Rita Keller, an award-winning and widely respected voice to CPA firm management, is uniquely positioned to help CPAs and their teams face rapid and significant change.
“Survey and test a prospective action before undertaking it. Before you proceed, step back and look at the big picture, lest you act rashly on raw impulse.” ~ Epictetus
The 2022 survey disclosed some very interesting information. I could analyze and recap it for you, but why do that? The CPA Journal has already done it for you.
“Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.” – Dalai Lama
Warren Buffett boils happiness down to four words: DO WHAT YOU LOVE.
Here’s a quote from Mr. Buffett:
“I get to work in a job that I love, but I have always worked at a job that I loved. I loved it just as much when I thought it was a big deal to make $1,000. I urge you to work in jobs that you love. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume.”
In an article via Inc., they give you five really good reasons why you should commit to doing what you love.
You’re aligned with doing the things you care about.
You feel like you belong.
You do the things you’re actually good at.
You’re more optimistic.
You’re more motivated.
Follow the Inc. link to read more about each of these five reasons.
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
“Courtesy is the one coin you can never have too much of or be stingy with.” – John Wanamaker
Have you been reading about skimpflation?
The quality of service, in various places like The Magic Kingdom, airlines, restaurants, etc. have deteriorated since the beginning of the pandemic. It is a problem that the NPR show “Planet Money” has labeled “skimpflation.”
The definition of skimp: expend or use less time, money, or material on something than is necessary in an attempt to economize.
Many businesses, especially small businesses have skimped in order to stay alive. Airlines cancel flights and put people on hold on the phone for hours. Some restaurants have eliminated menus and you must use your phone to see what is offered. Hotels and stores provide fewer services than in the past. Service seems to be very poor just about everywhere. Much of this is because businesses are simply understaffed.
Per NPR: While it may lurk in the shadows, make no mistake: Skimpflation is a form of inflation. As with normal inflation, it means we’re getting less for our money.
Read more about it here and consider the service in your own firm. I have talked to CPA firms who are concerned about obtaining new clients because they fear they won’t be able to offer the awesome client service they were once able to provide.
It is important that your long-time clients don’t feel that they are not getting the same level of service they have received in the past.
Are you guiding your small business clients through the minefield of skimpflation?
“Reading is departure and arrival.” —Terri Guillemets
Summer is on the way. This weekend is often referred to as our first summer holiday and to me summer means more reading.
For Flashback Friday this week read one of my posts that describes a book you should read. The post asks if you are a Linchpin or a Hurdle? Enjoy the 3-day weekend. Click here to read the post.
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
“The mark of higher education isn’t the knowledge you accumulate in your head. It’s the skills you gain about how to learn.” – Adam Grant
Last year at this time, could you ever visualize needing a person with the title Head of Remote Work?
Darren Murph is Head of Remote for a software firm that has been all remote since 2012. He lives near the Outer Banks in North Carolina and the 700 other employees of the firm are sprinkled around the country. He believes that his title might be the next evolution of the COO (or, in the CPA world, the Practice Manager).
He wears many hats and what he does daily sounds a lot like what a current CPA firm practice manager (firm administrator) does. Other companies are also hiring people who can help the company make the transition to remote work.
What about your firm? For most, it seems, it will become a hybrid model where some work remotely all the time and some work remotely part of the time. It might make sense to have someone devoted to helping and coordinating remote workers so that the firm’s practice manager has more time to focus on the on-site workers and over-all firm initiatives.
It would take somebody with an HR background, strong communication skills and they need to also be highly skilled at technology.
Maybe it is something you should be thinking about. Read the informative article via The Washington Post.
Soft skills get little respect, but will make or break your career.
“Start from wherever you are and with whatever you’ve got.” – Jim Rohn
If you want your firm to be a place where communication flourishes, then you (no matter what your role) must constantly work on your own communication skills. Sometimes it is called the Art of Communication and that title is meaningful.
Per Jim Rohn, there are many tools available to you as you communicate; you just have to be aware of them and then use them purposefully. The better you become at using these tools, the better you’ll be at communicating.
You communicate through both verbal and nonverbal methods.
Verbal Communication:
Your Words – People will judge you by the words you use. Think about it.
Your Vocabulary – An expanded vocabulary will set you apart. If you are an avid reader and learner you are expanding your vocabulary daily. Keep it up.
