innovation & change management

4 ways to create more capacity

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purple no. 4 billiard ballconsider creating two classes of partners.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 / succession institute

when partners plan to retire, how do we go about creating additional capacity or freeing up the necessary capacity to handle the client transitions that need to occur?

more on performance management: partner retirement and the war for clients | succession: the questions to care about | 7 succession questions to ignore for now | develop your employees or suffer the consequences | what having your employees’ backs means | 5 harmful management attitudes (and how to fix them) | job 1 for the practice owner: client management

first, all of the “c” clients, which is our shorthand way of describing the smallest clients the firm serves – who while profitable, don’t have much opportunity to hire us for additional services – should not be transitioned to partners, but rather to managers.
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how to find a partner’s replacement

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man choosing someone's face from a photo arrayshould you add a partner … or capacity? they’re not the same thing.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 / succession institute

let’s assume you have a retiring partner. you have decided how to pay the partner for his/her value in the firm, you have pinned down the mandatory sale of ownership date (mso) so you can phase that partner out of his or her leadership role in the firm, and you have covered the single most abused part of the succession process, which is client transition. it is now time to discuss how to find replacements for the retiring senior partners.

more on performance management: action plans for transitioning partners | partner retirement and the war for clients | succession: the questions to care about | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | cpa firm performance assessments: 15 core competencies, 21 questions | how to target what skills to develop now

goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

the most commonly asked question on this topic is “how can we find people with the same technical skills, management ability, client service capacity and vision for the firm’s future as those who are leaving?” the simple answer is “you won’t, so stop looking for that exact combination.”
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action plans for transitioning partners

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four people meeting for business lunchthe transition process is about making the retiring partner less attractive as the client’s first point of contact.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 / succession institute

the key to the client transition process is the action plan that the transitioning partner needs to follow for each client.

more on performance management: partner retirement and the war for clients | how retirement issues affect succession planning | 7 succession questions to ignore for now | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | how to target what skills to develop now | job 1 for the practice owner: client management

for a small tax client, the directive could be as simple as a one-year transition and turning it over to whoever has been assigned to take over that account. for example, the action plan might be something like:

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turning problems into opportunities

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business concept:problem solution success

what the highly successful do by habit and the rest of us need to learn the hard way.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间

every accounting firm has a problem. sometimes many problems. something is preventing exponential growth or inhibiting sales or tangling up the it system or requiring too many weekends at the office or causing clients to drift away or… well, the list could go on forever. no organization is perfect any more than any human being is perfect or any machine is perfectly efficient. somewhere in every firm there is a problem which, if solved, would make the firm better.

you need to find that problem and solve it. you need a system. here’s how some of the smartest people we know go about tackling their problems. read more →

best practices for client transition

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man watching handshake between two womenimproper transitions can lead to reduced retirement benefits.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 / succession institute

when a partner is retiring, there is a transition process that we recommend. let’s break it down into a few simple steps:

more on performance management: how client transition is abused | best practices for mandatory retirement | how retirement issues affect succession planning | succession: the questions to care about | 7 succession questions to ignore for now | how partner ratings factor into equity | hazards of not reallocating equity | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | develop your employees or suffer the consequences | cpa firm performance assessments: 15 core competencies, 21 questions | how to target what skills to develop now | what having your employees’ backs means | 5 harmful management attitudes (and how to fix them) | do cpa firms need management or leadership? |  job 1 for the practice owner: client management

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3 rules for asking great tax-return questions

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preserve your sanity, amaze your clients.question marks

by frank stitely

asking clients great questions is central to ruthlessly efficient workflow management (r.e.w.).

more: there are no easy answers  |  the 3 biggest tech failures of accounting firms  |  debunking the demise of the cpa firm  | how to thrive as a 21st-century firm   |  7 steps to effective project management  | how many tax preparers do you need?   |  wip-ing clients into shape

goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

great client questions can save hundreds of hours of time during tax season and prevent projects from falling behind schedule. here’s an example of questions done badly.

