Diary of a CFO | Financial Strategies for Smart Business Growth

Most finance teams start closing the month before the month has even finished.

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Turn audit and finance expertise into paid advisory work — Ethos (paid link): https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw

AI labs pay highly-skilled experts — Mercor (paid link): https://t.mercor.com/neABb

Build the design partner deck in minutes — Gamma (paid link): https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h

Esther Adeogun spent over a decade in audit and assurance across KPMG Nigeria, WYZE, Sapro, PKF Littlejohn and RSM UK, working between Lagos and London. She audited multinationals with US, Canadian and Australian parent structures. She then left professional services to found Valdore Systems and Intelligence Limited (VSIL), a pre-product platform building what she calls an intelligent operating layer: financial intelligence, controls and real-time visibility embedded directly into business workflows rather than applied after the fact.

The pattern that convinced her was not jurisdictional. Across Lagos, London and multinational engagements she kept meeting the same problem. Organisations had invested heavily in software, yet finance teams still ran on spreadsheets, manual reconciliations and judgement applied outside the system. Some of her design partners begin their July month-end work in the second or third week of July in order to report to management by 4 August. That is time taken away from professional judgement and scepticism, and Esther argues the gap between activity and visibility is the thing worth closing, not the accounting concepts underneath it.

In this episode:

The one sentence she would give a Fortune 500 CEO: an intelligent operating layer embedding financial intelligence, controls and real-time visibility into business workflows
The exact shift from auditor to founder, moving from "what went wrong" to "why did the system allow this to happen in the first place"
Why real-time reporting does not overturn the historical cost concept, and what she actually means by real-time
What SAP, Oracle and Microsoft would say in response, and where the design philosophies genuinely diverge
Where AI earns its place, and the deterministic, rules-based work that should stay conventional software
"Consulting is largely constrained by people and time" and why that pushed her to SaaS instead of another consulting firm
The four eras of accounting: paper, spreadsheets, ERP, and AI-assisted decision-making
Whether the Big Four look the same in 2035, and why she thinks firms evolve rather than disappear
Nigeria rewards technical skill, the UK rewards relationships, and what that cost her to learn
Why she no longer believes progress is linear, and what experimentation replaced it with
Rapid fire: the biggest misconception about AI, the biggest misconception about accounting, and the technology she is watching
Her legacy test: not to be remembered for building software but for helping build better businesses

More from Esther:
LinkedIn (personal): linkedin.com/in/esther-adeogun-0b9118125

LinkedIn (company): linkedin.com/company/valdore-systems-intelligence-ltd

Hosted by Ademola Odewade — chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich), and Founder of K-Dems Consulting.

The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.

Diary of a CFO. Finance leadership, unfiltered. Ranked in the global top 2.5% of podcasts.

This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

#AIinAccounting #ContinuousAssurance #DiaryOfACFO #KingDemsPodcast

Most transformation programmes fail because the organisation is quietly protecting the very thing you are trying to change.
Cop a copy of my new book NOW: ⁠⁠https://ademolaodewade.com⁠⁠
Turn transformation experience into paid advisory work — Ethos (paid link): ⁠⁠https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw⁠⁠
AI labs pay highly-skilled experts — Mercor (paid link): ⁠⁠https://t.mercor.com/neABb⁠⁠
Build the culture diagnostic deck in minutes — Gamma (paid link): ⁠⁠https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h⁠⁠

Zhanna Zhuravleva grew up in Georgia and lived through war as a child, then built her career across Russia, Israel and the UK. She completed two master's degrees — finance and human resources — followed by postgraduate study, and taught finance, management and philosophy at a university in St. Petersburg.
She started in industry as a Kaizen team leader and went on to lead HR and cultural transformation across organisations of more than 1,000 people in 40 countries. She is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, has run over 3,000 sessions with leaders, and founded Awake Conscious Play, a school of conscious leadership and leadership transformation.
Early in her career she ran a textbook transformation — designed framework, defined KPIs, strong governance. Six months later almost nothing had changed. The organisation was not governed by its processes; it was governed by informal power. Everything since has been built on that finding.
The 30% improvement in employee satisfaction and 10% reduction in turnover she reports came from no single initiative — a culture hub that put interns and juniors into the improvement process, people partners trained in coaching, and one-to-ones where the feedback actually changed the next decision.

