the nine essential personal commitments each partner must make.
by robert j. lees and august j. aquila
creating the effective partnership
a firm’s success is ultimately tied to its partners’ performance. and yet, improving partner performance is one of the key issues facing the majority of firm leaders today. read more →
nine questions to test your mettle.
by robert j. lees and august j. aquila
creating the effective partnership
not every cpa firm can be the market leader. but every firm can strive to be the best at everything they do. read more →
job #1: setting direction.
by robert j. lees and august j. aquila
how to engage partners in the firm’s future
there are many reasons why too many managing partners fail to truly engage their partners, especially as no managing partner we know ever sets out to fail. read more →
how the best managing partners gain commitment.
by robert j. lees and august j. aquila
creating the effective partnership
in the very best firms, the partners debate the options and, while it is incredibly rare for every partner to agree with every single aspect of the vision and strategy, the partners agree to line up behind the ultimate decisions. read more →
four checklists for thinking through the process, picking the right candidate and making it work.
by august aquila
creating the effective partnership
it seems that you can’t pick up a newspaper today without reading about a merger of national, regional or local firms.
if you are a partner in a cpa firm that is contemplating a merger, you are about to enter into an extremely risky venture. this article will help you to lessen your risk and give you a better chance of having a successful merger. read more →
survey of 150 chief executives also shows 10 ways they stay there.
by robert j. lees and
august j. aquila
creating the effective partnership
this article builds on two extensive bodies of research. the first, to which we refer briefly, is on what differentiates those managing partners who make a substantive difference to their firm’s performance from their peers. to add to our anecdotal understanding of this difference together with our years of desk research, we asked 150 practicing and managing partners from the u.s. and europe what they believed truly successful managing partners did to make a real difference. the result of this study is an in-depth understanding of the leadership attitudes and behaviors of successful managing partners. read more →
…survey, the seers for 2014 include: jennifer wilson: the baby boomers take control roman kepczyk: post-tax season tech boom august aquila: partners already checked out jeff pawlow: replacing the rainmakers…
passion. succession. growth.
see the complete 2014 roundtable
by august aquila
creating the effective partnership
analysis
the biggest issues that i am seeing revolve around partner engagement (commitment), succession issues and growth. the economy has been pretty much in a no-growth environment the last 12 months.
markets are becoming saturated by the national and super-regional firms. many secondary markets now have five or more of these players going after the same clients. the result is that this competition drives down fees and we are training clients to constantly go out for bids.
outlook
i personally don’t see a lot of change in the economy in the near future. succession, growth, commitment will continue to be major issues for a lot of small to mid-size firms.
how to create a fair and effective comp plan that unites partners and pushes the firm forward.
by robert j. lees and august j. aquila
creating the effective partnership
the right partner performance bonus plan encourages and rewards partners for achieving firm, team and individual goals, enabling the partners to see a clear cause-and-effect relationship between what they do, what it means to the firm and how they get rewarded.
unfortunately, in too many firms, partners can’t see these linkages. the compensation system is a failure.
consider, for a moment, these six questions for your firm: read more →
from why and when to who and how.
by august aquila
creating the effective partnership
acquiring or merging another firm has become one of the most popular ways to grow a practice.
for seven big reasons: read more →
how leaders can adopt the three modes of learning for change and improvement.
by august aquila
creating the effective partnership
the best leaders, managers and managing partners practice what i call the push down theory of accounting.
they take a certain percentage of the billable or administrative time they performed last year and give it to someone else to do. this frees them to do things that are worth more to the overall practice. but it requires a personal commitment. read more →
dealing with dysfunctional partners: the six-step process.
by august aquila
creating the effective partnership
as much as you would like to, you cannot ignore them; nor can you accept them as they are. doing that would be unfaithful to your core principles and ultimately cause more harm to the firm than any one of them is worth.
that leaves us with three options: rehabilitate them, fire them or place them outside of the firm. but first, be sure it’s not you.
how to become and remain competitive in the marketplace.
by robert j. lees and august j. aquila
creating the effective partnership
the challenge in designing the right system for the firm’s context is ensuring it motivates the partners to deliver the initiatives the firm needs to be successful.
if compensation is supposed to motivate and reward productive behavior and outcomes, and discourage non-productive behavior and outcomes, then you must ask yourself, “how well are we doing?”
we don’t claim that our recommended system is perfect since we know that the perfect compensation system does not exist. we do feel, though, that it encompasses the critical elements needed for leaders to better engage and reward partners.
we believe that if a firm wants to maximize its performance and keep its partners motivated and engaged, then it needs to design a compensation plan, which includes the following elements: read more →
