beBetter 

All I could do was laugh recently as this lady pulled up beside me at a stop sign.  As you can see, her companion has seen better days.  I immediately wondered what she was doing with this full scale skeleton riding shotgun in her car. But at least they had on their seatbelt, safety first! I rolled down my window to ask her what her friend was up to, but she sped off with what appeared to be a little attitude. I guess I was a little too lively for her. 

Full disclosure, this is a combination of both venting and sharing.  It simply drives me crazy when I see person after person allowing email to manage their day and destroy the power of focus and their effectiveness.  Email alerts and checking email constantly all lead to poor time management and reduce our ability to be outstanding. Email has gone from one of the most effective management and time saving tools to one of our biggest distractions.  We have too much of it and no discipline in how we manage it. 

It’s easy to see the sheer joy on my granddaughter, Dabs’, face as she enjoys her first experience snow sledding. She loves for Pops (that's me!) to come see her and I wish I could have been there when she ventured out last week to go sledding. However, I realize she would have had me on that sled too. 

One of our partners sent me this picture of his deck during the blizzard last week in Washington, D.C., where they got over 30 inches of snow in a little more than 24 hours.  At one point, he sent a short video and it was snowing so hard you could barely see beyond his deck. 

He was anticipating a big snow fall so he started shoveling snow early on, hoping he could stay ahead of it. He really wanted to be able to get the cars out if and when they needed them. But the snow was relentless and never let up and feeling overwhelmed, he lost his focus on keeping ahead. I immediately related to this feeling of being overwhelmed, although our weather had been simply cold and windy. You see, I was feeling overwhelmed at work.   

I wish I could say my self-reflection was always a result of careful planning and prioritization.  But that’s just not true. Life has too many surprises - good and bad.  So, this blog is the result of a moment of opportunity that I was not expecting or even really wanting.  Today’s reflection is the result of being stranded on the runway in D.C. on a crowded airplane that is already 45 minutes late taking off. I might also mention that my connection in Atlanta is already very tight, so this could result in lots of additional reflection time.  

You may have read my blog, Why Do We Ignore Good Advice?, where I shared about my mom’s wisdom and how it usually turned out that she, in fact, did know best. 

On a recent trip to Maine, we decided to hike the Gorham Mountain Trail in Acadia National Park. I had planned to do my first Periscope broadcast on leadership at the top, but when we got to the summit, the cellular signal was pretty weak, it started raining and I took the opportunity to chicken out.

Recently, I served on a panel discussing sponsorship and advocacy at the AICPA Women’s Global Leadership Summit.  In this blog, I will share some of what I shared with the women (and a few brave men) who attended this exciting, informative and motivating meeting. 

For years I have heard jokes about how slow the public accounting profession is in being innovative or adopting changes in business practices. Odds are, you have too. My favorite has always been, “When did the CPA buy his/her first fax machine?” Of course, the answer is, “When the client called and asked, ‘What is your fax number? I’m trying to fax you something.’”

This blog is the third in a four part series on how we can lead in public accounting to take advantage of some hard trends

Recently, my wife lured me into an afternoon session of Hot Yoga. Now, I don’t know if you have experienced a Yoga workout much less a Hot Yoga class where they turn up the heat to like 85 degrees, but take my word for it, it is a long, long hour. Not only are you sweating like crazy, your core is in a constant strain as you hold numerous very flexible positions.  I was literally shaking all over as I tried to hold these poses that individuals around me seemed to be enjoying. (PS, if they offer the weights, either pick the 1lb ones or just pass, the 5lb gets a little heavy around minute 12.) 

This blog is the second in a four part series on how we can lead in public accounting to take advantage of some hard trends

Blogging and still singing Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, you might remember the line “You better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone.” With most CPA firms having a large percentage of their revenues tied to the value of billable time, we might be sinking to the bottom holding on to this time clock if we don’t anticipate some of the changes ahead. 

This blog is the first in a four part series on how we can lead in public accounting to take advantage of some hard trends.

As I prepared my outline for this blog on life in public accounting, I am reminded of the Bob Dylan song “The Times They Are A-Changin'.” Today, in the world of public accounting, we are in the middle of a robust, free-agency market for talent like we’ve never seen before. This free agency market is “A-Changin'” because millennials are exercising their choices for a career and they routinely find public accounting not meeting expectations. We are not actually changing how we work, despite the proliferation of adopted new policies promoting millennial values. And we haven’t given any thought yet to generation Z desires as they start entering the workforce in the fall of 2016. Simply, in the trenches, we are losing the culture war. 

On a recent early morning trip to the gym, you can imagine my surprise when I came across these two ducks in the parking lot!  

I have to admit, at first, I thought someone had set decoys out to see if people would stop and look.  As I started walking towards the gym, I would just glance over, trying not to look right at them in case it was a joke.  I’m vain like that, I can’t stand for someone to trick me.  Then, the ducks started moving around so I knew this was the real deal.  (On a side note - what does this pool of water say about the parking lot?). This was so incredible, the ducks acted like this was their new home.  In places, the water was deep enough for them to swim around.