Ric Payne – Page 3 – Ric Payne's Blog: The Consulting Accountant

How an accountant created great value but failed to capitalize on it

This is a sad story. It’s about an accountant who met with a young lady and gave her advice that would lead to the creation of a world class business but he missed the boat. Watch the video to see what happened and to think about what you might have done differently.

Total Shareholder Returns – The Metric That Counts

It’s comforting to see that GamePlan and its predecessor has always provided the ability to assess and plan for Economic Profit in addition to other net profit metrics such as net profit before and after tax etc. because

The Six Business Trajectories

In business, as in life, there are three phases known variously as start-up, growth, and maturity/decline. The challenges that arise in each phase are different and call for different leadership and management responses.

Why people aged 20–40 should be close to first in line for a COVID-19 vaccination

I recently read in The Economist that the official death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic is in the order of 4.5 million people. The estimated unofficial number is 15-18 million and counting! This global challenge is not going away anytime soon.

Hamburgers, Wormburgers, Credibility, and Communication

In mid-1978 a rumour started in the American south initially aimed at Wendy’s, and later at McDonalds, that their meat patties contained earthworm fillers.

This was totally false but when picked up by a so-called reputable press, many people believe what they read especially if it is simple to understand and could be credible – that is, it sounds like it could be correct. Apparently, the story appeared in a local paper (source unknown) and was then picked up by a local current affairs TV station.

Why Aren’t More Firms Jumping into Advisory Services?

It would be an understatement to say there’s a lot of talk about the need for accountants to get into the advisory space. Like the folk tale of chicken little, the prophets of doom are screaming from the bell-tower that the end is neigh for the traditional firm and yet there does not seems to be much movement.

Continue reading “Why Aren’t More Firms Jumping into Advisory Services?”

Your reticence to jump into new new service lines may be due to your innate survival instinct

We’re told by neuroscientists that our brain weighs about 2.5% of our bodyweight but consumes close to 20% of our energy. Over our evolutionary history it has developed two different cognitive capacities to help us survive long enough to procreate. This dual-system thinking capability has enabled us to source food, find shelter, and defend ourselves against bigger, faster, and stronger predators as well as nature’s other dangers like earthquakes, fires, volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts, and each other! They have achieved that by giving us communication and social skills that have made collaboration, cooperation, and organization possible. Psychologist and Nobel Laureate, Daniel Kahneman describes these thinking systems as System 1 and System 2.

Transitioning from complicated to complex is a challenge for accountants moving into advisory

One of the things that is interesting me at the moment and which I’m including in my book is reflected in a fabulous book by General Stanley McChrystal called Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement For a Complex World which deals with organisational design and management in a complex (as opposed to complicated) world.

Why Strategy is Important and the Depreciating Intellectual Capital of Leaders

Steve Ballmer, the ex-CEO of Microsoft, is one of the wealthiest people in the world. While doing some research on Microsoft’s strategic positioning over time I came across the following questions: how much is Ballmer worth? Answer: $81.252 Billion. And how did he make his money? Answer: he owns 333 million shares in Microsoft.

That’s the wrong answer!

On Motivation

A frequently asked question by people in management positions is “how do you motivate employees?”

The first thing to understand is that the word “motivation” is a compilation of two words: motive + action = [a person’s] motive for action. When defined in this way it could be said that the “action” piece may be positive, neutral, or negative. The second point is that the direction of action will be driven by the interaction of two more factors: the aspirations and attitude of the person and the environment in which s/he is working.