Archive for the ‘performance evaluations’ Category
Monday, May 14th, 2012
Accountants in public practice, love numbers – their client’s numbers and their firm’s performance statistics. CPA firm managing partners can quote you “their” numbers accurately and rapidly – sometimes with pride and sometimes with guilt.
CPA firms participate in MAP surveys. MAP stands for Managing an Accounting Practice. After they submit their numbers, they anxiously await the report that compares their numbers to the numbers of other CPA firms. If they compare favorably with the average, they are happy.
Many CPA firm owners evaluate performance of their employees based on a rating scale of 1 to 5, one being “bad” and 5 being “excellent.” Most evaluators rate people a #3 – average and everyone seems to be happy.
To me average means mediocre. Who wants to be mediocre? Mediocrity is for losers, people with no passion or ambition.
- If you are going out for a nice dinner, do you pick the mediocre restaurant?
- Do you leave an above average tip for a mediocre waiter/waitress?
- Do you take out-of-town guests to play golf at a mediocre golf course?
Why do you settle for your firm and your people being mediocre?
The way to win new clients and the best employees is to be talked about. Most people think CPAs and CPA firms all look alike, they all look average. Don’t accept this fate – be unique, be different, be the cool firm in town.
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All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.
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Scott Alexander
Thursday, March 22nd, 2012
It is a very busy time, late March, for people working inside successful, growing CPA firms trying to provide the best possible client service while dealing with a huge workload and an impending due date.
While you are in the heat of the battle, you probably hear a lot of grumbling from managers, firm administrators or partners that goes like this:
- Sally is just not getting it.
- Joe can’t do the more challenging returns so we are giving him the kids’ returns.
- It took Paul 5 hours to do that 2 hour return.
- Betsy seems to be here early and stays late but her productivity stinks.
My question is, do these people know they are not meeting your expectations? More than that, do they even know what your expectations are?
After mid-April you will be faced with letting people go, firing people. Are you prepared?
Firing people is an emotionally charged activity and some accountants avoid it. They delegate it to the HR person, another partner or manager or worse yet, they simply don’t fire poor performers – they shun them until they quit.
In public accounting there are always going to be situations where you have to let someone go. The actual firing should be the very last step in a carefully planned, thoughtful and fair process. It’s called performance management.
Communicate, document, coach and mentor so that when the time comes, the person is NOT surprised.
I always suggest that practitioners review the documented performance reviews. In many firms, the written evaluations of the poor performers look much like the star performers.
Here’s a good article on HBR for reference – Firing Someone the Right Way.
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Coaching is nothing more than eliminating mistakes before you get fired.
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Lou Holtz
Thursday, March 1st, 2012
- How are you evaluating your accounting firm team members?
- How is your partner group evaluating each other?
- How are your team members evaluating you?
People inside your accounting firm are working very hard right now. After all, it is March, one of the busiest months for most public accounting firms. Take a deep breath and ask yourself some questions.
Are you and your employees doing the same thing that you did in 2011? An even more interesting question is – are you and your employees doing the same thing you were doing in 1999? Do you often wonder why your firm is not growing more rapidly and why much of your work seems like drudgery rather than joy?
Reflect on the old saying, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you have always gotten.”
Constant change is the operating model for today’s progressive firm. As for performance feedback, I encourage firm leaders to consider simplifying their feedback system. Develop a culture of continual feedback. Do you confront a puppy six months later after he has peed on the floor? Crucial confrontation is not hard nor is it being mean – it’s communication and then you move on. Praise is not something that you hoard. There is an endless supply – it’s communication and then you move on.
When you are evaluating performance this spring, try using three questions. What should I keep doing? What should I start doing? What should I stop doing?
Then use the big question – what are you doing this year that you were not able to do last year? This involves reflecting back on what you are reading, what continuing education classes did you attend, what educational conferences did you attend, what articles have you written?
When it is feedback time, your team is thinking about their pay increase. Usually, they earn it because they are still in the learning and building their skills mode. They are actually doing things this year they were not able to do last year. Does this apply to your managers and partners?
Because of all of the rapid change, if you and your team do what you have always done, you’ll actually get less than you have always gotten.
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If you can't, you must. If you must, you can.
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Anthony Robbins
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Tomorrow there is a great opportunity for you and/or your firm’s HR leader
Sandra Wiley of Boomer Consulting will be live on iShade between 1:00p and 3:00p Central on Thursday, February 2, 2012 to answer all of your questions relating to the HR issues inside your busy CPA firm.
Wiley will also share great information on the HR outlook for firms for 2012.
Just log-in to iShade on Thursday at the appointed time and go to the Practitioner to Practitioner Group and look for the Discussion Topic “Human Resources Q&A with Sandra Wiley.”
It’s a great opportunity for all of you dealing with HR inside CPA firms. If you read this and are not the HR leader in your firm, please forward this blog post to them.
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People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - - that's why we recommend it daily.
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Zig Ziglar
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
I hope you read my post from last Friday (January 20, 2012). It was titled, Build On Your Strengths. I posted it to share my exciting and educational jungle adventure in Costa Rica with you, my online friends, and to also make a point for all CPAs, in general.
Whether you are a CPA in public practice or a CPA, CFO running a challenging accounting department, I hope you will shed the reputation that many CPAs have acquired. I’m talking about being “nit-picky,” “critical,” “a perfectionist,” “adverse to change” and so on. Many partners in CPA firms also have a strong reputation for wanting things done “their way” and are critical of those who excel in different ways.
I always tell young accountants, non-accountant professionals working in firms and members of the administrative team to remember that CPAs have been trained intensely for years and years to find mistakes, to be critical, to look deep for errors and thus often focus on weaknesses when evaluating their own team members. It seems to help these non-partner, yet important team members, to understand why some more experienced CPAs are the way they are.
