transformation talks: mike maksymiw, cpa, cgma, says the secret to success and transformation in accounting is to be willing to learn, believe there’s enough work for everyone…and allow yourself to be vulnerable.
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transformation talks
with bill penczak
center for accounting transformation
after 16 years of working in firms, mike maksymiw, cpa, cgma, was done.
he went to his employer with his concerns about wanting to do something else. instead of encouragement to pursue another area in the firm, he was persuaded to remain on the partner track he was on. maksymiw decided he’d rather move on.
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“i didn’t have anywhere to go when i left. i just knew i needed to go,” he said. “so, after, you know, a couple pandemic busy seasons, learning about the cares act, being a national leader at the firm at that, like i was toast. so, my family and i just went to hawaii stayed there for two weeks.”
like many professionals, maksymiw knew he wanted–or rather, needed–more from his career.
“i wanted to have an impact on the profession as a whole,” maksymiw explained. “there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve been complaining about for a decade or so. and we haven’t changed enough of it.”
he decided to attend aicpa engage and develop his networking skills and build his contacts.
“i went there on purpose as a free agent to figure out like, what are the opportunities to go and make an impact in the profession because i don’t know what the job title is,” he said. “this is a weird and different kind of thing.”
maksymiw discussed his career path in the latest episode of transformation talks with bill penczak, the chief transformation officer for the center for accounting transformation. maksymiw, who is now the leader aprio’s alliance – firm foundation, offered career advice for new cpas, as well as those who are considering succession planning.
more takeaways
- firms with rigid pay schedules and little interest in developing the talents and interests of their employees could quickly find themselves losing talent to more flexible companies.
- to truly get the most of your profession, you must allow yourself to be vulnerable in your networking.
- in order for firms to evolve, maksymiw suggests professionals themselves must first do some introspection.
- there are specific, unique cultural attributes of firms that have been more successful in their transformation.
- cpas interested in succession planning must be willing to honestly examine the sustainability of the firm’s services–or risk losing retirement checks.
- firms need to be willing to get rid of “prescribed” ways to move into the partner seat.
about mike maksymiw, cpa, cgma, msa
mike maksymiw is passionate about the accounting profession, especially the sustainability of local firms. leader of aprio’s alliance – firm foundation, mike helps connect small and midsize accounting firms with the resources they need to advance client relationships, including practice management, coaching, group management, and a breadth of services to complement their depth of client knowledge, peer benchmarking, etc. maksymiw has served as a national leader of a cares act team that kept firms, clients and the public informed on changes in guidance to maximize program benefits, keep employees and strengthen businesses. growing up in a sole practitioner household, maksymiw worked for 16 years at three- to five-partner firms and knows firsthand the knowledge and wisdom gained from working in an environment where you see everything about a client, from the shoebox through the financial statements.
transcript
intro 00:07
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 presents the production of the center for accounting transformation.
bill penczak 00:30
hello, my name is bill penczak, and welcome to transformation talks. i’m your host, and i’m also the chief transformation officer for the center for accounting transformation. during these episodes, i’ll be visiting with a spectrum of firm practitioners who are successfully navigating their own changes within their firms in real-life examples of transformation in the accounting profession. with me today is mike max, i’ll let him pronounce his name was i butcher it every time,
mike maksymiw
max-em-you
bill penczak
thank you, who is the leader of the aprio, alliance firm foundation. and we’ll talk about that a little bit more. and he’s going to share some of the stories that he has, both from being on the practice side with a number of different firms. and then also as he’s evolved his own career, which i think is an interesting story, and one of maybe some interesting transformation for anybody who’s watching this. so mike, tell us a little bit about your background and get into some of the q&a that we talked about.
mike maksymiw 01:24
sure. so, i started my career at three different small firms. my initial job offer was from arthur andersen the year it imploded with worldcom and enron, which ended up having a pretty big impact on the outlook of my career, which i’m sure we’ll talk about later. so, worked for 16 years at small firms, three to five partners apiece. my father’s a solo practitioner, so i really grew up and cut my teeth at the small firms. made partner at the third one that we merged into, to a large national firm, lasted about three and a half years there, and then decided that there were a lot of impacts that could be made on the profession, and someone needed to do instead of just complaining about it. so, i hung up my practice shingle and went out trying to find a way to impact the profession and landed aprio to run their alliance of smaller cpa firms.
