accountants need to write their own stories.
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the disruptors
with liz farr
greg adams believes that accountants’ work opportunities have long been underappreciated and misunderstood. when accountants at parties are asked what they do, adams explained that they always have to give the “but answer,” as in, “i’m an accountant, but i have a really cool job.”
adams himself has spent time in australia and barbados and “had lots of adventures” during his time at kpmg.
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his new book, green shade$, is an attempt to dispel the notion of accounting as limited to just tax or audit and “to change the branding and image of accountants.” a fan of jack reacher-type thrillers, adams wrote an accounting book that comes with a warning: “it has a little bit of violence in there and some sexual tension and but even has accounting equations.” the protagonist, dex mccord, jumps off a cliff while dodging bullets, but in his quest to solve the murder of an old accounting friend, he is “aided by at least 10 different types of accountants,” experts in transfer pricing to sec filings.
adams hopes that future accountants will be like his protagonist, dex mccord, and “have that sense of adventure and be all over the world of looking at the company’s operations and adding value” rather than “doing our accounting gymnastics around convertible debt book entries.”
currently, adams is cfo of the american management association (ama), a leadership and management training organization, where he’s working to build a portfolio of programs for finance professionals. these courses aim to help accountants overcome the feeling of “being very uncomfortable and not confident in their communication skills, or perhaps not leveraging their critical thinking, their expertise enough.” because accountants tend to be the ones people go to for help in making decisions, adams says, “it’s vitally important to be able to communicate the issue, the solution,” as well as to listen with empathy about the situation.
another crucial skill for accountants is decision-making, which adams explains as “the ability to process information quickly, weigh all the options, and then do what you think is best after you’ve gotten all the input you can get.” obtaining buy-in from everyone and being able to pivot when you make mistakes are important aspects of decision-making.
8 more takeaways
- the four common soft skills we need are communication, presentation, decision-making, and leadership.
- it’s our job to present a story when we’re providing solutions to our customers.
- the whole premise of everyone’s career should be to add value.
- the best leaders listen and ask questions. listening is the best way to improve leadership skills.
- empower your people to make decisions and to be leaders themselves.
- ask questions to understand your customer. what do you want to accomplish in the long term with your company? what do you want to do personally?
- get out from behind your desk, walk around, and meet the people you work with. this is good for your physical and emotional well-being.
- talk to your customers about the work you are doing for them. is it correct? what are you using this report for? how can i improve it?
more about greg adams, cpa
greg d. adams, cpa, is the svp and chief financial officer of the american management association. he has held senior financial positions (cfo, coo & director) for over 25 years in the public and private sectors. adams is also an author, having released a financial resource-oriented guidebook in the form of an international crime thriller titled, “green shade$. (amazon.com: green shade$: accountants aren’t supposed to die this way: 9781956867916: adams, greg d.: books). for three of the 11 years he spent in public accounting at kpmg, adams lived in sydney, australia, a key setting for his protagonist’s adventures in green shade$. his leadership mission is to help employees and business leaders achieve corporate excellence.?
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr
welcome to accounting disruptor conversations. i’m your host. liz farr from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 and my guest today. this is special treat. this is an author we have with us, senior vp and cfo of the american management association and author of green shades, as if you can’t tell from his background, welcome to the show, greg, how are you? i’m
greg adams
doing great. liz, thanks for having me. i really enjoyed your prior podcast on the accounting trend lines. we have a long commute into new york city. amas headquarters is in times square, so i get to listen to quite a few podcasts and enjoy yours. enjoy randy crabtrees with the unique cpa podcast. so happy to be here.
liz farr
yeah. well, podcasting is, is a good way to learn about the world. now, when i was stuck in public accounting, podcasts were really a lifeline for me to the outside world. yeah, yeah. now, greg, you’ve had a very interesting career in accounting. can you give listeners a little overview of all the different things that you’ve done.
