{"id":130091,"date":"2024-09-10t00:00:52","date_gmt":"2024-09-10t04:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.g005e.com\/?p=130091"},"modified":"2024-09-14t08:23:05","modified_gmt":"2024-09-14t12:23:05","slug":"alan-whitman-stop-accepting-the-status-quo-the-disruptors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2024\/09\/10\/alan-whitman-stop-accepting-the-status-quo-the-disruptors\/","title":{"rendered":"alan whitman: stop accepting the status quo | the disruptors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>the firms that shift from billable hours to value outcomes will win. plus 10 key takeaways.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding: 56.25% 0 0 0; position: relative;\"><iframe style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" title=\"[preview] alan whitman: stop accepting the status quo | the disruptors\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1002186997?h=8591c31f9f&amp;autoplay=1&amp;&amp;muted=1&amp;loop=1&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_selres_start\">?<\/span><\/iframe><\/div>\n<h6 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #919191;\">this is a preview. the complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to pro members | <a href=\"https:\/\/goprocpa.com\">go pro here<\/a><\/span><\/h6>\n<p><strong>the disruptors<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-96261\" src=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/the-disruptors-with-liz-farr-and-cpat-hdr-vf-2022.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"145\" srcset=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/the-disruptors-with-liz-farr-and-cpat-hdr-vf-2022.png 1600w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/the-disruptors-with-liz-farr-and-cpat-hdr-vf-2022-300x171.png 300w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/the-disruptors-with-liz-farr-and-cpat-hdr-vf-2022-600x343.png 600w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/the-disruptors-with-liz-farr-and-cpat-hdr-vf-2022-424x242.png 424w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/the-disruptors-with-liz-farr-and-cpat-hdr-vf-2022-849x485.png 849w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/the-disruptors-with-liz-farr-and-cpat-hdr-vf-2022-768x439.png 768w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/the-disruptors-with-liz-farr-and-cpat-hdr-vf-2022-1536x877.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 254px) 100vw, 254px\" \/><\/strong><br \/>\n<em>with liz farr<\/em><\/p>\n<p>alan whitman wants to break the mold of public accounting. he wants to end the billable hour and the siloed practices that characterize how many firms have operated for decades. as whitman says, \u201cwe\u2019re here to serve clients, we\u2019re here to deliver great value. but do we really need to do it the way we\u2019ve been doing it since before my father was in the workforce?\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>more <\/strong><strong>podcasts and videos:<\/strong>\u00a0 <a href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/?p=129835\">sean duncan: discover your own genius<\/a> | <a href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2024\/08\/27\/ingrid-edstrom-true-wealth-is-not-financial-the-disruptors\/\">ingrid edstrom: true wealth is not financial<\/a> | <a href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2024\/08\/13\/caleb-jenkins-firm-growth-requires-owners-to-shift-roles-the-disruptors\/\">caleb jenkins: firm growth requires owners to shift roles<\/a> | <a href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2024\/08\/02\/chris-hervochon-be-the-leader-you-want-to-work-for-disruptors\/\">chris hervochon: be the leader you want to work for<\/a> | <a href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2024\/07\/23\/the-disruptors-with-liz-farr-ira-rosenbloom-dont-merge-for-the-money-rosenbloom-disruptors\/\">ira rosenbloom: don&#8217;t merge for the money<\/a> |\u00a0<a href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/?p=126845\">adam lean: get out of the accountant&#8217;s trap<\/a> |\u00a0<a href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/?p=126836\">geraldine carter: charging more is better for your clients<\/a> |\u00a0<a href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2024\/07\/02\/vimal-bava-when-working-smarter-not-harder-is-the-only-option\/\">vimal bava: when working smarter, not harder, is the only option<\/a> |<a href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2024\/05\/21\/liz-farr-disruptors-dawn-brolin-says-grow-your-tax-and-accounting-firm-by-shrinking-it\/\"> dawn brolin says grow your firm by shrinking it<\/a> |\u00a0<a href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2024\/03\/07\/the-disruptors-jason-blumer-move-leaders-out-of-client-service\/\">jason blumer &amp; julie shipp: move leaders out of client service<\/a> | <a style=\"background-color: #ffffff;\" href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2023\/11\/02\/the-disruptors-james-graham-focus-on-the-true-needs-of-your-clients-richtr-financial-studios\/\">james graham: drop the billable hour and you&#8217;ll bill more<\/a> |\u00a0<a style=\"background-color: #ffffff;\" href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2023\/10\/30\/disruptors-karen-reyburn-fix-your-marketing-and-fix-your-business-video-podcast\/\">karen reyburn: fix your marketing and fix your business<\/a> | <a style=\"background-color: #ffffff;\" href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2023\/10\/21\/giles-pearson-swap-experience-for-education-to-solve-the-staffing-shortage\/\">giles pearson: fix the staffing crisis by swapping experience for education<\/a> | <a style=\"background-color: #ffffff;\" href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2023\/10\/07\/jina-etienne-practice-fearless-inclusion\/\">jina etienne: practice fearless inclusion<\/a> |\u00a0<a style=\"background-color: #ffffff;\" href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2023\/08\/27\/bill-penczak-stop-forcing-smart-people-to-do-stupid-work\/\">bill penczak: stop forcing smart people to do stupid work<\/a> |\u00a0<a style=\"background-color: #ffffff;\" href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2023\/08\/21\/sandra-wiley-staffing-problem-check-your-culture\/\">sandra wiley: staffing problem? check your culture<\/a> | <a style=\"background-color: #ffffff;\" href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2023\/07\/27\/scott-scarano-first-grow-people-then-firm-growth-can-follow\/\">scott scarano: first, grow people. then firm growth can follow<\/a> |<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #c9990a;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cpatwpe.s3.amazonaws.com\/cpatrendlines\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/yellow_key_clip_art-e1375897299811-36p-hi-1-e1603911598474.jpg\" alt=\"goprocpa.com\" width=\"39\" height=\"16\" \/>\u00a0exclusively for pro members.\u00a0<a style=\"color: #c9990a;\" href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-login.php?redirect_to=\/\/www.g005e.com\/2021\/02\/05\/22-predictions-for-2021\/\">log in here<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<a class=\"external\" style=\"color: #c9990a;\" href=\"http:\/\/goprocpa.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2022世界杯足球排名 today<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>while \u201cmost firms believe that billable hours are the holy grail,\u201d whitman points out that \u201cthe client isn\u2019t necessarily buying billable hours.\u201d instead, clients buy the outcomes and \u201cthe intellectual capital you\u2019re delivering to them.