Here’s what you’re looking for: Anthony Zecca

LEADERSHIP

Why Leaders Should Focus on Talent

red rocket rising above white hot air balloons

Are you acquiring or recruiting? There’s a difference.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading From the Edge

In my recently published book, “Leading From the Edge – Creating a Standout, High-Performing Organization,” I focus on the leadership accounting firms need to succeed in a future driven by seismic disruptors.

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Leadership has a responsibility and impact on creating the standout, high-performing talent necessary to drive the firm’s long-term strategy. We all understand and believe that at the end of each day, the firm’s greatest asset walks out the door (or in today’s world, disconnects). The quality of a firm’s talent directly relates to the success and performance of the firm.
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LEADERSHIP

How Teamwork Drives Firm Success

underview of six businesspeople in a circle with hands in center in teamwork gesture

Potential leaders fall into four categories.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading From the Edge

Leadership has responsibility and impact on creating a powerful and united team throughout the firm and an environment that motivates every single team member to their highest level of performance for the benefit of the firm, and not their own career advancement. Teamwork and not individualism is a cornerstone of a strong culture that results in achieving the level of a standout, high-performing firm.

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In fact, a strong culture cannot thrive in an environment where silos exist, and individuals are more focused on what is best for their career versus what is best for the firm. Teamwork is not only a key aspect of the firm’s culture, but a key factor in driving the firm’s performance to become a standout, high-performing firm.
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LEADERSHIP

Where Strategy Meets Firm Culture

three people arguing in office

Four actions to take.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading From the Edge

As we focus on the leadership of accounting firms need to succeed in a future driven by seismic disruptors, we must address leadership’s responsibility, and impact on creating a culture that results in an environment that motivates every single team member to their highest level of performance.

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There are two great quotes that I would like to start with to frame this discussion. The first is from Bryan Walker (partner and managing director at Ideo), who stated that “Culture is like the wind. It is invisible; yet its effect can be seen and felt” in every single organization that exists from the family to the biggest company on the planet. The second quote is from author Tanya Mann: “Your organization’s culture is either an asset or a liability; either helping business performance or hurting it.”
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LEADERSHIP

How Accountability Drives Firm Success

senior businessman with five colleagues

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 post will address the critical element that makes empowerment work – accountability.

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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.” 
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LEADERSHIP

Standout Teams Require Everyone to Be on Board

four people talking in office

How to overcome roadblocks.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading from the Edge

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford, inventor, founder and CEO of the Ford Motor Company

Let’s follow Mary as she works through the first principle – creating a firmwide, standout team.

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Mary’s Firm (continued)

Mary is back in her office after the partners’ meeting where she told all the partners that the firm must become a standout, high-performing firm and move out in front of the pack. She continues to think about what she shared at the partners’ meeting and what comes next – how to move this process forward and create the vision that she shared. She knows she must get deeper into each principle and what leadership must do to fully actualize the goal – becoming a standout, high-performing firm. She decides to bounce some ideas off of another partner and asks Jim, a trusted long-term tax partner, to join her for some discussion.

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LEADERSHIP

Five Principles of High-Performing Firms

Transformation must occur at every level.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading from the Edge

“The world accommodates you for fitting in, but only rewards you for standing out.” – Matshona Dhiliwayo, author, “The Art of Winning.”

After your assessment of the leadership team, and the assessment of your own leadership, we move on to the challenge of answering the key question – what steps need to be taken (the road map) to move the firm from where it is today to a standout, high-performing firm?

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The call to action and question for you as the Edge leader, for your leadership team, for your partners, and in fact for the entire firm to answer is, do you just want to fit in or are you willing to do what it will take to stand out? If you want to move to the top of the pack, what does the firm need to accomplish and how does leadership drive that transformation?

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LEADERSHIP

How to Assess Your Firm’s Performance

Seven key filters to use.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading from the Edge

Now that we have completed an assessment of your leadership team and your leadership, the third leg is assessing the overall performance of the firm. This assessment, coupled with the assessment of the leadership team and your leadership, provides a strong foundation upon which to build the roadmap (strategies) for moving the firm from where it is today to a standout, high-performing firm. The underlying objective for this assessment of the firm is to have a factual basis for establishing a myth-free and accurate baseline of the firm by analyzing a number of key characteristics.