greg adams
sure, i’ll give the little reader’s digest version. i started traditional accountant at kpmg, public accounting for 11 years, and i was fortunate enough to have three of those 11 years in sydney, australia. so it gave me kind of a unique international flavor and background. i was in charge of the us desk for kpmg. actually, when i came back to the states, readers digest was one of my clients as well. so that’s interesting, though. but after i left kpmg, i became a, more or less a serial cfo, various companies, both public, three public companies and a few private companies. the most one of the most exciting ones was actually edgar online during the dotcom era, where we took sec filings and we democratized them. so, you know, we parse xml tags and put them on yahoo finance or wherever it may be. so that was quite interesting. and then i had some green tech as well, and ultimately wound up five years ago at the american management association here in new york. and that’s been a fun journey, working from public and private companies my whole career to selling it a non for profit education company, which has been a really nice career change. and along those years of experience, i managed to pen a book. so i’m excited, excited to release green shades, but also just really like what our mission here is at the american management association. oh, that’s that’s
liz farr
great. now. now, as we’ve mentioned a couple of times, you just wrote a book green shades, which is a really different take on accounting than most books about accounting. this is a financial thriller takes place all around the world and the main characters. what i liked about it was the main characters were all accountants, but they were all really different. they all came from different walks of life and were doing really different things. it’s not the usual stereotype of bean counters. now, what? what motivated you to write this book?
greg adams
yeah, you know, a big part of the motivation was, i think most people underappreciate the importance one of accountants, but the opportunities that accountants have, i’ve always cringed in my early career, even when i with other people accounting, whether that’s tax audit or even general finance professionals. someone you had a party, and someone will say, hey, what do you do? and you would always start the answer with, i’m an accountant or i’m an auditor, but you always had to give, i call it the but answer. you always had to give a but answer and prove that, hey, this is a really cool job. i’ve seen many different industries. i’ve had lots of adventures. you travel the world sometimes, or you travel locally or doing an audit at a pet food manufacturer, something as wild as that, or like my brother in law is a controller at a ski resort. yeah. so it’s so many different things, so i really got motivated to about 10 years ago, to start writing a book about the accounting profession. i’ve read a lot of historical fiction, particularly revolutionary war fiction or civil war fiction. and i’ve read a lot of crime thrillers in particular, like all the jack reacher now lee childs novels with jack reacher, which is now a show. so i tried to combine the two of having some, you know, factual information, particularly about the public accounting world and the accounting world in general, as well as some adventure of a crime thriller and in the backdrop, yes, you write. when you’re a writer, you kind of write about two things, what you know in your life experiences. so green shades is kind of combination of both. for example, not to give away all the plot, but part of the underlying financial crime going on was that xbrl documents. xbrl is the filings made with the sec with hidden software tags. so filings are now basically bar coded with hidden software tags for all the financial statements. but these were being obtained and sent to a financial services company before they’re being filed with the sec. so that’s a little bit of the crime and how that’s uncovered, and, and the book, yes, it’s a lot of fun. it’s different, you know, it’s got, it has a warning, you know, it has a little bit of violence in there and some sexual tension and but even has accounting equations. so it’s been a fun journey writing the book.
liz farr
and it was, it was a fun read. also, you know, it’s not very often that you read about accountants ducking from gunfire and and jumping off of cliffs. that’s
greg adams
right, yeah, the protagonist dex mccord. you know he’s, he’s, i don’t want to say he’s not your atypical account, because he is your typical account. you’re involved in everything. and sometimes he was an auditor in public accounting, and you get exposed to things that could be dangerous. and i’ve had a few, believe it or not, i’ve had a few experiences where i thought it was a little bit dangerous the position i was in while i was doing some audits, or maybe even as a cfo, trying to convince people that, no, you can’t do that. you know, my job is to keep you out of jail. so, yeah, the journey of writing the novel has been really interesting. literally, it did take me about seven to 10 years off on, and then the pandemic helped me a little bit to find more time to write. so while my day job as cfo, i really enjoyed putting this on paper, some of the adventures of dex. you know, the protagonist, dex before, but also trying to change the image of accountants. and, you know, the aicpa obviously knows there’s a pipeline issue. since the year 2000 about 40% over 40% of the decline in people taking the cpa exam. so quite significant. even the last three years it’s been about 17% so there is a significant pipeline issue. and when the aicpa did their report on the main causes, besides the obvious one of going for 120 hours, 150 hours of the exam and then some other work to learn programs, the last one they identify was image and branding that should be improved. and i would contend that image and branding should be the number one issue that’s holding people back from exploring the accounting profession, particularly at the high school and college level, to try to change that is, i think it would be very important for the aicpa, and we, we need to actually put funds behind it to change the branding and image of accountants. so that was another big driving force behind green shades.
