steven sacks explores how the coronavirus crisis is exposing all the bad habits of bad management.
with steven sacks
the new fundamentals
cpa firms are ill-prepared for the new era of virtual, work-from-home partners and staff, according to bill reeb, a leading cpa firm practice consultant, in this conversation with 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 contributor steven sacks.
more covid conversations: when covid ‘got real,’ with gabby luoma’ | the covid outlook with darren root and joel hughes: a long, slow climb back to recovery | steven sacks: covid crisis management | jean caragher: how to fight ‘fear’ and ‘insecurity’ | sarah dobek: learning how to operate in the new normal | august aquila: what comes next? | jody grunden: covid and client communications | andrew argue: on a mission | martin bissett: covid slams u.k. accountants, too | bill reeb: separating the winners and losers |
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management at all levels will need to adapt, reeb says, requiring new processes and procedures. but more than anything, it requires new metrics of productivity. and, most of all, new habits.
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after a painful, wrenching re-positioning, reeb says, firms will emerge stronger, more agile, and more profitable than they were before.
sacks covers a lot of ground with reeb, including:
- we have a lot of fictitious mechanisms we use as tools to manage.
- you can’t get away with what you’ve been doing to manage people in a remote-work environment.
- we really don’t know how to manage output from our staff in normal times.
- and it will be more difficult in this era of remote working.
- management at all levels will need to adapt.
- it requires new processes and procedures.
- but more than anything, it requires new metrics of productivity.
- and, most of all, new habits.
- to build the right habits, we’ll need the right systems.
- systems to create single accountability, with one partner designated as responsible for each staffer.
- firms are trying to move toward a more corporate model.
- leadership is not clear when it communicates expectations.
- firms need to cut the marginal workers and focus on the clients that really matter.
- firms and staff need to address the fundamentals of blocking and tackling and listen to what the different generations in the firm have to say.
- if you want to run a good organization, you have to do the basic stuff.
- this is an opportunity for firms to take the hard decisions they may have been putting off.
- they’ll be jettisoning marginal clients.
- and they should be looking at picking up some good talent.
- the influx of new talent will allow firms the running room to eliminate some lagging personnel.
- expect a marked shift from the matrix-management model.
- to a more corporate, top-down, command-and-control management.
- with more accountability at every level.
- and firms will emerge stronger, more agile, and more profitable than they were before.
a rough transcript
steve sacks: hello, i’m steven sacks owner of solutions to results llc, a firm that helps practices and organizations in the area of communication culture, education, and training. i’m here with bill reeb president, founder of the succession institute, a consultancy that focuses on cpa firm issues covering strategy, business planning, executive development, retreat facilitation, profitability, and performance improvement, along with team building and other major areas. bill, who was aicpa’s board chair during the 2019 2020 term. prior to that was aicpa’s chair of the consulting services executive committee of which i was staff aide. he was a consultant to many cpa societies in the area of staff leadership and training has also founded six businesses including an accounting firm and has authored hundreds of articles in the us and abroad. today, bill and i will discuss some issues and challenges, cpa firms will face a new work environment driven by a global pandemic, which has led many firms and organizations to reimagine the workday from a virtual environment. so, welcome, bill, i appreciate you taking the time. and there’s a whole bunch of questions that can be asked, but today i thought we would cover the more urgent kind. so, the first thing is, for those cpa practices traditional in the way they operate, how easy will it be to shift the mindset of senior leaders who have always measured productivity through presenteeism, and now we’ll have to deal with a remote workforce.
[1:51] bill reeb: you know, i was wondering how long it’s going to take for you to either make up a word or create a word that was bigger than i normally use. so that didn’t even make the introduction. so, thanks for that. presenteeism, that’s a good one. so, with that, let me just try to answer that with: we, as firms have, i don’t know, what you’d say is we have put way too much weight on, on being able to look at our people, rather than actually hold them accountable. and we feel good if you walk in and can see somebody busy. and it makes us feel like wow, i’m really a good manager of people because i can walk in and see that they’re busy. the fact is that people learn to look busy even when they’re not people can look busy buying products on amazon. so, my point is, we have a lot of fictitious, if you will, mechanisms and tools that we use to think that we’re managing people. the problem that we have is that as you go to a remote workforce as you have more people working remotely, you actually have to go back to some real basics of management. and the fact is most cpas have not been trained in management. management is a function of promotion. management is a function of which i’ve been successful as a technician. and all of a sudden, we find that we have people at high levels in firms that have been very successful as technicians, and their primary job becomes management. so it is a giant shift. and, and i will tell you, the warning that i’ve been giving our firms and the warning i’ve been giving, our profession is simply this. you, you can’t get away with what you’ve been doing to manage people in a remote environment.