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What are the major areas of focus for the firm assessment? In center-led firms, the assessment of how well the firm is doing is generally focused around financial metrics. How much profit did we make? What was our growth? What was the change in average partner compensation? What profit percentage to revenue did we achieve?
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LEADERSHIP

Four Traits That Great Accounting Firm Leaders Share

key leadership attributes

BONUS: Questions for self-assessment.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading from the Edge

As the leader of the firm, as important as it is to complete a comprehensive assessment of your leadership team, it is equally if not more critical to assess your own leadership. What are the key leadership attributes that reflect great Edge leadership?

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How can you get a meaningful and comprehensive assessment of how well you are doing as the leader of the firm? The trap to avoid is to just listen to yourself and your own self-assessment. To really understand how well you are performing, you need multiple checkpoints.
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LEADERSHIP

Your Team Needs to Know Its Purpose

people gathering in the shape of an arrow

Clarity is the key.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading from the Edge

Many of you who are reading this might be too young to appreciate the story I share below about my childhood.

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I have always been a huge football fan. I played football in high school until a knee injury cut short my road to the NFL (just kidding), but my love of the game continues to this day. When I was a kid, there was a football game that I received one Christmas that I spent countless hours playing. The game was powered by electricity. The game board was designed as a football field, and there were 22 little plastic players that would form two teams. The players were about 2 to 3 inches tall, with a rubber piece on the bottom that had two flanges that you could move directionally and in theory affect how the piece would move on the board once the power button was hit.
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LEADERSHIP

Will Your Success be Incremental or Exceptional?

Eight forces that have altered the future of accounting firms.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading from the Edge

“All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they are now getting. If we want different results, we must change the way we do things.” – Tom Northup, author of “Five Hidden Mistakes CEOs Make”

What a great statement not just about accounting firms, but all organizations – “perfectly designed to get the result they are now getting.” There is another old saying that goes something like this: “If you want different results you have to do things differently.” Center leaders hold onto the status quo whereas Edge leaders constantly push the envelope of what is possible – pushing to the future edge.

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Leadership is a topic that has been researched, talked about, written about, training sessions built around, and endless models developed – yet it is also one of the most challenging issues in most firms today. Over my career, I have worked and consulted with leaders of all shapes and styles and firms that experienced varying degrees of success. Based on working with hundreds of companies, my conclusions – and two of the primary reasons that drove me to write my book – are that in many cases, firms are performing below their capabilities and every firm has the potential to reach higher levels of performance if and when leadership moves from the center to the EDGE. Edge leaders want to be at the top of the pack when it comes to all metrics that matter whereas center leaders are content to remain average.
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LEADERSHIP

Five Questions about Leadership vs. Management

Group of businesspeople hiding their faces behind question mark signs at office

Do you see yourself in either of these two businesses?

By Anthony Zecca
Leading from the Edge

Let’s look at examples of managing versus leading from two actual clients.

Stuck in Managing – Center Leadership

I was retained by the owner/CEO of a $40 million manufacturer of a home products company. The current leader inherited the business from his dad, and over 20+ years grew the business on the top line, but always struggled with profitability. Over the last few years, however, there was no top-line growth and he was frustrated.

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His leadership view of the future was the next quarter, and the company had no strategy or vision beyond the current year. The most he thought about the future was when they were preparing their annual budget. This was an incremental process versus a real bottom-up process coupled with a growth strategy so as a management tool, the budget was relatively useless.
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LEADERSHIP

Are You Solving Too Many Problems?

man with six arms handling various aspects of business

Choose leadership over management.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading from the Edge

One of the biggest obstacles to a firm realizing its potential, its partners and staff realizing their potential, and a firm leader maximizing his impact on the trajectory of the firm is when the line between leading and managing gets blurred.

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Too often, center leaders believe their job is telling everyone what to do and how to do it (managing things) versus providing the tools, authority and clarity on the firm’s strategic objectives and then getting out of the way (Edge leadership). Leadership at its most basic level is about inspiring everyone toward a common shared vision and ensuring that the decision-making hierarchy is clear and consistent within the firm’s mission and core values. Edge leadership is not about tactics and how things are done, but about making sure everyone is doing the right things, with accountability for results.
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LEADERSHIP

Five Ways to Evaluate Your Leadership Team

man standing on giant laptop keyboard, pointing at nine faces on screen for videoconference

Not just once, either.

By Anthony Zecca
Leading from the Edge

“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” – Andrew Carnegie, industrialist

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The above quote by Andrew Carnegie really puts a fence around the key responsibilities of your leadership team:

  • Ability to lead their team to work together toward a common vision
  • Ability to direct (drive) their individual team members’ efforts and accomplishments toward maintaining alignment with the firm’s objectives and
  • Ability to inspire and motivate each team member to achieve more than they have and to reach top performance and top results as a team

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