Cfo Thought Leader

It’s a story that Verizon CFO Matt Ellis seems to enjoy telling and one that he has undoubtedly related more than once before.  One evening while in high school, Ellis was working at the fish counter of a local supermarket when he received some feedback from the store manager. Earlier in the day, the man had asked Ellis to clean a number of shelves beside the counter, but Ellis had soon become busy with fish patrons and hadn’t able to complete the task. More than 30 years later, Ellis easily retrieves the store manager’s words: “I’m not disappointed that you didn’t get it done—I know that you were busy with your normal stuff. What disappoints me is that if you had only told me, I could have arranged to have someone else to do it.” This is a classic management lesson that many business leaders have communicated before, but when Ellis presents it, the message is endowed with renewed relevance for finance. It is easy for us to imagine Ellis retrieving the store manager’s lesson to enlighten a young finance analy