what do “disturbing the present” and “paradigm shift” really mean?
by marc rosenberg
the rosenberg practice management library
roberto goizueta, the late chairman of coca-cola, and certainly one of the top two or three ceos of the last 30 years, said it best: “challenging the status quo when you have been successful is difficult. if you think you will be successful running your business in the next 10 years the way you did the last 10 years, you’re out of your mind. to succeed, we have to disturb the present.”
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compared to most vocations, cpa partners make a pretty good living. their success has been attributable primarily to a combination of the following:
- bringing in business
- providing great service to clients, which results in client retention and moving clients upscale in terms of services
- strong technical skills
- developing staff into leaders
- strong interpersonal skills
other skills are also important, such as:
- providing consulting services
- niche marketing and specialization
- proficiency and comfort with computers
- getting work done by a generation of young people who have values completely different from – and in some cases, repulsive to – older partners
- dealing with periodic shortages of qualified staff in the marketplace
- providing one-stop shopping for the wide array of financial services that clients want
- holding personnel accountable for their performance, just like real businesses
there will always be firms that will continue to be successful by doing things as they have always done. but those firms are the exception. most firms realize that they must react to challenges but haven’t figured out how.
strategic thinking is critical to the future success of cpa firms. indeed, strategic thinking or visioning is critical to the future success of any organization. the following evidence supports these statements:
- in their book, “built to last,” james collins and jerry porras found that visionary companies outperformed a control group by more than six to one.
- in a study of strategic planning by law firms, those firms engaging in strategic planning significantly outperformed those that didn’t.
- in my personal experience with accounting firms, i have found that the more successful firms engage in strategic planning.
the value of brainstorming the future of your firm, creating a picture of how you would like your firm to look in five to 10 years, developing specific, measurable goals to achieve the vision, assigning the goals and their deadlines to individuals, establishing accountability for accomplishing the goals, and implementing these plans … is incalculable.
many firms that i work with are “stuck in the mud” in the strategic planning area. they have had success doing things the same way for many years. intuitively, they know they should make some changes to keep up with what they are hearing. but they don’t know how to get started. many still think that the old ways will continue to work throughout their lifetime, despite what the so-called experts say. some are afraid that the changes they will have to make are so drastic that they will no longer enjoy being a cpa.
there is a great phrase for what these “stuck in the mud” firms need to do: achieve a paradigm shift. many years ago, joel barker illuminated all of us with his legendary book and tape on paradigms. he defines paradigms as “sets of rules that govern our actions. they establish boundaries. it’s not important that the paradigms are valid. the most significant thing is that we believe the paradigms to be valid. most paradigms are self-imposed and are subconscious.”
firms that are “stuck in the mud” have what barker terms “paradigm paralysis” and need to achieve a paradigm shift. that’s the hard part. the easy part will be counting the money when it starts coming in, the result of implementing strategic initiatives.