Culture Matters: Building the Wise Firm

A co-worker recently shared an online shopping experience with me. She purchased a high-end, metal water bottle online and it arrived scratched. She emailed the company about the scratch and returning the water bottle. Within minutes, she received an apology with notification that a replacement would be shipped out that same day. She emailed the company again and asked how to return the scratched water bottle. They just told her to keep it and asked that she recycle it if she didn’t want to keep it. 

As Partner Rusty Butcher shared in last week’s blog, advancing women into leadership roles is a critical focus for both HORNE and the profession.  At the same AICPA women’s summit that Rusty attended, Executive Partner Joey Havens and I served on the panel that addressed sponsorship and advocacy in the profession—which, unfortunately, for most can be a check-the-box exercise unless our mindsets change along with our methods. 

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?”

I have a mentor who repeatedly reminds me that “gratitude takes what we have and turns it into more.”  Gratitude is indeed a powerful tool that shapes our perspective. Yet, it is a discipline—not our natural default, and so it must be practiced.

I’m a female in a profession that is traditionally dominated by men at the highest levels of the organization. My entire career has been marked by the word “only”—the only woman on the board, the only woman at the table, etc.

Or, so I thought.

When we first began to work on HORNE’s formal sponsorship program, I began to look back over my 30-year career and realize that I had mistakenly placed that “only” label on my own path. In fact, in hindsight, I realize that there were many other people who played very important and intentional roles in my “only” positions. I did not get to be the only woman by myself.

I’ll never forget my first job after college. I had co-workers that felt like family, and a true sense of belonging. Though happy, I began to question the growth opportunities in my position.

I was young in the workforce and eager for more. So, I began the job search again and landed a position with a national company. I got the chance to learn more, do more and grow more. Yet, at the end of the day, I still wasn’t happy. I was simply just a blip on an 80,000+ employee radar and lacked a sense of belonging.

We announced this week that HORNE is the nation’s first accounting firm to partner with The Anticipatory Organization and train its team members with “The Anticipatory Organization™: Accounting and Finance Edition.”

What in the world does that mean you might ask? The short answer is this: accountants are operating in a world defined by accelerating change and complexity. As a result, the ability to anticipate (disruptions, problems, customer needs and new opportunities) will be the most important skill any business person can possess.

There have been times when I would have felt fortunate to be the only man in the room. This wasn’t one of those times.

Last October I was privileged to attend the AICPA Women’s Global Leadership Summit. I had gotten word from one of my partners who attended the previous year that I would be in the minority. He wasn’t kidding. With close to a thousand women from all over the country, there were five male attendees. Actually, there were more male speakers than male attendees.

Today marks the 53^rd anniversary since the founding of HORNE. Five decades of serving clients!

When someone recently asked me what I thought Mr. Horne, Sr. would say if he could see us now, I chuckled and told her that Mr. Horne would probably have more than a few words for me! I know he would ask “What is this Wise Firm?” and “Why are we putting so much knowledge out on our website?”