Four Accountability Steps for Firm Success

Plus four challenges to address.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading From the Edge

I’ve been focusing on the leadership accounting firms need to succeed in a future driven by seismic disruptors. We began with strategy, then empowerment. This third post will address the critical element that makes empowerment work – accountability.

MORE: The Art of Leadership: Empowerment | The Art of Leadership, Lesson One: Strategy
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A characteristic of a great “Edge” leader is the ability to empower everyone and understanding that as a leader, your responsibility is to lead and not manage. If you are the type of leader that manages, you own accountability since you can’t manage and empower at the same time. As I defined it in my previous post, a simple definition for empowerment that applies to all organizations is, “Authority or power given to someone to do something.”

Posted on April 27, 2022

Anthony Zecca

About the Author

Anthony Zecca is a veteran CPA and management consultant who focuses on growth strategies and leadership.

He is the author of
Leading from the Edge – The Strategic Growth Handbook with Bonus Toolkit
published by CPA Trendlines.

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Zecca’s understanding of leadership was honed both by his career as a partner in a CPA firm as well as his work as a consultant with hundreds of leaders across numerous industries.

“Leading from the Edge” reflects Zecca’s belief in what makes a successful leader and challenges every leader, in any capacity, to have the courage to step out of what he calls “Center Leadership” to become an impactful Edge leader who can move their organization to the level of a standout, high-performance firm.

Zecca’s career began at J. H. Cohn & Company – a small $5 million dollar firm in New Jersey where his first exposure to leadership was gained. Zecca earned his CPA credentials early in his career and was promoted to partner in 12 years.

His successful career as an audit partner provided him with the opportunity to work with a number of large clients of the firm.

Zecca’s interest in how businesses worked, what made good ones good and bad ones bad, resulted in a career move from audit to management consulting. As a partner in the small consulting team at J. H. Cohn, he led a number of consulting projects for small to middle-market companies.

He used his work with CEOs of these companies as a “leadership laboratory” where he took the time to probe and observe so many different leaders and began to develop a deep understanding of what made great leaders great and their impact on how their companies performed. Zecca served on the management committee of the firm and was part of the leadership team at J. H. Cohn as the firm grew from a small firm to a $250-milion dollar firm and one of the top 20 firms among the top 100 firms.

He became the Managing Partner of the consulting division of the firm in 2001 when consulting revenue was less than $2 million with a team of five.

When he retired from the firm at the end of 2015, the consulting division had revenue of about $70 million with 24 partners and close to 300 staff. Half of that growth was from the firm merger with Reznick in 2013.

Over his career, he consulted for hundreds of organizations, interacting with leaders in family companies as well as publicly traded and large not-for-profit organizations.

It’s through his long career working with leaders and being active in the leadership of his firm that his concepts regarding leadership were developed and shared in this second book. Zecca was co-author of “The Performance Power Grid,” first published, by Wiley, in 2000, focusing on “business intelligence,” making it one of the first on the topic.

Anthony has presented at conferences and client company retreats numerous times on strategy, growth, and leadership. He has written numerous articles on these subjects and is recognized for his excellent presentation and facilitation skill.

He has been involved in various charitable organizations including being one of the founding members of the Medhen Orphan Relief Effort which is an organization that supplies financial support to an orphanage in Ethiopia.

In addition, he has been on various boards including his hometown Board of Education where he was elected President for 8 of the 12 years he served. Most recently his consulting work has been with a number of accounting firms as well as other professional service firms providing high-value advice on strategy, leadership, and growth.

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