\u201d he believes that \u201cthe firm that can shift from production, from billable hours to outcomes, is going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>as ceo of baker tilly, he pushed through changes that tripled the firm&#8217;s size and increased collaboration. like law, medicine, and architecture, accounting is a technician-based profession, and \u201cmost of your identity is based on what you do,\u201d which can lead to siloes within a practice. but whitman argues that to deliver the appropriate solutions, \u201cyour responsibility is to not only deliver what you can deliver, it\u2019s also to deliver what other people in the organization can deliver,\u201d so the client is \u201cgetting what they need to prosper.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding: 56.25% 0 0 0; position: relative;\"><iframe style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" title=\"alan whitman: stop accepting the status quo\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1002187126?h=c0f7dbfa22&amp;autoplay=1&amp;&amp;muted=1&amp;loop=1&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_selres_start\">?<\/span><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>while whitman\u2019s constant talk at baker tilly about collaboration was initially seen almost as a joke, \u201cdoing things with others was where the secret sauce came.\u201d people recognized that through collaboration, the firm would \u201cachieve more greatness than we could have with 6,000 individuals working by themselves. this culture of collaboration&#8230; was critical to the success of baker tilly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>however, switching to a culture of collaboration required new performance metrics so that \u201cpeople realize that operating solely by themselves was not going to enable them to achieve the results they wanted.\u201d the new horizontal performance metrics valued cross-selling, collaboration, and bringing new opportunities outside of an individual\u2019s organization.<\/p>\n<p>besides revamping performance metrics, \u201cwe broke down silos. we brought people out of practices to work on firm initiatives, rather than rather than just their practice initiatives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>10 key takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>instead of thinking, \u201cthis is my client,\u201d shift to \u201cthis is a client i look after.\u201d this is a book of business i will steward for a few years or for my career, and then i will hand it off to the next person.<\/li>\n<li>your clients aren\u2019t buying billable hours \u2013 they\u2019re buying the outcomes and the intellectual capital of the deliverables.<\/li>\n<li>your strategy is to deliver the best services to the client and what they need to succeed. you may need to widen your aperture and bring others in to serve the client as \u201cwe\u201d versus \u201cme.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>the client should be the client of the firm. we don\u2019t want famous person relationships. we want famous people to provide great service so clients get what they need.<\/li>\n<li>stop the career non-value-added tasks. if someone stops learning after 300 tax returns, the next 700 add no value to their career. move that person to other areas to learn new skills.<\/li>\n<li>overcome resistance to change by removing emotion from it. people can hate it or love it, but the strategic change is for the betterment of the organization.<\/li>\n<li>to be a people-centric organization, build bespoke development plans and experiences for everyone and eliminate career non-value-added tasks.<\/li>\n<li>we must make transformational improvements to make the profession attractive to young people. we can\u2019t just make incremental improvements.<\/li>\n<li>stop accepting the status quo. be curious.<\/li>\n<li>the biggest mistake you can make is not learning from your mistakes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<figure id=\"attachment_130092\" class=\"thumbnail wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 201px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-130092 size-thumbnail\" src=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/alan-whitman-fullres-201x201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"201\" height=\"201\" srcset=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/alan-whitman-fullres-201x201.jpg 201w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/alan-whitman-fullres-100x100.jpg 100w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/alan-whitman-fullres-24x24.jpg 24w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/alan-whitman-fullres-48x48.jpg 48w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/alan-whitman-fullres-96x96.jpg 96w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/alan-whitman-fullres-150x150.jpg 150w, \/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/alan-whitman-fullres-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 201px) 100vw, 201px\" \/><figcaption class=\"caption wp-caption-text\">whitman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em><strong>more about alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/em><em>alan whitman is a seasoned executive and highly recognized leader known for his ability to inspire and navigate people around bold ideas and uncomfortable change. <\/em><em>during his nearly decade-long tenure as chairman and chief executive officer of baker tilly us, the cpa and accounting firm grew revenue by 3x, went global for the first time while expanding into 15 new domestic markets, and completed over 20 mergers and acquisitions in a matter of a few years. <\/em><em>alan now operates an advisory business where he shares his experience to help ceos and their key stakeholders break the mold\u2122 of long-time operating principles and conventional thinking so they can inspire and navigate intentional change.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>transcript<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>frst of all, can you give listeners a little bit of an overview of your career in accounting?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>sure, for whatever reason, i decided i wanted to be an accountant and i ninth grade in high school, and i wanted to go work for arthur andersen. i have no idea how i even knew what arthur andersen who arthur andersen was, i think it was actually the accounting firm of the company. my father worked for a big printing ink ink company, pretty printing company anyway. i&#8217;m a public accounting brat. i started with the big eight that i wasn&#8217;t the big 654. i then left and went to a very small firm who we quickly merged into what is now baker tilly mattacks by by back type guy by background. i had some wonderful coaches and bosses along the way and i added some bad ones too. as i got became a part of baker tilly, i was immediately asked to build an international practice. making the firm international capable and savvy working with the network firms around the world. i did that for eight or nine years came back was the managing partner of a couple different practices. and lo and behold, one day i found myself being elected to be the next ceo of a storied organization that had been around since 1931. i was taking over for for a wonderful leader in tim christian who had become the aicpa chair, the year after i or the his last year with the firm. and i was the ceo of baker tilly acting and ceo of baker tilly from june one of 2015 to march of 2022, when i retired from the firm, and it was a wonderful experience i met a lot of great people have made a slew of friends. and along the way, we had massive success in taking what was known as a first generation high flying principally regional firm, to a national and global firm, leading the league in in organic and inorganic growth over that eight or nine year period when i was leading the organization. so as i said, public accounting brett through and through and tax guy by background.