From the course: Leadership Stories: 5-Minute Lessons in Leading People

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Modeling behaviors

Modeling behaviors

From the course: Leadership Stories: 5-Minute Lessons in Leading People

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Modeling behaviors

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- Sara Mathew joined Dun & Bradstreet as Chief Financial Officer in August 2001. Less than a year later, there was a problem. The company sales projections were down a bit, but nothing had really changed since she arrived, so why the drop in the forecast? And the answer turned to have something to do with this arcane accounting rule. Now apparently, there's several different ways accountants measure revenue, and it's important to pick the right one for your business. And when Sara arrived, and put in a new team, they realized D&B hadn't been using the right method. So they changed it. And the new method happened to recognize revenue slower than the other methods. And that's why the sales forecast was coming down. So that made Sara curious. How far back had they been using the wrong method? Well, she had her team check and it turns out it was for almost a decade. Not exactly what a new CFO wants to find out in her first year. Well, Sarah knew the company would have to restate its…

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