Culture Matters: Building the Wise Firm

We’ve all heard the pros and cons of group projects. It’s a great experience if all team members bring something to the table and work well together. But, what if that isn’t the case? It’s easy for the attitude to emerge of going on standby. You know, the attitude of just standing by to see what happens next. Or waiting to see who will make the next move.  

It’s clear to me that HORNE is rethinking the way we do things. One area that recently caught my interest is around engagement. In her book Own It, author Meridith Elliott Powell charges us to recognize that today’s employees are different. Simply stated, we need to redefine the expectations of both leaders and employees in team member engagement. Failing to increase team member engagement means losing great talent to other companies or failing to help those that stay reach their full potential.

I thought I understood culture.  I thought I understood organizational change and development. I mean, I have a degree in anthropology after all. But boy was I wrong.  

After a few months at HORNE, I looked around and thought that we were “fluffy.” That our ideas and ideals were too lofty and that our heads were in the clouds. I thought that we changed our mind too much, and that it reflected negatively on leadership because we couldn’t make up our minds and stick with our decisions. I can’t help but think I’m not the only one that was looking at it with the wrong perspective.

When it comes to our personal and professional growth, the common denominator that often trips us up involves risk. As I consider my performance over the past years and my future ambitions, I find myself pondering these two questions:

My early career goals didn’t include the acronym CPA. I attended a liberal arts university and worked at a bank during my time there. After graduation, I was offered a full-time position with the bank. I worked my way up, eventually becoming a bank officer and lender. I made loans for everything from cars to churches to crops. I liked the people I worked with and I enjoyed interacting with my customers. But, it never felt like what I wanted to call my life’s work. The work kept me content, but I wasn’t totally fulfilled.

What is a leader? According to Merriam-Webster, a leader is “a person who leads…who has commanding authority or influence.” Am I a leader? Who can be influenced by little ole me? 

Creating The Wise Firm Way video was a group effort.  Literally, our entire firm had the opportunity to speak into its creation—and one of the greatest nuggets of information came from Tracy Cunningham, a director on our Firm FIRST team who has been with the firm since she was 18 years old, more than 30 years.

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.” 

I remember the day I saw the very first draft of The Wise Firm Way. I was sitting in a board of directors meeting in 2015, and we had been talking about the Wise Firm outside of the walls of HORNE for less than 12 months. That initial script was rough and there was still a lot of work to do, but I remember feeling so excited about seeing our vision for our future so clearly formed. There were still some lingering questions throughout the firm about why we were choosing to make such a big push on culture externally. And I am sure some were asking why we were so vividly describing the firm we were building together to those who don’t even work at HORNE.