Sometimes it's not the skill level as much as the willingness to step in and do certain things. A lot of times it is the skill level. And again, a lot of times it's just hard to know. I mentioned sort of the cyber thing, but I actually grew up, a childhood friend of mine became the fire chief in my hometown.

13:46And, you know, a genuine hero and acknowledged as so. He's probably the most respected person in our town. He's retired now. But, you know, he's literally, you know, putting his life on the line to save people. But, you know, he told me years ago that about one of his co-workers, he argued is actually more important. And he said, but this guy, his job is dreadful. He goes into buildings, you know, with his flashlight, he's inspecting for faulty wiring. He's making sure that the batteries and flashlights work. He tests the smoke detectors. He makes sure that the fire hydrants, you know, up to co, that sort of thing.

14:20He said, it's the most thankless job in the world. And no one even knows he's doing it. But when a fire happens, you really want to know that somebody like him is on your team. So I kept coming back into thanklessness and invisibility, and that's their nature. And also their personalities too. You need to come up with a different reward system for them than other people because they don't want to be, and they view promotions as punitive. And is that purely because of the additional levels of responsibility, because they enjoy what they do or where does that yeah that punitive nature come from yeah a little bit of it i in the book i use the phrase they don't like to climb they like to dig like if they're they're usually not well suited to like for project management or leading a department but what they do you're you're looking to find a solution to a problem you know let them go find that solution.

15:21Let them dig, let them do the research that only they can do to solve the problem. And, you know, the other thing is they don't have a lot of patience for things like bureaucracy, meetings, documenting procedures and stuff like that. They're just the types, they come to work and they just want to do stuff. They want to do stuff that's challenging and valuable and that they find rewarding. And it's not like they're, they're not belligerent about it or anything like that, but they just don't make good natural managers. It's not their strength. They're individual problem solvers. They make outstanding mentors, but they don't actually like to lead people and they don't want to do annual reviews or quarterly reviews or anything like that.

16:07They view it as something that's getting in the way for them of doing their real work. You mentioned recognition. How does recognition for a Rodman differ from from others? What sort of things can you put in place to recognize them in a way that they'd appreciate? Yeah, they don't want to be recognized through a promotion, right? As I mentioned, they couldn't be bothered. They don't want that. But, you know, the type of thing, sometimes it's just an attaboy, as we say, just letting them know that they're doing a good job, you know, letting them know how critical they are, consulting with them on major decisions.

16:47Like, while they may not be the VP of engineering, you know, you'd be silly not to include her in conversations about product direction. If you're with a design company, for example, and you're starting a PR campaign for your client, you know, maybe your most valuable contributor sits at the bottom of the org chart. But get her insights into the decisions. Have her sit in on client meetings. Encourage them to share what they lead. Title doesn't matter. It's the expertise and what they can bring to the table is what matters. And mostly, a lot of it is simply protecting them. They aren't the type that wants to go to a bunch of staff meetings.

17:31Don't make them go. Protect them a little bit. And then, I guess what I'd add to that Hannah, there's something that I believe IBM invented. They didn't invent it. They brought it to the mainstream. It's called dual career paths. And what that is, IBM realized that they were losing some of their best engineering talent and it was well-intended, but they were trying to force them into a leadership track that they didn't want and weren't well-suited for. So, okay, you did a great job of coming up with that new product. We want to put you in charge of a team of 10. And it doesn't work out that they're not good at it, they're not happy, and they eventually leave for a company that will actually respect what they were doing.

18:16So what they did is they created a dual career path for people that wanted to flourish, who are really valuable contributors, but weren't, you know, didn't aspire to be a VP or something like that. So you take the case, say an engineer, one's on a traditional path, one's on the technical path, you know, So on the traditional path, they might be promoted to supervisor, manager, maybe ending up at the VP someday. The technical path, they would start off as the same level, entry level, but then they would be like principal scientist or something like that. The highest level they might achieve is distinguished scientist.

18:53But to them, that's more prestigious than VP of engineering, pays the same and is a better fit for them because they're not doing a lot of stuff that they don't think it's pointless. They just don't want to do it themselves. Yeah. So like you say, finding a way to recognize and reward performance without giving them managerial responsibilities. Yeah, that's the best way. And again, you know, they like to mentor and apparently the word apprentice is very effective. You know, we want to assign you an apprentice. That seems to work because the other is too, you know, in the military, there's an expression, single points of failure, where, you know, if one thing goes wrong, it's catastrophic.

19:37You know, you need redundancies. And, you know, geniuses don't write policy handbooks, nor do you really want them to. You know, it doesn't occur to them. So assign them a mentee or protege or an apprentice, whatever the term is, just to document stuff, right? It's like, okay, if this person leaves, what is it that they're actually doing that we can be prepared to survive if we lose them? You lose a CEO or a CFO, I'm not suggesting that's easy, but you pretty much know what your CFO is doing or what your CEO is doing. You lose a brilliant scientist that never documented the thing. It's like, geez, where do we even start, right?

