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This site is teeming with book recommendations. Here is the all-time top of the Business category: https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/category/7/all-t...
Disclaimer that this site hasn't been updated since Sept 2021. So the book list is not the latest. I do want to give it a spin some time later using the latest language models and make auto updates.
Also, understanding where money comes from, where it goes to, and how budgets were allocated allows you to learn A LOT about how different industries work.
Also, which country?
Others have said CFA. CFA is the obvious paved path to what you are looking for. A few grand to add some letters to your name, and it will forever alter the way you think about business. But probably just ask someone who you think knows a lot to teach you.
Financials are important, but not as important as having a bias for customers and revenue.
I think getting basics of accounts/finance will go a long way. Being able to read a balance sheet/profit & loss statement/cashflow statements will help you understand the health of business. Next I would say, reading up on basic marketing/consumer psychology will help develop/acquire product and sell it. Since you mentioned being CTO, I am assume you have development/programming background. This series [1] is good re…
The world of business is large. I'd probably read up on the particular domain your focusing on (real estate? sales? telephony? etc). Find subject matter experts at your company and take them to coffee and ask what they read or recommend.
Happy to chat offline.
Things I wish I knew:
The first law of learning business is tech folks can learn business far easier than business folks can learn tech. You have this.
Second law is no one should represent your voice. They should help present it.
The leadership team should be facilitating introductions to learn more about the business how they see fit. If it’s not proactively happening.. keep reading.
Learning business is as much about understanding what the business needs and how it can get there as accounting and finance.
Understand the type of cto you are there to be, there are many kind. I have a book somewhere that broke it down well but effectively it can vary.
Read into CIO roles and responsibilities as well as traditionally they made the decisions about tech
If your position is net new you are extra capacity. Be mindful of absorbing work from other areas that upholds the past vs change for the future.
Find a framework you like for your first 30-60-90 days.
First, tech should never ever roll into Finance, only CEO. You are now the leader of possibility and capability in the organization. It may ruffle feathers. Find all the reports from McKinsey, etc making this clear why. This will mean you’ll need to be a better communicator and self manager out of the gate.
Get an executive coach or mentor immediately. Once a week at minimum if not twice a week for the first few weeks. You will know when to ease off.
Setup your own way to communicate regularly with the entire company. Find all the meeting you May want a slot on.
Learn the phrase innovation accounting- how to measure what can’t be counted by dollars and cents. Your world can be undermined by folks who want to measure what suits them.
Digital transformation - take a few classes or certain immediately. Quicker than books. Be clear in whether the business is building the future, or catching up to the present.
Change management - take a cert immediately for it, it’s fine to read but only a 2-3 day thing. It will keep mbas with no track record at bay.
Togaf/Cobit - having something like this doesn’t hurt. At least read about it.
Agile/scrum - make sure you can talk the talk and walk the walk. Those words belong to you now. I’d probably lean towards agile.
Six sigma - this overlaps with others a over however a bit better known in the business world. Consider it.
If you want to become a better speaker look into a course like Roger Love’s speaking courses, you will discover how simply your voice is just an instrument like keyword and you can use it as well as the best.
Learn how to read and summarize simply when needed. It helps tremendously to present complex ideas simply to folks who just need to know to put the car in drive.
Others have said CFA. CFA is the obvious paved path to what you are looking for. A few grand to add some letters to your name, and it will forever alter the way you think about business. But probably just ask someone who you think knows a lot to teach you.
Hi! Could you give an example or be a bit more specific? What kind of things are you struggling with? Is it certain topics or business lingo?
Thanks for your time! Basically, business in General, understading whether or not The company numbers are doing ok or not, how much to invest in the tech team, cut costs and so on.
Unfortunately I don't have a specific resource to recommend.
But I can share from my experience.
I have advised some tech people on this specifically and it usually boils down to: explain everything you want to do in $ figures. $s is the language the CFO and the CEO speak. So you need to translate anything into their realm.
Most tech folks talk team, tech, servers. CFOs/CEOs don't bother and don't understand. So try to calculate some basic business cases for most of your requests and for their questions to you. Nothing basic, but have some rudimentary logic ready.
The Personal MBA: master the art of business, by Josh Kaufman (and personalmba.com has more info, maybe). Seems to want to be the practical guide.
MBA in a Nutshell, by Milo Sobel. Seems slightly more academic than the one just above.
Start Your Own Business: the only startup book you'll ever need, from Entrepreneur
At least the first two come with lists of recommended further reading, by topic, including on finance, marketing, etc etc.
Paul Graham has some great essays on business / startups: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html