Both tax and audit partners can achieve margin goals, but in different ways.
By Bill Penczak
I was leading a midyear review of the 2023 strategic plan for one of my CPA firm clients, one that has experienced exponential growth (you’re welcome) in the past few years but simultaneously is facing the positives and negatives that accompany rapid growth. As we delved into the goals and objectives in the six strategic areas, it dawned on me that partner focus – and the ensuing measurement and related compensation – should be narrowed to just two things, which I will address in a bit.
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The polar opposite of this KISS approach was the managing partner of a $100 million-plus firm that wound up being gobbled up by one of the supernationals almost 10 years ago. He was brilliant – he could look at an Excel spreadsheet and, in “Rain Man” fashion, immediately identify wrong entries or formulas. (For those readers on the younger age spectrum, “Rain Man” was an Academy Award-winning film from 1988 starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise.) Being the king of Excel, this managing partner had created a 20-column rating sheet for each partner to measure their performance. In the words of one partner at the time, “There was so much detail, we didn’t even know what to focus on.”
Time for Wapner, indeed.
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