your timeline needs a deadline, or big things won’t get done.
by jody padar
from success to significance: the radical cpa guide
now that we know who our customers are and our desired business model, we’re going to think about what we’re going to do for the rest of the year. we’re going to create goals!
more on radicalism: accodex sets up a platform for practice management | the persona: a closer look | father, son team up to capitalize on capacity | going deeper into product management | firm product management is the way to the future | why our clients need us to be radical
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i’ve talked about aha! and how that helps me set a course for my firm. but what i really like about the platform is that once you create goals, you can move them around. and it’s not a big deal!
brand might be important to you today, but later it might be something else. you can set up your goals for the year using this technology, and then after you have your goals, you can add in initiatives to support them.
too many firms don’t align their initiatives with their goals. or the goals happen in the partner meeting, and then the initiatives fall off. by having them all tied together, you can have accountability. when you have your initiatives, goals and strategic plan all in one place, on a platform that allows you to experiment and regularly make changes, then you can see what work is being done to serve your customers. it can be immensely helpful as a firm leader to have this at your fingertips.
the other thing i love about aha! is that you can move around your priorities. how many of you still use lists on your desk? it can work sometimes, but what happens if they disappear? are you able to easily prioritize them? i use this technology to keep track of my ever-changing priorities.
ask tough questions that relate to your goals. what’s your payroll process? have you designed it? are you going to have a ticket system? do you have a new website? are you putting together a mobile app? are you going to use autoflow? you know, most of us have these questions floating around in our heads. it doesn’t have to be that way. you could put all those initiatives together, prioritize them, and then put timelines around them! who’s paying attention to timelines that are not deadline-related? not many of us!
cpas are notorious for saying, “oh, we’re going to do it.” then somehow, it’s tax season again and what we wanted to get accomplished didn’t get done. why? because we don’t have any way to follow through with our initiatives while keeping everybody on the same page, all moving the way we need to be moving.
the next-level radical cpa knows this way of (not) doing is over.
it’s no longer, “oh, i can wait until next year to do this.” now you have a place to start – and it’s the roadmap. it gives you a place to put your to-dos and your details, so if you wanted to move toward customer selection or pricing, you could put your goals around it.
so, you have assessed your firm’s skill set, developed a roadmap and identified your main customer personas, and you are starting to build your products around your customers’ needs and wants. now what else should you be thinking about? believe me when i say, there’s always something!
build strong teams. how do you a build a team? what does it take? how do personality and skill set get considered, especially when you’re going up against the old-school mentality that was built in a service of hours business? there is going to be a lot of change happening. be prepared for lots of questioning and ridicule from old-school partners. think ahead about engaging those naysayers. keep your enemies close. do you want to put that difficult partner on the project so you can control the conversation?
to be successful, you must be savvy in networking, in office politics and in influencing. you must let your insides come out. you must show people who you are – your strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes. and you need passion. show it. live it. breathe it.
master your processes. i can’t say this enough. in fact, i’ll say it again: master your processes. i knew i was on to something in the chapter on process and design thinking in my last book. but it’s now gone beyond those concepts. within the context of product management, process becomes a powerhouse to your firm. efficient and effective processes are what will make your firm’s product profitable and scalable. the ability to iterate on your process over time allows for constant improvement.
know your data. data matters. we all know this. we love our numbers and our graphs and our calculations. data is like gold in an organization – for both you and your customers.
be open to where new data will come from. a timesheet is not the right data point. is data from your workflow software the correct data point to determine capacity? how long do items sit in your firm? how much work can you do before you need to add additional headcount? is it quantifiable by number of customers or gross billings? how will your team leverage customer service? these are all things never given to us via a timesheet.
and how quickly do returns get out of your door? workflow needs to be one of your new measurements for productivity. how fast projects are moving through your firm is important – possibly. what about emojis for customer service? have you given your customers a survey for benchmarking? a popular survey is the nps or net promoter score. you might get a lot of information from a survey. be open to all types of data, both concrete and subjective.
decide to platformize or productize. in the above paragraphs, i detailed why firms should productize their services instead of sell hours. a unique business model that is also potentially transformative to your business is the platformization of firm services. one firm doing just this is accodex from australia. the idea is that the process becomes a platform to deliver services. is one business model better than the other? both lead us into the future.
take for example, feng zhu and nathan furr’s 2016 harvard business review article, “products to platforms: making the leap.” the authors write: “in a product business model, firms create value by developing differentiated products for specific customer needs, and they capture value by charging money for those items. in a platform business model, firms create value primarily by connecting users and third parties, and they capture value by charging fees for access to the platform. platform models bring a shift in emphasis – from meeting specific customer needs to encourage mass-market adoption to maximize the number of interactions, or from product-related sources of competitive advantage (such as product differentiation) to network-related sources of competitive advantage (the network effects of connecting many users and third parties).”