proper planning prevents poor performance.
by bill penczak
we have all heard the term, “working in the business” instead of “working on the business.” i would suggest that most managing partners and senior leadership fall more into the “in” than the “on,” given staff turnover, busy season deadlines, exhaustion, and advancing years of many managing partners.
more: the great resignation: five reasons accountants are quitting | five tips for better decision-making | your marketing sucks: six reasons why | five global cpa leaders: four survival strategies | are you too generous with your write-offs? | it’s time to herd your highly compensated cats | nine smooth moves to build client satisfaction | five tough questions for these tough times | i started a consulting practice the first week of march 2020
i’ve endured enough management committee meetings during which the course of conversation leans more heavily towards rat-holes than addressing key firm issues of people, technology, quality, risk management, and growth. at the end of the day, every decision you make as managing partner foots back to one of those areas. deciding on the venue of the holiday party does not fall into that category.
peter drucker, the famous management consultant, summed it up succinctly: management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
here are six ideas that managing partners should contemplate when it comes to running an effective and engaged firm:
1 – focus at the top
it would be interesting for managing partners to examine their week and assess how they are spending their time outside of client work. i’ve had many conversations with partners about “highest and best use” and how they are sometimes reticent to relinquish decision-making on even minor issues to others. auditing your own work isn’t permissible for audit client but auditing how you spend your time, and the resulting value would be a great exercise.
i would suggest keeping a spreadsheet of daily and weekly tasks and label them:
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- high value to the firm’s long-term success
- moderate value to the firm’s long-term success
- low value to the firm’s long-term success
- no value to the firm’s long-term success
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your own assessment might cause you to think—and act—differently, and evolve the art of delegation.
2 – create and maintain a process for identifying and managing key performance indicators
for a profession obsessed with numbers, we rarely delve into the causal elements of the typical firm metrics of realization, utilization, turnover, margin contribution, and organic growth. i understand its often difficult to even get the right numbers in a timely manner from your own accounting department (more on that later) but spending time “on the business” requires a deeper dive into why and why not things are working properly. the best led firms have management dashboards, often in graphic form, that shows trends and derivations from goals, along with the underlying activities and decisions that inform them. one kpi tool i’ve used extensively is ceo tools 2.0 by jim canfield, which includes worksheets to set strategies and the actions to support them. ceo tools is an example of smart goals (specific. measurable. achievable. relevant. time-bound) and it would be a smart thing to investigate for your firm.
3 – closely link partner compensation to firm performance metrics.
here’s where the rubber meets the road. while not all partners are motivated strictly by money, few would object to more lining in their pockets. ideally, each of the firm kpis would cascade to individual department heads or partners, and a weighted scorecard would determine an equitable bonus structure. but don’t make that structure too complicated or include too many metrics. i know of a firm in which the managing partner maintained a meticulous spreadsheet with more than 20 data columns that he used to determine partner compensation. the partners i spoke with about this found it onerous and unattainable, and even their eyes trained to look at spreadsheets would glaze over. “i don’t even know where to start,” confided one partner. “at the end of the day, the bonus program was still a popularity contest.” few and specific kpis are the great equalizer.
4 – involvement of more than the partner group.
this approach achieves dual goals—getting things done by those with the drive to contribute–beyond only your partners–and engaging your firm’s the best and brightest as part of a retention strategy. i would rather have an engaged senior manager or principal actually leading the charge on a firm initiative than a tenured partner who get up and go, got up and went. your younger professionals don’t usually come with a lot of baggage, and as a rising star, they have something to prove. and likely want an escape from the monotony of another financial statement audit. you already know who they are—engage them.
5 – creative thinking.
i know there’s some reticence in the industry to even use the word “creative” when it comes to accounting. (i do know of a firm who boldly adopted that word in their new firm values, to the surprisingly enthusiastic entire partner group.) remember the adage, “if you’ve always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.” some creative thinking approaches could be engaging a client advisory panel; discussing topics with other firms in your cpa firm network; or enlisting the insights of trusted influencers like bankers or investment bankers. these ideas might be out of your comfort level, but if they can assist in your navigating the firm’s growth and accountability, there’s no downside to doing so.
6 – an engaged and capable strategic services team.
one of the resources firms often overlook is their own strategic services professionals (aka admin group, a term that i find disparaging). the right professionals in hr, marketing, it and finance can and should do the heavy lifting on many firm strategic initiatives, because as i mentioned earlier, these initiatives fall into the people, technology, quality, risk management and growth categories. one of the frustrations i’ve heard expressed from some marketing directors, for example, is that they don’t have a seat at the adult table at many firms. engaging your non-billable bright minds allows them to be engaged in the firm, assists retention, and ensures the right things are getting accomplished without the burden of client deliverables. if you don’t have finance, marketing, hr and it professionals capable of bigger thinking, then perhaps its time to upgrade. but i’m certain that most firms do have people with good ideas, whose voices have been silenced in the past.
there was an urban legend story a few years ago about a ceo of a major company who said something to the effect, “i could leave my strategic plan on an airplane, and have it fall into the hands of one of my competitors, and it wouldn’t matter. that’s because when it comes to strategic planning, all that matters is the execution.” employing these six strategies is all about the execution, because talking about strategy and actually doing it are often worlds apart.