Thinking
Choosing Your Surfing Style
I have to admit: Iâd love to learn how to surf. I sorta imagine itâd be something like skateboarding (which Iâve tried a couple times, and happy to report no major accidents) or like snowboarding (which I havenât tried yet, but maybe soon). Surfing involves mounting a wave, finding your position, then holding and adjusting that position as the water flows under you, supporting you with its force.
Letâs take a look at the anatomy of a wave:
Okay, so this isnât the type of wave youâll see at the beach â only the one youâll find in the oceans of business. There, one adoption curve after another ripples through time: first the innovators begin the momentum, then the early adopters take up the flow. Next the early majority makes it their own, after which it moves into the late majority camp, and lastly the laggards begrudgingly accept it.
We all have our preference: some of us are itchy and are stirred to push onto something no one else has tried yet. Others would like to see at least a few go ahead before they follow. Then there are those who need to see it proved before theyâll make their move, followed by those who finally catch the drift, and in the back, those who only come because someone made them.
Accounting Firm Process Model
A few years ago, I was working on the interior components of our firm, and there were so many different ideas coming at me, that I had a hard time putting them all in context. I started to think about it: is there a way to see the firm from a birdâs eye view that can help me keep track and prioritize whatâs changing, whatâs not changing, what needs to be different, what should be left alone, etc? Thus was born the accounting firm process model.
Processes arenât strategy per se; they arenât your business model exactly, nor your organizational structure by itself. Processes are simply the way things get done. They get touched by, and touch all these other elements, so they need to live and breathe with your âwhy.â But having a place where basic steps are outlined goes a far way to enabling you to effectively help your customers.
Channeling Creativity
You know that Marvel comic book hero, Cyclops? The one that emits a powerful energy beam from his eyes? Yeah, that reminds me of accountants.
Flow. It comes from somewhere deep inside. Some combination of the powers of our soul: memory, imagination, will, intellect, emotions, passions, and more. You might even think of it as a spring bubbling up from within, overflowing from wells far underground. But itâs a spring which must be fed or it runs dry. Our eyes, our ears, our mouths, our bodies, our noses â all of these are ways to feed the flow. If youâve been keeping your Big Ideas Journal, you might recognize this as the New Stimuli section â the ways we open ourselves to new experiences, broadening the types and numbers of âdotsâ we can connect. I like to think of it as exercising the curiosity of a child. Looking at diagrams at the doctorâs office, interacting with kids (did you know the Polaroid was invented by a father whose son asked why he couldnât see the photo right after it was taken?), watching public television specials, taking ballet lessons, digging deeper into something youâre interested in, even if thereâs absolutely no utilitarian value. It creates a flow, which can get quite powerful actually (side note: be careful what you feed in).
The Courage To Be Wrong
âIf youâre not prepared to be wrong, youâll never come up with anything original.â -Sir Ken RobinsonThat quote is taken from this 2006 TED talk video, which I highly recommend watching if you havenât seen it before (or even if you have, for that matter â itâs that good). In it, Sir Robinson offers some observations and insights about the education system, and how we might make it better.
It brought to mind a particular observation about accountants: that weâre used to knowing the right answer, and that people rely on us to be right. It breeds in us a predisposition to shy away from the unknown, to adopt a âwait and seeâ approach to new ideas, and to not step out unless weâre certain.
âIf youâre not prepared to be wrong, youâll never come up with anything original.â
Accounting Is Not The Language of Business
I think weâve been duped: you, like me, have probably been told somewhere along the line that âaccounting is the language of business.â Itâs not.
I think we like to think it is. I think we feel good that we can say that about our chosen profession. But I think we do a disservice to ourselves and our customers by subscribing to this notion.
Be Open To Randomness, But Not Random
This past year our team undertook the effort to re-design our customer on-boarding process. We met and started brainstorming over some basic questions: What does the customer care about? What should they care about? Any and all items were noted up on our whiteboard wall.
Over a series of get-togethers, we proceeded to follow more questions down a road to define customer touchpoints, process steps, components we needed to build out, and ideas on how to build them out. Since that time, weâve completed some basic âconstruction,â and we continue to build out more components as we go along. But the biggest revelation to me from the whole process was to define the results we wanted to achieve. And that the definition was a narrative, not a number.
What do I mean? For example, some of the process results we defined were:
Greed Is Not Good
Greed is not good. We have only to observe what happens when greed takes ahold of ourselves, to recognize that an unbalanced desire for wealth, and a willingness to do anything to get it, leads to an ignoble form of the human person.
Yet decades of economists have taught us that itâs pure self-interest that drives the marketplace. Theory after theory states that exchange is built on the principle of people looking out for number one. And the words of Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film Wall Street (and many films since) unabashedly proclaim that âgreed is good,â and what fuels commerce. Even in recent years, the mantra of the âoccupyâ movement rails against corporations that care about nothing but the bottom line. At best, business is perhaps a necessary evil â it gets us the things we want. But weâre suspicious of its origins, and wary to look too deep, lest we see the avaricious monster lurking underneath.
But thatâs no way to run a company, and leads to self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-sabotage. Greed is bad. Business is good. Itâs lifted the global standard of living by tremendous leaps and bounds over the last century. Greed is not intrinsic to business. Itâs a weakness of human nature which surfaces irrespective of context. In fact, far from being its engine house, greed corrupts business, just like people, and leads to their demise.
How so, you may ask? Well, Iâm glad you asked. đ
Putting the âTeamâ in âTeamworkâ
The omniscient manager.