liz farr
yeah, yeah, yeah. and even in in my time in accounting, i’ve met accountants who are doing so many very, very different things. and here in new mexico. we’ve got netflix studios. they have a big presence here. there is such a need for accountants on the on the sets of the shows that one of the local colleges set up a program to teach students how to do accounting for show business, which is pretty remarkable, yeah,
greg adams
and that it’s but this tells you how integrated accounts are in the fabric of every business, every company. and we’re, we are, truly are the trusted professional. and we can, you know, we we save money for our customers, our clients, and we can make that money potentially and and really can impact people’s lives as an accountant, and i don’t think that’s understood at the dinner table, when when parents talking to their kids say, what do you want to do? as well as the diversity of experiences that accountants could have? yeah.
liz farr
yeah, absolutely. now you’re now at the american management association, and this is, i don’t really know much about this organization. can you tell us a little bit about what you
greg adams
do there? yeah, absolutely. as cfo, obviously, reporting is important. we’re a 100 year 101 years now education company and leadership and management, primarily soft skills, and we’ve trained. we have about 90% 92% of our clients are in the fortune 1000 we train about 20,000 people a year, quite, quite a bit in over 100 different countries. and more importantly, our training is behavioral change. training being that even after a course, 96% say they’ve learned something that will alter their behavior when they go back to the work environment. so that’s important. so it’s ama is sort of right up my my, my thoughts, and one of my initiatives here is, accountants need to build those soft skills, or what i call sometimes power skills. that’s ama has a great portfolio, and we work with chief human resource, resource officers and hr directors, and we train a you know, like i say, we’ve trained millions of people over the last these few decades, and over 20,000 a year. but one of my jobs at ama is to build a portfolio educating soft skills and power skills to finance professionals the finance departments, because there still is a perception of the uncomfortableness, or there’s a feeling by accounts, but let’s say that of being very uncomfortable and not confident in their communication skills, or perhaps not leveraging their critical thinking, their expertise enough, because when there’s usually decisions to be made, it’s often people go to the accountants, it’s vitally important to be able to communicate the issue, the solution, and then initially, probably more important than anything is to listen, listen and have a little bit of empathy of what is that person going through, and how can i solve their problem? as you know, accounts have a lot of stakeholders, whether it’s your customers and clients, or it’s your fellow employees to help them do their job better, or it’s the community to be out there and help the community as well. so you have to wear a lot of different hats. and the ama is, you know, been a great place for me to sort of, let’s say, end my career at a not for profit, where you’re impacting people’s lives, and you’re actually changing the story for folks. so you know, accountants need to write their own stories and these communication presentation skills, writing skills, critical thinking skills, communicating with tact and diplomacy. it was all so important for not only all professionals and managers, but particularly for accountants who have to communicate data sometimes which could be difficult. it is, you know, and communication and empathy and listening deeply, those are not things that were part of my masters of accounting program and even at some of the conferences i go to there, they’re sort of taught, but not it’s not really a big emphasis. so i’m, i’m really glad that there’s an organization out there that kind of has our back and that can support us. thanks. liz, yeah, because you’ve with your accounting background, you know, a lot of it sometimes is you have to prove your battle scars, so you have to sit there with your head down and knock it out. and, you know, talk to people. and that is so important to just go out and talk to your your stakeholders, and you know it, besides being very healthy, don’t sit down at your desk all day and have a your back hurting and carpal tunnel on the computer, you know. but you’re right. a lot of conferences. obviously, we need those technical skills, and we’re required to have those technical skills, but more and more, i think we need to look through a more of a macro lens of, how can we help our customers, our business and the community?
liz farr
absolutely now we’ve talked a little bit about how accounting needs to change. change its image. what would you say are some of the other changes that we need to do, need to do to make accounting better and a more appealing career path?