bill penczak 02:15
thank you. so, you were you’re on the tax side, right?
mike maksymiw 02:18
yeah, tax, and i call it tax and accounting, right? when you’re at small firms, and you’re doing tax work for clients, you’re always helping with the accounting stuff, too, because it’s not perfect. they don’t have cfos running the show and giving you a nice, neat set of books. so yeah, tax and accounting.
bill penczak 02:32
so, you recently gave an industry presentation about your own professional transformation, and not to steal the thunder of what you did already. but can you kind of talk about and give us a reader’s digest version of, of what helped you evolve, because you know, going from a big firm to a foundation like you are, and then other conversations that you and i have had, you’ve always been outspoken. you described yourself as being outspoken and even an outlier. kind of talk about some of the highlights that you featured in that presentation.
mike maksymiw 03:05
so, it kind of goes through my career journey of why i left each of the different firms. and then why i stayed at the firm that ultimately merged into marcum, the large national firm. and it boiled down to like, like being micromanaged. i didn’t like being purposely underpaid. even when i presented information that, hey, market value is x, just can you pay me that and we’re good. what i wanted to get out of my career, like i wanted to have an impact on the profession as a whole. there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve been complaining about for a decade or so. and we haven’t changed enough of it. and there’s not resources and support that are centralized for the smaller firms to get at doing that. because they don’t have the time to do it. so ultimately, what happened was, i wanted my career to go in one direction. the firm was like, no, be a line partner. and i was like, no, thanks. i’m all set. so, i’ll just go. and i didn’t have anywhere to go when i left. i just knew i needed to go. so, after you know couple pandemic busy seasons, learning about the cares act, being a national leader at the firm at that, like i was toast. so, my family and i just went to hawaii stayed there for two weeks before the last year’s engage at aicpa conference, so i went there on purpose as a free agent to figure out like, what are the opportunities to go and make an impact in the profession because i don’t know what the job title is. this is a weird and different kind of thing. so, like, who is out there that was looking for this. just put all bunch of feelers out, use my network from the leadership academy, which has been fantastic. i just kind of went and let the chips fall where they may, like i just put it out into the universe that i wanted to go make an impact and this role in aprio found me in the universe.
bill penczak 05:04
yeah, but if i do believe you make your own luck. so, the universe has to help, but you do have to make your own luck. so what? what kind of advice would you offer to a younger person who’s newer in their career and accounting? who might want to either follow your footsteps and use the core skills and knowledge that you’ve developed over your career and do something that’s slightly different? you know, i, because i think that, you know, a lot of people who want to leave public accounting, go into industry, and you know, the grass is not always greener on that side, as well. but what kind of advice would you give to a younger person, who may be frustrated by what they’re doing right now?
mike maksymiw 05:45
a couple of things. first, i agree with you that luck is kind of created. i’ve always said that, you know, good luck is when opportunity meets preparation. right. so, to get this job, i had two people in my national network that knew the person hiring for the role that said, you need to call mike. and i had never met this guy before. i’ve never heard of the firm. like, so, it was just by network that they put my name forward. so that’s one of the things that i would suggest is, go create a professional network for yourself. i got really involved in state society. so, i’ve met the best and the brightest young people and volunteers in the state society. going through the leadership academy, the aicpa was able to expand my network nationally with a bunch of superstars who do crazy cool stuff all the time. so, you stay in touch with them, you learn what they’re doing, you learn what’s out there in, in our professional universe. and you don’t have to be an expert at it. but if you’re paying attention to what your friends are doing, or what your networks doing, you kind of get a sense of what the options are and what’s available to you. because with a cpa license that we have, we can do so many different things that’s not tax or audit or consulting or industry. like my friends have cool jobs, because they’re cpas. so what fits, what you want to do is that the next question to ask yourself. if continuously reviewing the same 200 tax returns every year doesn’t sound like something you want to do for 20 more years… all right, but what lights your fire? like, i bet that your cpa can help you do that. use your network to say, i really love backs, where can i go do that? and then listen,
bill penczak 07:29
did your association with the leadership academy help that, and like so? so, you know, a lot of people probably have the same sort of thoughts as what you’ve expressed there. but then they may be reticent to talk to people within their own firm about that. and they may not have a mentor outside of their firm. you know, so certainly, networking helps you do that, but how do you find a forum to kind of pick through what you should do or what the next steps might be?