You know: the mastermind, who has the vision, and orchestrates all the pieces in a three-dimensional chessboard, to achieve a magnificent result. They are filled with sage wisdom, far-seeing insight, and a gut instinct that never errs. We watch with awe and aspire to one day be that person.
Might I humbly submitâŠthey donât exist. Or at least they are as rare as unicorns.
So why are our business structures built on this myth? Why do we have managers, or at least, why are they endowed with powers and expectations that far outstrip a realistic understanding of what they can accomplish? Is it helping, or hurting, to follow this accepted âprofessionalâ model?
Time To Innovate
âTime is money.â
Our profession has grown up on this concept: time is money. You hear it even today. And thereâs a tempting ring of truth to it. After all, if I put in time, I can make money. It doesnât get much more simple than that, right?
But is it really the time thatâs making me money? Or is it what I do in that time? And if itâs the latter, why am I tracking and selling time? What should I be tracking and selling instead? What should I conclude when I spend a lot of time, but donât make a lot of money?
I have a theory: time is merely a tracker of value. And as the definition of value shifts, time can become a less and less accurate tracker of that value.
Endless Limits
The problem of our age is too much choice.
Endless possibilities are endless. Technology lifts limits, but provides no direction. The land of opportunity is all potential.
The result: dissipated energy.
âA large part of the beauty of a picture arises from the struggle which an artist wages with his limited medium.â -Henri MatisseMaybe limitations arenât something to be removed, but something to be embraced. Perhaps, the more external barriers are removed from around us, the more we should be establishing internal barriers to reinforce us. Whenâs the last time you made a list of the things you wonât budge on? You know, those things from life experience, that youâve come to realize are really important to you, or that you donât want to let happen. Maybe stop and do that now. Or start thinking about them, and make a list later today or this week. See them in black and white. Test them over a couple weeks, and find out how strongly you really feel about them. And then after youâre fairly comfortable with them, make a note of them somewhere youâll remember.
The Firms(s) of the Future(s)
The Firm of the Future. What does the future look like? And how does one ready their firm to flourish in it? Lately, the future seems to be arriving faster than it used to, and these questions have increasingly grown in significance. Many of you also recognize The Firm of the Future as the title of the landmark book by Ronald Baker and Paul Dunn, where they lay out an argument and a plan for professional firms that shifts focus intensely to identifying and pricing for value. Another highly recommended title and a companion volume: Implementing Value Pricing.
Like many Thrivealists, I am fascinated by the concept of the firm of the future â itâs so core to who we are, and runs as a common thread through our Manifesto. The more I thought about it though, the more I came to think that âthe firm of the futureâ was somewhat of a misnomer. I had a chance to actually chat about it once with Ron Baker, and he readily agreed. He wasnât fully comfortable with the term, but he hadnât found one he liked better just yet. More recently youâll often find him, and other members of the VeraSage think-tank, using the phrase âtimeless firms,â which I find much more apt.
Language affects thought, which in turn affects belief, which then impacts action. The problem in my mind with âthe firm of the future,â is that it is both singular, and static.
Energy Futures
In the financial markets, âenergy futuresâ refer to that elusive breed of investment instruments known as derivatives. The idea is that you can buy a contract now, for a set amount of energy (say, fuel) in the future. Itâs what gave Southwest Airlines the leg up in the early 2000âs and allowed them to keep their prices so low for so long â energy futures, a good thing (potentially).
In a converse, but no less elusive, way, the same holds true for the actual future: itâs made up of the energy from today. The energy you expend today is shaping your tomorrow. Which means that to change your tomorrows, you have to change your todays. The future isnât powered by, âWell Iâd like to do that one day.â Itâs powered by, âIâll do this now, for my later.â
Thatâs all well and good of course, and perhaps weâve all heard it before, but how do I actually change my todays? Habits have a way of staying, well, habitual. Never, never underestimate the power of inertia (something I have to continually re-learn). Inertia can be broken by a massive redirection, or by small shifts in weighting. Circumstances probably dictate which is better: the latter being preferred as less painful, but the former being required when itâs a matter of survival. But both require energy, and here is the crux of my argument: to change your future, stop managing time, and start managing energy.
Pricing Justice
We want to see our customers treated fairly â itâs in our CPA DNA. Somewhere between learning debits and credits, independence, objectivity, and integrity seep into our subconcious. Iâm not quite sure how it happens, but I think itâs what leads to CPAâs being consistently ranked among the most trusted advisors, ahead of doctors, lawyers, and bankers. To be honest, itâs one of the things that attracted me to the profession.
That desire for upright honesty and fairness surfaces in a variety of different ways: the services we provide, the counsel we give, the interactions we have with third-parties on behalf of our customersâŠand, in our approach to pricing.
A Profession In Search of An Identity
What is a CPA?
WellâŠweâre the only ones licensed to perform financial statement audits. The federal government requires it for public companies, and the states issue the licenses. But is this what defines us? Is our identity basically defined by regulatory statute?
âBringing integrity to information.â Thatâs sorta what an auditor does â makes the financial information believable, adds credibility. And even if we donât perform audits, the public turns to us when it wants an honest opinion: when it needs to be objective and independent.
âMaking sense of a changing and complex world.â Thatâs what the CPA Vision Project proposes. I have very deep respect for the folks involved in the project, though this statement sorta leaves me wanting for more. âMaking sense of a changing and complex worldâ feels a little vague, and lacking in a sense of direction to me. I sorta feel like itâs a definition for being âhumanâ: weâre all just trying to make sense of the changing and complex world we live in. But what makes the CPA unique? What do they bring to the table that others donât?