greg adams
yeah, it’s there’s several things that i look at, and i’ve listened to like randy crabtree’s bridging the gap conference. i know he did a study recently, and it was actually a little bit surprising. some of some of the findings, the ones that were not surprising. for example, salaries. you know, the pay could be better. and, you know, i see and why did a new program that they’re giving 10% increases, and that helps. i also think there should be a much, much higher award when you pass the cpa exam, so that maybe incentivize people more to take the cp exam. the other was work life balance, and i think that will help young accountants also, you know, have a little bit of flexibility. the old school where, again, where i was trained, yeah, it wasn’t uncommon for you to do 7080 hours a week. liz, you probably had the same thing in your younger days, if you were pressured to finish the job and you were overloaded with work instead of instead of getting out there. so i think the work life balance is important. the findings, the one finding that surprised me was that, though the work load was it didn’t bother people as much. they seem to say, okay, i’m important, and i have a workload and i have to get things done, but what’s more important for me is salaries and the work life balance. i can get my things done if i can just balance some other things, and i can run out and take care of my family, for example, as well. so what? what? another thing too, is that the training did come up. the the not and again, not the technical training, but the training to embark on learning journeys for accountants. and i thought that was, i think that’s a really important, you know, lesson that for everyone, that we all need to embark on learning journeys. you know, life is constant, learning, constant development. and that’s those are my big takeaways when i when i saw the bridging the gap conference, and hearing some of the studies that were there, getting back to soft skills. i think the four common soft skills that we need is communication, presentation, decision making and leadership. those are the four big four drivers. i recently had an article accounting today, so i know we’re accounting trend lines, but accounting today about the importance of soft skills. but i also just finished another article that will be up shortly, about leading finance to storytelling. and part of what green shades is is leading finance to storytelling. so it’s up to it’s our job to present a story when we’re providing solutions to our customers.
liz farr
absolutely, you know, and there have been studies done that demonstrate that if you can put a story around some something in financials, then people retain it better. if you put a story around just about anything, people will remember this story, not necessarily the numbers or the figures, but the story that goes around it. yeah,
greg adams
absolutely so, yeah, when i get another accounting today article, but you’ll see some of the various steps to create a good story. at ama, we use the spar technique. you gotta spar with your audience. and what a spar means, spar means, what’s the situation, what’s the problem, what’s the action, and then what should be the results. so i was saying, spar with your audience. get to know that over my career, when i’ve met your people and work with folks. i always say, i want to hear the problems. i want to know what’s going on. don’t keep anything secret. but when you bring those problems, bring your recommendation, what do you think we should do? and that’s so important. i think in development of people and mentors should really drive that home to when they’re working with with folks that say, you know, it’s great to have a problem and identify the problem, but make sure you don’t tag a solution along with that problem or a recommendation. let’s say it may not work, but at least you have a recommendation that you thought about it. yeah, yeah. and
liz farr
that that’s. something that i’ve heard from several other people that i work with as a writer, the importance of not just bringing a problem, but here’s something, here’s a way that i think i could solve this problem.
greg adams
yeah, absolutely. you have to empower the people that you’re working with and let them do the research and do the study and come up with that solution. so it’s really now fundamental and not enough. i don’t think enough people do that in the business world for their support, let them make feel empowered to make a decision.
liz farr
yes, yeah, and and that that’s so important to and decision making is some is something that we’re really not encouraged to do,
greg adams
no, and it’s yeah. in a lot of meetings, many people are looking to the cpa or the accountant to make a decision. so you have to be trained, particularly as cfo, i probably make five decisions a day, literally. and you know, not all will be correct. that’s and you have to throw a few mud pies against the wall see which ones stick. but decision making is it’s, it’s bringing together all the synthesizing, let’s say, all the complex issues, and then jointly coming together and figuring out, okay, how do we solve some of those issues together? and so you have buy in from everybody,
liz farr
right? yeah, absolutely. now, something else that i’ve seen that has changed is changing in the accounting world, is the business model. now, for decades, the business model was really pretty much the same, you know, bill by the hour, and work a million hours. you come in as staff, and then you get promoted to the next place and the next place, and then maybe eventually you reach the top and you make partner. but i’ve seen a lot of firms that are operating quite differently. what are some of the changes that you’re seeing that excite you the most? yeah,
greg adams
