It was a dark and stormy night. The power was out and I heard the back door squeak. I was sure someone was in my kitchen. I called out but I couldn’t have expected what was about to happen … Continue reading “Client Selection: Do it Right and You’ll Do Your Banking in Cornsacks”
Category: Your Practice
Visions, Missions, Motherhoods, Engagement and Strategy
The Gallup organization has been monitoring the level of employee engagement across national boundaries and industries for years. The numbers are not pretty. Gallup measures the degree of engagement based on employees’ ratings of key workplace elements such as having an opportunity to Continue reading “Visions, Missions, Motherhoods, Engagement and Strategy”
Trash your annual performance reviews
At our Bootcamps and other events one of the biggest and most important recommendations we made for getting team engagement was to stop doing annual performance reviews with your team members. I was reminded of this the other day when I saw a FB post from a good friend Michelle Golden in which she announced with deserved pride that the firm she is a Principal at, K-coe Isom, have abandoned doing annual reviews. Continue reading “Trash your annual performance reviews”
What would Henry Ford think about the Cloud?
I was going through some old note folders and came across a photocopied page from a report that, unfortunately, I no longer know the title of. It contained an infographic that I found incredibly interesting. Continue reading “What would Henry Ford think about the Cloud?”
A Webinar on Strategy in the Emerging Competitive Landscape
The accounting services industry is highly fragmented and intensely competitive and as is the case with all mature industries its principal services are commoditized which inevitably puts downward pressure on margins. In this webinar, I discuss why this occurs and what you can do about it. Continue reading “A Webinar on Strategy in the Emerging Competitive Landscape”
A Glimpse at The Firm of The Future
I was talking to a previous Results Accountants’ Systems team member yesterday about how technology has caught up with the ideas I had talked and written about extensively back in the last century. He reminded me of a paper I wrote called “I had a Dream” that from memory was circulated internally at RAS in which I outlined what I saw as the evolutionary changes that were playing out in our profession. These ideas were detailed in a presentation I did for the Kentucky Society of CPAs in June 2000. Continue reading “A Glimpse at The Firm of The Future”
It’s Lonely At The Top: A Mentor Makes the Difference
By far the most enjoyable part of my work is the formal and informal mentoring I do with leaders of forms around the world. The main reward I get is the learning experience it offers me and the sense of contribution it brings. I have to confess I’d do it whether I was paid or not. Continue reading “It’s Lonely At The Top: A Mentor Makes the Difference”
Collaborate and Grow Further and Faster
I first started talking to accounting firms about growth strategies in 1982 when I was just a kid. One of the things I noticed even then was that multi-partner, multi-manager firms that embraced a “whole firm” approach to meeting client service needs seemed to grow further faster than those built on an “eat what you kill” approach. Continue reading “Collaborate and Grow Further and Faster”
The 25 best pieces of advice I have given or received
Over the years I’ve been given or have picked up from my reading lots of good advice that I have acted on. I thought I’d put together a list of my top 10 but before I knew it I had about 30 ideas that came to mind. So I filtered them to 25 and I intend to work on this a little more but for now here’s what I’ve come up with. Continue reading “The 25 best pieces of advice I have given or received”
Structuring Your Business for a New and Profitable Era
This post is an updated version of an article I wrote for the 2014 Good, Bad and Ugly inter-firm comparison study done by the Australian firm, Business Fitness.
The accounting services industry has been around for long time and is likely to be around for a long time to come because people and organizations need their services. But as is the case with every industry, its structure will be largely shaped by outside forces that are beyond the immediate control of the firms in the industry today and those forces will create opportunities and challenges. The way in which firm leaders respond to those forces will determine the destiny of their firm. Continue reading “Structuring Your Business for a New and Profitable Era”