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>well, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s great. and it&#8217;s not too often that i have somebody on my podcast to comes from the big firms. you know, a lot of the people that i talked to are leaders of pretty small firms, pretty little micro firms. but you came to my attention because you&#8217;ve been on the podcast circuit. and i you&#8217;ve said a few things that i think will really resonate with the listeners. now know during your time as ceo at baker, tilly, you accomplished a lot of great things. you were tremendous growth, you doubled the workforce, you expanded internationally. and at that time, baker tilly was one of the fastest growing cpa firms in the us. now how did you make this happen?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>first of all, i want to change one thing you said we accomplished quite a bit. yes, i was the ceo. and i led the charge. and i did it with a whole lot of people, a lot of great people. so yes, we tripled the size of the firm, i think more than tripled the workforce count. how did we do it? specifically, liz, we designed a strategy. we achieved alignment behind that strategy. and then we executed flawless flawlessly. we married both organic and inorganic growth activities. we built the engines to support all of our strategic initiatives. but mostly we all lined up behind the strategy and said we&#8217;re going to do this and we went on went about our business and use the strategy as our roadmap as our as our future guiding star. and we all work together and we all rode rode in the bus or in the boat however you want to say it together. and one of the things i&#8217;m most proud of liz yeah, the numbers are interesting. in the, the quantitative results are interesting, what i&#8217;m most proud of is that the culture of the firm as a $1.5 billion firm, was actually even stronger than it was when i began. as the leader of the firm wasn&#8217;t that it was bad, it was wonderful. but alignment and a common cause, and all people running towards the same same goal, actually strengthened our culture and matured it. and that was a really wonderful realization that i had towards the latter part of my tenure as ceo with baker tilly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>now, it&#8217;s interesting that you put a lot of emphasis on culture. and, you know, a lot of what we hear about at big firms is kind of this toxic culture. so how could can you describe for me what that culture felt like to you as, as a participant in it as a member of that culture?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>that&#8217;s a great question was, what did it mean, to me, it meant that i had team members, partners in the in the general sense that we&#8217;re all walking and looking at this towards and walk looking at the same goal. this was about us, not me, we not me, not my client, our client, it was building teams that could work together in an effective manner to achieve a commonly agreed upon goal. you know, when i, when i was being considered to be the next ceo of baker, tilly, one of the foundational tenets of my candidacy was collaboration. and you may think that that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s okay, that&#8217;s table stakes. well, actually, it&#8217;s not in a, in a technician based profession, whether it be attorneys or cpas, or architects, doctors, etc, lawyer, you. most of your success, most of your identity is based on what you do, how you connect with clients, the things that you do for your customers, or clients and in and in order to collaborate, you need to work with others, you need to realize that what we can do together is more than what we each can do individually. and while people didn&#8217;t sign on initially, they pretty quickly figured out that the best way for us to achieve our goal was to work together as as a team as an effective team. and so the culture, yes, we were still hard charging, yes, we wanted to accomplish things individually. of course, we wanted to be rewarded for our performance and our input. we also recognized it was a big and that doing things with others was where the secret sauce came, came to be and where we were going to achieve greatness faster, and we&#8217;re going to achieve more greatness than we could have with 6000 individuals working by themselves. so this culture of collaboration, this culture of camaraderie, rising tide raises all boats, whatever you want to say, was critical to the success of of baker tilly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>i am loved that emphasis you put on collaboration, and especially in a technical field, because i was in tax for many years. and i don&#8217;t really remember too many opportunities for collaboration with anybody other than, you know, maybe the preparer or the reviewer depending on my role. so i think that that is, is really a remarkable shift that you put in place.<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>well, it didn&#8217;t happen overnight. and it wasn&#8217;t easy. you know, one of the critical success factors to achieving that was redesigning the performance criteria, the the goals, the rewards and whatnot, such that people realize that operating solely by themselves was not going to enable them to achieve the results they wanted or be rewarded for what they&#8217;ve performed. you know, the funny story though, just came to mind. i remember when we first started off in 2015, and you know, words matter and delivering a message to the team matters and so i constantly was dripping this word of collaboration and my other one of the other tenants was celebrate people. the third was a revered brand which i think we achieved all three but when i when i by the time i retired. and what i found was people started snickering when i would use the word kill collaboration and, and they, and they started raising a glass or their water bottle or whatever they had? well, it turned out that it was kind of a joke that whenever whitman would say collaboration, they would raise their glass and take a drink of whatever they had a coke bottle or a cup of coffee. and so it was almost like a drinking game. and at the time, it really threw me off. i&#8217;m like, what in the world is going on? but i&#8217;m like, you know what, let them do it. because this means it&#8217;s taking hold. and then after that, it was just this is just who we are. this is this these were in this is when the bones of the organization, and we didn&#8217;t need the word anymore.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>you mentioned that you you changed the performance metrics. how did you what what does that mean? you know, usually were were measured on billable hours. so what does that mean? what did that mean?