In this episode:
Change fluency — why transformation is not a project with a start date and an end dateThe "inner game": why a fintech's people-first programme stalls because the tension is giving leaders their identity
Three signals that tell you inside a week whether a culture is healthy — quality of disagreement, speed of bad news, and the gap between the official story and the underground story
Diagnosis before prescription: the first 30 days run across Ken Wilber's four quadrants, not a rush to launch programmes
Three types of values — declarative, conscious, unconscious — and which layer actually decides
Why Meta making AI token consumption a performance metric produced engineers burning tokens instead of better decisions
WEF Future of Jobs: 170 million roles created against 92 million displaced — recalibration, not replacement"AI is electricity with intelligence" — why this is an electricity moment rather than an internet one
The 4D Compass for building trust: self, soul, soft, spiritWhy engagement surveys measure compliance — a purple, tribal culture scores high on engagement and low on trust
What she protects if the HR budget is halved: leader development, and a culture diagnosis every year
The mistake founders make at 100 employees — still leading as though there are 20Zhanna's recommendation for every CEO is Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan.

Her conscious leadership programmes — including Lila, the transformational game she has adapted for leaders and runs offline and online — are at: ⁠⁠https://awake-play.co.uk/⁠⁠
Upcoming cohorts: ⁠⁠https://awake-play.co.uk/upcoming⁠⁠
Connect with Zhanna on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhanna-zhuravleva-chartered-fcipd-03a0a622a/⁠⁠

Hosted by Ademola Odewade — chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich), and Founder of K-Dems Consulting.

The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.

Diary of a CFO. Finance leadership, unfiltered. Ranked in the global top 2.5% of podcasts.

This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Why Transformation Programmes Fail | Zhanna Zhuravleva | Diary of a CFO
Most transformation programmes fail because the organisation is quietly protecting the very thing you are trying to change.
Cop a copy of my new book NOW: ⁠https://ademolaodewade.com⁠
Turn transformation experience into paid advisory work — Ethos (paid link): ⁠https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw⁠
AI labs pay highly-skilled experts — Mercor (paid link): ⁠https://t.mercor.com/neABb⁠
Build the culture diagnostic deck in minutes — Gamma (paid link): ⁠https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h⁠
Zhanna Zhuravleva grew up in Georgia and lived through war as a child, then built her career across Russia, Israel and the UK. She completed two master's degrees — finance and human resources — followed by postgraduate study, and taught finance, management and philosophy at a university in St. Petersburg.
She started in industry as a Kaizen team leader and went on to lead HR and cultural transformation across organisations of more than 1,000 people in 40 countries. She is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, has run over 3,000 sessions with leaders, and founded Awake Conscious Play, a school of conscious leadership and leadership transformation.
Early in her career she ran a textbook transformation — designed framework, defined KPIs, strong governance. Six months later almost nothing had changed. The organisation was not governed by its processes; it was governed by informal power. Everything since has been built on that finding.
The 30% improvement in employee satisfaction and 10% reduction in turnover she reports came from no single initiative — a culture hub that put interns and juniors into the improvement process, people partners trained in coaching, and one-to-ones where the feedback actually changed the next decision.
In this episode:
Change fluency — why transformation is not a project with a start date and an end dateThe "inner game": why a fintech's people-first programme stalls because the tension is giving leaders their identity
Three signals that tell you inside a week whether a culture is healthy — quality of disagreement, speed of bad news, and the gap between the official story and the underground story
Diagnosis before prescription: the first 30 days run across Ken Wilber's four quadrants, not a rush to launch programmes
Three types of values — declarative, conscious, unconscious — and which layer actually decides
Why Meta making AI token consumption a performance metric produced engineers burning tokens instead of better decisions
WEF Future of Jobs: 170 million roles created against 92 million displaced — recalibration, not replacement"AI is electricity with intelligence" — why this is an electricity moment rather than an internet one
The 4D Compass for building trust: self, soul, soft, spiritWhy engagement surveys measure compliance — a purple, tribal culture scores high on engagement and low on trust
What she protects if the HR budget is halved: leader development, and a culture diagnosis every year
The mistake founders make at 100 employees — still leading as though there are 20Zhanna's recommendation for every CEO is Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan.
Her conscious leadership programmes — including Lila, the transformational game she has adapted for leaders and runs offline and online — are at: ⁠https://awake-play.co.uk/⁠
Upcoming cohorts: ⁠https://awake-play.co.uk/upcoming⁠
Connect with Zhanna on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhanna-zhuravleva-chartered-fcipd-03a0a622a/⁠
Hosted by Ademola Odewade — chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich), and Founder of K-Dems Consulting.
The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.
Diary of a CFO. Finance leadership, unfiltered. Ranked in the global top 2.5% of podcasts.
This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Business valuation isn't a multiple of EBITDA. Cop a copy of my new book NOW: ⁠https://ademolaodewade.com⁠
Turn expertise into paid advisory work — Ethos (paid link): ⁠https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw⁠
AI labs pay highly-skilled experts — Mercor (paid link): ⁠https://t.mercor.com/neABb⁠
Build the buyer deck in minutes — Gamma (paid link): ⁠https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h⁠
Mark Mills OBE started Cardpoint plc from scratch in 2000. Two years later it floated on AIM at a £7 million valuation. By 2006 it was turning over £100 million a year on £19.8 million of EBITDA, and he exited in 2007 at £175 million.
He now sells other people's businesses. One owner was told his company was worth £3 million. Mark sold it for just over £10 million. Nothing changed in the accounts — what changed was who the business was presented to, and why they needed it.
In this episode:
- Why bids from strategic buyers don't resemble a multiple of EBITDA
- The £3m-to-£10m sale, and the buyer maths that produced it
- Rule one of any business model: recurring income — learned from a payphone business that died in the 1991 recession
- How Mark and his CFO reverse-engineered £100m of revenue onto a sheet of paper, then landed within 2%
- Why "in three years" is a useless target and "by 31 August 2029" is not
- Solving a working capital problem by finding a bank with too much physical cash
- The one metric he never ignores when assessing a company for sale
- FARM — why people work for Fun, Achievement, Recognition, then Money, in that order
- Selling to strangers, and why referrals cannot scale a business
- What AI actually changes about client acquisition and KPI monitoring
- Realistic exit timelines: 12 to 30 months, not six
Mark's book is Making Your Mark: How I Built a Fortune From £1.50 — and You Can Too.
He offered listeners a free signed copy — email him at ⁠mark@mark.co.uk⁠ with your address and he'll send one out.
More from Mark: www.mark.co.uk · ⁠linkedin.com/in/markrichardmills⁠
Hosted by Ademola Odewade — chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich), and Founder of K-Dems Consulting.
The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.
Diary of a CFO. Finance leadership, unfiltered. Ranked in the global top 2.5% of podcasts.This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
#BusinessValuation #ExitStrategy #DiaryOfACFO #KingDemsPodcast

