Marie Greene: Your Bad Apples Are Ruining You

Don’t be afraid to fire poor performers to appreciate great performers.

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The Disruptors

With Liz Farr for CPA Trendlines

Marie Greene founded Connected Accounting in 2019 out of a desire to create a new kind of accounting firm where firm culture and “reliable, reliable, reliable” customer service were the highest priorities.

“What is your culture? Who do you want to have on your team?” are questions leaders need to consider when seeking out new team members or deciding who to fire, says Greene. She advises firm owners to remember the message it sends when poor performers are retained because “the good people also leave because you keep the bad apples.”

MORE: Megan Genest Tarnow: Hire for Curiosity Rather Than ComplianceClayton Oates: One Way to Keep Clients for LifeRandy Crabtree: Follow These Three Rules to Keep Employees HappyErik Solbakken: Yes, You Can Work Less and Make More | Donny Shimamoto: Future Firm Growth Requires a MindshiftJennifer Wilson: Empower Young Workers to Build the Firm Everyone LovesMike Whitmire: Re-Think Your Hiring and Training PracticesHector Garcia: Success Strategies of a Quickbooks YouTube Superstar | Blake Oliver: Why Tax Work Yearns To Be FreePrivate Equity Explodes in U.K. | Brannon Poe: The Status Quo Must Go  | Accounting Nerds, Unlock Your Super Powers  | Disruptor: Jason Statts Shakes Up the Status Quo | Think Small to Think Big with Matt WilkinsonWhen Financial Statements Go Extinct with Corey SchmidtCan Geraldine Carter Save Accountants from Themselves?Re-Inventing Accounting with Tyler Anderson

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Greene recognized that not everyone in a firm wants to be a partner, especially today when “we see partners work crazy hours” and rarely enjoy the benefit of a lighter workload that used to come with becoming a partner.
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How Do You Value Your Most Important Asset?

Yes, your employees.

By Steven E. Sacks
The NEW Fundamentals

Skills, abilities and experience are the elements recruiters use to assess candidates who come before them. But what is interesting is despite a skill set playing  a dominant role in the value that an employee brings to the organization, it may not be recognized as such. This is not a new concept. I came across research conducted in 1918 by Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation and Stanford Research Center.

MORE STEVE SACKS: How to Build a Winning Proposal | Six Ways to Fix Your Firm Agreement | The Great Resignation or a Reshuffling? | Listen to Learn | Build the Framework to a Solution with Five Answers | Try for Success, Not a Win
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The study discovered that almost 95% of job success comes from having well-developed soft skills (better referred to as life skills ) and people skills, while  only 5% of job success comes from technical skills and knowledge — hard skills.

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Randy Crabtree: Follow These 3 Rules to Keep Employees Happy

Randy Crabtree: Allow your employees freedom in two critical areas to win talent wars.

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr for CPA Trendlines

Randy Crabtree talks to a lot of other accountants and admits that he “steals ideas from everybody else.” Imitation, after all, is the sincerest form of flattery.

MORE: Erik Solbakken: Yes, You Can Work Less and Make More | Donny Shimamoto: Future Firm Growth Requires a MindshiftJennifer Wilson: Empower Young Workers to Build the Firm Everyone LovesMike Whitmire: Re-Think Your Hiring and Training PracticesHector Garcia: Success Strategies of a Quickbooks YouTube Superstar | Blake Oliver: Why Tax Work Yearns To Be FreePrivate Equity Explodes in U.K. | Brannon Poe: The Status Quo Must Go  | Accounting Nerds, Unlock Your Super Powers  | Disruptor: Jason Statts Shakes Up the Status Quo | Think Small to Think Big with Matt WilkinsonWhen Financial Statements Go Extinct with Corey SchmidtCan Geraldine Carter Save Accountants from Themselves?Re-Inventing Accounting with Tyler Anderson

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One topic he’s been talking about a lot lately is the issue of mental health in the profession, which he feels is largely self-induced. Although he’s been asked to talk about mental health without mentioning burnout–don’t be a downer–Crabtree says it’s impossible. “I’m like, I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. It doesn’t go away if I don’t talk about it,” he said.  