20:21And that's the trouble that companies get into sometimes. In your book and when you were researching this, did you find lots of instances where this had happened? Were there any interesting stories around this that you could share with us? Yeah, a lot of them. There was one, and I had to fictionalize it a little bit, but it was, um, it was a bank audit. It was, um, it was, um, I don't know if it was Denmark. Um, but the, um, the, the CFO was American. It was his division in Denmark, but, um, they did a bank audit. Uh, the regulatory bodies came in and they failed miserably. Um, and there was one person that who the hell is that?

21:06But she like knew everything about fraud inspection and criminal trolls and everything. And, you know, the way it's described to me, the leadership team was kind of in a panic because they were facing, you know, a possible shutdown, loss of reputation, losing customers because of all of these, you know, perceived, you know, internal control weaknesses and whatnot. And she just got to work. She's like, okay, I've got this. She just quietly started sort of doing her job, documenting things that weren't documented, coming up with a remediation plan. And, you know, she was middle management at the highest if you go by title.

21:44But for a couple of months, she was the most critical person in that company. And, you know, I don't want to over-dramatize it, but, you know, maybe save the company in a way that the CEO and the rest of the C-suite just weren't capable of doing. And, you know, again, you know, the reward there is not to promote her. It's a good instinct to promote her, but to empower her in the role she's in. You know, give her some resources, digital or otherwise. You know, do have her teach what she does to the rest of the people. Let her do the things that she does really well, which is to inspect the plumbing and make sure that a failure like that doesn't come up again.

22:20And so there's almost in some ways a Rodman for each season, potentially, depending on where the business is at as well, because that, you know, that that knowledge at that time was critical. but if you know you may if you depending on the I guess the process that the organization's going with you know the Rodman may change over time. Yeah absolutely and you know as the company evolves or a crisis happens or whatever you know especially in the age of AI with companies changing so quickly like Rodman's the ultimate specialist but a lot of the work you know specialist work can now be done through artificial intelligence.

23:00So the very nature of Rodman's, what they do, and their role in the company is changing along with that. But yeah, it's a company in an early stage company versus a multinational public company. Their Rodman's are very, very different. And also, the company can evolve and kind of outgrow a Rodman. If an engineering firm goes from pre-revenue to a billion in revenue over a few years, the person who was the Rodman at the beginning who made these breakthrough discoveries, maybe they're not needed anymore for that multi-billion dollar company. Maybe there's a different role for them. Maybe there isn't, right?

23:44And then they need to find a different role for them. But absolutely, as a company evolves, where they really shine, I think, is crisis, where that's kind of like, okay, we couldn't live without this person. We just didn't know it until the crisis happened. You know, once we start to get this context, I can think of some individuals, like both within other organizations I've worked with and also our own. Once you've identified them, you know, now we know this, what should we be doing differently as leaders as we go forwards? Yeah, the key question, so you have identified your Rodman and she or he is on your team.

24:24So, you know, the key questions are, you know, get them involved in a way that's meaningful for them. You know, don't have them do the project schedule or that sort of things. You know, are you familiar with a movie called Office Space? No. Oh, it's Jennifer Aniston was in it before she was famous. But it was a spoof on working in an office. Anyway, there was this thing, it became a cult movie in the United States. It actually didn't do well, but like everyone my age knows it. there is these things tps reports i forget what it stood for but the main character had like 12 bosses and any any time he did anything he had to had to submit 12 different tps reports and it just drove him crazy rodmans do not submit tps types of reports they do stuff uh but but you you've identified one don't have them submit tps reports uh you know have them keep doing it but that doesn't mean they're not accountable.

25:24You know, you can give them deadlines. Okay, you're going to work on this. Tell me why you want to work on this, how the company benefits, what the outcome is, and give me a deadline for getting this done. And then the other question is, you know, sometimes it's hard to understand exactly what they're doing. I don't know, if you've ever been in a situation, but it's not even that the person who works for you is smarter. they just have an expertise that you don't have and yet you're responsible for them right it's like how do i know what they're doing is valuable right so i i felt that a few times in my career it seems like it's valuable but you know maybe it is maybe it isn't type of stuff but you know try to understand what it's valuable and then you know one of the key questions you can ask is i'm your supervisor and i want you to flourish what am i doing that gets in your way of being successful and you know you ask that question it really breaks down a bunch of barriers because then they say okay this isn't the standard corporate speak question this person's actually committed to my success they recognize what i do and the value i bring they want to help me bring that value and it really does break down some barriers in communications because again it's not like they're cynical but they don't necessarily value the infrastructure and the leadership the way other employees do.

26:47And it's like, does leadership even understand what it is that I, you know, bring to the table here? You ask a question like that, it kind of melts some of those barriers down. I really like that question. That's, yeah, I might borrow that one, Jack. I'm going to take that one away and try that one. Well, you know, I stole something from you from our first conversation. The question sandwich, I think you referred to it as. Yeah, the compliment sandwich. I use that once a week now. I always think of you when I'm in a position to use it. Yes, it's done me well over the years. And I think what's really interesting about this is that the dynamic is different, isn't it, with these individuals?

