687: The Room Where It Happened | Ken Kaufman, CFO, Community Dental Partners

Each Wednesday morning, as the CEO prodded his team for business projections and troubleshooting ideas, the midsize company’s top managers would huddle around a white board inside a glass-enclosed office. For 20-something Ken Kaufman, the management huddle was a silent spectacle—except for the occasional bouts of laughter that burst out from behind the glass. “The managers would always leave with this positive energy and always have new guidance for how the business could move forward,” explains Kaufman, who says that for him, over time the meeting became not just a source of weekly intrigue but also a career destination. Years later, Kaufman recalls, when he was invited to join the huddle at another middle market company, the gathering generated little energy and was far less productive than what he had expected. “I finally made it into the room, and then we spent the entire time arguing over why certain numbers were wrong,” remembers Kaufman, who—now with a business degree in hand—then began to dig into the company’s financial statements. Subsequently, he was able to introduce some business modeling approaches that allowed managers to better understand the company’s pain points when it came to growth. “I ended up sliding into the CFO role and ultimately brought the company into job costing and creating visibility that allowed managers to make decisions to build the business,” reports Kaufman, who adds that within only a few months the finance leader proceeded to ask him to take over the CFO role. –Jack Sweeney