All of you who know me – either personally, through my speaking or by simply following this blog, know that I am successful because of the wonderful friends and mentors I have had during my many years in the CPA profession.

I believe you take on the characteristics of the people you hang-out with. That’s why it is so important to surround yourself with positive people. You learn from people who set a good example. You change, when you have to, because people have high expectations of you.

Yesterday was a very special day for me. Bill Leach, of Katz Sapper Miller, and I did a joint presentation on Succession for the Indiana Chapter of the Association For Accounting Administration in Indianapolis. We have often co-presented at the National Conference of AAA but this one was special because I first met Bill Leach at the Indiana Chapter of AAA – many, many years ago.

Yesterday was more than special because it was Bill’s last meeting with the chapter – he retires on June 30 this year. To celebrate the occasion many long-time friends, some retired, some working at other places who were members of the Indiana chapter years ago, joined us for lunch to surprise Bill and join in the celebration.

Anita Goets, Colleen Endres, Virginia Lowery, Bill Leach, Nancy Kriner, Diana Sarkine – - is that you with Rita?

Mr. Leach and I will have our swan song presentation in June at the AAA National Conference. I hope you will be there.

Now what I am hearing is, “We’re tired of waiting.” Hopefully, younger CPAs are on the move and making things happen.

There’s a good article in the Journal of Accountancy – June 2012 – titled, Generation Next. It notes that a wave of new CPA leaders is on the rise, and accounting will never be the same.

The first sentence in the article scares me – - “The next couple of decades will see massive change for the accounting profession.”

It is certainly not the change that bothers me, it’s the fact that some people think it’s going to take two decades. Oh my, I hope not.

I am anticipating that the younger crowd are making strides and noise that will cause change before another 20 years go by.

Advice for young CPAs. If you are reading this and are not a “young CPA” please forward the link to this blog to those 30-something CPAs in your firm.

• Act in ways that true leaders do, develop skills that show leadership.
• If you, as a young CPA, are seeking leadership positions, don’t be afraid to speak-up.  Ask for more responsibilities and set high expectations for yourself.
• Be sure you are networking. Do you belong to a YP group? Don’t have one in your area? Then start one.
• Use social media to build your professional reputation.
• Communication skills are key – verbal and non-verbal. How good are you at making a presentation, facilitating a discussion, or writing a blog? Remember the non-verbal – what kind of first impression do you make?

I am hoping the Results Only Work Environment becomes widespread. Here’s what Jason Blumer says about it:

As we’re hiring younger people in our firms, we’re experimenting with a results-only work environment (ROWE), where we’re bringing on new employees, giving them the vision for the position, coaching them through the process of realizing what we and our customers need, and then letting them manage what the results look like for them.

We have no performance reviews. We don’t have dress codes. You don’t have to work in the office. Leadership is really more about coaching now and helping employees be successful, pushing them toward what their strengths are. We’re hiring people so self-motivated that they’re able to run their own departments.

Yes, I received my box of onions and I was simply delighted. I’ve been lucky enough to receive this gift for many years now and I don’t take it for granted. It seems special every year.

You see, McLain Calhoun is located in Vidalia, Georgia – you all know what that means when it comes to onions, Vidalia onions are sweet and delicious.

How about your firm, are you recognizing your important clients and your valuable people by “remembering” them each year with a gift?

There are a lot of great ideas out there for gifts, but I met the people from Gifts On Time last fall and they make it easy for busy CPAs to schedule their gift-giving. They call it “gift management simplified.” One of the founders is actually a CPA – Ron Orleans.

I also encourage you to consider gifts for prospects. How can they refuse a phone call from someone who has sent them a nice gift. At my firm we did this all the time – - – send a letter, then a card, then a gift – then make a phone call.

I bet you never thought you would see a picture of me with onions! Maybe I should add it to my “Is that you with Rita?” album.

It’s what comes to mind when I read all of the news and articles about mergers in the CPA profession. Seems like every week I read about two or three mergers/acquisitions in the public accounting profession. And yes, in my opinion, you can call them mergers but they really are acquisitions in that there is always a “top dog.”