[3:39] steve sacks: what do you think will be one of the biggest changes in how you manage your supervisor even delegate in this new work environment?
[3:51] bill reeb: well, first off the average delegation in a firm i would best characterize as dumping. so, dumping is the function that occurs when i realized the deadline is coming. and prior to right now, i said to myself, well, i’ll do it because i can do it faster. and besides, if i give it to someone else, they won’t know how to do it. they’ll do it wrong, and i have to correct them anyway. so i’ll just do it myself. and then as the deadline for the work comes, and you realize that you’ve got more work on your desk than you can possibly do. all of a sudden you walk in and say, here, would you do this? as if overnight, that person became smarter, and got the skills to do the work? and we’re pretending like, look at me, i just delegated. i can’t tell you the number of times i hear people say, i can’t believe the work i got back from my employees. i can’t believe how bad that work was. and then i would say something like, well, have they done it before? well, they’ve done something like that. have they done something of that complexity? no, but i figured they would figure it out? you know, i would, i would have figured it out. okay, so when did you check on them? so you gave him the job when? well, i gave it to him, you know, four or five days ago, i said, when did you check to see how they’re progressing? well, right now, because it’s doing about two hours. and so i asked for it. and they said, no, it’s on your desk. so i looked under, and i found that work on my desk or at a metaphorically on my desk, it would be my system. and they’re surprised and i said, so why would you be surprised if someone hasn’t done this particular work of this complexity before? you didn’t check in on them? and you’re surprised they did it wrong? like the way i look at it, or in the way i look at it, you should be surprised if they did it. right. so you didn’t give yourself any room to correct your thought they would give you something right because you assumed if you had the work, you would have done it right. and that’s probably one of the biggest mistakes that we have going on in our profession, is the presumption that if i give you the work, you’ll figure it out. and you’ll do it right. simply put, if you haven’t done the work before successfully on your own with limited supervision, and let me repeat that for you if you haven’t done the work on your own success with limited supervision, and don’t expect it to come back right.
[6:16] steve sacks: it seems to me that what you’re saying is under the old way, with the problems of delegation and managers’ expectations of what their staff will deliver and their level of expertise now working virtually, you’ve exacerbated an already bad situation. so now, the expectation is that the work will be done properly, because be lowered. i mean, right? because now you don’t have that face to face interaction. you’re working virtually. and then you throw in other things about accountability, the management of time, what is productivity, how do you get a question answered? are you afraid to ask your supervisor question for fear of looking silly? so isn’t this making an already bad situation worse when we talk about a virtual work environment?
