Lee Eisenstaedt, Author at CPA Trendlines

Are You an Ostrich or a Giraffe?

Are You an Ostrich or a Giraffe?

By Lee Eisenstaedt
Leading With Courage Academy

There are leaders of CPA firms who think everything is right with the world, from their client relationships to their people.

How do they know for sure? Well, they don’t. There’s been no study or feedback or hard data to go on. Based on their years of experience, they just know…somehow. It’s the rare ones who have conducted a client survey to uncover festering problems they are unaware of. However, many choose to close themselves off from the truth and continue to operate in the same fashion as if nothing were happening.

Then there are those firm leaders who have a clear view of what is working well and what is in dire need of improvement. This type of leader understands that if left unaddressed the urgent problems will remain and, in all likelihood, result in operational breakdowns. This may involve serious costs to the firm.

LEADERSHIP

The True Measure of Practice Growth

The three critical questions you should be asking.

By Lee Eisenstaedt
Leading With Courage Academy

Question: Is your firm really growing as much as you think?

You probably celebrate when you win a new client, but what do you do when you lose one? Which leads to this little exercise… What are your revenues and profits over the past 12 months after you:

• Take out any mergers and acquisitions completed during that time?
• Take out any price increases implemented in the past 12 months?
• Take out all the new clients acquired in the past year?

What’s left? What kind of real growth remains? Even with those questions answered, you may be ignoring three fundamental considerations. READ MORE →

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Lee Eisenstaedt

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Lee H. Eisenstaedt, MBA, is an author, speaker, and co-founder of the Leading With Courage Academy.

Lee Eisenstaedt brings more than 35 years of diverse leadership, finance and operations experience to the clients of Value Drivers, LLC.

Lee focuses on helping new and emerging leaders make a bigger impact, sooner. He is accomplishing this through the Leading With Courage℠ Workshop and the Leading with Courage℠ Academy, both of which are based on his Amazon best-seller Being A Leader With Courage: How To Succeed In Your C-Level Position In 18 Months Or Less (May 2016).

Previously, Lee was a founding partner of L. Harris Partners, LLC, during which time he surveyed/interviewed several thousand clients of professional services firms. He has been a Chief Operating Officer of a Top 5 and a Top 50 CPA firm. Lee spent the majority of his career, 22 years, with the SC Johnson family of companies – including the consumer products company, the SC Johnson family office, and Johnson Outdoors, Inc. – in the U.S. and Western Europe, frequently as the “right hand” to the leader of the division, subsidiary or country to which he was assigned.

During his two European assignments with SC Johnson, Lee lived and worked in Paris, France for five years and had responsibility for finance, accounting, logistics, IT and customer service in five countries within the European Union. Lee also spent six years with Baxter International, Inc. in various finance and accounting positions.

Speaking and Writing

Lee’s second book Being A Leader With Courage was published in May 2016 and became an Amazon best seller in July 2016. He is also the co-author of the book Wallet Share: Grow Your Practice Without Adding Clients, and is a frequent speaker at national and regional conferences of practitioners of professional services.

Education and Certifications

Lee received his MBA from Northwestern University and his BA from Franklin & Marshall College. He has attended executive programs on marketing at Harvard, Wharton, and Northwestern Universities, and executive development programs at INSEAD and the Center for Creative Leadership. Lee is also a Net Promoter® Certified Associate and a member of Attorneys for Family Held Enterprises (AFHE), Family Firm Institute (FFI), Private Directors Association (PDA), Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Association Forum.

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