Ric Payne's Blog: The Consulting Accountant – Page 4

If You Want to be a Better Leader Try This.

Stephen Covey tells us in his brilliant book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that we should seek first to understand and then me understood. That is so critically important to influencing people it hardly bears close examination.

You need courage to lead a business

I read a lot of books and the ones I enjoy most are usually biographical. This one by Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, is amongst the best I have read on leadership not because, during his 14 years as CEO, $184 billion was added to shareholder value but because of the way he led the business – his philosophy of leadership.The book is full of sage advice (in fact he added 45 “lessons to lead by” at the end of the book.

Some Thoughts on the Characteristics of Great Business Advisors

At a time when many accounting firms are planning to get into the so-called business advisory space it’s important to think about the type of personal characteristics that are most suited to success as an advisor because the characteristics that are exhibited by great compliance people are not necessarily those that suit business advisory. Here are my thoughts.

A case study on how a Principa member worked with the team of a small client to kick off a business development project

For background on the case the client was a £350,000 light engineering partnership paying annual accounting fees of around £800. We’ll let the business development manager in the firm take over the story…

If you want to change business outcomes, adopt an inclusive management style

When I first became interested in the idea of pro-active business management in the mid 1970’s the prevailing sentiment at the time was that you had to be tighter, tougher, leaner, meaner or die. Being youthful and mentally aggressive I was seduced by this notion. Fortunately, I was teaching at the time so I didn’t have much opportunity to let myself loose on an unsuspecting business community.

Accurate Problem Identification is Difficult and Failure to do so is Dangerous

In business the symptoms of problems are not difficult to see but for the most part they are assumed to be the problem. This is also one of the reasons why KPIs can often result in “corrective” action being misdirected.

What Makes a Good Business Advisor or Consultant

I once read that a consultant is a person who consults, and an advisor is a person who advises. I can’t think of a more stupid way of defining a concept but for my purpose I will consider them to do the same thing which in a business context is to help the management team of the business achieve the full potential of the business by bringing an outside perspective and different skill set to bear.

A Business is a Machine in Two Parts

I’ve been reading Ray Dalio’s book Principles and thinking about it in the context of creating and developing an adaptive professional services firm. This figure from the book is accompanied by this comment:

Smarter Makes More Sense Than Smart

Whenever you read a piece on goal setting and planning you will inevitably be advised that your goals should conform to a variant of the SMART acronym:

Specific

Measurable

Ambitious

Realizable

Time bounded

I’m sure you can think of a bunch more words for the acronym but I also think it makes sense to add two more letters to make it SMARTER while you’re at it:

S M A R T E R

Specific
Measurable
Ambitious
Realizable
Time bounded
Engaging
Related to strategy

And come to think of it, let’s make it SMARTEST:

Specific
Measurable
Ambitious
Realizable
Time bounded
Engaging
Strategically aligned
Transformative

But most importantly, don’t let it be STUPID:

S T U P I D

Short sighted
Time wasting
Unattainable
Pernicious
Incapable of directing action
Divisive

Should You be Considering a Merger, Sale or Acquisition?

Before jumping into a merger or sale, you should stop and think about the consequences and whether it makes sense from the viewpoint of them offering a better quality or a broader range of services to your clients and/or whether it will improve your long-term profitability or survival prospects through internal efficiencies from scale.