[7:16] bill reeb: you bring up about seven or eight good points in that sentence. so i wish i could remember them all. so remind me to go through it. but the bottom line is that, at least if i could wander around, i could look over somebody’s shoulder. and if i thought they were, you know, kind of puzzled, or they seem like they’re spinning, i could just step in and say, so what’s happening, show me what you’re doing, etc. if we built habits that were good management habits, and working remotely wouldn’t be a big nightmare, because i built habits. i mean, think about it. when we when covid hit and all of a sudden we had firms that said, i got to work remotely, they already had systems and processes in the cloud. and yet while a few people use them they could be spread to everyone overnight because the systems were there. the problem is the systems of management are not there. so they’re not used to checking in on them. they’re not used to checking in early enough and often enough with them. so this absolutely exacerbates it. but what exacerbates it even worse, is that i’m going to say, at the highest levels of the firm, and i’m going to say and, and certainly it can apply to anybody so so i’m just giving you a generality and by definition generalities are wrong. so, i’m just saying as a general talking point, the higher levels of the firm being a manager and, and partner, and maybe some supervisor, maybe these people have enough knowledge of what they do. they do the same things over and over again, and they’re fairly self-motivated. well, in a work at home environment, we actually may see increased productivity because i can tell you for me, without being able to travel for a while, all i did was work eat and sleep because there just wasn’t anything else to do it’s not like i could go out and play golf because the golf courses were closed whatever it was couldn’t go to a gym couldn’t go to martial arts. so i was stuck and i just work all day long and i break to eat i break to go to sleep. so productivity actually went up now burnout was part of that but productivity that actually went up. but the fact is, most of our people aren’t necessarily that self-motivated. most of our people don’t know how to do their job in every facet of their job every day. and many of our people are not comfortable being isolated and working at home. so, you have not only health issues, you have mental health issues, you have people that can get depressed really easy. you have people that now aren’t used to this but they can work and then do their laundry, they can eat lunch, they can watch a quick tv show. my point being is that that workday that eight- or nine- or 10-hour workday that we are used to getting compresses into about four or five real work hours, and the rest of it is just spread into regular household duties. now you add the fact that i’ve also got for many of our younger people childcare duties, and childcare management, then that eight to 10 hours becomes a bad four or five hours. so, we’ve definitely lost productivity. but when you have people that don’t know how to do the work they’re doing, then you have a lot more spinning because we don’t have check-in and you brought it up. am i comfortable reaching out to my boss and say, hey, i don’t know how to do this, because they’re fully expecting a phrase like, really? i thought anyone at this level would know how to do it. i certainly knew how to do it when i was at your level.
[11:10] steve: well, those are good points that you bring up.
[11:12] bill reeb: did that hurt to say? by the way, they’re good points to bring up?
[11:22] steve sacks: no. not that painful. i internalize everything. but be that as it may. oh, people. we gotta million of ’em. do you think it’s gonna take some convincing of senior leaders that productivity is not simply a measurement by time spent at one’s desk because–you did bring up before somebody could be sitting at their computer, but really looking at different sites. they’re on social media. they’re doing things that are not work-related. and when i bring up the word presenteeism, that was a word that that came from the book why work sucks. and it’s about the rowe theory, results only work environment. you know, so you have a split-screen on one side, you have somebody who’s in a suit and tie, they’re sitting at a board table. and behind them is a, you know, a library of books and things in they’re sitting on their computer. and then on the other side, you have a woman who’s dressed in athletic wear is on the telephone and is walking two or three dogs. so naturally, the reaction would be that guy who’s sitting in the left is doing work, and the woman is not, but in reality, he could be looking at sites surfing the web looking to buy stuff, and she is on the phone, having a conference call internationally and domestically with people. so, we have these preconceived notions or i should say those who have been in the profession for many years have a preconceived notion of what work is, you know, and what productivity is. so, it’s going to take a little bit of time to convince leaders that productivity is not simply based on how much time is spent on the desk, plus the fact that we may enter the realm of big brother spyware could be placed on someone’s laptop, so if they feel you haven’t hit the keystrokes in a few minutes, you’re away from your desk, but you could have gone to the bathroom. you could have gotten a cup of coffee. this big brother aura is really a little frightening your thoughts?