mike maksymiw 08:04
yeah. so, i guess the place to start is inside yourself. you have to be willing to be vulnerable. i, what i was able to do with our national group going through this journey to get where i am now, we had started a slack channel during the pandemic. and i just wrote, like, three pages of stream of consciousness writing of what was on my brain, and i was like, hey, don’t judge me, this is what’s going through my head right now. what do you think? and i got a lot of feedback about my thoughts, whether it was i agree with them, or what do you think of x or like, wow, that’s great that, you know, you’re able to put those fears and things that you’re worried about, like into something that you’re willing to share with someone. so, it’s a network where i was comfortable with the type of feedback i got by being vulnerable. but you’ve got to take that first step yourself. and within your group, you probably know who the one or two people are that you could trust and be vulnerable with. and then what that does is it helps develop the muscles so that when i actually went through with it, and i had to talk to the 98% of the rest of the profession who were like, you’re crazy. i had like the backing of i get that you think it’s crazy, because there’s not 6,000 of these jobs, but i only need one.
bill penczak 09:28
yeah. so, one of the things that we also talked about in the lead up to today was succession planning in firms. and, you know, obviously, there’s a, a track, a tenure track for moving up in the food chain to become a partner. not everyone wants to do that, does do that. but what’s been some of your observations with some of the firms that you’ve been associated with or maybe even your observations with some of the firms in the aprio group now, about out where the opportunities are to provide a better path forward for younger people who have some ambition?
mike maksymiw 10:07
i think that, from the current ownership standpoint, it’s, it’s acknowledging that your career has an end to its timeline. for those of us that have worked with estate and trust planning, like it’s hard to get clients to talk about death. it’s weird and uncomfortable. and that’s how i think a lot of the older partners like look at succession planning is they don’t want to talk about it, because they’re talking about the end of their career, not realizing that there’s so much more to them as a human than what their career was. but it is a big part of who they are. so, like, that’s a difficult conversation to have. but we’ve had it before in our profession. so, like we know what to do, it’s just, well, you take the step to go do it. and on the younger group side, i think we have to acknowledge that 30- and 32-year-olds are perfectly capable of being partners. they’ve got a decade of experience. the type of experience you’re getting now is different than the first 10 years of my career. they learned so much. there’s so much to do. there’s so much specialization. and if they’re on that path, like they can be ready to be a partner, like a decade into their career, especially if they’ve got the mentorship within the firm. the senior leadership like cede some of the control and allows the development of the person, don’t put it on the historical timeline of you need two years at each role, and you got to be 45, where you can be partner. and like, you’re gonna lose a superstar, 29-year-old, if she looks up and goes, “man, i ain’t doing this for 15 more years to be a partner. but i’m ready, and someone else is going to not acknowledge that.”
bill penczak 11:38
well, the other interesting thing is that the baby boomers are aging out. and so, a lot of the owners of firms are in their late 50s or early 60s. and a lot of them that i’ve talked to recently, like don’t have a plan forward. and you know, they kind of thought about it, or they kicked it around. but having either a succession plan for running the firm or a succession plan for owning the firm is something that’s really absent in a lot of firms. and so maybe talk a little bit more about millennials, who are going to become i think 75% of the workforce in the next couple of years, that they maybe march to a different drummer, and even the generations behind them are marching to a different drummer than i did as a baby boomer. how are some of the senior partners that you’ve worked with or talked to acknowledging that and maybe changing the structure within their firms to accommodate that? or do you have any good examples of firms that are doing it?