Those are just two of the ways you communicate verbally. Also, consider Emotion and Enunciation.
Nonverbal Communication:
Your Hands – Use your hands, for sure but don’t go overboard.
Your Eyes – The eyes speak volumes. It bugs me when people don’t make eye contact.
Also, think about your arms and your speaking position.
“How to give people feedback is one of the hottest topics in business today.” – Marcus Buckingham
This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post about giving and receiving feedback. It is an excerpt from the article, The Feedback Fallacy, via HBR, written by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall.
Just in case you didn’t read the entire article, here is a segment that speaks volumes.
The Source of Truth
The first problem with feedback is that humans are unreliable raters of other humans. Over the past 40 years psychometricians have shown in study after study that people don’t have the objectivity to hold in their heads a stable definition of an abstract quality, such as business acumen or assertiveness, and then accurately evaluate someone else on it. Our evaluations are deeply colored by our own understanding of what we’re rating others on, our own sense of what good looks like for a particular competency, our harshness or leniency as raters, and our own inherent and unconscious biases. This phenomenon is called the idiosyncratic rater effect, and it’s large (more than half of your rating of someone else reflects your characteristics, not hers) and resilient (no training can lessen it). In other words, the research shows that feedback is more distortion than truth.
This is why, despite all the training available on how to receive feedback, it’s such hard work: Recipients have to struggle through this forest of distortion in search of something that they recognize as themselves.
Next summer, when all the unique and unusual circumstances surrounding work has calmed down. Your firm should be ready to give feedback in a new and refreshing way. Do the homework and begin now. Maybe even some new behaviors surrounding feedback should begin happening much sooner than next summer. How about starting January 1st?
Just as your doctor doesn’t know the truth of your pain, we don’t know the truth about our colleagues, at least not in any objective way.
“There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.” – Bill Waterson, Calvin & Hobbes
The 2020 Rosenberg Survey is NOW available!
The 4-day Thanksgiving weekend would be a good time to study the Rosenberg Survey. It has so much great information.
The number of firms that have mandatory retirement provisions in their partner agreements remained relatively steady after an upward trend for the past few years. In working throughout the industry, we have noted a general acknowledgment of the importance of mandatory retirement provisions. For more information on partner retirement, purchase The 2020 Rosenberg Survey.
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker
Today, I am sharing a press release from the Illinois CPA Society. I think it will definitely be of interest to those working in the CPA profession. They are providing seven predictions for the future titled, “CPA Profession 2027: Racing for Relevance.”
CHICAGO, Nov. 11, 2020– Unveiling seven provocative predictions for the future of the CPA profession, the Illinois CPA Society (ICPAS)—one of the largest state CPA societies in the nation—has released its 2020 Insight Special Feature, “CPA Profession 2027: Racing for Relevance.”
The result of more than a year’s worth of strategic planning conversations and reviewing countless articles, interviews, reports, studies, and surveys—and conducting some of its own—“CPA Profession 2027” coalesces ICPAS’ findings from these authoritative, and sometimes disparate, sources into a powerful report detailing the underlying trends and challenges driving change in the CPA profession and how they may shape its future.
Inside “CPA Profession 2027,” ICPAS outlines how the CPA profession is facing a pace and type of change unlike any it has experienced before, where the rules of the race are literally being rewritten by technology. Key predictions include outlooks on how artificial intelligence and robotic process automation will forever change accounting, audit, finance, tax, and more; the ways services are provided to companies and clients, and the ways companies and firms are staffed, will shift dramatically; and how implications of the global pandemic, along with rapidly changing company and client expectations, will demand CPAs change both mindset and skill set. The most provocative prediction of all is that the number of CPAs will decline in the years ahead as technology becomes more pervasive.
“While many strategic plans and reports look just one, two, or maybe three years out right now, we believe we cannot risk being shortsighted given the long-term implications of all that is changing around us,” says ICPAS President and CEO Todd Shapiro. “We understand the risks of making predictions. We acknowledge it’s unlikely each one plays out perfectly. But we firmly believe they’re directionally correct. Our hope is that the insights compiled here will rev up conversations that help us chart a roadmap for ensuring the sustainability, relevance, and growth of the CPA profession for many years to come.”
“CPA Profession 2027” is available now in PDF and digital formats at www.icpas.org/CPA2027, and print editions are available upon request. Shapiro welcomes feedback and is available for further comment.
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
