Gets him to look at what you've already built
You work for or with the owner of a construction company. You built the job cost structure and you send the monthly reports. He still manages the business off his gut half the time, because a report only works once somebody trusts it enough to act on it. CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System is written in the language he already uses on a job site. A spreadsheet can't do that.
It's rarely the report
You've built the cost codes and the reports. The numbers are right. The owner still makes the call from memory. Your report uses words that aren't his, and he never learned to trust it. This book was written by a master electrician who managed the jobs before he handled the numbers. It uses the words a crew already uses, and an owner follows a system written in his own words.
See the full system this book is built from at all 8 steps.
8 steps, six templates, a monthly cadence
What controllers and fractional CFOs ask
I already build the reports. Why would the owner need a book too?
A report changes nothing until he reads it, trusts it and acts on it. Sending it doesn't make any of that happen. This book uses the words he already uses on a job site. That's often what gets him to go through the numbers with you.
Is it condescending to give my own boss a book?
Framed right, no. It reads as "here's a faster way for the two of us to get on the same page," not as a lesson. The honest pitch is that you're already doing the work and would rather spend the meeting on decisions than on re-explaining what a report means.
Will this contradict what I've already built for the business?
It's very unlikely to. The system lines up with what most controllers and fractional CFOs already care about: job cost structure, overhead, and a monthly cadence. If anything it gives you and him the same words for what you're already doing. Usually the words are what's missing. You already have the report.
What if the owner already reads his numbers carefully?
Then he's already the exception, and the book still holds up as a second opinion he respects, from someone who managed jobs himself.
Is this a good gift for an owner I report to versus a client I advise?
Both. The only difference is who's on the org chart. In either case, you already know better than almost anyone where he's not engaging, which makes you well positioned to pick this for him.
$9.99 ebook, $24.99 paperback
Get the paperback if you want it on his desk. Six chapters include a QR code straight to a working template.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.