seven steps to leverage the power of positivity in your firm, your career and your life

success comes to those who go out and find it.

by nick keseric

so what’s wrong in being upbeat and positive? nothing at all. this is not about rose colored glasses.

nick keseric
nick keseric

more on the entrepreneurial accountant:  nine bridges to cross in business development for accounting firms  | if business development is a circus at your firm…   |  my attitude??? what’s wrong with my @#$%! attitude?  |  curious minds want to know: are you helping or selling?  |  the six-step roadmap for cpa change agents  |  20 biz dev ideas for your career and your firm  |

given today’s world, if you are waiting for good things to happen to you, you better get a comfortable chair because that train isn’t coming towards you. success comes from effort. our own individual effort. and having a positive attitude and being upbeat plays a huge role in obtaining success.

this has as much to do with us as individuals as it does about us as a profession. the professionals in accounting are among of the most respected of all the professions. given that foundation, how we deal with others can only enhance an already proud and powerful profession.

read more →

when is it best for partners to stay together and when is it best to part?

making the partnership work seven ways to sunday.

by marc rosenberg, cpa

sometimes a parting of ways is best because the partners are simply incompatible. people change. their values change. their priorities change. when these changes become so huge as to produce constant conflict, it may be best to shake hands and part ways.

more marc: pick your partners right to begin with  •  the first nine questions your partner team needs to embrace for optimal profitability  • profitability and the value of strategic thinking  • the five essential building blocks for creating a strong accounting firmthe seven signs of great leadership in a cpa firmcompensation issues for the new managing partner  • 20 decisions for your firm’s new partner compensation committee  • three ways to break partner gridlock in an accounting firm  • what partners are entitled to, and what they’re not entitled to | how to make partner?  • why accounting firm partners are “popping prozac like m&m’s”

what does it take for partners to stay together?

here are seven critical requirements: read more →

are partner retreats really worth the cost?

how to do it right.

here at 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间, ed mendlowitz answers some of the toughest questions practitioners can throw at him. he’s the right one to ask. after more than 40 years in the business – building his own practice, running the firm, and eventually selling it to a major regional firm, withumsmith+brown, where he remains a senior partner and consultant to professional services clients – he has the answers.

browse more from ed here:   audit reports without doing the work?  | should i really spend the time making checklists?   |  what’s a tax practice worth today?preparing to sell your practice in a few years? 13 things you need to know today     |    10 questions to ask yourself before you decide to add financial services to your practice   |  why selling your practice is not a retirement strategy | congratulations! you bought a tax practice. now what? | how accountants can keep the business when a client wants to sell theirs | 10 reasons clients don’t pay, and what to do about it | 13 reasons timesheets will never die

question: is there any value to a retreat? read more →

the seven signs of great leadership in a cpa firm

how strong management spells the most reliable path to profits.

by marc rosenberg, cpa

if partners of firms across the country were asked what the key was to the success of legendary fortune 500 companies such as general electric, coca-cola, ibm and countless others, i’m sure that the words “strong management” and “strong leadership” would dominate their responses. yet, ask those same partners to evaluate their own firms’ management, and if they are honest, their responses would not be very flattering.

marc rosenberg
marc rosenberg

related: compensation issues for the new managing partner | 20 decisions for your firm’s new partner compensation committee | three ways to break partner gridlock in an accounting firm | what partners are entitled to, and what they’re not entitled to | how to make partner? | why accounting firm partners are “popping prozac like m&m’s” | more…

of all of the techniques for improving cpa firm profitability, none is more effective than strong management and leadership. yet, nothing is more elusive. why is this?

read more →

herding cats: change management for cpa firms

eight good tips for getting everyone on board when change is scary.

change is inevitable. but with a crashing a crashing economy, it is also treacherous, which makes these suggestion from august aquila all the more urgent.

1. know where you want to go. what are you trying to achieve as a firm and a partner group? while it’s always difficult to address the elephant in the room, now is the time to take advantage of the economic turmoil and bring all issues to the table.

2. get others involved. if you are the only one in the firm who is pushing for the change, you might as well forget about it. when others get involved they also get committed. they provide you with feedback so that you can develop the best steps in the change process. read more →

what it means to be a partner

11 tests to measure the health of your firm’s partner group. 

click for download

by robert j. lees and august j. aquila
new research report, instant download: leadership at its best: what successful managing partners do (pdf, 17 pages) 

partners are the culture in a professional service firm – what they believe, what they reward, what they do and how they do it determines what and how things get done. but, one of the problems we consistently hear about is the lack of clarity in what being a partner means. and, in the absence of clarity the partners typically fill the gap by doing what they think it means, with all of the differences of thought and behavior that inevitably brings. it’s these differences in behavior that result in firms failing to maximize their potential.

so, how do firms overcome this lack of clarity and ensure the partner group set the right example and consistently deliver the performance the firm needs to be successful?

in our over twenty years working with professional service firms, we have seen many attempts to provide greater clarity from sophisticated competency frameworks through balanced scorecards to highly personalized objective-based compensation systems. the problem is that none of them (or even all of them together) ever works well enough without the critical link between partner behavior and what the firm is trying to achieve and what the partners have to do to deliver it. only when that overt linkage exists and becomes part of every partner’s dna do any other initiatives have a chance of working.

read more →

when a partner is unwilling to help

maybe the problem is you.

