Culture Matters: Building the Wise Firm

Last week, we took a look at how a strong culture leads to innovation with HORNE’s Principles for a Culture of Innovation in Executive Partner Joey Havens’ beBetter blog. This week, it’s time to ask yourself if your firm is future ready? CPA.com published its “Insights into the CPA of the Future Study” concluding that 92% of CPAs reported that they were not “future ready.” Read more about Joey’s challenge to leaders of the profession to set the tone at the top and do what it takes to become a future ready firm in his beBetter blog below.

Our Executive Partner Joey Havens presented “Creating a Culture of Innovation” at the Digital CPA Conference this week in Las Vegas.  Among other things, he shared our belief that a strong culture leads to innovation. It’s true, we didn’t specifically set out to be an innovative firm, instead we set out to create a culture with a strong sense of belonging, a place where team members felt safe to make mistakes and then learn from them, and mindset to challenge the status quo daily. Read more about our journey and HORNE’s Principles for a Culture of Innovation in Joey’s beBetter blog below.   

I had the opportunity to attend the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Global Women’s Conference in Boston in November. I left feeling energized as I watched a majority room of women seeking to understand what the workforce of the future looked like. A future full of companies who are actively working to create an environment where employees feel included and recognized for the contributions they make to their companies. There were a number of sessions with a wealth of information, but there were a few particular individuals that left their mark engraved in my mind as they represented the very culture we envision and are working together to build at HORNE. They were each unique in their own right, bringing fresh perspectives and challenging old conversations.  

For millennials, the workforce looks vastly different today than when baby boomers were entering. Passion is a hot topic that society pushes millennials towards in the search for a career. Many millennials believe they will be unfilled in the corporate world because it does not provide an opportunity to pursue certain passions. For me, a millennial, life at HORNE has proven that a personal passion can easily align with my career. 

My first two years at HORNE were pretty exciting and filled with fast-paced learning. But, I slowly started to feel eager for a bigger more impactful role in a project. Then, one day my performance advisor was talking about having to travel to Tennessee for a client meeting. I immediately chimed in, “I want to go to Tennessee!” He smiled and said, “Well, I don’t need you on this project right now, but we have a big project coming up that’s also in Tennessee. And, it’s a big one.”

Why are mistakes so hard to swallow? You know that sinking feeling in your stomach, the sweaty palms and the voice in your head screaming "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?" This feeling might be something similar to getting pulled over for the first time, discovering your checking account is overdrawn or accidentally running into the car in front of you while your attention was diverted (on something completely not worth the accident). It's a terrible feeling.

Trying to raise a child could be compared to being in a large boardroom during the negotiations of a hostile takeover. Over the last seven years that I have been blessed (or in negotiations) with my child, I have noticed that I have acquired new skills and honed existing ones, some of which are often utilized in the professional world.

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.

Recently, I was given an opportunity to be a part of proposing for work with a new client. I learned many things during this process, but my biggest takeaway was a comment made by the company’s CFO.

At this point in the conversation, we were talking through the process of them changing accounting firms. We addressed the fact that we would reach out to their former firm regarding the inspection of work papers. Realizing this could be an awkward process, the CEO asked if that encounter was typically hostile. In response, the CFO said, “Well no, because we aren’t switching firms due to issues with quality of the work, we are switching because these guys specialize in working with companies like ours.”