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partner retirement and the war for clients

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retirement plan label on folderbonus checklist: 8 best uses for a retiring partner.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 / succession institute

once a firm is ready to phase out a partner in retirement, it’s time to move on to the client transition process. but this is the single most abused part of the entire succession process.

more on performance management: best practices for mandatory retirement | how retirement issues affect succession planning | 7 succession questions to ignore for now | how partner ratings factor into equity | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | cpa firm performance assessments: 15 core competencies, 21 questions | what having your employees’ backs means | 5 harmful management attitudes (and how to fix them)

the reason why this part of the process is the most abused is because both sides – the partner nearing mso (henceforth referred to as retiring partners or retired partners) and the remaining partners – are motivated to do the wrong things. for example, it is in the best interest of retiring partners to not transition their clients because if they don’t, the firm will need to keep them around to continue to work on them after mso. if this isn’t bad enough, because they did not transition their clients properly, the retired partners have a great deal of leverage since they are now entitled to their full retirement pay and still have control over some or most of their client base. this allows the retired partners to gain additional benefits from the partner group by basically reselling their clients to them again. unfortunately, this situation is more the norm than the exception.
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best practices for mandatory retirement

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time to retire clock facethe work retired partners should – and shouldn’t – do if they stay on.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 / succession institute

once “fair” retirement benefits have been determined, for this moment in time, we can move on to the next step in building our succession plan. the reason i mention that we are simply putting stakes in the ground is because as we set additional stakes in the ground, those new stakes might require us to rethink a decision made when setting a previous stake.

more on performance management: how retirement issues affect succession planning | how partner ratings factor into equity | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | develop your employees or suffer the consequences

for example, if the firm later establishes premium perks for past owners who want to continue to work for the firm after sale of ownership, then that might require reassessing the retirement benefit calculation agreed to when setting that earlier stake (because in the end, the retirement benefit is about the whole package offered, not just one component).
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how retirement issues affect succession planning

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an old-school bronze justice scale with inequal stacks of moneyif you believe your firm will be dysfunctional without you, now is the time to fix it.

by bill reeb, dominic cingoranelli, and tommye barie
the succession institute

when we take our clients through succession planning, eventually the focus turns to implementing the best practices for running a firm – but first we normally have to start with short-term retirement issues.

more on performance management: succession: the questions to care about | how partner ratings factor into equity | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | cpa firm performance assessments: 15 core competencies, 21 questions | what having your employees’ backs means

why? because typically you won’t get any buy-in for change until the partners have looked at whether the current retirement system is paying at least roughly a fair market value to the near-term retiring partners.

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succession: the questions to care about

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track and field athletes passing relay baton. studio shot over white.bonus checklists: 5 rules to govern a succession plan. 8 keys to an effective compensation system.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli

we’ve seen a lot of frequently shared, misdirected advice on commonly discussed succession issues. we would rather stop focusing on symptoms and start focusing on resolving the root cause issues that a good succession plan should address.

more on performance management: 7 succession questions to ignore for now | hazards of not reallocating equity | develop your employees or suffer the consequences | how to target what skills to develop now | what having your employees’ backs means

our solution: the robust succession framework

first and foremost, good succession management is a function of good business operating practices. over and over, we find successful firms – including many that have even effectively retired partners in the past – that are overlooking some very important best practices.
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7 succession questions to ignore for now

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serious-looking businessman in front of empty conference roomthere’s some misdirection in succession management out there.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 / succession institute

you can’t go a week without seeing some article or blog focused on succession management and everyone seems to have a different opinion as to what is important when addressing succession. so, we thought it was time we challenged some of the more common misconceptions.

more on performance management: how partner ratings factor into equity | hazards of not reallocating equity | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | develop your employees or suffer the consequences | 5 harmful management attitudes (and how to fix them) | do cpa firms need management or leadership?

the first thing most authors want to focus on with succession is the development of future leaders. then the dialogue will shift quickly to mentoring programs, leadership training and more. well, it would be hypocritical for us to disagree with this because we actually develop and conduct these kinds of programs. however, training such as this is only valuable after many other issues are addressed first. so, while it is important, i guess the best phrase to describe this is “first things first,” and this is not first by any stretch of the imagination.

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nine factors for dividing the partner pie

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cut pie chart on plate flanked by fork and knifehow to decide who gets how much voting power.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli

people who can lead, develop, train and supervise others are worth much more than those who can just make themselves faster, better and stronger.

equity ownership allocation is a critical success factor if you expect your firm to continue after you leave.  for many firms, reallocation of equity ownership is or will be an important part of succession planning.  while it can cause some anxiety for your owners’ group as you go through the process, it’s better to confront the issues now, to help ensure that your firm is in good hands after your leave. it’s not necessarily easy, but it must be addressed for long-term success.

more on performance management: hazards of not reallocating equity | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | develop your employees or suffer the consequences | cpa firm performance assessments: 15 core competencies, 21 questions | do cpa firms need management or leadership?

when you are deciding which partners should have more say (or less say, which is just as important), you need to consider issues such as whose judgment partners trust, who is pulling the wagon, who consistently acts in the firm’s best interest, or who is viewed as a current or future leader. with this in mind, here are nine areas to evaluate or each partner: read more →