A distinguished finance leader answers our question: When you entered the CFO office for the first time, what’s the one piece of advice you wish someone had given you?

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Bender: “I think the one thing that I would like to have done that I didn’t in my career is, I wish I had taken the time at some point a little earlier in my career to get an MBA. I’d like to consider myself a recovering CPA, recovering accountant. The numbers are important, but use them, don’t let them use you. I think that over the years, something that has made me more successful is that I worked for a family that has allowed and encouraged me to be involved in my profession and my industry. I made this comment earlier. “Therefore, I have been around as a member and in some cases in leadership roles in both professional and industry organizations, and I have met incredibly gifted, talented, bright, just nice people who share. I know, as you know, that in writing an article, plagiarism is a no-no, and it gets you in trouble. But the truth of the matter is that there just aren’t that many new ideas that crop up every year. If you’re around a lot of people who do a lot of different things, you learn from them. It goes back to that we live in an age when it seems like all we talk about is technical advance after technical advance. I would propose to you today that social capital is every bit as important today as it was in 1954 or 1914. I think that this is the root of many of my successes¾that I have been allowed to be around others who have shared with me, and our companies have occasionally reaped large benefits because of that.”

320.5 Afterpod | Ralph Bender, CFO, Manship Media