i think two, two sides. first, let’s say the auditing firms, the people that have come in and have audited by companies in the past. first, just make a blanket statement the big four firms, unless you’re a couple million dollars in auto fees, they may not want to work with you. so now you have all these other firms that are competing for 1000s of companies, and a lot of public companies too. so you have to have the sec experience. but the biggest change i’ve seen from the auditing profession on how as a customer, how i’m audited, is most audits now are virtual. you don’t have people come to your office. and to me, that’s a little bit disappointing. i think, to be successful, you still need to have that face to face, and particularly if you’re testing inventory or whatever it may be, i think the face to face auditor is still critical. now, tools that’s different. they’re using a lot of different tools or ai. they’re using a lot of people offshore, whether it’s india or philippines or indonesia, or maybe even near shore, close by in south america, regarding the united states i’m speaking, or even barbados, which in my book i talk about, a niche nearshore technology company barbados. but i still think from an audit profession wise, you need that face to face and and that makes the auditing more exciting for the professional, rather than just saying, okay, i’m gonna do my grunt work and build my way up from the auditor to senior auditor to manager to senior manager to partner, that’s a long grind. it’s anywhere from 11 to 14, 15, years now, depending on your specialty and what you do. i recall when i was with kpmg, one of the audits while i was australia was a gold mine, and we had to take a four seat plane out to the middle of the bush, then from there, take a helicopter out to the gold mine. and the way i learned the business was going to sites, but sitting on the porch and having forex beers with their engineers and their geologists of how they mine gold and how they find it, how many reserves is in the ground, and things like that. so the auditing profession is it seems to be changing a bit to a lot more. virtual work and offshore work, and a little bit less face to face. so i’m hoping that doesn’t completely swing every which way, but i am starting to see that more and more in the audits from an accounting perspective, and i’ll talk more corporate accounting perspective. there is hype around ai and there are a lot of ai tools out there. i know our fp&a person use co pilot to do a lot of their fp&a planning. so i think that’s really healthy, and that’s healthy and respect again, back to who your stakeholders are. you’re not spending times in your office, hours and hours and hours, late at night, getting carpal tunnel on the keyboard, putting numbers into spreadsheets, you’re now able to quickly get information, quickly, have them thrown on charts and interpret that information and then present that information. so you know, back to the soft skills, communication skills, presentation skills, etc. so i’m seeing the change in the corporate accounting leveraging a lot of those tools. there’s the larger companies have always been leveraging offshore accounting, one of my prior companies, we leveraged folks in india, and they they do a great job and very meticulous, very much methodical on their process. but the tools that are out there now, and mostly web based tools that obviously saves a lot of money with not you don’t need a large, big data center anymore that helps. and you know, stepping way back to the 2000s when i was part of an sec task force, and with my old company, edgar online, working on xbrl data tagging and xml tagging. but that’s not a financial statements and slowly working its way down the tax returns, slowly working its way down to the invoice level, that everything will have xml or computer readable, machine readable tags on it, and so you can leverage we’ll be leveraging technology more and more and more in internal accounting departments quite a bit, and this that will also help auditors as well be able to drill down further. well,
liz farr
that’s exciting to hear, and i really like hearing about the use of technology in audits. because, you know, when i when i did audits, technology that we used was spreadsheets, yeah, excel and not much else. so i’m glad to hear that we’re getting more and more tools out there, so that’s great.
greg adams
yeah, i think anything is bigger, more productive, and then add more value your customers. and that’s the whole, whole premise of everyone’s career really should be, to add value. add value to your stakeholders are, whether that’s fellow employees or customers, you know, depends, but the one thing that folks need to be careful that we see here at ama, we have a we have a suite of a ai courses, fundamental ai courses, and some some risk management around ai. but some of our surveys noted that 83% of the workers at companies or corporations that come to us, they say their company has no ai strategy at all, or at least i communicated well, and that’s dangerous. and 66% say, yeah, we use ai, but we don’t trust managers and senior managers that they know how to use it, or they’re very transparent on how we should use it. so it’s still early in the game, but there’s definitely risks with technology and going forward. so it needs to be a strategy needs to be developed, a very comprehensive ai strategy needs to be developed. well, it’s internally at your own corporation and internal accounting corporate boarding and tax returns or auditors as well. these are really big, comprehensive ai strategy and communicating.
liz farr
yeah, yeah. i mean, you know, on the one hand, you want to use these tools certainly, but we’re feeding them data, and when it’s just been us and our computers and our spreadsheets, it’s we can be pretty confident that we’re keeping that customer data safe, but there aren’t quite as many safeguards with ai, and i don’t think a lot of people are aware of that at all.
greg adams
yeah, absolutely. i think not aware. and, you know, getting back to green shades my book, you know that data and i was. a young mentor of a cfo many years ago, actually, when i was a young accountant at kpmg, the account cfo is always telling me, you control information and data. you control the world. we thought that was very funny, but to a degree, it’s, it’s, you know, if you can manage the messaging with data that then that shows it. and so my book that in green shades that, you know, the big plot is around data, and it’s about sec reporting data, and the power of being a first mover, getting that information and that data. and so that’s, it’s a it’s it’s security and safeguards. you know, controls is going to be very important. and as accountants and as cfos, risk management is one of our primary duties, and you can blame it on the cto, but ultimately comes back to you, your chief technology officer, ultimately comes back to you to work with the information technology group on how to safeguard your assets and our assets.