[13:47] bill reeb: well, the big brother thing is, it’s something that could occur. i think there’s gonna be some violations, doing that in the home without permission. but you’re right, that certainly could occur. there’s already big brother everywhere, anyway, yes. but the bigger point you bring up is is the idea that i look busy. and i will tell you that any good young person or any good person that has technology skills, is very adept at hitting the alt-tab key to go from the amazon purchase screen to a document. so as soon as i hear footsteps, i do a quick flip and there comes up the screen. and as the person walks by, they say, wow, bill’s working. yeah. and i just flip right back. my point is we have a lot of people that have developed habits around looking busy. and we coined the phrase since we’re making up words of presenteeism. and i’m glad you’ve been putting me in my place to point out that you got it from reading, which if i read, i might know that so thank you for pointing that out. but we call it linger-put we have a lot of people that give more credence to linger put how long you hang around, then output as to what you actually accomplished. and, and when you have people like me, for example, who blends work with play all the time. so i don’t play on weekends and work during the week, i work all the time. and if i have some time, i’ll go out and play right now. and then i’ll make up for on the weekend or whatever. so, they’re the, i know i’m going to be working or playing. i just don’t know when, and i will make those choices. but if you took a moment in time and said, for example, yesterday, “where was bill?” bill was at the golf course. i worked in the morning and i worked in the evening. i work this weekend. i promise you, i put in plenty of hours. that’s not my point. it’s just for many people, the blend of work and home life, work, and play, life is just constant. so, you can’t judge somebody by checking in and seeing they’re not there. they could be your hardest workers, but you don’t know that because you’re making it a point in time reference. therefore, things have to be converted to output, what did you actually accomplish? and when you start looking at the output, the fact is we as management haven’t really taken the time to figure out necessarily what that output should look like. you’re going to argue that when you give somebody a tax return, you have a budget of five hours, and they should have done it in five hours. we also have the fact that somebody can code five hours to that code, and code eight hours to something else that doesn’t have nearly as clear a number of hours. so we don’t know what people are doing. and i’m not trying to sound like we’re being paranoid or skeptical or anything else. i’m just saying, when we already kind of abused the management tools, of checking in verifying, training, having that a constant blend of what we do to interact with our people. to now we’re just busy doing our own work and we don’t have the easy check-in that we had before. i could easily walk down and just find you, i may have to set up a call, i have to do something you may not pick up as you point out, could be doing something else. but my point is that the ease of follow up is not there. and if you haven’t built good habits, then you’re going to have a problem. so, i use this, you know, analogy. part of the issue is, i remember when i was young, and i was not a great student. but i would go to bed with my textbook in hand, especially the night before the test, and i would try to start reading. well, because i was in bed, it didn’t take very long for the textbook to hit the floor, and i was out because the bed was for sleeping. i had to develop habits where i studied at a desk. why? because the desk was not for sleeping, it was for work. and so, when you’re in your house working and you’re sitting at the kitchen table, you’re sitting on your couch, trying to work all of those things, create disruptions to your ability to concentrate, to focus to work well. and we’re hearing people now they’re, they’re the firm’s at least now investing in multiple screens, and they’re making sure that people are truly set up with an office in their home, because if you don’t create a work environment that lets you get focused and do it efficiently, i can just tell you, when i’m on the road and i got one screen, i’m not nearly as efficient as i got when i have multiple screens. i just, it’s not the same work environment.
[18:17] steve sacks: but you know, you brought up a couple of things about building the right habits and putting in the right systems. so those companies or firms that are working virtually will have to rethink hr policies and how they communicate with staff. so what type of business model may be created from this in terms of defining what full-time work is, quote, unquote, full time, what it means, and accounting for work-related activities, billing, etc. what will what impact will it have on hr what will the changes be?
[18:29] bill reeb: well, that’s a that’s a loaded question, steve. yeah, i’m not sure i can answer i will answer, i’ll do what the politicians do. i’ll listen to your question. i’ll just answer a different one. see if i can pull that off.
[19:07] steve sacks: but it won’t surprise me cause i’m used to it. but, but not from general politicians, but from you.
[19:14] bill reeb: the first comment is that, you know, simple things. and part of the problem is firms aren’t ready for this. but simple things when you start looking at some of your people, they either need to be producing, or they need to be trained. they either need to be producing or being trained. i mean, that’s their job. so consequently, that’s going to take a lot of hands-on, that’s going to take a lot of oversight, that’s going to take a lot of checking in. but as you start getting further up the ladder, with people more experienced, you shift from the mindset of hourly work to you know, partly what you’re paid is an expectation of x amount of billing. because then it doesn’t matter if it took you 14 hours to do eight hours’ worth of work. it’s only worth eight hours. that’s all we can build for. so you, you at least have some accountability. so now i’m going to use that segue because you asked me specifically about hr, and i’m not sure i’m ready to delve into that, to something even more significant to me. and that is accountability. we are working with firms right now. and they consider this to be on the edge of bizarre, if not on the edge of outlandish because we in firms have matrix organization. so, the fact is, i could work for everybody on any given day, i could work for any manager, i