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>so, if you&#8217;ve, if you&#8217;ve if you know me, and those of you that know, me, have heard me say often that in this profession and, and a lot in professional services, generally, most organizations are operated and considered vertical, my book of business, my practice, my team, my whatever. and the best firms don&#8217;t, don&#8217;t operate vertically, they operate horizontally, i still need to serve the clients that i&#8217;ve got in my area, or what i&#8217;m responsible for. and i need to cross the lines, i need to go to the next neighborhood, i need to go to my neighbor and work together on on the fence so to speak. and, and so we started talking about how can we work horizontally across the organization, rather than just vertically and hope that we add all the vertical p&amp;l &#8216;s or results together, we achieve our financial goals. and so we started putting together horizontal performance metrics. you know, certainly cross sell and collaboration, influence on pipeline throughout the organization, how many opportunities are you, you know, helping others achieve your support of something outside of your organization, whatever it is, whether it&#8217;s your book, whether it&#8217;s your department, whether it&#8217;s your practice, etc. so we, we pulled together a number of goals, some of which i just shared with you, that were designed to make people think horizontally, yes, you&#8217;re right, liz, whether it&#8217;s billable hours, and i&#8217;ve written quite a bit on that, i&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ll ask me about that in a second. or it&#8217;s my book of business or what have you. you know, it&#8217;s really interesting, i&#8217;ve had a lot of a lot of experience globally, you know, in those first eight years with baker, tilly, and post me becoming the ceo, and, and i remember, some people in the uk saying, this is a client i look after. and i found that very, very fascinating. it&#8217;s not my client, it&#8217;s a client i look after. and what that means is the client is the firm&#8217;s client, and i&#8217;m just here for a few years, or a career i&#8217;m gonna look after for this long, and it&#8217;s gonna go to the next person. so it&#8217;s really not my book of business. it&#8217;s the book of business that i steward that i lead. and so we needed to figure out how to get people to think horizontally. so we needed both quantitative performance metrics, and qualitative influence on this involvement here, assistance over there, etc. and the real test came during compensation time, when we did demonstrate to the anybody that those criteria were real. and if you didn&#8217;t do it, you weren&#8217;t going to be rewarded as as you may have otherwise, expected, because you didn&#8217;t do those things that were good for the for the we, when you only were focusing on the i.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>so so let me understand this a little bit. you know, in terms of my frame of reference, you&#8217;re at a small firm that would be like, you know, i see a tax client whose business books are a mess. so i talked to the cavs department, and i say, hey, you know, you&#8217;ve got to work with this client about and help them with their books. and then i hear about another another client who is looking to sell their business or looking to retire and and i say, hey, you know, i&#8217;m a cva. so, maybe i can take a look at your business and the how we can make it more valuable or give you a ballpark idea of the values that that the kind of&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>sure, without question and then look, whether it&#8217;s the cas practice, whether it&#8217;s the state local practice, what have you. you&#8217;re here to as a tax professional as an example. you mentioned billable hours, and i, i love billable hours have a place in every organization because it&#8217;s the way we account for our activities. unfortunately, i believe that most firms believe that billable hours are the holy grail of a professional services firm. and they i don&#8217;t think they are the, the client isn&#8217;t necessarily buying billable hours, they&#8217;re buying the value, the outcomes, the out the intellectual capital that you&#8217;re delivering to them. so billable hours are just something that&#8217;s been there forever. and, in my mind, just this is get me off my i&#8217;ll get off my soapbox in a second, the firm or firms that are able to shift from production bill hours, to outcomes, value outcomes, is going to win. and i know there are a number of firms that are doing that right now smaller, to your point, smaller firms. i just hope more do. that&#8217;s the way to break the mold. as i as i as i&#8217;d like to say, when you look at when you look at clients, the goal that you have lists as the tax professionals deliver the appropriate services, the appropriate solutions, the appropriate value, for them to achieve what they want to achieve. and your responsibility is to not only deliver what you can deliver, it&#8217;s also to deliver what other people in the organization can deliver to be to bring an integrated solution, a value solution to the client, so that they&#8217;re getting what they need to, to prosper. you know, i often hear in my coaching, and when i was in the see that, well, my client doesn&#8217;t need that, or i don&#8217;t understand it. so i&#8217;m not going to, i&#8217;m not going to present it. or that&#8217;s too expensive for my client. well, first of all, you&#8217;re making decisions for your client, which is not, you&#8217;re playing god, which you shouldn&#8217;t. but frankly, the idea that you&#8217;re not bringing another person to the mix, another specialist, who&#8217;s got to think about the situation differently, just means that you&#8217;re off strategy, it doesn&#8217;t mean that you&#8217;re not collaborating, it really means you&#8217;re off strategy. because by and large, i would think your strategy is in some form or fashion, to deliver the best services to the client. you can say it any way you want. but at the end of the day, you&#8217;re here to deliver to the client what they need to to succeed. and if you&#8217;re not willing to bring if i&#8217;m not willing to bring liz, who has something that the client should hear about to a meeting, i&#8217;m off strategy. that&#8217;s just, it might be no i&#8217;m not, i&#8217;ve got a $3 million book of business strategy, i grew 10% no, you are on strategy, because then about what you did, it&#8217;s about what the client is getting or not getting by you not thinking or being comfortable enough to widen your aperture to bring others in to serve the client as we versus me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>i love that perspective. and i wish that more firms would embrace that instead of having this, this very narrow, siloed view of just their little book of business and their clients. because that makes it very risky for the firm. because if something happens and that person leaves, then the loyalty of the clients is more likely to be to that person and not to the firm. so you know, you do something to make somebody angry and they leave then not only do you leave, you lose that person but you lose their book of business to<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>exactly again, the client should be the client of the firm. and if the firm is delivering more tentacles into the organization means more stickiness. not famous personal relationships. we don&#8217;t want famous person relationships. we want famous people doing great service together with everybody else so that the client is getting what they need.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>exactly. now you mentioned that you change the performance metrics at baker tilly, what are what are some of the other changes that you explored while you were there? in the in the traditional business model of firms.