In 2002, David Paine published something unusual for the agency world: a manifesto. Not a pitch or a capabilities deck, but a set of beliefs about how a client-service firm should actually be run. He called it the PainePR Service Manifesto: Putting Clients and People First, and it argued, plainly, that the agency model was broken in ways that hurt both clients and the people doing the work.
I still remember my interview with David at his PR and communications firm. He told me he was going to teach me a new way to manage a business: by theory, not by the seat of your pants. He had built a firm, he said, that was highly profitable while winning every “best place to work” award in the industry, and those two facts were not a coincidence. He would show me why. It sounded like recruiting talk. It wasn’t. It was an accurate description of how the place ran.
What I learned working for David became the foundation of how I practice finance and, years later, of the firm I built. Below are the ideas from his manifesto that shaped me most, and how each one lives inside The Good CFO today. The words in the pull-quotes are his and his firm’s; the commentary is mine.
Blame the process, not the person.
The manifesto’s central claim was radical for a talent-obsessed industry: consistent quality doesn’t come from hiring stars, it comes from designing systems that let good people succeed. David leaned on W. Edwards Deming to make the point. This was the theory he had promised in my interview: Deming’s, applied to an industry that had never heard of him.
“Better than 94 percent of all outcomes are a function of the system, not the people.”— PainePR Service Manifesto (2002), citing W. Edwards Deming
That single line rewired how I see problems. When a number is wrong or a close slips, the instinct to blame a person is almost always misplaced. The process failed them. At PainePR, when something went wrong, the first conversation was about the process that produced the error, not the person whose name was on it, and I have run that conversation the same way ever since. It’s why our whole method starts with mapping the system before touching the people, and why “blame the process, not the person” is something we say out loud.
A culture built on humanism.
PainePR ran on what David called a Bill of Rights: the right to be heard, to be told the truth, to be treated fairly regardless of title, to have balance. It was humanism as an operating principle, written down and enforced. And it delivered exactly what David had promised in my interview. The firm kept winning the industry’s best-place-to-work awards while staying highly profitable, and the manifesto was his explanation of why the two went together.
“The only competitive advantage companies have is the quality of the relationships they can build with their own people.”— PainePR Service Manifesto (2002)
I took that with me completely. A good CFO isn’t just a steward of capital; they’re a steward of the culture the numbers depend on. It’s why we measure how people feel with the same rigor we measure cash, and why “people over profits” is a value we actually hold, not one we print.
Put senior people on the actual work.
David’s sharpest critique was structural: the layered agency model pushes real work down to the least experienced people, then burns senior time on inspection and rework. Clients pay more for worse. His answer was flatter teams where experienced professionals do the day-to-day.
“Clients are best served by an agency service structure that has far fewer layers, less management, and more day-to-day involvement of experienced staff members.”— PainePR Service Manifesto (2002)
This is exactly how we staff. Our controllers often do the bookkeeping too, because an experienced person does it faster and better than a hand-off through layers, and we only add a junior resource when the work is genuinely transactional. You get senior judgment on the work that needs it, and nothing wasted on the work that doesn’t.
Profit that doesn’t come at the expense of people or clients.
The manifesto didn’t pretend money doesn’t matter. It argued that the usual levers for making it (billability targets, performance-based pay, profit centers) quietly destroy the quality they’re meant to fund. Better systems, not longer hours, are what make a firm both good and profitable.
“A study for one major national client found that we saved them 20 percent in fees because our system resulted in better planning, reduced inspection, and less rework.”— PainePR Service Manifesto (2002)
That reframed profitability for me as an engineering problem, not a squeezing problem. It’s the logic behind how we work with clients: a clear monthly budget and scope, efficiency built through systems, and a model designed so the incentives never pull us away from doing right by your business.
Get better, on purpose, forever.
Finally, PainePR treated improvement as a discipline: documenting methods, inviting everyone to scrutinize them, running quality circles, getting better year after year rather than by accident. It’s Deming again: intention over chance.
“In the absence of a formal system that promotes quality, generating great results is more likely a product of chance than real intent.”— PainePR Service Manifesto (2002)
That belief is the engine of The Good CFO Method, a Plan-Do-Study-Act rhythm that runs from the weekly sprint to the annual plan. We don’t hope things get better. We build the system that makes them.
The revolution starts here
That was PainePR’s tagline, and more than twenty years on it still reads as a challenge worth answering. David Paine set a standard for what it means to serve clients and people well, and to run a firm on beliefs, not just billables. He told me in a job interview that he would teach me a new way to manage a business. He did. We don’t claim to have it all figured out any more than he did, but it’s the standard we try to live, and we’re grateful for it.
David remains my mentor to this day, and the lesson didn’t stop at business. He went on to co-found 9/11 Day, the nonprofit that established the September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance and works to make the anniversary the nation’s largest annual day of charitable volunteering and good deeds. I’m proud to support it.
Our thanks to David Paine and PainePR for the manifesto and everything it taught. The full document is worth your time.