Procrastination is your worst enemy. Accounting practitioners face a crisis if they don’t make significant changes.
A recent survey revealed that less than a third of practitioners reported having a strategic vision and plan. Of those that did have a plan approximately 50% shared it with managers and staff.
When asked why a plan hasn’t been prepared, the most frequent responses were:
- “We don’t have time – we’re too busy!”Client demands inevitably take priority, even though a large proportion of these clients are non-profitable (see my blog on the 140/20 Rule), to the detriment of your own firm.
- “We can’t get partners to agree on a vision.” Without a process to do this properly it is likely that individual partners and even staff will have their own personal vision wherein ‘pillars’ are developed with lists of clients rather than any sort of business model.
- “We really don’t know how to complete a plan.” I do see plenty of evidence of this where firms attempt to do some sort of planning themselves at a ’Retreat’ but inevitably they become talk fests with no serious actions determined.
Firms, across the profession, that are unable to retain quality staff are unlikely to attract them and today’s best talent expect a digital environment, a clear vision, a change-ready organisation with fast decision-making at the leadership and management levels. Successful firms are adaptable, learn quickly and move with a sense of urgency. Results are directly impacted by employee experiences. Experiences impact their beliefs. Beliefs impact their actions and their actions impact your firm results.
WHAT ARE YOUR CORE VALUES?
Your skilled, experienced people want to know where the firm is going and whether they will personally be able to play a significant role and grow professionally. There are plenty of choices for them in this fast changing world and reliable economist, Phil Ruthven, was quoted as follows:
“For those fearing the disappearance of jobs, don’t. Over the past five years, Australia created six times more jobs than it lost, and it is well placed to do the same over the next five years. And, yes, the new jobs are in new industries. So the message is don’t just stand there, do something!”
….and they will. The war for talent is just beginning! Young accountants have grown up with an abundance mentality, rather than a scarcity mentality. A vision, mission and core values are integral to a firm’s strategic plan. Potential employees simply do not want to work for firms that do not align with their own core values and beliefs. Partners often insist that they have a vision, mission and core values, but is this really true?
- Do partners agree and live up to the core values?Imagine a situation where two second-tier accounting firms that were merging wanted to set aside a day to discuss and identify core values. Imagine if every single partner (a very large group) wanted to list their own specific comments which resulted in pages of ‘values’ for their new merged firm. Would you conclude this process was way overdone and would probably never be implemented? Unfortunately, this was a real situation. Unfortunately, this did happen. And yes, unfortunately the ‘values’ were never implemented. The firm demerged not long after.
- Do your employees know the core values and are they held accountable?
- Does your firm share your business plan with your staff and key clients?
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
Of all the reasons given above the most revealing is that partners can’t agree. Arriving at a shared, agreed-upon business plan requires a lot of planning, thinking and allocation of resources to a limited number of prioritised strategies – usually no more than three. Your first attempt might only be 80-90 percent complete. This will not limit your success. Over time the task becomes easier, the planning gets better and the achievements escalate. In our experience it always helps too to have an independent part-time facilitator to keep everyone accountable and on track.
NOT ENOUGH TIME?
We hear this a lot. Many practitioners are prepared to allocate time to developing strategies but never follow through. With the right processes and commitment of all partners, a plan can be prepared in as little as one to three days (contact us for an outline of a process and, if you wish, facilitation of the process). Remember it should be about progress and not perfection. We use a range of ‘tools’ and processes to engage partners and staff and implement action.
Simplicity is the key and one-page plans and many of the simple tools referred to above ensure a far better outcome.
MAKE PLANNING A PRIORITY
We are convinced that facilitating the planning process within your own firm is a monumental task. Over great many years we have facilitated in the development of hundreds of plans. Engaging an external facilitator helps to expedite the internal process and provide valuable external expertise. Too often practitioners are convinced of their own ability to attend to this. A great facilitator ensures that strategic action is followed through with implementation and accountability.
ATL Network’s Strategic Planning Process is built on the core tenets of Strategy – Growth – Implementation – Accountability.
Authors: Vale David Connell and Colin Simkin