Culture Matters: Building the Wise Firm

A few weeks ago, Harvard Business Review published an article titled The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief and as I read it, I immediately wanted to share it with everyone I knew. David Kessler, an expert on grief, discussed with the author his perspective on the current coronavirus crisis and how what we are really collectively feeling is grief. He elaborated on the idea of multiple  kinds of grief that we are experiencing.

Last week, I wrote about 5 Ways to Avoid Needing a Vacation After Your Vacation. As promised, today I would like to share with you a few things I did once I returned from my trip that also proved to be very beneficial.

Have you ever come home from a vacation and returned to work on Monday feeling like you need a few days just to recover from PTO? I know I’ve experienced this almost every time I return from a trip, especially if I take a full week off.

Due to some recent unfortunate events in my life, I’ve been thinking a lot about failure. At HORNE we are very positive about failure and see it as a necessary element of success in the workplace as well as in our personal lives. We encourage the act of failing forward, but what does this mean?

I think our philosophy aligns well with the Winston Churchill quote “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” We choose to see our failures as necessary learning opportunities on the way to a successful career. But in order to live this out we have to remember several things that define the way we handle failure. I have compiled a list of a few things we need to do in order to use our failures for ultimate success.

We all know how important it is to set boundaries. We set all kinds of boundaries that act as walls to keep the good in and the bad out. But how often do we think through our professional work/life boundaries? From my experience, these lines are not thought out as well as others and are too easily blurred. I’ve heard many successful businessmen and women tell me that one of the hardest areas to tackle is work/life boundaries. This begs the question: Why? Why is it so difficult to create and maintain good boundaries at work?

Last week I told you about the first four differences I’ve experienced since I’ve been at HORNE. Below, I round out the list with the last three differences and why I am choosing HORNE.

5. HORNE Values People Before Profits

The support at the HORNE business advisory firm is exceptional. The sense of belonging is encouraging and fosters an environment of positive people who feel a connection with the work they do. HORNE realizes that people are much more effective when they actually enjoy what they do.

In September of 2014, I was under the impression that just about every accounting firm was the same, except that some were just larger than others. That completely changed nine months later when I began interning at HORNE. During my internship, I have learned a lot about accounting, but I’ve also learned a lot about culture and what makes one firm different from another. In particular, I’ve learned what makes HORNE so different from other public accounting firms.