<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>down barry i broke down barriers between practices. again, i made the firm more horizontal, not i build my own business here in this in this geography where i&#8217;m going to have everything marketing, sales, technology, etc. so i&#8217;m kind of like my own firm within a firm. no, no, no, no, no, and that you don&#8217;t need to build your own your own your own business, because what will happen is, the leaders in that business will build it as they want to. and then you&#8217;ll have an organization made up of different different businesses, and you want one firm doing one thing. so we broke down, we broke down silos, we brought people out of practices to work on firm initiatives, rather than rather than just their practice initiatives. look, there&#8217;s all sorts of talented people in organizations, and they need to be expanding their horizons by sharing that with the entire organization, we i had had a belief, that structure, internal structure, i&#8217;ll be an important was not predictive of success. and many people think that structure is predictive of success. now, it&#8217;s what you deliver to clients is predicting is and how you bring on new logos and new clients. structure is not the critical success factor of the organization&#8217;s success. and so we changed structure, we became more regional, so we can have people throughout our region working on clients, we didn&#8217;t have to have somebody assigned to a client, because they were down the street from them, we needed to get the right person to be assigned to a client. so we we picked and chipped away at all the the historic goal biases of you know, linear growth of an organization. one of the things that we are very, very proud of that we did was when we did when we did an acquisition or a merger, we would try to get as many people in that new organization to work on other things in the organization. so they could be carrier pigeons of the culture from, from bigger to back to the new people, the people that have just joined the organization, we got them on for my committees and projects and, and what have you. and so that was a huge, a huge culture builder, we, i looked for, intentionally and i a lot of my partners didn&#8217;t like this, i intentionally look for people to pluck out of the out of the practices, to give new ideas give new opportunities. whether it be firm wide initiatives, or things the firm needed to do differently, or a different practice, because they needed to develop, they needed other opportunities, as opposed to kind of be on the escalator, where they&#8217;re always at the same level, they&#8217;re just moving up as everybody moved up, let&#8217;s move on to the other escalator, let&#8217;s move to another, another elevator so they can they can have the express to the top. so that did shake the firm a bit when we were smaller, because taking people out of the out of the out of the mix was challenging. but as you got larger, and you can do it, i was just with the firm that was much smaller than baker tilly about a $250,000,000.70 $5 million firm the other day. and i shared this and i said you&#8217;ve got to pull people off the line. you&#8217;re big enough that you can do it. is it easy, but you&#8217;ve got you&#8217;ve got capacity and persons like really you took them off the line and add a client service? well, not entirely immediately. but yes, over time i did because the firm needed their skills. more than the practice. you know, if you have a pet, if you have a pail of water, tim, my predecessor used to say this, when you have a pail of water and you take a measuring cup and you scoop a cup of water out of the pail, what happens, the other water fills the void. you may have a cup of water out of the cup, one cup out of a pail is not going to make a big difference, but the other water fills the void. well, if you took somebody out of a practice. now i&#8217;m not talking about a three person practice where you take 33% out. but if you&#8217;ve got a $10 million practice, it takes somebody out part time the other people will fill the void over time and it gives other people opportunities to grow and take on new opportunities, new new challenges. so unfortunately, most organizations which as you said are billable, hour focused, are what&#8217;s in front of me vertically focused, are like no way. we need their billable hours. well, you still have their billable hours, you still have them just can be done by somebody else. and this person that you&#8217;ve taken out, can go explore new horizons, you know, i have a saying was that as firms builds build themselves and get larger, they build a firm of scale. and when you build scale you get many things, and two that i like to call in, specifically. the first is financial capital, you make more money, because you&#8217;re larger, you get some economies. and so there&#8217;s more money at the end of the day to decide what to do with whether it&#8217;s to, you know, reward the employees make investments put away for a rainy day or what have you, excuse me. the other thing that scale generates is intellectual capital. so financial capital, intellectual capital, and intellectual capital is you, me, our colleagues. and with the intellectual capital, you can build an even better organization. so building scale gets you what you need to continue perpetuating the organization.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>i love that emphasis on intellectual capital, in most of the firms i was at, you know, my intellectual capital was kind of valued in terms of, well, how many tax returns can she crank out? and, you know, i might have stayed in public accounting, if i could have done some of these different things that you&#8217;re mentioning. because i know that just knowing how to work, how to put the numbers in the boxes, that that&#8217;s not a very interesting skill. but figuring out how to match up the clients in the services and get the clients the best outcomes. that would have been more interesting.<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>you know, you&#8217;re hitting on some really great points here list. as i look at it, so i was a tax guy, you were a tax gal. so how many 1040s? do you think you did? just guess.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>oh, geez, i don&#8217;t know. couple 1000. okay, so i don&#8217;t know,<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>at what number did you stop learning? 300 200? something like that. right. so so i&#8217;ve always said that. that other if it was if it was 1000, the other 700. were career non value added tasks. yeah. right. and so the firm that&#8217;s able to just give you enough 1040s as or whatever the tax return, to get you to be proficient, so that you can then go to another another skill to maybe learn something new, or maybe even increase the rate per hour that the firm is able to charge for a year out comes. everybody wins. but and but unfortunately, and i had the same thing. you&#8217;re stuck with those 700 career non value added projects. so you didn&#8217;t grow. and so look what happened. you left. and it&#8217;s that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s crazy to me. and again, not enough firms are realizing that that there is a solution. there is a way to keep people longer, there is a way to be intentional about developing their their skills and their career. we just just don&#8217;t do nearly as much as we like to.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>do you know, when you were making these changes at baker, tilly, there must have been pushback. i would imagine how did you deal with that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>oh, i what i would suggest to you is i don&#8217;t know if it was pushed back. and i&#8217;m sure there was. it is a it&#8217;s a slight difference in terminology resistance. at the end of the day, it didn&#8217;t get done. right. so no matter how it is, right? so a former colleague of mine said, alan, you know, we, we like where you&#8217;re taking us. and it&#8217;s not about what you&#8217;re asking us to do. it&#8217;s the fact that we&#8217;ve done it our way for so many years, so many repetitions. so you&#8217;re you&#8217;re fighting 1000s of repetitions of how we used to do it. i&#8217;m like, wow, that&#8217;s because you know, at the beginning, i was like, why don&#8217;t why aren&#8217;t they doing what we say they should do? it must be about what we&#8217;re asking them no, was about what we&#8217;re taking them from not what we&#8217;re asking them to go. having said that? yes, there was resistance. how did i deal with it? more communication, more demonstration of of the what and the why. after a while when people