could work for any partner. and that’s true. so that won’t change. but we also set up accountability as a matrix organization, and it simply doesn’t work well. so we are working with our firms to help them create single accountability. that means i have one boss. only one. now i could work for everybody, but i only have one boss. you look at the org chart. i know exactly who my boss is. my boss is accountable for my development, my training, my performance. that boss is responsible for me. so, if i’m not producing, that’s a reflection on my boss. because historically in accounting, what we’ve had is this idea: have anybody want reporting to you, but at the end of the day, all i care about is your personal production. and i don’t care if you train somebody, that’s great, but if you spend too much training time training them and your production fails, then you’re bad. so, all of a sudden, if i worked for you, and i know this will scare you, but if i worked for you, and i didn’t perform, stevie, it would come out of your pay. i’m not saying i wouldn’t be impacted, but you have a stake in my performance. you can’t afford to let me just wander around. you’re either going to make me better. you’re going to make sure i got work to do and then i know how to do it. or you’re gonna be proposing that i be let go because you’re not going to take a hit for my lack of performance. in today’s environment, if you’re my boss, and i’m not performing, you’ll probably just ignore me and get your work done. and let me try to fend for myself. you cannot do that in today’s environment. i need to know who’s responsible for every single person so i can when i check on that person, and it’s all the way down the ladder, not just manager or supervisor, seniors will be bosses could be staffed up some bosses, we call them developmental coaches. but at the end of the day, i can get to every single person in my firm by going to the one person who’s accountable for four or five or six people and say, how are they doing? how are they performing? and this way, we don’t go for four or five months and get so far behind on performance and so far behind on accountability that the year’s lost, we can’t catch up. so it’s like, we have this free pass to goof off for the rest of the year. performance has to be managed on a regular basis, and i’m saying, generally speaking, a weekly basis, and someone has to be responsible for training me. so, let me stop for a second and add one separate component. if you’re my boss, that doesn’t mean you have to train me, it means you’re responsible to make sure i get trained. so you may talk to someone in the matrix organization where i’m working on their project and say, bill needs some help in this area? would you please work in some training on these kinds of aspects of the tax return? your job is to make me better. and under that model, i know that i can go to a person and verify that they’re checking in on a regular basis on their people because that will reflect directly on their pay and their performance. and that changes this model to where remote working is much more viable.
[23:50] steve sacks: you think that besides changing the model for productivity, that going forward the traditional partnership model with cpa firms will shift over time toward a more corporate model. and therefore, performance assessments, evaluations, raises will be based on different types of metrics under that new model, the corporate model.
[24:19] bill reeb: we’ve been trying to move firms of every size. i mean, if you have even one employee, we’re trying to move everybody to a more corporate model. entrepreneurs, by definition, don’t like a corporate model, because their general feeling is, well, i’ll tell you when you do it right. and i’ll tell you when you do it wrong. and if i tell you what to expect upfront, you’re going to use that against me and say, but you didn’t give me what i needed. and i don’t want to be in that position. so, i want to just be able to do what we call seagull management: fly-in, crap on everyone. so, we’re trying to get people to move to a corporate model because all a corporate model is saying is people have defined roles. we have expectations clearly set out. i’m telling you in advance what’s expected of you. and i want to make this clear, this is not about hr. to me, hr is about compliance, making sure we don’t discriminate against people, to make sure that we have ways if something’s going on, that’s bad, they have a reporting place, a safe place. but when i’m talking about evaluations, i don’t look at it as an hr function. i think that if i am your developmental coach, i’m the one that’s responsible for you. i should be giving you feedback in small increments; 10 minutes, 15 minutes here and there on a regular basis to where every month we’re checking in and when, when we ever when we do get to an evaluation, there should be zero. that’s new information. you should know exactly how i’m gonna evaluate you. because i’m telling you all year long, here’s what i expect. here’s how you’re doing against this. you’re doing fine. i’d like to see this change. and i’ll be monitoring for that. we don’t have a bunch of people saying i wonder how i’m going to do because we know with evaluations, we know that our people responsible for evaluations, they first roll their eyes back in their head, they make a loud sigh, and they say, why do i have to do this? this is horrible because they’re trying to document the last year’s performance of which they ignored all of it. and they’re trying to in this 30-day window, try to fabricate enough rational, logical documentation to justify whatever they’re going to do, which is why so many poor performers get good evaluations because they’re going, you know, i know they weren’t performing that well, but i don’t have anything that proves that. so i’m kind of stuck. and i don’t want to yell at somebody because they’re going to say, so what is that based on? and i have to say, well, i don’t know. i’m just making it up. so they tend to evaluate people too highly. they tend to not hold them accountable. and we wonder why this system fails. the concern i have and i make it clear every day when we talk about it is this is not about writing letters to the file and memos all year long, and taking hr from four, five, or six hours per employee, to 50 hours per employee. it is about communication and you live in the world of communication. if you know exactly the points you constantly run into, which is we don’t communicate enough. and when we communicate, we’re not clear. and we create a lot of ambiguity. and then we get surprised by what comes out of the other end.
