Senior executives at businesses of all sizes understand all too well that today's global economy is still not adequately protected against cyberattacks, despite years of effort and spending in the multibillion-dollar range each year. But until recently, many CFOs may not have been considered an integral part of an organization's security team or understood how to respond to security risks and the implications for their organizations. But times have changed and many CFOs are being called upon to help promote cyber security and identify threats.

For most business leaders, it's difficult to make any decision without letting bottom line bias come into play. Globalization, in addition to evolving social, economic and regulatory trends, has elevated corporate competition to a new playing field altogether. For procurement departments in particular, cutting costs, doing more with less, and running agile operations are the new standards for success.

Brian Holland, the CFO and president of Fleet Advantage, a truck leasing and big data firm, was trying to put his finger on what it means to be a finance chief at the kind of fast-growing, sales-driven companies that have employed him over his more than 20-year career. And then he thought of something a former boss had said to him: “You’re one of the few bean counters that I can even stand to be around.”

The key attributes for supply chain leadership are patience, diplomacy and financial literacy. And this is a very rare combination of skills.

It just might be time to book that vacation in Paris you've been thinking about. That is one practical conclusion to draw from a remarkable set of shifts in global currencies that started in the second half of last year and has continued in the early trading days of 2015. The seemingly inexorable rise of the dollar versus the euro and most other currencies has broad implications for the global economy this year and beyond.