didn&#8217;t do things like here&#8217;s a give you a prime example. when people wouldn&#8217;t weren&#8217;t willing to adopt salesforce, a crm salesforce.com or something else like that. i didn&#8217;t talk to them about salesforce.com. i again went back to him and said, listen, liz, you&#8217;re off strategy. and of course they the back. no, i&#8217;m not, i&#8217;ve got $3 million, or $2 million, or whatever, i&#8217;m doing fine. no, you&#8217;re off strategy because our crm is part of our strategy. and i&#8217;m not asking you whether you like this or not, you can hate this. and i appreciate why you hate this or don&#8217;t like it. some of these things i don&#8217;t like either. i&#8217;m asking you to respect it, because this is what the firm is being asking you to do for the better of the organization. and when you&#8217;re able to take the emotion out of things, you can still hate it, i get it. so now there&#8217;s no emotion. i&#8217;m not i&#8217;m engaging with the emotion of this, i&#8217;m engaging with the, with the, with the science of it with a logical look. it didn&#8217;t happen overnight. it took some time. narratives, communication, getting one on one with the individuals showing success bringing people out and making a commitment to certain people that we needed to do something different to show the organization where we were headed, etc. so it was it was not just one thing, it was a number of different things that we did, little by little chip away at where we had been to move us to what we need to do to get us to where we want to go.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>i like your rephrasing as is resistance. that&#8217;s that&#8217;s much better. because, you know, of course, we think that the way that we&#8217;ve been doing it for a long time is got to be the best way to do it. but it&#8217;s not always that way. and so i think that as we figure out that there are different ways to be affirm, then we can create better firms. no, no, no, you have a, you have a trademarked phrase, break the mold? and can you can you talk about that just a little bit. i&#8217;m really curious. i love the idea of breaking the mold.<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>well, we&#8217;ve talked about a lot of the aspects of the mold of public accounting, right, billable hours, vertical operations structure, you no non no collaboration, all you know, all of these things that we kind of, we all laugh about them, right? everybody talks about them around the watercooler at the breaks in these meetings, we all talk about them. question is, who&#8217;s going to do something about it. and one of the molds is you got to get as i used to when i i&#8217;ve heard cheeks in the seats. i mean, you got to sit in your in your office, put your cheeks in the seat, because if you&#8217;re not in your desk, you&#8217;re not working, which we all know is not true. so there&#8217;s a mold for public accounting. and i wanted and led baker tilly to build a new organization. and pretty much that&#8217;s what i&#8217;m consulting with all the all of my clients on and that is let&#8217;s build a new reality. let&#8217;s build a new future. and break the mold is literally what it says let&#8217;s break the mold. if you put a mold together, you stamp something that&#8217;s the same thing every time over and over and over, you know, break the mold, that list doesn&#8217;t need to do 1000 tax returns, well, what will it take to make sure that list? well, it&#8217;s gonna take automation, it&#8217;s going to take different labor, labor builds, etc. so that, liz, if we&#8217;re really a people centric organization, if we&#8217;re really focused on your development, we will not let you do 301 tax returns, because you&#8217;ve already learned that 300 and we&#8217;re going to ask, we&#8217;re going to teach you to do something else so that you can build your capabilities. so let&#8217;s break all that up. let&#8217;s start chipping away and re molding it. and so break the mold is really a rally cry. it&#8217;s a camaraderie statement to we&#8217;re going to break the mold of public accounting and build a new future, a new organization. that that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s all about. and for break, and mold. you can&#8217;t mistake what it really means once your is explained every time you say it. all right, yeah, we got to break this down and rebuild it. if we had a white piece of paper, and we were going to start this process and this firm or this initiative from scratch with nothing, don&#8217;t worry about all the things we have got to do to pave the way just build it from scratch. how do we do it? if if we knew then what we know now, how would we build it back then? and then deal with all the minutia that we need to deal with or the friction and and the resistance if you will as you as you as you shared earlier. let&#8217;s break the mold and redefine our future. we&#8217;re still here we&#8217;re here to serve clients, we&#8217;re here to deliver great, great value. but do we really need to do it this the way we&#8217;ve been doing it since? before my father was in the workforce, and he, you know, he&#8217;s now passed away, but he was born in he was in the workforce in the late 50s. same way, we were doing accounting firms back then. that&#8217;s some 80 some odd years ago.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>so, so what, what does this new vision look like? i mean, you know, if we&#8217;re all gonna get at our own white papers, it are on whiteboards, it almost feels to me like, it&#8217;s not going to be one, one certain shape that firms will have, but it&#8217;ll be more like, a range of shapes that fit the individuals is, well, i&#8217;ve read it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>well, i&#8217;ve written quite a bit about it. i think i wrote recently, you know, i&#8217;ve heard a number of organizations say, where people centric. and the only way you&#8217;re people centric is if you&#8217;re able to build bespoke, in my, my, my way of thinking, bespoke development plans, bespoke experiences. right? i was reminded on 58. so i was, you know, i&#8217;m from the suit generation, some of those are older than me, kind of laugh at me, but i was. and i remember buying, buying a sport coat or whatever, off the rack, i had to have all sorts of alterations, because i just didn&#8217;t fit. but if i went to a tailor, and i got a tailored jacket felt really good because it was made for me. but if you buy some off the rack, and you make a couple tweaks, it didn&#8217;t feel right. it&#8217;s kind of hard on yours. and you know, it didn&#8217;t feel right. well, that&#8217;s the same as the analogy here, if i get something that that&#8217;s bespoke. now, when i said that, this is probably six, seven years ago, some of the people in the audience and ellen, we don&#8217;t even know what a sport coat is, we don&#8217;t wear them anymore. we just wear you know, we just wear you know, slacks in a in a golf shirt. i&#8217;m like, yeah, okay, so that that story doesn&#8217;t work. you get it, i see the reaction on your face with something that&#8217;s something that&#8217;s built for me feels better than something that i just take off the rack. and so how do we take, you know, look, there&#8217;s going to be a portion of development that&#8217;s going to be wrote, or it&#8217;s going to be off the rack, the basics. but then if we want to build liz, liz farr to something special, we need to, we need to bespoke part of it. i don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s 20%. or if it&#8217;s 30%, what have you. we need we need, we need to build bespoke plans, we need to find a way to go from production to outcomes. we need to find a way to automate all out of the system, all the career non value added tasks, all the layers of