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How Small Firms Can Win the Talent Wars

Three young people working in an officeGetting creative can bring in better talent and better clients.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

One afternoon, the partner group of our outsourced accounting practice met for a state of the practice meeting conducted by our director of outsourced accounting. Our prior director left and we were looking for someone when one of our newbies asked if he could be considered.

MORE: Easy Ways to Avoid ‘Done But’ Tax Returns | Six Ways to Create a Millennial-Friendly Firm | Do You Know Your Turnaround Time? | Why Hiring Out of School Works | Leadership Growth is a Two-Way Street | Quiet Quitting: Are Employers Culturally Aware? | How to Guide Students into Accounting | Three Strategies to Keep Emerging Leaders Engaged
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The 25-year-old had one year of experience, and we were chasing a controller-type person. The whole outsourced practice was in shambles. Revenue was nil and any clients we had were unsatisfied.
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Talent Retention: Five Tips for an Audit Adjustment

Dodge the perfect storm of quiet quitting, the great resignation and busy season.

By Chis Vanover

Vanover

Chris Vanover is an outspoken survivor of the Big 4 and PCAOB and has committed himself and AuditClub.cpa to helping transform how public accounting firms deliver audit and assurance services. 

The accounting industry is facing a growth in demand but suffering a squeeze on available talent.

Bloomberg Tax calculates that the number of accountants and auditors employed fell 17 percent between 2019 and 2021. The shortage starts on the supply side: The number of U.S. students completing bachelor’s degrees in accounting declined from 2016 to 2020, according to the AICPA’s 2021 Trends Report.

MORE TRENDS & OUTLOOK for 2023: The Biggest Change in Accounting? Personnel | Look Who’s Making Money Now | Merger Minded? Go Out on Top! |  Capacity Strategies Drive Change | Who Wants to Be Partner? Not Enough | Private Equity Heats Up M&A | Top Five Trends |  Compensation Gets Creative | CPA Partners Rejoice on Surging Fee Growth | The Office Is Over | Accounting Firms Face Up to Private Equity | IRS Hires Will Add Pressures | Consolidation Brings Challenges, Opportunities |

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The short supply is aggravated by high turnover and growing demand. Accountants have been leaving corporations and audit firms in record numbers. Though it’s been expected for some time that baby boomer retirements would produce a talent crunch, the crunch has been earlier and tighter than expected because of the great resignation.
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OUTLOOK: The Biggest Change in Accounting? Personnel

Four ways to address the talent shortage.

By CPA Trendlines Research
The Rosenberg MAP Survey: National Study of CPA Firm Statistics

The accounting industry has just begun to make its most radical change.

  • It isn’t the tech.
  • It isn’t the shift to advisory services.
  • It isn’t the remote offices.
  • It isn’t the mergers and acquisitions.

It’s all those things, plus what they all add up to: personnel.

MORE: Four Accountability Steps for Firm Success | How to Build a Standout Team | Five Keys to Becoming a High-Performing Firm | Assessing Your Firm | The 4 Traits of Great CPA Leaders | Why Leaders Must Ensure Clarity | Incremental Vs. Exceptional Success
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The industry has been suffering a shortage of professionals for many years now. Decades. Everybody talks about it, but nobody is doing much about it … until now. And, according to Charles Hylan’s Foreword to The 2022 Rosenberg Survey, the solution is a combination of several significant changes.

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Who Wants to Be Partner? Not Enough

Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Please?

By CPA Trendlines Research

As if the general and long-term shortage of accountants isn’t bad enough, now we’re seeing a widespread reluctance to take the final step in an accounting career, the step into partnership.

MORE: OUTLOOK 2023: Compensation Gets Creative | What New Leaders Want in Ownership | Getting Partners to Accept a New Pricing Philosophy | Survey Results: Partners Rejoice on Surging Fee Growth | Headcounts Grow 5%; Pay Rates Surge at 7% Pace | Fourteen Rules for Lateral Partner Hires

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This is serious. According to the 2022 Rosenberg Survey, a quarter of all partners are over the age of 60 and either near or past many mandatory retirement ages. Many have sold their equity yet continue to work just to help their own firms grapple with personnel shortages.

But nobody works forever.

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