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Why “Busy” Is the Wrong Productivity Metric in Accounting
Many firms get planning assumptions wrong.
By William Englehaupt
Walk through almost any accounting firm during busy season, and the signals are familiar: calendars packed wall-to-wall, inboxes filling faster than they can be cleared, and professionals praised for constantly stepping up to meet demands. In many firms, this visible intensity is taken as proof of productivity. If people are busy, the thinking goes, work must be getting done.
But “busy” is not a productivity metric. It is a symptom. And when firms mistake it for performance, they quietly undermine quality, predictability, and morale.
Accounting is not alone in this trap, but the profession is especially vulnerable to it. Long hours and constant responsiveness feel reassuring in high-risk environments. They create the appearance of control. What they rarely produce is a reliable flow.
Shannon Stone-Winding: The Workforce Was Built for a Life That No Longer Exists | MOVE Like This
As caregiving responsibilities expand across generations and definitions of family, employers have an opportunity to rethink how work gets done — and keep valuable people in the process.
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MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research
In this episode of MOVE Like This, Shannon Stone-Winding, President and CEO of the Business Alliance of Colleges and Employers (BACE), joins Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to explore caregiving through a much broader lens: what does it mean for an organization to truly care for its people?
Shannon brings both a professional and deeply personal perspective to the conversation. In addition to her work connecting employers, colleges, and emerging talent, she has spent 20 years as the primary caregiver for her husband, a 100% service-connected disabled Marine Corps veteran.
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That experience has shaped how she thinks about caregiving, workplace culture, and what employees need to remain and thrive in their careers.
Shannon’s current caregiving research grew from a conversation at a diversity symposium, where accounting professionals began sharing examples of how firms were responding to employees’ changing needs.
Mandy Gallagher: Caregiving Isn’t a Side Issue – It’s a Workforce Issue | MOVE Like This
“Flexibility should be used as a tool for success. It shouldn’t be the exception.”
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MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research
In this episode of MOVE Like This, Mandy Gallagher, lead manager of Women’s Initiatives at the AICPA, joins Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to discuss why caregiving has become such an important conversation in accounting, what firms may misunderstand about caregivers, and how greater flexibility and support could influence retention and leadership pipelines across the profession. Gallagher’s work focuses on advancing women’s initiatives, supporting professional development, and amplifying women’s perspectives throughout the profession.
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One reason caregiving is getting more attention now is that it is both more visible and much broader than many people have traditionally assumed. Demographic shifts mean multiple generations are simultaneously balancing careers with responsibilities for children, aging parents, siblings, partners, friends, and others who rely on them. COVID also changed expectations around where and how work can happen. Employees experienced firsthand that they could remain productive while having enough flexibility to pick up a child or take a parent to a medical appointment. As more organizations return to traditional office expectations, those competing demands have become harder to reconcile.
The conversation challenges another long-standing assumption: that caregiving is primarily a women-with-young-children issue.
Understand Clients’ Relationship with Money
Start with which of four “money scripts” they follow.
By Rory Henry
The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management
Joy Lere Psy.D., licensed clinical psychologist and co-founder of Shaping Wealth, a learning platform transforming the human experience of money, told me on my podcast that she was amazed by how often money was the cause of her clients’ anxiety and unhappiness. Research confirms this phenomenon.
MORE: From Services to Experiences to Transformations | How Behavioral Finance Works | Manage Change through A PACT | Priority No. 1: Your Mental and Physical Health | Build Stronger Financial Futures with Health Care Planning | Marketing Strategies for Wealth Management Services | Trust Is the Primary Ingredient | Use Goodwill to Maximize Exit Readiness | An Accountant’s Role in Exit Planning | How to Prepare Your Clients’ Kids for Their Inheritance | A Question of Trust: Not Just for the Wealthy | Trust and Estate Planning Is for Clients of All Ages | Annuities and Insurance Growing More Attractive | Bridge the Advice Gap for Better Financial Futures
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According to the American Psychological Association (APA), money has consistently topped Americans’ list of stressors ever since the first Stress in America survey was conducted in 2007. According to the APA:
- 72 percent of adults report feeling stressed about money at least some of the time
- 22 percent reported feeling “extreme stress” about money at some point during the past month
- 26 percent of adults report feeling stressed about money most or all of the time
It shouldn’t be this way and this is where financial advisors can be a huge help.
READ MORE →
Randy Johnston: Accounting’s Brave New World of MCPs | The Disruptors
If MCPs are the infrastructure, agentic AI is the workforce.
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
Randy Johnston has been in accounting technology longer than many of today’s practitioners have been alive. With more than 50 years in the field, and a hand in designing everything from IBM ThinkPads to Excel’s PivotTables, he has seen more technological revolutions than he can easily count. He even wrote AI code in 1975 in Lisp. Through it all, he has remained true to a singular ideal: “My personal mission has always been to help as many people as possible do the things they want to do with technology.”
MORE DISRUPTORS: David Cristello: Growth Breaks Things – and That’s Normal | The Disruptors | Blumer, Vacin: What Only 5% of Firms Get Right | Disruptors | Ira Rosenbloom: PE Forces Firms to Pick a Future | The Disruptors | Doug Slaybaugh: How to Define “Values in Motion” | The Disruptors | Nancy McClelland: Bookkeepers Need a Safe Space to Collaborate | The Disruptors | Chase Damiano: Good Operations Means Defining How the Hand-Offs Happen | The Disruptors | Jeff Seibert: Digits Software Moves Toward Real-Time Accounting | The Disruptors |
Yet Johnston, executive vice president of K2 Enterprises and co-founder of Network Management Group, says the most significant shift is happening right now with Model Context Protocols (MCPs). MCPs are a technical layer that allows multiple systems to be connected and queried through AI. Though he’s spent decades watching technology evolve through mainframes, databases, graphical interfaces, and SaaS, he says MCPs may be the most consequential development he’s seen in years.