Friday, November 19th, 2010
DO YOU HAVE MAGNIFICENT MANAGERS?
Many managers in CPA firms have the “manager” title just because it is a title that an experienced, long-time employee receives in a CPA firm. In relation to the work of the firm, they take care of clients and they take care of partners. As managers, they are often STILL the work-horses.
My mind is filled with questions about CPA firm managers and what you are doing to help them help your firm:
- Why aren’t they more skilled at taking care of the people they supervise?
- Have you (Mr./Ms. Partner serving as their Boss), invested (yes, spent lots of money) on the development of their emotional intelligence and their understanding of how nurturing relationships with people build a solid foundation for an organization’s success?
- Have your managers studied and been trained on the power of generational differences?
- Do they understand and enthusiastically reach-out to the youngest CPAs and play a key role in keeping them in the CPA profession?
- Are your managers, “people” people?
Here are some more important questions:
- Do you, CPA firm owner, study what behaviors make a front-line manager in your firm successful and makes them “the” manager everyone wants to work for?
- Do you spend a huge amount of time selecting your managers?
- Do you have the best training program possible for your managers (not technical accounting skills), I mean people skills?
- Do you formally, rigorously and enthusiastically mentor your managers?
- Are you willing to leave a manager slot open until you can fill it with someone who is awesome?
- Do you consider promotion decisions for managers as thoroughly as you do for partners?
- "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."
