The CFO Strategy Brief - CSOsandbox
Welcome to the CSOsandbox Podcast Channel
Your gateway to cutting‑edge insights at the intersection of finance, strategy, and operations. Designed for CFOs, senior corporate leaders, and strategy professionals, this podcast delivers fresh, thought‑provoking perspectives that help you navigate complexity and drive organisational success.
Every episode explores how CFOs can become strategic catalysts, aligning financial leadership with corporate vision and operational execution to unlock sustainable growth.
But the podcast is just the beginning. It’s part of a comprehensive strategy ecosystem that empowers leaders to move from insight to impact:
- Strategic research and intelligence for informed decision‑making
- Power BI‑enabled strategy monitoring and reporting via our stratāgaia Strategy Navigator app
- Executive education and facilitation to build strategic capability
- Consulting and knowledge dissemination for practical implementation
Tune in, transform your thinking, and lead with confidence.
Our strategic insights are brought to life by the stratāgaia Power BI App. Our knowledge base is hosted on the Strategic Management Institute (SMI) website: https://www.smiknowledge.com. Core concepts are drawn from the acclaimed books Corporate Strategy (Remastered) I & II (Routledge, 2020), Corporation of the Future (Routledge, 2022).
The consulting, PowerBI (stratāgaia) access and online learning program ecosystem published by PH Strategy and Leadership is accessible at https://www.phsandl.com.
Explore the podcast at https://csosandbox.buzzsprout.com, and dive deeper into our strategic tools and resources at https://www.csosandbox.com.
The CFO Strategy Brief - CSOsandbox
CFO Strategy Brief 6: Reinvention Champions or One‑Hit Wonders?
CFOs are being asked to do more with less, certify numbers faster, and form a view on AI while defending margins that no longer look defensible. Yet the real opportunity is not another efficiency program; it is to use the finance vantage point to change what the organisation is capable of seeing and doing.
This episode explores why some corproate “reinvention champions” become genuinely regenerating corporations while others remain "one‑hit wonders". Drawing on the SMI Cycle of organisational transformation and renewal — Reframe, Restructure, Revitalise and Regenerate — it shows how CFOs can distinguish
- a gale of value destruction (cost‑driven restructures that hollow out capabilities), from
- a gale of creative disruption (tough moves anchored in a clearly designed future business).
Using examples like RELX, Nokia, Alphabet, Ford and Tesla, the conversation reframes the CFO’s role from guardian of cost to necessary friction in the system: the leader who insists on clarity about what the company is becoming, challenges capital patterns, and champions a portfolio of Green Shoots so that renewal becomes a repeatable system rather than a one‑off transformation.
This series is designed for Chief Financial Officers and senior leaders who want to master the art of managing a strategy system—not just a plan. We explore the principles of Third Wave Strategy (www.csosandbox.com), a forward-thinking approach that transforms strategy into a continuous, enterprise-wide capability. The content is equally valuable for corporate executives, consultants, and advisors.
Why Listen?
- Learn how to build a living strategy system that adapts and regenerates.
- Discover practical tools and frameworks for managing complexity and uncertainty.
- Gain insights from research and real-world applications through our Strategic Management Institute and CSOsandbox platform.
Supporting this journey is stratāgaia (www.phsandl.com/strategicintelligence), our Power BI-based strategy app . It’s not just a dashboard—it’s a dynamic, enterprise-wide BI platform that brings strategy to life, enabling leaders to visualise, monitor, and steer strategic performance in real time.
Additional Resources
- Video Bites: Watch short, actionable insights on our https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwW1QK_4P31MtXyYGmJOyUg.