mike maksymiw 12:40
uhm, the firms that are, they recognize that, while changing the firm now doesn’t really benefit them in the short term, it benefits them in that the upcoming leadership to 30- and 40-year-olds that want to create something great, but want to do it differently, supporting them to do it differently. that’s the way to like put more eggs in the basket of somebody will be able to write my retirement check. if you keep driving home that we’re going to do it the way that it’s always worked for me, because that’s how i’m going to make the most money. that’s right, in the short term, like, you’ll still make what you were making for the last two, three years of your career. but when you want to stop, and you’re like, “alright, who’s going to buy me out based on what our partnership agreement says?” and it’s a long dusty road, with tumbleweeds blowing across it because nobody wants to do it that way. your retirement check is zero. if there’s nothing to sell, there’s no value. you know, firms don’t inherently have the value today that they had 20 years ago, where a compliance practice should be generating one or one and a half x revenues. a 30-year-olds, like, “i got 35 years left in this compliance,” isn’t what it was 20 years ago. we need to switch the client base over to advisory and if i’m doing all that work, the firm’s not worth as much if i have to go do all the work. let’s work together at it. you know, you have the relationships. let’s try to implement some of these cool things that we can help create the firm that’s going to be sustainable and valuable moving forward. and that’s going to be the revenue driver that will write your retirement check, but we need your support the last few years to move in that direction. so, like just don’t get in our way. if you want it to be awesome, support the younger crew.
bill penczak 14:35
have you seen that well done without naming names? you have some examples of either starting new practices or looking at different client bases, that a firm has done successfully?
mike maksymiw 14:53
yeah, i have. a firm i know went from one of the original founders, you know, reaching the mid-60sretirement age with a fit young 50s super go-getter, wants to change the way firms are run, managing partner in line. and what they found was… they had a plan, right? but they were able to adapt their plan. so, they said, “alright, to do a transition, we’re going to lay this out over the course of 18 months to 24 months, and this is what we’re going to try to accomplish each time. and after like, two months, they’re like, “wait, we’ve got the managing partner in the room on all of these meetings, and everybody just looks at him to figure out what the answer is. they don’t look at the new managing partner.” so, as difficult as this conversation is, old managing partner, like, you need to not show up. like, we got to let this other guy run the meeting. and visually show everybody that this is the new leadership team. and then that partner would go talk with the old managing partner and say, “alright, here’s what happened in the meeting. here’s what i’m thinking. can you give me your historical expertise on the firm? a piece i might be missing?” so, the leader didn’t just say, “well, bye, good luck.” they utilize the old managing partner’s resources in more of a one-on-one setting. and the old managing partner was a willing participant to share his knowledge for the success of the transition.
bill penczak 16:24
that required a lot of containment of his ego, i would imagine. so, i’ve got another example. here’s a client or a firm that i know of, it’s about a $30 million, i’m sorry, 30-person, $5 [million] or $6 million tax firm, and a main partner, or one of the main partners retired a number of years ago. gone. the other one retired, but he still attends all of the partner meetings, but as a role of counsel. and so—and he’s done a really, really good job of saying, like, just the language that he uses to say, “have you all thought about…”, instead of, “here’s what you need to do.” and he’s got a really good relationship with each one of the partners, especially the new managing partner that took over, that’s probably in his mid-40s or so. and so, they got the benefit of both worlds. we got the new guy in place. it’s clear that he is in charge, but also the advice and counsel of one of the founding partners that, you know, he’s kind of found his role. and he’s super comfortable with it and very respectful of the fact that there’s somebody else in charge. but i think that’s rare. i mean, he and i talked about that separately. and he said, “no, it’s this other new partner, new venture partners role, it’s not mine anymore.” and he was okay with that. but plus, he’s upped his golf game and he gets to travel a whole lot more.