As I facilitate owner retreats, the “M” word is often on the owners’ minds, mostly because they have not done a good job at dealing with the “S” word (succession). Simple advice here: If you want to pass your firm along to the next generation inside the firm, you have to build a strong culture and operate a “well-run” firm. That means active management, not waiting on something to happen and then reacting. It means a strong career development program and streamlined, efficient, fully adopted operating procedures. Considering this option? Then get busy now!

If you (the owner group) are considering merger/acquisition – do your homework. Today I want to share a very informative article written by Joel Sinkin and Terry Putney of Transition Advisors for the AICPA newsletter – The Practicing CPA. The title of the article is, The Great Mystery: How Do Billing Rates and Profitability Affect a Firm’s Worth?

Here are the topics covered in the article – follow the link above and read the entire article.

• What You Really Need to Know in an Acquisition: Net Profit
• What You Really Need to Know in a Merger: Partner Profitability
• Billing Rates: Do They Really Matter?
• Deal Terms: How to Factor in Profitability

*The line is from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in 1798:

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

In thinking about your firm’s future, are you “stuck with no motion?” Are all your boards shrinking?

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.

I was reading Time magazine yesterday and saw a short blip about Queen Elizabeth’s 60th Jubilee being celebrated via Legos.

She has worn plenty of spectacular crowns, but none quit like this. To celebrate the U.K. monarch’s Diamond Jubilee, marking her 60th year on the throne, Legoland in Windsor, England, is creating a toy-size tribute. Starting May 24, its 4-in Lego Queen – outfitted with a diamond studded tiara – will reign over a mini Buckingham Palace and a court of mini royals.

How cool.

For many firms it is a name they give a person who has developed solid technical accounting, auditing or tax skills over a period of time. I believe the term “manager” applies to partners, managers, supervisors and even seniors inside an accounting firm. After all, they are expected to manage the client engagement and the work of people who are more junior than themselves. They are the boss in many situations.

Google, inside their own organization, decided to explore the question, “What makes a good boss?” and called the the study Project Oxygen.

They discovered that what you might think would be the top characteristic, the ability to write computer code in your sleep, came in last. I imagine that inside an accounting firm, being a great tax mind or having extremely advanced auditing skills would also come in last as an indicator of being a great boss.

Here’s Project Oxygen‘s findings, Google’s “Eight Good Behaviors” of top managers, ranked in order of importance:

1. Be a good coach. Provide specific, constructive feedback, balancing the negative and the positive. Have regular one-on-ones, presenting solutions to problems tailored to your employees’ specific strengths.
2. Empower your team and don’t micromanage. Balance giving freedom to your employees, while still being available for advice. Make “stretch” assignments to help the team tackle big problems.
3. Express interest in team members’ success and personal well-being. Get to know your employees as people, with lives outside of work. Make new members of your team feel welcome and help ease their transition.
4. Don’t be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented. Focus on what employees want the team to achieve and how they can help achieve it. Help the team prioritize work and use seniority to remove roadblocks.
5. Be a good communicator and listen to your team. Communication is two-way: you both listen and share information. Hold all-hands meetings and be straightforward about the messages and goals of the team. Help the team connect the dots. Encourage open dialogue and listen to the issues and concerns of your employees.
6. Help your employees with career development.
7. Have a clear vision and strategy for the team. Even in the midst of turmoil, keep the team focused on goals and strategy. Involve the team in setting and evolving the team’s vision and making progress toward it.
8. Have key technical skills so you can help advise the team. Roll up your sleeves and conduct work side by side with the team, when needed. Understand the specific challenges of the work.

Paul’s answer as he continues to age: “You get the argument, ‘Make way for the young kids,’ and you think, let them make way for themselves. If they’re better than me, they’ll beat me.”

For now, McCartney continues to draw huge crowds who are willing to pay a lot of money for his performance and what he contributes to their sense of well-being.

As I talk with CPAs around the country, I encounter a similar mindset. CPAs who are around 60 who intend to work until they are 70.