27:35Your typical way of approaching it and how you might think will be different to how these individuals think. So trying to maybe not take those assumptions into these conversations about what you would want in their position is really important. Yeah, you have to, you know, absolutely recognize their differences and what they can bring. And, you know, one of the stories in the book, there was a woman, she was very smart, but the world didn't figure that out until she was like 26, 27 years old. and um so she um college dropout not because she wasn't smart she found it boring uh but you know technically a genius just kind of couldn't find her way a little bit just where'd she fit she ended up of all places working for a public relations firm and the pr firm didn't have any you know they just could not break in to the digital space you know they did not have any technology clients, which, you know, it's one of the biggest sectors in the world, certainly in the United States.

28:40And they just couldn't penetrate it, even though it was a great firm with a good reputation. And she just kind of inserted herself into some conversation. It's like, you know, that isn't going to work. You know, that, you know, she's like, it sounds like corporate speak. That's not how engineers think. That's not how they're going to value these products. So she got involved with a couple of tech proposals. All of a sudden, they were unbeatable. any project that she worked on they were winning because she had this unique ability to understand the audience but then they moved her like into a different role it's like okay let's move her to consumer goods crash and burn she she had no interest in that market you know she didn't know you know much more about it than you or me probably uh but it's like okay this person is very limited but boy what a limitation she can we're now a player in like the third biggest industry in the country.

29:33That's a really interesting point as well. Like a Rodman is, it may be a Rodman in one area, but you move them and they lose their specialist knowledge that makes them so special. Yeah, that's exactly right. And going to the basketball metaphor and, you know, recognizing he's not famous outside the US, but like he did two things extraordinarily really well. It was rebound and defense. Don't try to make him a leader because it's not his personality. Don't ask him to score a lot. Don't ask him to handle the ball. Just let him do those two things, which he actually did. It wasn't appreciated in his career, but because of modern statistical analysis, we now recognize he was the best rebounder in the history of the sport.

30:21Everyone knew he was a good rebounder. People didn't quite realize how good, but you're going to make him a scorer or a team leader or you know handle the ball no he's he's not going to be very good at it he he likes rebounding and defending just just let him do that uh and you know again it maybe it's easier to do when michael jordan's on the team but he was successful everywhere he went so so if you had to give sort of your top tips for how to leverage this this concept of the Rodman paradox or the Rodman employee, what would be your advice for the CFOs listening out there? I would say, you know, first of all, you know, do that operational network analysis.

31:03Find out, you know, who has influence within the company. It might surprise you. You might find out, you know, during a crisis or a problem, people aren't going to come to the C-suite. They're going to come to this person whom you've never previously heard of. So, you know, I would say do that. Advocate for them, you know, recognize that, okay, they're a little different and they're not likely to advocate for themselves. They don't like politics. They don't like promotion. They just want to do really good work. Well, you need to be the advocate for them. And Hannah, that can be really challenging because like imagine, let's say you're a public company and, you know, you're sort of they're reviewing the compensation for everybody, you know, and, you know, the comp committee says, okay, I see you're paying your VP of marketing$350 ,000 a year.

31:59That seems right. You've got a person here who, you know, they're making the same salary. They don't supervise anyone. They have no managerial responsibilities. How can you justify that to me? And I'm going back to the individual at the PR firm. And the reason is because they're more valuable than the VP of marketing. They're helping you with these big wins. So, you know, be prepared to fight a battle on their behalf because they're critical and they're not going to fight it for themselves. They do have opportunities. It is the strange thing that a lot of companies, they don't know what they have, but sometimes the competition does.

32:43There was one company that I spoke to. It was a design firm. They recognized that they were losing to one particular person every time when they put their proposal up against this other proposal. They didn't know how or why, but they just knew that they lost every single time. So they just threw a bag of money at the person. I forget, it's a man or a woman in this case, but I think it was a woman. They just threw a bag of money at her and said, why don't you come work for us? The company didn't recognize it. It's like, yeah, we're not going to match that. all of a sudden their winning streak's over and it took them like a year before they realized why they were so successful in client pitches and it was because of this person that just connected with them so that that's some amazing advice so thank you so much jack for coming on um coming back i should say because it's uh it has been a while but so great so for those of you know our listeners that are interested perhaps in exploring more about the robman paradox where can they find the book?

33:40When is it available? And yeah, where is the best place to find you as well? Yeah, it's available July 21st. And I hate to sound like a commercial, but everywhere books are sold. But you know, Amazon and Barnes and Noble and anywhere else like that. I also have a website called rodmanparadox.com. And if anyone just ever wants to reach me directly, I'm pretty easy to reach. You can just text me at 617-678-0957. I respond really quickly to texts. If you want a more thorough, just email me at jack at cfolc.com. Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Jack, again, for coming back onto the show. Hopefully, we won't leave it as long next time.

34:30And yeah, wishing you all the success for your new book launch. Excellent. Thank you. That was wonderful. Hey, Google, what's the best accounting software for my business? Give it a couple of years and I'll bet you she'll be able to answer you pretty accurately. But for now, it's still one of the few questions Google can't give you an answer for. But we can. Take our free quiz and find out which Sage products is the right fit for your business. Just head to itassolutions.co.uk.