beBetter 

Why are firms and CPAs moving so slowly to do what it takes to move from transactional/technical/compliance work to serving as an advisor that actually helps clients redefine reality and discover what’s possible in their future?

As we sat elbow-to-elbow in the tiny fellowship hall of the little rural Methodist church, enjoying a delightful selection of home cooked food, Schaeffer (a team member on our healthcare valuation team) leaned over and said, “I bet there’s already a blog idea in your head about this experience.” He was right, but I must confess, at the time I was too busy enjoying the fresh cut skillet corn and the bacon enriched butter beans—an experience that was truly reliving the tradition of “Sunday Lunch” with family and friends.

Today, it’s very common to hear people greet each other and respond to personal inquiries as, “Fine,” “I’m fine,” “We’re fine.” At the AICPA Major Firms Group meeting in July, I overheard many managing partners and COOs respond to inquiries about their firm with, “We’re fine.” For some reason, it didn’t seem as confident as it might have in the past. There were a few smiles missing. I could feel a little tension and heard a more serious tone, which caught my attention.  It was obvious to me that “We’re fine” had a different context this year. 

A few months ago at HORNE’s State of the Firm, we discovered together that most of us are swimming, wading, tiptoeing or running through the swamp of despair since we took a new direction in response to the transformation we see around us. We reviewed this insightful graphic, “The Emotional Journey of Creating Anything Great,” and each of us identified where we were on our journey. It was not pretty, big change never is.

In a moment of insanity, I agreed to go to the factory outlet mall with my wife, Cathy, on a Sunday afternoon. The reason? 1. It was raining, 2. We had been in the house for 2 days, 3. I did need some new casual dress shoes, 4. The NCAA college baseball regional that I was watching was on my ESPN app (LOVE IT), and 5. I knew she would love it (yes, this one should be higher on the list).

Fifty-one years ago this month, Roy Ward, a young and inexperienced yet entrepreneurial-driven accountant, joined the solo practice of William F. Horne in Laurel, MS. Mr. Horne’s practice was just slightly more than three years old at the time (founded in 1962) and his office was located in a converted house at Jefferson Street. This is the moment when HORNE LLP’s journey began in earnest and where many of the core values of our Wise Firm culture were established. 

One small thing, if repeated daily, is not a small thing. It leads to big things and big impact. One good daily habit can be the difference in great and average. The difference in outstanding and typical. Small things are always easy to do or easy not to do. 

Simply showing up just doesn’t cut it. Today, we need team members who are going to be fully present. Passionate, focused, committed and engaged. 

Ever notice the trend when we are faced with stagnation, less relevance, stiffer competition or slow growth—we’re quick to default to a “more is better” approach. An approach based on beliefs that bigger means being relevant and brings certainty for future growth. If we were bigger, more companies would choose us so we would have more growth. If we do more of any of our services, our relevance will grow also. These beliefs or approaches might be a very slippery slope that could land us at the bottom of a swamp infested with other non-distinctive commodities. 

I think the busy we each feel today primarily comes from our legacy of treating everything as being urgent. We have bought into the legacy thinking that if it is urgent, it is important to our future. We have bought into the legacy thinking that to be responsive we must treat everything as urgent. We have bought into the legacy thinking that if we are working on urgent things, we are important and valued. We have bought into the legacy thinking that learning to handle urgent things is a competency that makes us feel good. 

Let’s start with a bold statement (an assumption based on experience and lots of supporting evidence)—most firms have partners and managers who are not hitting on all cylinders to reach their full potential. But these low performing partners/managers generally have two key CEO attributes that might surprise us.  In fact, these two key attributes are exactly what our legacy thinking might use to rationalize why they should be partners. A few weeks ago, we talked about our current leadership gap, which is worsened by our legacy thinking. Let’s dive in as we may find ourselves justifying past decisions based on highlighting these two important attributes.

The unparalleled success of public accounting has led our firms into a leadership paradigm where our basic assumptions, reasons, beliefs and perspectives are failing us in developing leaders for tomorrow’s success. As we look within our firms, what past trends do we see that help us understand our present paradigm in promoting partners, the key leaders in our firms?

It is so tempting (obviously too tempting for CPA firms) to be everything to everybody. CPA firms wear the badge of never saying, “NO.”  No wonder we constantly hear the warning that someone can’t see a real distinction between most firms.