mike maksymiw 17:45
here’s the fun part like about those two stories, right? we have role models. as difficult as it is for, we’ll call it most of the retiring partners, to take on that kind of mindset, you have a role model to see it done successfully. so, you can say, alright, maybe they weren’t built that way, either. but they learned, which means i can learn. so, reach out to the network, like, you, me, whoever else that you know, and say who’s done this? well, like, can you put me in touch with bill? bill knows how to do this and i’m struggling. like, and it’s okay to acknowledge that you’re struggling with something because, guess what, for 40 years of your career, you did not deal with partnership transition? you don’t…
bill penczak 18:25
you only do that once. i mean, i’ve worked i’ve worked with some investment banks before. and they always point out the fact that, that your transition, whether it’s a public accounting firm, or whether it’s a manufacturer widgets, like your, your exit is probably a once in a lifetime event. you know, there are some serial entrepreneurs, but for the most part, that and then the other fact that most of your net worth your personal net worth is tied up in the in the firm. and so, it’s really important to you. it’s real money, right? because it’s your money. and, and so, and, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. and even though one of the things i love about this industry is that everybody in the industry is really smart, but in a—certainly—in a different way. and not always in a broad sense that of, you know, knowing how to exit themselves when maybe they’re advising their clients how to do it all the time. it’s like “physician heal thyself,” right?
mike maksymiw 19:23
yeah, it’s the same way our clients come to us for our expertise, because they’re awesome manufacturing widgets. i can’t make a widget, just like, i’ve never had to transition myself out of a practice. i’m going to, i’m going to call you and say, “bill, you’ve helped firms do this before, like, what do i need to know?” like, i know i’m going to have a change management problem because that’s my personality. like, can you check me on that? like, yeah, i’ll give you permission to do that.
bill penczak 19:47
and it’s funny because if you continue to talk to people, or, like you said before about opening yourself up to be a little bit more vulnerable, you’ll soon discover that most other people are in the same boat. like i’ve heard this example before, like going to a networking event, like nobody really likes to go to those events, and everyone kind of plows through and does it. but if you start having that conversation, and as you mentioned, open yourself up a little bit, people will do the same thing. and i think you’ve got a better bond. so, whether it’s that or we’re talking about challenges that you’re having with the firm, or challenges that you’re having with transformation or transition, like if you make yourself a little bit vulnerable, others will do the same thing. but you’ve got to create that safe space for somebody to do it. and as the point you made earlier, to be self-aware of where you are and where you want to go. but it takes a little bit of even for somebody in their 60s, who’s running a successful firm, demonstrating vulnerability, i think it’s actually power.
mike maksymiw 20:50
yeah, i love that you said that. because people think that it’s a weakness all the time. like we default to vulnerability being a weakness, the same way that we think like saying, “i don’t know, let me go check on that” is a weakness because we don’t know everything. except your power and your network and the people that can help you to then go do what they’re really, really good at. and whoever you’re talking to you about it wants the best answer—not from you, they don’t want your answers. they want the best one. if you go, “let me go check with bill, he’s the expert on this,” and i connect you and then the client’s super happy, they’re going to say, “great!”
bill penczak 21:25
then the client’s super happy and the person that you introduced them to is more fulfilled and the bond that you have with them is better. and so, it’s an all-around real positive experience, right?
mike maksymiw 21:36
right. they don’t say, “hey, mike, why didn’t you know that?” well, i’ve never done it. because bill’s the expert. i don’t need to know how to do it.
bill penczak 21:43
yeah. so, when we were getting ready for this conversation, one of the things that, you know, i talked about was the story about the unicorn partner, that woman who started off as an intern of one firm, and then in a very short time was made partner. what did that firm do right? and maybe tell the story a little bit, but what did that firm do right to make that happen?
