beBetter 

In December each year, millions of people celebrate religious holidays. Christmas and Hanukkah, as well as spiritually significant days for Muslims, Buddhists and Pagans, are celebrated among others. Universally, humankind continues to look for morally good virtues to live by. Love, caring and kindness are three that we might find appealing to the masses. They certainly are to me, and I believe they are key virtues for anyone who wants to be a leader, influencer or a great team member. 

This is the first in a blog series where we will explore strategies and insights I have gained in the last few months with other Top 100 CPA firm managing partners and COOs. We are attempting to “pull back the curtain” for strategies that might help propel our profession and firms to remain relevant and become future ready. 

We do not need to pull that curtain back very far to know that innovation is a key strategy for almost all firms as well as competitors outside our profession. It’s that competitor that doesn’t carry any legacy baggage that scares me the most when I am thinking about innovation. They have no respect for our existing business model, client relationships or services. Their objective is to become relevant advisors for our clients at the expense of our relationships. Scary, but if we are aware, predict and adapt — they are toast. There are also lots of advantages to being the legacy provider as long as we do not cling to the status quo or take our role for granted. Let’s heat the oven with some innovation. 

As Barry Melancon presented at the AICPA Women’s Global Leadership Summit, today is the slowest pace of change we will experience in our profession for the next five years. Transformation in our services, how we market, how we audit, how we consult and how we work will only increase exponentially. TODAY is the SLOWEST. Would you believe we have experienced a change in 31% of the Top 100 public accounting firms in the last ten years? Nearly a third turnover in the largest firms. Obviously mergers, acquisitions and new growth firms have contributed to this high rate of change. But what do you think the pace of change in the Top 100 will be over the next five years? Will this pace increase or decrease? I personally suspect we will have significantly more turnover in the Top 100 Firms during the next three years, much less in the next ten. There, I said it, and frankly, I am not alone in expecting this type of transformation.   

You are reading the blog of someone who once wore his Mack Weldons inside out for months. Yes, inside out and I was convinced I had them on right the whole time. So much so that every time CeCe put up the laundry, I flipped them back around after her. But one day CeCe caught me and asked what I was doing turning them the wrong way. “You have been wearing them inside out haven’t you?” she asked. After some laughs and a website search for confirmation, I realized that I was in fact wrong. I claimed they were my favorite brand yet I had been wearing them inside out for months.

Now I realize this might be too much information, but it is relevant because my embarrassment was the result of being quick to make assumptions, especially if they help fit my view of the world. 

The grocery stores are madhouses as everyone scrambles to prepare for their Thanksgiving feasts. Sunday lunches will soon be enjoyed with family and friends. But even as we began this week of preparation for Thanksgiving, news around the country has been clouded by the darkness of evil and hate.

How can we make a difference? Enjoy, Celebrate and be Thankful! 

This week, I am at the Grand Hyatt in New York for the AICPA Women’s Global Leadership Summit. Wanting to be well-rested for the full week ahead, I turned in early my first night. But around 2:30 a.m. my hand hit the control panel and all of the shades in the room started coming up. Talk about being confused.  Where am I? What is going on? So after I figured out the issue, I fell back asleep only to hit the control panel again at 3:47 a.m. and have all the lights come on. Too much technology for me! And since things tend to happen for me in threes, sure enough at 4:40 a.m. I hit the shades again. 

The truth is, it’s easy to be average. To be outstanding, however, calls for risks. It means not letting our comfort zones or fears of mistakes, perceptions and the unknown keep us from reaching our full potential. 

Life lessons learned at the airport have become almost commonplace for me and last week’s trip was no exception. As I sat in seat 19C, I opened my Kindle to finish the latest book in the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. I was barely halfway down the first page when I felt it. Someone was staring at me, and it was the lady sitting right next to me in the window seat. “Oh no,” I thought. “I have a talker.” A situation that is a big threat to an introvert like myself.

Recently several people have shared how they struggle to maintain a positive attitude consistently. As I reflected on this, I thought I would share my greatest insight into remaining positive. There’s a secret sauce that, when we apply it regularly, will leave us with lots of positive energy. 

As CeCe (my wife, Cathy) and I were checking our luggage curbside at the airport, she commented that someone had on too much perfume. In complete transparency, we are both very sensitive to strong fragrances.

I really didn’t think much about her comment as I had not noticed a strong fragrance. As we were getting ready to board our flight (boarding last, of course), we were the last two passengers walking down the jetway. About halfway down, CeCe said, “that person with the fragrance is on this flight. Gosh, I hope they are not sitting close to us!” I giggled but still had not noticed a strong fragrance. 

We had two team members: Adam, who had been with us three years, hard worker, dependable and always completed his assigned tasks. The other, Tom, was with us for six months — extremely innovative, demonstrated the ability to learn fast and seemed to always be exceeding expectations. Both were being considered for promotion to supervisor and Adam was even requesting the promotion.

First and foremost, we must learn to lead ourselves. It starts with understanding who we are. Do we know ourselves very well? Seems like a crazy question, but it is the starting point for leadership, fulfillment and success. What are our values? What decisions did we make that brought us to this point?

Recently, I surprised a team member by requesting that we role-play a difficult situation I had to address the following week. “Joey, why do you want to role-play this? As Executive Partner with tons of experience, why are you wasting time role-playing this discussion?” he asked. Great questions that brought to light how often we don’t gain the benefits of role-playing.