Well, I have a remedy for all of you growing CPA firms who are re-branding and re-examining your purpose statement or your firm slogan. Follow this link to visit the Corporate Slogan Generator. It generates random nonsensical corporate slogans and mission statements.

I found it quite entertaining. Lighten-up this week-end and give it a try. There is also a Financial Advice Generator on the site that might amuse you. AND, since it is Superbowl week-end, you might want to see the NFL Jargon generator.

I hope your firm has many volunteers helping high school and college students realize the great opportunities available to them if they become a CPA.

If you are in Ohio, the state society has a fantastic program titled The Accounting Careers Awareness Program (ACAP-Ohio). It is an all-expenses paid, innovative career development program designed specifically for minority high school students. It is a week-long campus residency program at The Ohio State University, Fisher College of Business.

Check out this brief, informative video and if you are in Ohio, I hope you share it with your local high schools. If you are a CPA in another state, I hope your state society is doing something similar.

I have worked in the CPA profession for over 30 years. I have seen CPAs drag their feet with embracing and implementing new ideas and trends. It’s always “let others do it first and then we’ll see.”

A prime example is going paperless. CPA firms began moving into the paperless world in the late 90s and there are still a huge number of firms who aren’t there yet. “It takes more time.” “It’s too hard to review on-screen.” “I can do it faster if I have a paper copy.” “My clients want a paper copy.” “I have older clients who don’t have a computer.”

Right now the major topic is social media. There are all kinds of excuses aired by CPAs why it won’t work for them and their firm.

Please, please read this recent blog post by Michelle Golden: Listener Beware: Don’t Take Everything You Hear From Experts as Gospel.

CPAs, in my opinion, place too much weight on comparing themselves to other CPA firms. One of the common questions I hear is, “What are other firm our size doing?”  What I would like to hear once in a while is: “Who cares what other firms are doing, let’s try our idea and do it our way!”

Think for yourself – read and take to heart advice from successful business people outside the CPA profession – be more creative and don’t always rely on other CPA firms to lead the way for you. Why don’t you lead the way for them?

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.

Do you have too many clusters of partners reaching retirement age? How many younger partners are also in clusters?

I suggest doing two time-lines – one based on the year that partners reach age 65 (in many firms this is when you have to sell your stock) and one based on when the individual partner thinks he/she will actually “retire.”

One of the major issues you will be facing is that many partners will reach retirement age, sell their stock and then want to stay active in the firm for many years to come. You have to decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s often a downer for the young partners and future partners in the firm in that they are looking forward to their chance to take over and do things their way.

In years gone by, firms have been able to keep the founder on the payroll and provide an office and other support. However, now you might be facing many Baby Boomer partners wanting to keep working. Does it make sense to have four or five over-65, former partners around the office indefinitely? Be sure to examine, discuss and decide what is really best for the firm.

Here’s a sample of the Retirement Timeline:

The January issue of Accounting Today has an article on this topic and quotes compensation ranges from the latest Robert Half salary guide (2012). Here’s a link to the article – The Salary Momentum Continues – Experienced and senior-level staff are first in line for pay bumps.

Another thing on this topic. Firms are usually very secretive about staff salaries, yet we live in an age of getting any information you desire via the Internet and social media sources. I subscribe to the thought process that it is a good thing that firm team members know that top performers are getting paid more than mediocre performers. But, what goes along with that (and specific salaries do not have to be divulged) is that mediocre performers know they are “average” and they also are given clear expectations on how to become a “top” performer and thus, earn more. Not rocket science.

I am so fortunate to know many of you in the CPA world and although I expect you to work hard, don’t forget to play some, too. Don’t forget your dreams and the things on your bucket list.

Take a few minutes this week-end to “lighten-up” and to think, dream, relax and ponder this quotation:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – - Mark Twain

Here’s a link to a set of pictures on my personal Flickr page of our recent adventure in Costa Rica. We certainly explored, dreamed and discovered. What a beautiful country filled with friendly people. My dreams of exploring a jungle, seeing poisonous things, taking a jungle canopy walk and hearing howler monkeys at night came true. Plus we rafted in to a remote, no electricity jungle lodge and rafted out the next day.

I think you will find it interesting and informative.

We are living in a knowledge era and I like Baker’s mention of the following from Steve Jobs: Does it really make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do? Apple hires smart people so they can tell Apple what to do.

This reinforces my message to all of you – involve everyone in shaping your firm. Seek out the opinions of all generations and all levels, including new hires and the administrative team. What do they think leaders could do to make the firm more awesome?

The era of CPA firm leaders trying to evolve to a one best way of doing things (meaning all of the benchmarking CPA firms do), is not working. Focus on the relationship side of things with your people and with your clients. What do your people and your clients really think? – - Ask them!

Halogen is a great resource for a lot of HR challenges and for HR education. I recently listened to a couple of short videos in a Halogen series called, HR’s Bold Thinkers Series: Practical Next Generation Talent Strategies.

Lizz Pellet, author of The Cultural Fit Factor, gives some great HR information in the following videos:

Attracting the Right Employees – Do the people you hire really fit?
Retain the Best – Do your leaders proactively focus on retaining the top performers?

If you are a managing partner, firm administrator or the person responsible for HR inside your firm, I hope you take a few minutes to listen to the messages.

The talent shortage is real for the CPA profession – be sure your firm has a plan to find, hire, develop and retain the best and the brightest.

Steve Mayer, CEO of BPM, made a statement that is so important: “As MP, I’ve never made a decision at BPM on how it affects me. The minute you do, you enter the dark side.”

So many times in my advisory capacity to CPA owners, especially during strategic planning sessions, I hear owners discuss the challenge of change – more individually, than as a group. The group says, we should do this or that but John won’t do it (you fill-in the name for “John”).

“John” has proven to his partners that he will always continue to do what he has always done, what makes him comfortable, and not join-in the “for the good of the firm” movement. To me, a firm like this is always teetering on the dark side and not basking in the power of The Force.

Okay, all of that is a downer and you know I don’t like negative thoughts, pessimism and naysayers. Here’s a brief story from one of my strategic planning sessions that simply makes me say, “Wow!”

In a discussion about what the firm and partners could do to make their firm unique, truly different from their competitors we got on the topic of how all of the more successful firms in their market pretty much looked just like them – an aging (over 55) managing partner and an entire partner group that was predominantly Baby Boomers; all firms seemed to be showing some growth and are respected in the community.

Then an unsolicited comment came from the managing partner. “What if I stepped down and we all agree to let a younger (Gen-X) partner take over as managing partner? None of our competitors are showing any youth in the leadership ranks and it would certainly make us different from the herd.”

I have never heard a managing partner originate such an idea in an open forum with all partners. To me, that is putting “the good of the firm” first.

As you can imagine, nothing was settled during that session but lots of great conversation followed and the idea is being explored.

So many partners nearing retirement age want to continue to work and I truly believe there is a place for that and they can be a huge asset to the firm for many years. But, are they willing to really turn the reigns over to the next generation?

Younger partners, are you willing to speak-up and explore the leadership topic at your firm more openly? Firms need to see more pro-activeness from younger partners rather than them continuing to play the waiting game.

In closing, may the Force be with you, Steve Mayer and with all of you who are exploring what the future of your firm will really look like.

Time to revisit the VW award-winning Super Bowl ad from last year: