November 2025
Intermediate to advanced
352 pages
5h 54m
English
Content preview from Move First, Align Fast
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
CHAPTER 9CFO Metrics for Human-Centric Transformation
Misalignment isn't soft. It's a cost center.
The project delivered exactly as promised. At an enterprise software company, a $4.2 million AI transformation finished two weeks ahead of schedule and came in 8% under budget. System performance exceeded technical specifications. User adoption reached 87% within the first quarter. All KPIs showed green across executive dashboards. This composite case—drawn from multiple enterprise software transformations—illustrates what we call the Perfect Execution Paradox: flawless delivery on time, on budget, and to spec, yet no measurable business value.
But business value remained flat for 18 months.
Revenue per customer didn't improve. Customer satisfaction scores remained unchanged. Operational efficiency gains were offset by increased overhead from managing dual workflows. Most telling, competitor advantages that the AI system was designed to address continued growing—market share declined 3% during the transformation period.
The post-mortem revealed the hidden cost of misalignment: employees were using AI systems extensively but not trusting them sufficiently to change decision-making patterns. High adoption enabled compliance reporting, while low trust velocity prevented performance improvement. The organization had spent $4.2 million to build sophisticated reporting infrastructure that generated limited competitive advantage.
This execution-value gap illustrates why CFOs need alignment ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.