“Some of the wisest auditors say that there are only three internal control objectives: to gain assurance for reliability of financial reporting, compliance with laws and regulations, and

hook for a huge number of projects. So, let’s look at what our capacity is.

When all you do is react, there’s not enough time to do the hard mental work of figuring out whether you can accept new work. So, more projects are crammed onto the plate, with fewer cycles available to each one, which means more bad multitasking, more escalations from poor code, which mean more shortcuts.

“So that’s what’s on the second slide, which shows what I believe are the more important company goals. I look at this slide every day.” Are we competitive? Understanding customer needs and wants: Do we know what to build? Product portfolio: Do we have the right products? R&D effectiveness: Can we build it effectively? Time to market: Can we sh

CFO GOALS Health of company Revenue Market share Average order size Profitability Return on assets Health of Finance Order to cash cycle Accounts receivable Accurate and timely financial reporting Borrowing costs

customers? Sales forecast accuracy: Can we factor this into

What we need to do isn’t merely to prioritize better.

“every work center is made up of four things: the machine, the man, the method, and the measures.

Two are relatively innocuous but the others are more serious: she has contracted