Culture Matters: Building the Wise Firm

At some point in my life, I decided that one of my mantras would be that the little things in life can make a big impact. The risk with stating that in this blog is that people who know me can likely find many instances where I have not lived up to that mantra. Agreed, I am not always consistent with it; however, it is something that I think about often. 

I was once asked what it means to “own your career.” My answer at the time was to seek opportunities for growth both personally and professionally. I continued by stating that you won’t always be doing what you “want to do” in order to grow. As I reflect on that answer, I think I got it wrong. Not totally wrong, but I missed an important step. Not just any step, but the first step. 

Author Patrick Lencioni’s book The Advantage has a great section about creating clarity in an organization. His premise is all about achieving alignment, which is a key discipline in creating a healthy firm, because, as he puts it, “…alignment is about creating so much clarity that there is as little room as possible for confusion, disorder, and infighting to set in.” 

A few weeks ago I attended the AICPA Women’s Global Leadership Summit. This summit was attended by nearly 500 female professionals and about 10 male professionals. In case you are wondering, yes, I was asked multiple times why I was in attendance. You see, simply stated, public accounting and HORNE do not have enough females in leadership roles. At HORNE, we are very much focused on how to improve retention of our female professionals and help them advance to leadership roles at our firm. 

I am part of that change. The question for me becomes, “How?”