mike maksymiw 22:05
yeah, so in my travels, in my job, i was talking to one of our leadership academy, alums, and so i went out for coffee. and she was “yeah, i just made partner. i’m 32. it’s a nine-partner firm, my guess is somewhere in the $12 [million] to $20 million range, so not a small place. and her kid’s one, her husband has a job. just like her, like a professional, relatively successful one. so, i was like, can you… i need to hear more about this. because like, this is a story that everybody under the age of 35 needs to and wants to hear. because you’re a pathway. you can start a family. you can have your career. you can get to the top of it. and you can do it from intern and in 10 years, like, how does this happen? she was “well, i was really fortunate. one of the senior partners mentored me early in my career. i had a pretty good internship. they saw something in me when they hired me, and they nearly immediately started mentoring me through the different ranks.” so, and the firm had policies of “you get promoted when you should be promoted,” not, you know, once a year on january 1, we take a look at our team and we decide if they’re ready. it’s like “nah, man, it’s august 3, and you had a, like a really good project. yeah, you’re ready to go from supervisor to manager, promoted on august 3.” just do that. so that mentorship from the senior leadership really helped her put in the hard work…and she had support from her husband, where they could like trade off, like who was going to get the kids like, what were they doing? like, so, it’s not like what did just the firm do. her spouse was super supportive. even when we were having coffee, he was going to get their daughter from daycare. and then with the pandemic, and work from home being a thing that works, it made it much easier for them. because when somebody needed to stay home with the child or needed to go get them, like, it’s 20 minutes out of your day to go get your car, drive down, pick up at the daycare, bring her home. it’s not, “well, i gotta leave the office at three and i’m not working anymore because i can only work from my desk.” it’s like, “no, who cares if they took 20 minutes off?” like they might not get back on until 8:30, after they put the kid down to sleep, but they’ll get the other hour and a half of work done that day. so, if the project’s due on tuesday, and they get it done on monday night, it’s done. it doesn’t matter if it’s done at 4:30 or 8:30, right?
bill penczak 24:37
right. yeah, so kind of recap what did the firm so she had a special and supportive husband and family life that allowed her to do that. but recap, again, what the firm did that empowered her to make that transition as quickly as she did.
mike maksymiw 24:59
it was having a partner as a mentor to get her through the levels of the firm. so constantly talking with her about hey you’re doing great at this essential skill to be a staff accountant, here’s what a senior would do. try that next time. and then demonstrating that senior skill and going, alright, you know how to be a senior, now you’re a senior, and not doing that based on a date for the year, just on a when does she demonstrate the skill sets? and purposely, like, it’s pretty easy, when you’ve got that much experience to look at someone to go, “wow, you’ve got to drive to the superstar.” you know, we’re not 100% at it. but we can look through our team and be like, yep, jerry, sally, tommy. they’re good. like, they’re going to be really good. let’s go assign them some mentors. also, fill them up with the rest of the team so that you’re not just cherry-picking. because you never know who you might miss. like, you know, sebastian might be a late bloomer, but really start hitting it off in year three. you don’t want to lose that. so it’s the involvement in their career and the caring, i mean, and she stayed at the same place for all 10 years, like she didn’t hop around and jump because she had that support level.
bill penczak 26:18
do you think that millennials, in general, are better about that mentorship, because i’m a baby boomer, and i grew up in my career in the “command and control,” right? that was, after you do this for two years, and you get promoted, you’re going to have x amount more. and then three years later, you get this. and, you know, don’t talk back, don’t ask questions. don’t make eye contact, don’t do anything like that. exaggerating. and i think we’re in a, in a good way. we’re in a kinder, gentler work environment for a lot of different reasons. and even in a very conservative and staid industry, like public accounting. but do you think that as the baby boomers age out, that the new wave of millennials, and the generations behind them are expecting that and that will be a kinder, gentler industry?
mike maksymiw 27:10
i’m not sure i’d put it as kinder, gentler. i think i’d put it as, why would we hire really smart people and then tell them exactly what to do? they’ve got amazing brains. like, you know, steve jobs used to say that we don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do, we hire smart people and ask them what to do. and when we have to go through like the rigor of being a cpa, where it’s a four-year undergrad, you’ve got to get a fifth year, you got to pass one of the hardest tests in order to be one. and you’re entrusted with the financial well-being of multiple businesses, by giving them insight and advice, like, we’re not dumb. so, we shouldn’t just say, “you need to fill out the work papers this way, and sit down and be quiet and do it this way.” it’s like, “hey, what are you bringing to the table with your brain? because you’re learning different things. you’re gathering information differently.” so, i think that people expect to be asked those questions. because they are really smart. and they have been able to learn a lot and try things out in group projects in school and look at things differently and be successful at it. so i think it’s more, ask those folks what they think, is there a more efficient way, and we don’t need to micromanage them. say, “hey, the end project is, should land here. how you get there, i don’t really care. but i would love to learn how you got there, because i’ve got my idea, but you might have a better one.”