liz farr
so important? yes, absolutely. now, something that we’ve alluded to a little bit is the structure of leadership. you know, a number of people on this podcast, have talked to me about this transition point that we’re at in in leadership, and this goes for not just public accounting firms, but for business as a whole. we’re at sort of a transition point from the top down kind of leadership to a more collaborative version of leadership. have you seen that in the companies that you’ve worked with?
greg adams
you know, i would have to say the successful companies, yes. and when you have a rogue ceo, let’s say or coo that not necessarily being collaborative and listening to options and decisions, it usually goes wrong, and you just spend half the time trying to correct those errors and keep everybody out of trouble, but the accountants will always be on the front lines of leading the tactical transformation of how information is reported and displayed, enacted upon, and the companies that the companies that have good leaders, it’s definitely evident, you see, and it’s always more collaborative. and a good leader will always listen they’ll ask questions. they’ll ask probing questions. they’ll try to pull out more and more information. they’ll ask your opinion on what do you think? which way should we go? so it is a more collaborative effort. along with they have their they have to keep an eye on the macroeconomic issues going on that could impact their business and is the industry changing? how do we get in front of that change? the book who moved my cheese is, you know, still valid, valuable today, to give that book to somebody say, hey, read this. who move my cheese? because always going to happen if you, if you don’t change, you know, you, as i say, if you don’t change you die. the company will eventually go away. and as many, many examples of that, and probably because they had a leader that wouldn’t necessarily listen and yeah, a little bit of ask yourself, how, how does this company need to change in order to survive? even here at ama, used to be pretty much the leader in the world of all management leadership training, and it was always in person training. there wasn’t anything online back then. and we even had a facility in new york, 60 acres, that ceos from around the world would fly to, and they’d go there for two weeks and just share ideas and exchange ideas, and they get trained about leadership. that’s all changed now with virtual on demand where, you know, maybe they think 20 minutes is good enough to hear a little 20 minute snippet on how to present. but that doesn’t necessarily work. i do the analogy of, if you taught how to swim, could you do it watching a video? i don’t know. i think you need somebody to teach you how to swim, to go into the pool with you, to hold you, to let you flounder a little bit in the water. and then eventually you will need that face to face hand holding. so we need to be careful about the future training. in that respect, it needs to be education needs to be a little bit more. or more in person, slash or online, in person, talking versus just watching a video. and a lot of the i think younger accountants, they can do that with technical skills. they can watch a video with technical skills. i’m not sure it’s possible to do with the power skills and the soft skills that you need to learn. you need to do exercises and and see examples of that from from your leaders, yeah. and at the same time, have a little bit of empathy on the people around you. it’s going to take time, and you know, they may be going through something, so be patient.
liz farr
yeah. no, no, what are we talked a little bit about needing to learn how to ask better questions. what are some other things that leaders can do to be to improve their leadership skills?
greg adams
you know? i, i think again, the biggest thing is just to listen. take your time to listen, and from there, you’ll be a lot more empathetic on what that person’s going through. but also, one of the most important things is to empower your people. empower them to make decisions. yeah, empower them to, you know, be that leader in the room that folks look towards to say, okay, we’re going to do this and to make a decision after they get all the input. and that’s not an easy easy to learn. takes years of experience to be that leader in the room. but again, most accountants and cpas, when there’s issues going on, everyone seems to turn to you and look and say, this makes sense, maybe because we’re very pragmatic and we we can go through the process of decision making at that point. so that’s going to be, you know, the decision making skills is, is having the ability to process information quickly, weigh all the options and then do what you think is best after you’ve gotten all the input you can get, and you’ll make mistakes and you might have to pivot along the way of some of your decisions, but you need a flexible environment. and again, that’s what makes a good leader. in my mind, that one that says we’re going to do this, yeah, there’s very few and far clean that they can pull that off. and, you know, i don’t know if elon musk is doing that correctly, whether he’s making some good decisions, but he’s making a lot of decisions, and some may be good, and some not so good, but i think he’s a little autocratic compared to how mostly this should be,
liz farr
yeah. well, i think i would be safe to say that elon musk is sort of a, a class unto himself.