What happens to financial judgement when AI, cognitive bias, uncertainty and executive pressure collide in the boardroom?
In this episode of Diary of a CFO, Ademola Odewade sits down with Dr. David Rock, Co-Founder and CEO of the NeuroLeadership Institute and originator of the field of neuroleadership, for a powerful exploration of the neuroscience behind executive decision-making.
This conversation goes beyond accounting and financial strategy.
It examines the brain behind the numbers.
Dr. Rock explains why even highly intelligent executives can make poor decisions under pressure, why recognising your own cognitive biases is harder than most leaders realise and how AI can either strengthen human judgement or encourage cognitive surrender.
One principle captures the conversation perfectly:
“Human in the lead, not human in the loop.”

In this episode, you will learn:
Why leadership creates three major cognitive challenges: capacity, self-regulation and social cognition
How pressure and uncertainty can affect executive decision-making
Why technical competence does not eliminate cognitive bias
How CFOs and finance leaders can use AI without outsourcing critical judgement
Why accountants, lawyers, marketers and other executives can interpret the same business information through completely different mental models
How the SEEDS framework helps teams identify patterns of bias
How the SCARF Model explains Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness
Why stronger decision processes can matter more than relying on individual objectivity alone
Why one of the most important jobs of a modern leader is simply to create clarity

About Dr David Rock
Dr. David Rock is Co-Founder and CEO of the NeuroLeadership Institute and the originator of the term neuroleadership. His work applies cognitive science to leadership, organisational behaviour and human performance. He is the author of Your Brain at Work and the forthcoming Good with Humans, which explores the neuroscience behind human motivation and the SCARF model.

Connect with Dr David Rock
NeuroLeadership Institute:
https://www.neuroleadership.com/
NILES AI:
https://www.askniles.ai/
Book: Good with Humans:

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