Rebecca Ryan of Next Generation Consulting puts it this way when addressing the Paul McCartney situation in a blog post on the Winning Is Everything blog: “That’s not how it works for you and me. We toil in organizations where some of our elders hang out – sucking up resources and biding their time, well past their expiration date. They hide behind a smokescreen of success that veils the hollowness of their contributions.”

Ryan notes that many Boomers are scared because they haven’t saved enough to retire and many of them love to work.

Relating this to the public accounting profession, my first issue is, some of them say they love to work but what they really love is coming to a nice, comfortable office every day surrounded by bright younger people and simply enjoying the environment. What would they do at home anyway?

My second issue is, younger CPAs (the younger partners and even younger managers) let this happen. They must step-up to the plate and demonstrate their ability to bring in business, manage a growing firm and take the firm to the next level. They have to prove their ability. Like the McCartney quote, “If they are better than me, they’ll beat me.”

Firm leaders, young and old, take on the project of addressing the dilemma of continuing contribution.

If a 60-something is still contributing ideas, showing creativity, providing over-the-top client service, keeping up with technology and social media and bringing in business – their performance still draws a crowd and brings in lots of money – they are contributing. If a 60-something comes in every day at nine or ten, checks emails, surfs the net, often plays golf in the afternoons and “sucks up resources” without any visible signs of personal growth – they are not contributing.

It’s going to be an issue for years to come – the oldest baby boomers are just now turning 65. Figure out your firm’s plan to deal with it.

I also had the great honor of hearing Joan Cronan, the Women’s Athletic Director at the  University of Tennessee for the last 29 years, do an opening keynote presentation that was truly motivating and moving.

When she was 12 years old, she was told by the little league coach that she could not play because she was a girl. She could be bat girl, water girl, team manager but she could not compete on the field.

That story set the tone for her life. She relates, “It made me so mad! Since that day I have had a vision the I wanted to help women learn to compete.”

In the world of public accounting, that is what I want to stress for the many females who are still facing challenges. You must learn to compete. It comes through passion, hard work, and developing self-confidence.

Here are 3 tips from Ms. Cronan:

Competition:  Be willing to face your competition, you must compete. It doesn’t have to be basketball or tennis. It can be tap dance, cheerleading, speaking or getting promoted. Set goals for yourself. I thank my competitors, because my friends won’t always tell me my weaknesses but my competitors will. If I had no competition, I might become lazy. Competition makes us all better.

Mentor/Coach:  You need one or more than one. Find good ones and listen. Ask them to help you develop confidence – your must get it and use it!

Communication: Her pet peeve is people who do not say thank-you. How hard is it to say those simple two words that carry so much weight. Show your appreciation by communicating. Also, always be direct in your communication. If you are supervising others, it is your responsibility to tell them their weaknesses and help them get better.

Picture above: Joan Cronan, is that you with Rita?

If your firm is large enough, I am sure your Marketing Director is one of the busiest people in your firm. If your firm is not large enough, consider introducing the role of Marketing Coordinator, even if it is a part-time position at first. You will be amazed at how quickly this person’s schedule fills-up and even overflows.

Smaller firm or larger firm, it takes discipline to effectively market your practice. Please don’t think that now summer is just around the corner, you can wait until fall to market!

Go through some simple exercises with all partners and managers. Use forms to gather information about your firms uniqueness in your market then identify weaknesses and get busy now!

• List each CPA and each community or charitable organization where they are active. Are there, key, high profile organizations where your firm is absent?
• Have each CPA list their referral sources (bankers, attorneys) and identify the referrals they have given you in the last year. Are you referring more their way than they are your way? Did you discover some referral sources on every one’s list and some powerful ones that are missing altogether?
• Does each CPA have a marketing action plan and submit a report each month on their activities?
• Is your firm, no matter how large or small, holding pipeline meetings at least monthly?
• How are you dealing with social media and who owns it?

Don’t let summer cause a lapse in vigorous attention to marketing activities.

The Association for Accounting Marketing annual conference is coming up in June. I hope your marketing director, marketing coordinator or other firm representative will be attending.