Especially in these trying times, partners must show leadership by accepting the consequences of their actions — or their inaction.
Accountability is the essence of your success, according to management consultant August Aquila, CEO of AQUILA Global Advisors, LLC.
“I don’t think that the average partner takes accountability seriously,” Aquila says. “If they did, they would take their individual goals more seriously and not let their fellow partners down.”
There is a real financial impact to the firm because of a lack of accountability. And some of it stems from a lack of trust — trust that business burdens and rewards will be fairly shared.
- Partners with low trust can be very reluctant to share clients with other partners.
- Decisions take a long time or perhaps don’t get made at all.
- Partners operate like sole practitioners rather than members of a team.
- When partners don’t have accountability they have a difficult time setting and achieving goals. They don’t want to have written goals.
- Partners also focus on getting what they want rather than helping the team win.
- Partners do not improve their skill sets.
- Finally, they often fail to get the results they say they are going to get.
Why accountability now? “Both clients and firms are feeling the profit squeeze,” Aquila says. “It’s no longer acceptable for partners to just be busy. They now need to produce results.”
The problem is not a lack of theories, tools, or programs. The problem is EXECUTION.
In research for his recent book, Execution Revolution, author Gary Harpst discovered:
- An astounding 90% of well-formulated strategies fail due to poor execution!
- Only 5% of employees understand their corporate strategy! Unbelievable!
- Only 3% of executives think their company is very successful at executing strategies, while 62% think they’re only moderately successful, or worse.
In short, read all you want on the subject of programs such as Baldrige, Lean and TQM. You’ll find the subject matter interesting, and you’ll enjoy learning about the many successes of those who have successfully executed such programs.
Read about knowledge management, data mining tools and scorecards for performance measurement and management. You’ll learn a great deal.
Investigate new models of training and employee development as well as personal and executive coaching. In the end, you will have read, researched, investigated and probably learned much. Now you KNOW what to do. However, you have invested a great deal of time, energy and effort to no avail at this point. True success and ROI emerges only when you successfully execute what you’ve learned. The “knowing-doing gap” must be closed at every level of the organization in order to enjoy true success.
– Per Harry K. Jones, at AchieveMax, with hat tip to Skip Reardon via twitter @sreardon.
What CPAs can expect in workouts and lending today?
If ever an economic period was destined for America’s history books, it’s this one, according to Jerry Mozian, a turnaround specialist writing in this week’s CPA Insider.
Mozian
“After a long run of living above our means, the concept of credit is being fundamentally revisited,” he says. “It seems we have entered not just a short period of revenue dislocation, but a seriÂously challenging situation for the rest of 2009 and well into 2010.”
“When the dust settles, our nation will emerge a more value-oriented society – one that better understands leverage and restraint,” Mozian says. “Future generations can avoid the mistakes we’ve made by learning how we overcame them.”
For CPAs, that means understanding a little bit more about liquidity, insolvency, bankruptcy and workouts.
According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, business bankruptcies have increased dramatically – from 4,086 in the first quarter of 2006 to more than 11,504 in the third quarter of 2008.
According to Mozian, before filing bankruptcy, CPAs should:Â READ MORE →