[27:20] steve sacks: oh, the fact is that some of the performance evaluation approaches and systems to your point, i told you what i expected, whether you did it or not, it’s sort of like on a visceral level. so, so basic. on the other hand, and i’ve heard you talk about this in various venues in the past, and that is, you know, joe hasn’t been doing, he’s not a star, but he’s a worker bee. so i’m gonna keep joe because i know joe is going to get the work done. he’ll never i’ll never put them in front of any clients and i don’t expect him to be a strategist or a rainmaker. so, by keeping that person there, the work is being done. and then as a partner, you’re saying, you know, the work i’ve done it was within budget, etc. but that’s continuing bad habits. will that change? will the worker bee will be eliminated that person? or will that be a continued habit, something that we just kind of bite the bullet and say, you know, this is the way it is?
[28:38] bill reeb: well, there are so many factors. you know, part of the issue and i was just emailing a client last night and as you said, you know, when you look at one factor, at this stage of the game, there’s so much integration of multiple things together that it’s not really clear. but the point you bring up is critical. in the case of joe, joe may be an okay worker, joe may get the work done. the fact is most of the time we say things like yet, joe, don’t do it that well, but i’m already stretching everybody else so far, i can’t afford to let joe go. because it can put more pressure on my better workers and i can’t do that. the problem is you’re creating sustainability as bad performance because you’re keeping people around that are setting a bar that’s very low. and let me tell you when you set a bar that low, every other performer saying, well, that’s what the bar is. so you’re telling them to kind of back off and say, well, if they don’t care about that, why would i just bust my butt? that the real issue is that we need to constantly bring in people because we’re not going to just replace joe with no one. that will probably never happen. but we don’t replace joe because we say well, we don’t have enough money to hire someone. well, we need to constantly bring in people and make the evaluation. does joe stay? or does joe go? does joe’s performance if joe’s performance doesn’t improve in the next three or four months, i’ve got sue that’s coming in and she’s picking stuff up really fast. i’m now not making the choice of joe or no, joe, i am making the choice of, i’ve got a marginal asset, and i’ve got a really strong developing asset. let me leverage the developing asset and we will get hurt a little bit. but the fact is, we will trade up. and if we’re constantly trading it up, our firms get better. it’s interesting. and the same thing may be true with covid. it’s interesting, because in 2008, when we had the recession, most of our firms came out stronger than they’d ever been. most of our firms performed really well and did well and made a lot of money during those years. why? because they cut the marginal workers; they focused on the clients that they needed to focus on. they stopped worrying about clients that weren’t all that profitable. they made the changes they should have been making all along, but they had to because of the recession. and what ends up happening to us most of the time is we’re doing so well we just justify leaving everything alone because we are constant slowly growing and putting pressure on people to say, it’s okay. it’s okay we’ll just leave. covid may be the same thing. it may actually right size some firms covid may make better managers out of our managers. and that’s not the title manager. that’s anyone that manages people. covid may make our firm stronger than they’ve ever been. but it requires change, which is when i started this. it requires a new philosophy to adopt as to how we are.
[31:27] steve sacks: well, i think at the same time, where the profession’s reached an inflection point with pending retirement of managing partners and senior partners, and the trend towards making partners sooner, no, no longer the 13-year track because people are not going to have any of that. so, i think at the same time, new systems, new metrics, new habits, a new cohort, new generation coming in that, maybe if we can extract a positive from a negative being the global pandemic, that firms will become a lot smarter. maybe the communications will improve because now you’re working i think with multi-generational workforces maybe four at most, and there’s this disconnect when it comes to expectations of the people, you know, hey, we can do social media for business development and the older guy says, no, this is not the tradition. this is not you know, the way i was brought up and those are the people with you know, the pencils and the 18-column paper.