greg adams
yeah, and even, yes, even steve jobs. you hear about steve jobs now he, he had a vision, and he also gathered, you know, gathered facts around this, that vision, and work collaboratively and on that vision. so, yeah, it’s having a that’s the biggest thing for the leaders ability. the vision has to be set at the top. and whether it’s the ceo and a cfo, you have to have a vision for your department. how’s your department going to work? is it going to be a joint effort and all work together? it’s, it’s so important to have roles overlap in finance departments. you need that backup. you need a succession plan, otherwise you can be in trouble real fast to start losing a lot of people.
liz farr
yeah, now i like what you said about having a vision at the top, because i think a lot of accounting firms historically have just been sort of this conglomeration of partners who have almost their own little siloed practices within a shared services firm, and they don’t necessarily all have this vision or sort of a mission for what the firm is going to accomplish, is that something that your courses at the ama teach or look at it,
greg adams
does the we have a lot of leadership courses, a whole portfolio of leadership courses, and that’s exactly what the what they teach. and the one thing that’s always emphasized too, is what is your. customer one, and how can you help your customer? so for the for like new cpa firms, you shouldn’t just go say, hey, we’ll do your tax return. go do your accounting for you. maybe it’s what are you trying to accomplish long term? what do you want to do in five years? not necessarily numbers wise? what do you want to do personally? you want to sell the company. you want to build it and leave it to your your children. it’s a whole process, and it’s important to this. again, it gets back to listening, having effective listening skills. i took a critical thinking course at ama because i like enjoyed taking our own courses once in a while, and again, that was the number one thing of critical thinking, was actually listening. so i probably say that a lot, but drive it home, but it’s something we emphasize here in our training.
liz farr
that’s good. that’s really good, because i worked with quite a few firms that just were, yeah, i’m not really sure what we’re trying to accomplish for our clients, other than we’ll get your tax return done, we’ll get your bookkeeping done, we’ll get your audit done. but what? what was it that we were doing those for? what was the bigger purpose? right? we were serving? yeah, yeah, you
greg adams
need to be a financial advisor. and that’s a complete 360 financial advisor, not just the blocking and tackling with tax returns and getting the books completed, etc. but financial advisor, retirement planning, trust and estate planning, it’s all there and and as i say, all these things, this is done by accountants, even financial bosses. a lot of them are accountants. so ex accounts and that this, again, gets back to the book where i have a longer protagonist journey. he’s aided by at least 10 different types of accountants, all different types of you know, whether it’s a transfer pricing tax accountant or an account that knows a lot about sec filings. it’s it’s all all different ways. so it gets back to the excitement that i have about our profession, and why we need to hammer home the image and branding that the cpa has. is these needs to improve. it needs to be communicated to the world that this is a great profession, and the old green eyeshades and, you know, pocket protector, that’s that’s a different image, especially with automation. i won’t be tied down to doing the numbers as as much as interpreting the numbers and trying to add value be that trusted professional for all your clients,
liz farr
absolutely now, sometimes for accountants, the most important thing for us to do is not to add something more to our portfolio of things we do, but to stop doing something. so what do you think accountants should stop doing immediately?
greg adams
sitting at their desk, i really think stop immediately. you should get up out of your desk and go meet the people that you’re working with. i think that’s really important, but accounts should stop doing immediately. it sounds simple, but we like staying in our cubicles, and we like being productive and getting our work done, but it’s more important for not only your physical well being of getting up and walking around, but also your emotional well being. is a lot we teach about wellness, for example, wellness in the workplace, and that’s one of his getting out and talking to your your peers, talking to your customers, talking to your community. it’s also important. and that’s, i think that’s the biggest advice i have for the accountants that i work with and my accounting team. the same thing, you know, know why you’re preparing that report. go speak to your your customer, and find out, is this report correct? and hey, why are you using this report? what are you looking for? how can i make it a little bit better? present it better? and i think some accounts are at fault of just staying in their at their desk, sitting down, not getting up, not roaming the hallways, not seeing go out to manufacturing plant and talk to the guys out there and see what they’re doing, how things are made. and. it’s there’s a big opportunity that they might be missing if they don’t do that.
