Adrian G. Simmons

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, we’ve completed some basic “construction,” 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:

Continue reading “Be Open To Randomness, But Not Random”

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 it’s 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 “greed is good,” and what fuels commerce. Even in recent years, the mantra of the “occupy” movement rails against corporations that care about nothing but the bottom line. At best, business is perhaps a necessary evil – it gets us the things we want. But we’re suspicious of its origins, and wary to look too deep, lest we see the avaricious monster lurking underneath.

But that’s no way to run a company, and leads to self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-sabotage. Greed is bad. Business is good. It’s lifted the global standard of living by tremendous leaps and bounds over the last century. Greed is not intrinsic to business. It’s 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, I’m glad you asked. 🙂

Continue reading “Greed Is Not Good”

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 submit…they don’t 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 “professional” model?

Continue reading “Putting the “Team” in “Teamwork””

“Time is money.”

Our profession has grown up on this concept: time is money. You hear it even today. And there’s a tempting ring of truth to it. After all, if I put in time, I can make money. It doesn’t get much more simple than that, right?

But is it really the time that’s making me money? Or is it what I do in that time? And if it’s 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 don’t 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.

Continue reading “Time To Innovate”

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.

“A large part of the beauty of a picture arises from the struggle which an artist wages with his limited medium.” -Henri Matisse

Maybe limitations aren’t 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. When’s the last time you made a list of the things you won’t budge on? You know, those things from life experience, that you’ve come to realize are really important to you, or that you don’t 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 you’re fairly comfortable with them, make a note of them somewhere you’ll remember.

Continue reading “Endless Limits”

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 – it’s 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 “the firm of the future” was somewhat of a misnomer. I had a chance to actually chat about it once with Ron Baker, and he readily agreed. He wasn’t fully comfortable with the term, but he hadn’t found one he liked better just yet. More recently you’ll often find him, and other members of the VeraSage think-tank, using the phrase “timeless firms,” which I find much more apt.

Language affects thought, which in turn affects belief, which then impacts action. The problem in my mind with “the firm of the future,” is that it is both singular, and static.

Continue reading “The Firms(s) of the Future(s)”

In the financial markets, “energy futures” 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. It’s what gave Southwest Airlines the leg up in the early 2000’s and allowed them to keep their prices so low for so long – energy futures, a good thing (potentially).

In a converse, but no less elusive, way, the same holds true for the actual future: it’s 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 isn’t powered by, “Well I’d like to do that one day.” It’s powered by, “I’ll do this now, for my later.”

That’s all well and good of course, and perhaps we’ve 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 it’s 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.

Continue reading “Energy Futures”

We want to see our customers treated fairly — it’s in our CPA DNA. Somewhere between learning debits and credits, independence, objectivity, and integrity seep into our subconcious. I’m not quite sure how it happens, but I think it’s what leads to CPA’s being consistently ranked among the most trusted advisors, ahead of doctors, lawyers, and bankers. To be honest, it’s 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 customers…and, in our approach to pricing.

Continue reading “Pricing Justice”

What is a CPA?

Well…we’re 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?

“Bringing integrity to information.” That’s sorta what an auditor does – makes the financial information believable, adds credibility. And even if we don’t perform audits, the public turns to us when it wants an honest opinion: when it needs to be objective and independent.

“Making sense of a changing and complex world.” That’s 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. “Making sense of a changing and complex world” feels a little vague, and lacking in a sense of direction to me. I sorta feel like it’s a definition for being “human”: we’re 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 don’t?

Continue reading “A Profession In Search of An Identity”