MANAGEMENT

Make It ‘Productive Season’

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Don’t be busy. Be productive.

By Seth Fineberg
At Large

At this time of year, most accountants are considered to be mired in an annual waterboarding-like ritual known as “busy season.” While the moniker has long stirred ire, one way to rally against its implication is to take a good look at what being “busy” means. Moreover, why not make it more productive?

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Perspective is everything. And while I’ve noticed more accounting professionals making concerted efforts to have more of a life/work balance, it is apparent that much of the work that contributes to being “busy” could evolve into productivity.

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Why Strategic Thinking Impacts Your Firm’s Future

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What do “disturbing the present” and “paradigm shift” really mean?

By Marc Rosenberg
The Rosenberg Practice Management Library

Roberto Goizueta, the late Chairman of Coca-Cola, and certainly one of the top two or three CEOs of the last 30 years, said it best: “Challenging the status quo when you have been successful is difficult. If you think you will be successful running your business in the next 10 years the way you did the last 10 years, you’re out of your mind. To succeed, we have to disturb the present.”

MORE: Seven Things Good Firms Must Do | Five Ways to Separate Accounting Winners from Losers | Core Values: Why Your Firm Needs Them | Voting on Ownership Basis? Three Better Methods | Fifteen Big Questions for Your Next Strategy Session
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Compared to most vocations, CPA partners make a pretty good living. Their success has been attributable primarily to a combination of the following:

  1. Bringing in business
  2. Providing great service to clients, which results in client retention and moving clients upscale in terms of services
  3. Strong technical skills
  4. Developing staff into leaders
  5. Strong interpersonal skills

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It’s Time to Prepare the Next Generation

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Group of four young professionals

They’ll learn from someone. Shouldn’t it be you?

By Martin Bissett
Business Development On a Budget

If you are a partner in your firm, you may already have asked yourself the all-important question: how can I successfully retire and have someone else take over the firm?

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The partner who has a satisfactory answer to that question is the one who is committed not only to developing business and building the firm on a regular basis, but also to developing and preparing the next generation of professionals in the firm.
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Seven Things Good Firms Must Do

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six people meeting around office conference table

Good management gets them there.

By Marc Rosenberg
The Rosenberg Practice Management Library

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.

MORE: Five Ways to Separate Accounting Winners from Losers | Two Factors Determine Firm Profitability | Five Keys in Compensating New Managing Partners | What Partners Do and Don’t Deserve | Five Steps to Transition to Partnership
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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?
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Fifteen Strategies for First-Time Supervisors

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Partners should set staff up for success.

By Ed Mendlowitz
202 Questions and Answers: Managing an Accounting Practice

Question: My boss asked me to call you. I am a staff accountant with five years’ experience. I am having a lot of stress trying to manage everything I have to do. I am juggling supervising people I don’t know how to supervise, being managed less by those above me and having to figure out more for myself – including things I never did before or in industries I never worked on previously, keeping current with changes in accounting rules and taxes (because I am more like a generalist and clients ask me everything), never seem to have any free time, juggling my schedule because most of my clients are never ready when they say they will be and being accountable to my boss for everything I do plus what the staff working under me does.

MORE: No One Listens to You? Change How You Talk | Free Consultation? Not Always | Referral Fee? Forget It | How Much Is Your Tax Practice Worth? | Merge in Lower-Priced Work without Losing Out
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So how do I do it all? How can I prioritize all my responsibilities?

Response: Wow! Deep question! It seems there is very little written for “entry-level” supervisors. But plenty for people already doing it.
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No One Listens to You? Change How You Talk

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man intently listening to woman in office

It might be more of a workaround than a solution. But it gets results!

By Ed Mendlowitz
202 Questions and Answers: Managing an Accounting Practice

Question: I notice that most of the time my staff doesn’t listen when I talk. How can I make them listen?

MORE: Free Consultation? Not Always | Measure Knowledge Gaps (Then Close Them) | Should You Offer Financial Services? | Ready to Retire? Selling Your Practice Is No Strategy | 20 Things You Need for a Business Valuation
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Response: I find this issue very widespread. I believe there is an epidemic of people not listening, not just staff.
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Don’t Make Firm Profitability a Goal

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An example from outside the accounting profession.

By Marc Rosenberg
The Rosenberg Practice Management Library

It has been said that organizations should never have profitability as a goal. Why? Because profitability should be the result of an organization’s efforts, not its goal.

MORE: Core Values: Why Your Firm Needs Them | Five Keys in Compensating New Managing Partners | What Partners Do and Don’t Deserve | Five Steps to Transition to Partnership | Disturb the Present to Improve the Future
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Profitability is a measure of success in accomplishing core business goals. The Disney Corporation probably says it best in their mission statement, which is short and sweet, but very powerful: “Our mission is to make millions happy.”
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