Why Does a CFO Have a Podcast about Epic Journeys?

I am a chartered accountant and a chartered professional accountant. However, I'm not an accountant's accountant. I hate tax. I still get a knot in my stomach when I think about auditing.

I can do the detail, but I tend to be more interested in the big picture. Getting back into my consulting business after seven years in public service, at the time of the initial Covid-19 lockdown, offered me time and space for deep introspection. I focused on the questions, "How do I solve problems?" and "How do I think about organizations?" This effort brought me to some recurring themes and principles that have shaped my work for years, starting in my youth, and as a young volunteer missionary, then as a business student, a junior auditor and as a consultant at an international professional services firm. I took all this into my time as a CFO, fractional CFO, COO and CEO, and into service on boards and commissions.

I had relied on an approach that developed over time, but that I couldn't completely explain or document. The early months of the pandemic were a great opportunity for me to set out how I think. What I found surprised me - that the principles of how I solve business problems were equally relevant to both personal and family situations and to broader societal issues.

Once I realized that I was onto something that could be explained in five minutes but that could be applied in many creative ways in many situations, it didn't take long to come up with a plan to share it in a podcast, so the Essential Dynamics Podcast was born.

You can check it out at https://feeds.transistor.fm/essential-dynamics-with-derek-hudson

Essential Dynamics is completely relevant to the work of CFOs. How could it not be? - being a CFO has been a major part of my life.

One of the things I've learned is that for any situation, there's the story, and there's the numbers. Ideally the story and the numbers match. Essential Dynamics provides a way for CFOs to think about the numbers and the story in a more integrated way.

Essential Dynamics sets out our meaningful pursuits in the concept of a quest, with three essential elements: people, path and purpose. These are each subject to dynamic forces: those opposing but complementary forces that make life both challenging and meaningful.

The "path" in Essential Dynamic refers to the processes and systems we create so that people can work together to accomplish meaningful purposes. Applying dynamic forces to the path leads us to look at the drivers - those forces that move the organization toward its purpose - and the constraints - those forces which hold the organization back from achieving its purpose.

Thanks for reading,

Derek