administration, all the things that we shouldn&#8217;t be doing. we need to find a way to get back to what we&#8217;re doing. look, when when, when this profession was started, nobody thought that billing and collecting was part of the job. we were cpas we were here to deliver cpa stuff. and how much time are we spending on non cpa stuff? too much? so how do we get back to where we were and how do we make this or this profession sexier? you know, i don&#8217;t want to get into the conversation about it. i&#8217;ll mention it briefly. but you know, the the drop in number of graduates there&#8217;s a lot of reasons for that. i&#8217;m telling you, the reason that people aren&#8217;t interested in the cpa profession has a lot to do with the the lack of sexiness if you will, of the firm&#8217;s because working hard is not the issue there plenty of people that work hard finance people, investment banking people, plenty of people were even even attorneys work a lot hours, we have made this profession unfortunately, less attractive, and we need to break the mold to make it more attractive for young professionals to want to come work here. and until we do that, we may make incremental improvements, but we&#8217;re not going to make transformational improvements. and i&#8217;m all about making transformation improvements.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>i that really resonates with me. one of the other ceos that i do some work with the ceo of a tech company called flowqast mike whitmire is the purpose of leadership is to help people become better as human beings. then, and i like that very much.<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>well, here&#8217;s another way of saying that my job as a leader is to make you achieve the to be the best version of yourself to being able to do the best work you can do. i was just talking to somebody in an organization that i&#8217;m consulting with now, and, and i was talking with her this morning, and she said that there&#8217;s a friction point in her job. and i said, well, we need to remove that, wow, i don&#8217;t want to ruffle feathers. i don&#8217;t want to, you know, i don&#8217;t want to get anybody. no, this isn&#8217;t about ruffling feathers. this is about the fact that you keep in this same situation, whatever it was, your neck, and we&#8217;ll do the best work that you can. so this is about you, isn&#8217;t about the other person that&#8217;s causing the friction. it&#8217;s about you. so let&#8217;s get you to be in the right situation. so you can do the best work because will benefit from that. and you&#8217;ll be happier. and you know, it&#8217;ll all work out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>that&#8217;s right. that&#8217;s right. now, we&#8217;ve we&#8217;ve already talked about some of the dysfunctions in in accounting that make it less interesting for people to join the workforce, you know, the billable hour and keeping your button that chair? what are some things that get in the way of creating a great client experience?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>wow, great question. bureaucracy? no. he, i&#8217;m going to hear here&#8217;s what organizations are more focused on what&#8217;s happening inside their four walls than what&#8217;s happening with their relationship with their client. that gets in the way, when people are worried about the rules and regulations of the of the company, not to say that we don&#8217;t have to have principles and guides and etc, yes, of course we do. but when we&#8217;re more interested in what the relationship has in store for us, the company, then what we&#8217;re here to do, to deliver value to the client that gets in the way of great client experience. now, there&#8217;s all sorts of other things, you know, poor technology, poor, portal, poor, you know, all those things, of course. but by and large, it&#8217;s when the organization is more focused on what the relationship is going to do the revenue they&#8217;re gonna generate for the organization, then what we&#8217;re going to deliver to the client, because if you&#8217;re delivering the right stuff, if you&#8217;re delivering it in the right manner, and the right speed, etc, you&#8217;ll be able to build for built clients do understand value when you deliver it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>i agree, you know, and i think that that is something that we&#8217;ve often lost touch with their what what is the value to a client of a tax return or an audit report, that doesn&#8217;t also include something about how this document or the information learned in the preparation of this document could help the client achieve their goals?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>yeah, that makes sense to me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>yeah. yeah. now we&#8217;ve talked about how technology will be taking over some of the the rote work some of the tedious work the non, i love how you put it the non career value added pieces of the work. so what are some of the skills that accountants are going to need to be successful in this new new future of accounting?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>curiosity, constant learning, certainly being technology enabled themselves. you know, i just wrote a piece about a great leader, great boss, john de stefano, who, who took the time to teach me a lot and one of the things he taught me was how to write and how to write coming out of school. and i remember i remember the the the the event that got me there. and so as i was gonna say, writing, but now with chat gbt and all that kind of stuff, and these artificial intelligence, not so sure, writing although i think people do need to have need to know how to write. communication skills are critical. speaking skills are critical. it amazes me how people rise through the ranks of an organization and they really do not know know how to communicate effectively. they just don&#8217;t know how to convey thoughts and themes. they they don&#8217;t know how to use the right phraseology and terminology, etc. so communication is critical. i think the ability to work as a team member, rather than just by myself, is a skill. a generic skill, as i said, a qualitative skills, curiosity. being being willing and committed to learning, and not just taking the first thing that comes to you as a potential solution. look, the technical skills, we can teach people, we can teach people what depreciation recapture is, we can teach them what ordinary versus capital, ordinary human capital gain income, you know, getting your tax professionals, that&#8217;s why i use that, or we can teach them a fasb or what you know, whatever, whatever. yeah, we can teach, but the skills that are really going to differentiate the people are those that i mentioned earlier.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>and love the your emphasis on curiosity, because i think that that is something that is almost hammered out of us in public accounting. and when we have to do all these certain procedures, especially over an audit, where it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s checklist after endless checklist, and there&#8217;s very little opportunity, there are very few people in audit who have the, the bravery and the the the belief in themselves to ask the question, well, why do we need to do it this way? can&#8217;t we do it this other way and still fulfill the standards?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>yeah, yeah. agreed. nothing else to add to that, like, makes total sense.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>yeah. now, what are some of the things that accountants should stop doing immediately?