bill penczak 28:36
and again, that goes back to the vulnerability of being able to say, let’s talk about it and not just jump into it’s 1, 2, 3. and it’s prescriptive. because again, smart, smart people are going to get frustrated by that.
mike maksymiw 28:50
yeah. and i’ve had people push back, like, “well, what if they blow the budget?” like, all right, so here’s a way around that. you got a project with a 20-hour budget, right? bill, here’s a project. we want to land here. if you’re at 10 hours and you don’t think that you’re halfway done, hit the pause button. come talk to me, we’ll try to redirect you. so, you could try to get it done in like 24, instead of you coming to me at 24 and be like, “yeah, i’m not close to being done yet. i tried something; it didn’t work, you know. now i gotta go do it your way, it’s going to take me 50 hours.” well, that just stinks for everybody. right? so, you just kind of put that little piece in place that says just when you think you’re halfway done, just… let’s chat, make sure that we’re both on the same page of being halfway done.
bill penczak 29:28
but that invites a whole different conversation about value billing and the hour-by-hour. we’ll probably talk about that later, but still hourly mindset.
mike maksymiw 29:38
yes. and part of the reason why i brought it up.
bill penczak 29:43
i kind of suspected that. so, a lot of the things we’ve talked about today relate to mindset and they’re kind of softer issues that are not really black and white. where do you think, in general, kind of in summary, what are the two or three things that as managing partners or partners where even employees within firms are trying to think about transforming their environment, because we’ve been talking about a lot of soft issues today, what are the two or three things that that you would offer as advice for them?
mike maksymiw 30:17
to adopt a growth and abundance mindset.
bill penczak
say that again. you broke up a little bit.
mike maksymiw
to adopt a growth and abundance mindset. both of them, because there are two things that are a little bit different. carol dweck wrote a great book about the growth mindset that basically comes down to you’re not born with an innate set of skills. you can learn whatever you want, which i’ve learned all of this soft skill stuff, like it’s doesn’t come naturally, and it didn’t. and my mom would tell you time and again, that she would yell at me, “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” and i never understood it until like 10 years ago.
bill penczak 30:57
did you go back and thank your mom for that?
mike maksymiw 30:58
oh, of course. yeah. all the time, especially when i kind of figured out it was like, “hey, i finally get what you mean.” and then the abundance mindset of there’s so much quality work that we can do for clients, whether your industry consulting, compliance, or any aspect. like there’s enough for everybody to win. if we take those two things and put it together, it’s a really easy way to create, like that kind of safe environment to try new stuff.
bill penczak 31:31
yeah, but it does take a little bit of personal courage to do that.
mike maksymiw 31:36
it does. but for the first time in a long time, there’s so much less risk for having that personal courage.
bill penczak
yeah
mike maksymiw
because there’s so much work to do, and nowhere near enough people to do it. so, i get i went through two different recessions during my career and left two jobs during the middle of those. so, i get like, the scarcity mindset and how that drives behavior. we’re not there. and we’re not going to get there based on the complexity of what our clients are doing and the pipeline that we’re missing.
bill penczak 32:09
yeah. great. well, this has been great. as always, though, it’s great to talk to you. you and i first met on a conference call. and as soon as you opened your mouth, i knew i wanted to get to know you better. and i’m glad we kind of cultivated that over the past six months or so. so, thank you for joining me on this edition of transformation talks, and talking about the industry transformation and also kind of your own personal journey. and i encourage everyone who’s listening or watching this today to visit the center for accounting transformation website at www.improvetheworld.net. the center for accounting transformation provides business professionals with a network for utilizing innovations that are ready for adoption, the training and resources necessary to apply those innovations, and an opportunity to engage the talent and community needed to further the pursuit of innovative accounting practices that drive respectful, responsible and mindful business performance. and you can find out more at that website www.improvetheworld.net. and, if you’re interested in sharing your own transformation story, please contact us at the center website. thanks again for joining us and we’ll join you on the next transformation talk.