For 2012, please consider adjusting your performance review and evaluation system to build on strengths. That is the value of a team. If you can’t do that, maybe you should be a sole proprietor (and many of you have wisely chosen that role).
Alan Weiss has a good message this week in his Monday Morning Memo:
This week’s focus point: I’ve read that Picasso’s mother told him that he would become Pope if he joined the clergy, and a general if he joined the military. But he reported that he preferred art and “I became Picasso.” The great architect Frank Lloyd Wright said, “I once had the choice between hypocritical humility and honest arrogance, chose the latter, and have never regretted it.” I’m suggesting that, short of tedious smugness, we take some time to recognize our strengths and build on them. Too much of “self-help” is about correcting weakness, as if we’re all somehow damaged. Organizations and individuals grow by building on strength. And if you don’t blow your own horn, there is no music.
Please reflect upon today’s quote from Churchill. If you, as firm leaders, are more inclusive with ALL your people and move away from the chosen few making all the decisions without significant input from your entire team, nothing is impossible.
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If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.
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Winston Churchill
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
As I work with CPA firms, I see a lot of performance evaluation, review and feedback systems that are well-documented, and fairly-well carried out.
One aspect that troubles me is the lack of a goal setting process that truly causes CPA team members to grow, improve, change, initiate, contemplate and most of all – STRETCH.
What is a stretch goal? Here’s the definition from the Business Dictionary on the web:
Stretch goal – that cannot be achieved by incremental or small improvements but require extending oneself to the limit to be actualized. Expressed in the saying, “You cannot cross a chasm in two steps.”
Don’t you love that saying? Do you find it applies to some problems inside your firm?
In many firms there are major chasms to cross and although I usually recommend “baby steps” for creating change inside CPA firms, there are often times when baby steps simply will not work. The problems are too big and need confrontation to resolve.
That’s when you must “face the music and dance!”
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The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.
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Fred Astaire
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
Inside CPA firms, people with authority often avoid difficult conversations. You can call them crucial conversations, critical confrontations or even honest performance feedback. If there is something unflattering to say, people often choose to simply avoid it or ask someone else to do it.
An example might be that the firm has a very clearly defined dress appropriate policy, however, Julie constantly ignores it and everyone notices. Bill, a manager, stops the firm administrator in the hall and says, “Did you see what Julie has on today? Could you please talk to her about it?”
I usually find this happens to firm administrators in CPA firms and sometimes to managing partners. It happens to some managers but not all, because there are select people in a firm who seem to have a natural ability to actually talk about the tough issues with people.
What do you do when a “messenger” discusses a performance problem they are having with someone or uses you to complain about another person in the firm?
Delivering unflattering feedback and becoming a problem-addresser rather than a problem-bearer is a skill that can be learned.
Check-out this helpful blog post, How To Respond When Someone Brings You A Problem, on a site called Leadership Coaching, Inc.
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Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.
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Wendell Phillips
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
Jennifer Wilson of Convergence Coaching, had a good article in the CPA Insider a while back. Jen asked the question: Does my personality let me off the hook on performance?
First of all, I love the question. During my many years working with CPA firms of all sizes, there is always someone inside most firms who seems to get a “pass” or “get out of jail free” card. They don’t follow the rules. They prefer to ignore the guidelines and they often claim ignorance…. “I didn’t know that’s how we do it!” But, the disturbing part is that others within the firm let them get by with it and the culprit is usually a partner.
Whatever happened to leaders setting the example? I love the quote by Albert Schweitzer: “Example is leadership.”
Wilson explores some interesting ideas in her article, such as:
- It is important to understand each person’s history, preferences and motivators.
- We need people with diverse personalities.
- All people should be given the opportunity to modify their behavior to meet the firms expectations.
- There should be expected results from every position on a team.
The final word from Wilson: No, your personality preferences and other character traits that make you special and unique don’t let you off the hook for meeting performance expectations.
Be sure to read the entire article via the link above.
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Few things are harder to put up with than a good example.
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Mark Twain
Monday, July 25th, 2011
When you are responsible for the progress for other people inside your firm, what should you be doing?
Here’s a list. You should:
- Monitor performance
- Conduct interim and annual performance reviews
- Establish and monitor practice development and training plans
- Provide strong encouragement and support so that the team member passes the CPA exam within two years of joining the firm
- Stress that public accounting is a professional career and more than an 8 to 5 job
- Stress the importance of great client service
- Communicate career track expectations and timelines
- Be a cheerleader for the team member
- Help the team member build their asset
- Stress that the firm needs future owners
- Set high expectations and help them establish stretch goals
- Encourage them to take ownership of clients; don’t pass-off responsibility when they move on to the next assignment
- Challenge them to take things from people above them – encourage them to ask, “What can I do that you are doing?”
- Encourage, push and lead by example
- Pay attention. This is not a passive job.
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Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
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Winston Churchill
Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
By now, most CPA firms I talk with have moved to an automated, digital solution for their employee performance review (management) system. Some are using a digital, online form that they have created themselves and many have embraced a software solution like Halogen eAppraisal.
I first learned about Halogen from Kathy Anthony, administrative partner, at O’Sullivan Creel, a Gulf Coast firm with 150 team members.
In the first year of implementation, O’Sullivan Creel saved 386 hours on time posted to performance management and that level of savings has been met or exceeded each year since.
If your are considering a new system for your firm, read this short O’Sullivan Creel story on the Halogen site.
Most CPA firm leaders find that performance reviews get stale after a few years. You should be modifying, updating and keeping up with current trends on a continual basis.
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Only undertake what you can do in an excellent fashion. There are no prizes for average performance.
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Brian Tracy