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>in the micro stuff, not judging your time. and i know we&#8217;ve been talking about that time. but you should you should account for what you&#8217;re doing. what should you stop doing? that&#8217;s a really, it&#8217;s a really interesting question. i kind of think about that you shared that question with me, prior to our time together today, and i didn&#8217;t come with an answer. i guess generically, you should stop accepting the status quo. stop accepting the process that we&#8217;ve got to the what we have going on right now. which is the opposite of being curious. to stop settling for what is always been stopped being silent, with your ideas, stop. just going through the motions. that&#8217;s what you those are all the things you said stop, the more people that we have challenging the status quo, and trying to build a new mousetrap. so to speak, the people that are going to push the envelope the edges are the people that are going to make a new a new future. and there&#8217;s plenty of people that, that do that. you see him in the news. and we in the accounting profession, or the professions in general, we need to do the same thing. we&#8217;ve got a lot of smart people. stop sitting on your hands, start raising your hand.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>stop, stop saying, okay. how do i check this box with this software? but why do i need to check this box?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>there you go, right. yeah,<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>yeah. yeah. sometimes, as leaders or as just people trying to get through life. it&#8217;s the mistakes that we make, that we learn the most from, what would you say is the most valuable mistake you made in terms of the lessons that you learned?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>well, i&#8217;ll answer the question. i want to i want to want to turn it a little bit. the biggest mistake you can make. knowing you&#8217;re gonna make mistakes, is not learning from your mistakes. not really assessing and stepping back. you know, we we all we often say in innovation or whatever, you know, fail fast. somebody i was, i don&#8217;t know who it was, i was reading something, i don&#8217;t know if it was a post or what have you. and they said, you know, don&#8217;t think about as failure think about as learning. and so somebody said one time to me, just learn fast. so you can continue iterating. and as opposed to fail fast, just learn fast, so you can change the way you&#8217;re doing things. so i&#8217;ve made a ton of mistakes over the years. sure, i remember the first big mistake i made i love this, i use the wrong depreciation convention. for for publicly for a publicly traded partnership then went to 1,000k ones, i had a problem. i had to recall 1,000k ones, this is when i was a senior associate way back when, so i made plenty of mistakes. look, i&#8217;ve i&#8217;ve made the mistake of thinking that things can happen faster, or to to a greater degree than they could, i wasn&#8217;t skeptical enough of half empty or half full guy or a full full guy. so i always thought that we could achieve everything anything could work out, i made the mistake of thinking that i could solve somebody&#8217;s performance issue. if i just tried harder, move them around. and in turn, i wasted five years of somebody&#8217;s life, somebody&#8217;s career, because i wasn&#8217;t willing to say, listen, this isn&#8217;t the right place for you. you&#8217;re a great person, let&#8217;s go find something else for you. so that was a mistake, that hurt that other individual. look, i made a mistake by getting getting all excited about an opportunity. and we acquired a firm that we should never have acquired. and i knew it immediately. i knew it. so look, i&#8217;ve made plenty of mistakes. i hired the wrong people. because i didn&#8217;t slow down i didn&#8217;t think through it in a thorough enough manner. the thing i&#8217;m most proud of is i&#8217;ve learned from those things. and i&#8217;ve course corrected and pivoted for the next situation. but i&#8217;m using all of those mistakes, as you you know, and those opportunities to learn let&#8217;s let&#8217;s make a little bit more positive. in all the advisory work in the coaching that i&#8217;m doing, i use that today i was talking with a young, up and comer advisory professional, and we were talking about strategy. and i had made the same mistake she had made. so i just shared it. i said listen, i&#8217;ve learned from this mistake, i don&#8217;t want you to make the mistake. so i&#8217;ve used my learnings, my mistakes to help others avoid the same ones. they&#8217;ll make their own. but i don&#8217;t want them to make the ones that i&#8217;ve made.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>that&#8217;s that&#8217;s great. and, you know, one of the other people i work with peter margaritas, there&#8217;s that fail really stands for first attempt in learning.<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>i&#8217;ve seen that yeah, i&#8217;ve seen that. yeah, that&#8217;s wonderful. that&#8217;s wonderful. yeah. i wish i was that smart to come up with this stuff on that. i use all their other ld isms that they all the other more smart, smarter people come up with.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>yeah, you know, i, i rely on on what other people say a lot to know. now, alan, i want you to get out your crystal ball. and and just look deeply into it and try to see where is the profession going to be in 10 years?<\/p>\n<p><strong>alan whitman<br \/>\n<\/strong>well, the dreamier of me says there&#8217;ll be some firms that have figured out how to break the mold. and they will build a new future. the skeptic in me says we will just incrementally improve. because the immediate is more important is more in front of us than the important. my hope is that we&#8217;ll have both we&#8217;ll have some that are really pushing the envelope. and we&#8217;re gonna have some that are not. that&#8217;s just that&#8217;s like i hope that we have some organizations that really solve for sexing up the profession as and and breaking the mold. i&#8217;m working with some organizations to try to break the mold. and if there&#8217;s anybody out there that wants to chew the fat, so to speak with me on breaking the mold, i would love to talk to them. and i&#8217;m sure i&#8217;ll share my contact information later. i would love to share challenge them and be challenged on how to add a somebody write a new story, write the last chapter or the next chapter of this storied history and book of cpa firms public accounting.<\/p>\n<p><strong>liz farr<br \/>\n<\/strong>and i think with that, that&#8217;s a perfect note to end on.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>the firms that shift from billable hours to value outcomes will win. plus 10 more key takeaways.<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2024\/09\/10\/alan-whitman-stop-accepting-the-status-quo-the-disruptors\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-130669 size-full\" src=\"\/\/www.g005e.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/alan-whitman_-stop-accepting-the-status-quo-low.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"141\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<strong>the disruptors<\/strong><br \/>\n<em> with liz farr<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4386,"featured_media":130671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2327,2734,3869,2764],"tags":[4555,4570,4100,4090,3267],"class_list":["post-130091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-innovation","category-podcast","category-the-disruptors","category-video","tag-alan-whitman","tag-baker-tilly","tag-disruptors","tag-liz-farr","tag-the-disruptors"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- this 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