here at 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间, ed mendlowitz answers some of the toughest questions practitioners can throw at him. he’s the right one to ask. after more than 40 years in the business – building his own practice, running the firm, and eventually selling it to a major regional firm, withumsmith+brown, where he remains a senior partner and consultant to professional services clients – he has the answers. we’re happy to have him at 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. send your questions for ed here, or chime in with comments below.

meanwhile, browse more from ed here: what to do when you lose your biggest client  |  congratulations! you bought a tax practice. now what? | how accountants can keep the business when a client wants to sell theirs | 10 reasons clients don’t pay, and what to do about it | 13 reasons timesheets will never die |

— rick telberg
president / ceo

question: my tax partner gives me a hard time when i ask her for assistance.  is there anything i can do to get her to be more responsive?

read more →

20 decisions for your firm’s new partner compensation committee

partners need to be something more than production machines. [checklist included.]

by marc rosenberg, cpa

increasingly, cpa firms are adopting the compensation committee system for allocating partner income.  firms are finding that systems such as formulas, pay based on ownership percentage or pay-equal no longer work.  when we compare the usage of the compensation committee today to 5 years ago, the increase in usage ranges from 16% to 26%.

if there is one overarching cause for this significant trend, it’s that firms are understanding that their partners need to be something more than production machines.  in addition to bringing in business, managing a client base and working billable hours (all of which continue to be important values in a compensation committee), partners need to excel in intangible areas such as helping staff grow and develop, developing specialized expertise and teamwork.  the compensation committee is one of the best systems available to cpa firms to allocate income based on this diverse array of performance criteria.

more marc rosenberg practice management trends and guidance: three ways to break partner gridlock in an accounting firm  | what partners are entitled to, and what they’re not entitled to | how to make partner?  |  why accounting firm partners are “popping prozac like m&m’s”  |  the 15-item checklist for your next partner retreat |  five key responsibilities for a new partner  |  planning a partner retreat for real results  |  6 steps to get your business to the next level  |  the 10 biggest mistakes in reading map statistics  |  re-engineering partner accountability  |  marc rosenberg: why cpas aren’t making more money [video]  |  marc rosenberg: slow learners need not apply  |  10 to-do’s for a partner buyout

when firms begin operating their new compensation committees, there is a lot of initial confusion and bewilderment about how to get started.  for example: read more →

three ways to break partner gridlock in an accounting firm

when one-partner, one-vote isn’t working. 

by marc rosenberg, cpa
author of how to bring in new partners

most firms vote on a one-person, one-vote basis despite varying ownership percentages.

more marc rosenberg practice management trends and guidance: what partners are entitled to, and what they’re not entitled to | how to make partner?  |  why accounting firm partners are “popping prozac like m&m’s”  |  the 15-item checklist for your next partner retreat |  five key responsibilities for a new partner  |  planning a partner retreat for real results  |  6 steps to get your business to the next level  |  the 10 biggest mistakes in reading map statistics  |  re-engineering partner accountability  |  marc rosenberg: why cpas aren’t making more money [video]  |  marc rosenberg: slow learners need not apply  |  10 to-do’s for a partner buyout

but is that always the best way? here are three better ways.

read more →

what a coach can do for you – and your firm

five tough questions and five good tips to take your firm and your personal effectiveness to the next level.

gary adamson, former managing partner of brady ware cpas, has become a living legend in the profession for taking his firm from a small, local player to a regional contender. but he’s the first to admit he didn’t do it alone. coaching helped. in fact, during his career at the firm, he used two business coaches.

more from gary adamson at 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间: how to balance the six jobs of managing partner  |  the partner compensation checklist  |  how cpa firms make money in turbulent times

he learned a lot, and now he’s sharing what he learned with 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间.

read more →

what partners are entitled to…

…and what they’re not entitled to. 

partners are entitled to a lot. at some firms, they are virtually royalty. but that’s no way to run a firm these days.

here, marc rosenberg, cpa, and author of how to bring in new partners and a 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 affiliate, lists what every partner – especially new and wanna-be partners – need to understand.

more from marc rosenberg:  how to make partner? | why accounting firm partners are “popping prozac like m&m’s” | the 15-item checklist for your next partner retreat | five key responsibilities for a new partner | planning a partner retreat for real results | 6 steps to get your business to the next level | the 10 biggest mistakes in reading map statistics | re-engineering partner accountability | marc rosenberg: why cpas aren’t making more money [video] | marc rosenberg: slow learners need not apply | 10 to-do’s for a partner buyout

a partner is entitled to:

1. attend partner meetings and retreats.

2. have access to all confidential firm financial data.

3. receive a return on capital; repayment of capital when he/she leaves the firm. read more →

can you be trusted as a leader?

dan mccarthy

20 signs you can’t.

if paychex inc. knows something about leadership — and considering their position in the market, they might — then dan mccarthy may have had something to do with it.

dan was responsible at paychex for executive training and development, including succession planning, at a time when the company was consistently named a fortune magazine “great place to work,” a “training magazine top 125” training organization, and a bersin “high impact learning organization.” since 2011, he’s been director of executive development programs at the whittemore school of business and economics at the university of new hampshire in durham, n.h.

lately, he’s been thinking — and worrying — about the difficulties that leaders and managers face from the effects of the great recession. “job satisfaction has decreased since the beginning of the recession in 2008,” he notes. and 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research by bay street group llc bears him out in the tax and accounting industry.

some of the damage may be self-inflicted. here dan lists “20 signs you can’t be trusted as a leader:” read more →