[32:39] bill reeb: but come on now. that you’re talking about me now. i didn’t have pencils and 18-column paper, you know. i am an older guy, so…
[32:48] steve sacks: you used a quill. you used to quill with a feather and you used to get yelled at. billy, you’re putting numbers down that could be wrong. stop using ink. let’s get the lead out. they meant that in multiple ways.
[33:03] bill reeb: let me comment on that. i think, i’m reminded of martial arts you know, martial arts is central to my life except for right now since it’s hard to work out but right, except on my own, but bottom line is that, you know, we teach young white belts and our young belts information, we teach them how to do certain things. everybody wants to learn how to do a spinning kick like chuck norris or, or somebody. they want to learn to do the fancy stuff. and the fact is, the fancy stuff is just that. it’s just fancy stuff. the real day to day blocking and tackling is basic, and people don’t want to focus it on that. they don’t want to make sure that their stance is actually grounded, where they can feel their feet and they have power just by standing there. so somebody couldn’t knock them over with a feather. the fact is the basics of a punch so that when i punch, i’m not filling out my elbow, which would make it weak, or i’m not having my fist up, which would let me break my wrist. these are all basic things when you look at martial arts. but everybody wants to focus on the fancy stuff. they don’t want to get the basic blocking and tackling down. and, so when i teach a lot of people say, oh my gosh, bill’s teaching, you know what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna do basic stuff. well, without good basic stuff, the rest of it is absolutely worthless. because i don’t care if you can do a big fancy spinning back kick, you’ll never get there because i’ll already have knocked you off your feet long before you get that move. the same thing is true in business. we’re, we’re, we’re skimming over the blocking and tackling, focusing on some of the frilly stuff, and some of the things you’re bringing up, steve, is just about the blocking and tackling. i don’t care that we have four generations and i don’t care that everybody has their own ideas. there are still some fundamental blocking and tackling that that is pervasive across all generations. we got to get that right. to the younger generation, do they have some great ideas? yes, they do. do the older generation, just because they’re old, they have bad ideas? no, they don’t. so we have to find the best out of all of it. but invariably, what i see is a focus on the frills rather than on the blocking and tackling. and if you want to run a good organization, you have to do the basic stuff. and when you think about some of the things you’re bringing up, management and communication, this stuff is just 101, you’re starting a business. these are important. everybody goes: of course, that’s important. but it doesn’t take very long once you get successful to say, i don’t do that. i’ll give you one quick story and then i’ll stop on this topic. when i started with ibm. they spent a year teaching us so you had to go through exercise after exercise. and if if you fail if your grade in school fell below 80 in the ibm school, so you just disappeared. you’d be an apartment with four other guys and all of a sudden you’d say, well, where’s joe? joe who? because clearly his grades fell too low. so there’s a lot of pressure to do stuff. so they teach you exactly how to do the blocking and tackling. interestingly enough, you come out of school and you’re working for ibm, but you come out of that school environment, you start selling, for example, and you find out that it worked. a year later, two years later, you’ve started merging in your own little frills and your own little unique style, and you stop being successful. you can be you, you can be unique, but you still have to do blocking and tackling or it won’t work. and you find yourself walking out meeting after meeting saying why isn’t anything happening? well, it’s because you have kept modifying without having a good, strong foundation. that’s what everything’s about. you can build on it, but you have to build on a strong foundation. otherwise, you lose it all. so the focus of your book is absolutely appropriate for where we are, you know, the fundamentals are what’s critical, and you need to take a look and say, it’s interesting because the new fundamentals, they’re new to us, because we haven’t been doing them. so we need to go back and look at the playbook. make sure that what we’re building on makes sense? and like i said, what you’re talking about is exactly what’s critical to firms today, which is how do i build something on solid ground? because like i said, if it’s not, then your feet fall out from under you. and if your feet are falling out from under you, you don’t have anything to really move forward with.
[39:17] steve sacks: exactly. well, with that said, bill, i appreciate the time that you spend to provide insights into what the profession, cpa firms, and individuals need to have to perform better. there’s a whole bunch of questions i said that we could cover, but we’ll save that for another time.
[39:35] bill reeb: so, steve, again, thank you for the call. and i appreciate you including me in on this and it’s always great to see you.
[39:42] steve sacks: same here. all right. be well, bill. bye