liz farr
absolutely. yeah, i spent a little bit of time as sort of a part time virtual cfo, on call cfo for a manufacturing company, and i was really surprised that the accounting group rarely left their little department. they rarely went out and walked around on the floor to see what was going on. so that’s so important.
greg adams
it is so important. one of the first changes i made in ama was our back office accounting folks are up in near lake placid in saranac lake, and there’s several buildings up there, and there’s one main building, and the accountants were in a whole separate building by themselves. and so we shut that building down. we had all the accounts moved into the main building. main building so they could be with and that is so important. this is the, you know, just a small example that if you’re your accounting department’s isolated, let’s, let’s try to get them integrated more
liz farr
absolutely now, now i want you to kind of put on your get out your crystal ball and think about, where do you think the accounting profession will be in 10 years?
greg adams
yeah, that’s that’s always fun to to look forward. and so what i’m seeing is a lot more automation, obviously, and accounting will be more more or less. so say less about the rear view rear view mirror, and more about what’s happening going forward. and so i think the accounts are going to be tasked less about the technical issues around accounting, because that can be solved, maybe with software. a lot of the day to day processes will be off, either offshore or just plain old, automated because of xml tag. so i think the accountant of 10 years from now will go back to my protagonist, dex mccord, and have that sense of adventure and be all over the world of looking at the at the company’s operations and adding value. that’s my hope, at least that less about pencil pushing, doing our accounting gymnastics around convertible debt book entries, more about being out in the field. so i think the automation there, and i’m not going to say ai, because it’s more than ai, i think it’s really about the xml tagging of all documents, which makes them a machine readable. so then you could do trends, what’s going forward, and you can mix with those trends, external data in your industry, economic data, etc. so you can be more of an advisor, you know, to senior management, or to whoever you report to, and give more the crystal ball of what we think is going to happen and what the trends are going to the future. so i think the profession is going to be less blocking and tackling and bookkeeping entries. while that’s all important, you get your regulatory reports have to be done, but lot may be done by pushing a button and you’re seeing it now. there’s a lot of customers that you got to go into their systems and load up your invoices, and everything gets paid automatically and and everyone’s happy. and then everything gets downloaded into your books. it’s it’s going to be exponentially further along with a technology standpoint, in 10 years from now. and so that’s why it’s more and more important to make sure you become, you know, manage those soft skills. invest in training for yourself. you know, don’t, don’t, you know, if you don’t ask your manager, can i do this training? because i know i want to present, and i know something i may be presenting to board of directors or investors as a cfo of a public company, i spent probably 30% of my time speaking with investors, so you needed those communication and presentation skills, and you had to do some storytelling to make the data come to life. i was at a technology company during the year 2000 transition, and there was a really large shortage of software programmers. there was plenty in india, but not many united states, because it was really hard to get work visas the united states. so we had a solution, and our customers did not like the midnight phone calls india and the long travel and the expense of flying there, so we took 750 plus. software engineers from india and from barbados, same time zone five rapid ring around the island and fix the y, 2k, problem for a lot of these companies. but i’m telling you that, and you know, in one minute you got to do that. storytelling comes in. you gotta explain, in a long story why we’re doing things and what the benefits are and what the future is going to be like. and i’m hoping that storytelling and presenting will become much, much more important for the accounts of the future, interpreting, interpreting the information and and hopefully universities and colleges will will stress these skills,
liz farr
i hope so too, and and i think that that’s where things like podcasts can play a little bit of a role in teaching people that it’s not just the numbers, it’s not just the spreadsheets, but it’s the ideas behind the numbers. you know, why did the numbers get there, and what are they doing? what? what does this mean for the future, and what does it mean in today’s larger economy? so i, i think, i think you’re on the right track with a lot of your hopes and dreams for the future of accounting, and that’s probably a good place to end our conversation. i want to thank you so much, greg for coming on my podcast and sharing your ideas and your experiences. now, if people want to reach out to you, where’s the best place to find you? the
greg adams
the best place is my email, g adams at ama net.org and you can probably go to the ama net.org website to find information. i am also going to put out there liz that if any listener reaches out to me and wants to take an ama course, i’ll, i’ll deduct $500 off the list price. so it’s an offer out there, and hopefully people will take me up on it, because it’s that important, really, to take, take as many soft skills as you can, if it’s with respect to green shades. accountants aren’t supposed to die this way. you can go to my website, www, dot cpa, dash author.com, and i guarantee you’re going to enjoy the book. money back. guarantee the $14.95