What is the single biggest challenge facing your firm now?
Technology has changed the roles of our staff at all levels, and they are adapting to the changes at varying levels of individual success. We are focused on upskilling and in some cases changing our training to focus on a role that their supervisors had two years ago. As technology replaces the repetitive tasks and lower-level responsibilities, the staff are being trained in new roles that will allow them to move up faster and be in a more review role, then a consultant role to our clients. We are working hard on how training must change to prepare our tech-savvy workforce for their new roles.
Where do you expect to be focusing most of your attention in the next two to three years?
The next two to three years may have the most dramatic effect on the profession in a long time. Artificial Intelligence will require innovation in all aspects of our business. This will require capital and new skills from our teams. Universities are generally slower to react to the professional requirements, therefore businesses and accounting firms will be required to lead in these changes. We will be focused on technology skills to equip the accountants to deliver the best service to our clients and help those clients understand the technology needs of their businesses. Our clients will win with the help of our teams’ enhanced technical skills.
What is the biggest and sometimes often missed opportunity for the profession?
Our profession has missed the opportunities to deliver additional services to our clients because we have been so busy with compliance work. This has been more difficult with the staffing issues, but also due to the success of our core services. We are focused on being consultants while performing our core services and bringing the highest-quality consultants to the client. As the client needs require, we staff up on cyber security, risk advisory, technology, transaction advisory and valuation/expert witnesses to assure the client gets all the team they need to excel in their business.
What was the best advice you received as a young up-and-comer in the profession?
Young up-and-comers should know that in this profession, the sky is the limit. It’s a hard-working profession and the skills are much more than accounting or tax, but you can stay in the profession for a career and be in many different businesses without leaving the firm. They should “learn the trade” in the area they begin with and broaden their abilities to be the most valuable they can to the client. It’s a lost art for many to read about business, but it’s the most important thing they can do in the early years to understand what really happens in the business world outside their core competency. Another thing to always remember – we are a professional service business. That requires being professional and being a servant. The world doesn’t always appreciate those roles, but the clients do!
What advice would you offer to someone entering the accounting profession today?
Don’t listen to the parents or friends who say the profession is too much work and other roles make more money and don’t require as much hard work. Like anything that’s worth doing, it takes hard work and can be the most rewarding professional experience, both financially and intellectually. The value you will add to your client’s business and life cannot be undervalued, and the feeling you get from your client’s success is rarely forgotten, by you or the client.
What motivates you most as a leader?
My best motivation is a client calling to say how much the work of our team added to their business or life. Sometimes it’s a sale that is life-changing, sometimes it’s protecting them from cyber crimes and sometimes it’s a conversation with their family about the transition of family wealth and the role each member plays in the family’s legacy. Watching our young people exceed their own vision of who they can be is life-changing for me.
Where do you see the accounting profession in five years? How do you see it changing/developing and/or how would you like it to change?
In the next five years, we will see the accounting profession evolve into what we all wanted it to be when we started. We want to help our clients with any business issue they have. We started out helping small businesses with everything, then as we were just preparing to step up to the consulting areas the businesses were needing as they grew, as a profession, we were slowly overwhelmed with the amount of compliance work. We had our resume of consultants to refer them to and that became our solution. Now that we have artificial intelligence, automation and offshoring, we can build the consulting firm we envisioned and take back the consulting we outsourced. The profession will have new competitors, but the full-service firm is coming back and the clients trust us to deliver the solutions they need.
What business book would you recommend to other leaders?
First Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham is a study in how to get the best people on the bus, to quote Jim Collins. I’m a data or metrics nut and finding data around how you get the best people running your business through studies of those people is a lost art. I love the examples of questions to ask and how the result of talking with people can help create a great team, if you listen well.
What is your proudest professional achievement?
My proudest professional achievement is helping build a great firm with great clients and great people. This was a team effort but working with that team to build a high-quality sustainable firm with the lowest average age of partners in the top 40 firms is something I could not have imagined. A great group of C-Suite leaders who will take the firm to the next level, far after I am gone, allows our team to focus on the clients’ needs. In addition, we have always looked down the road and have begun building what we need to better serve clients before the clients know they need the service. The legacy of our founders is unprecedented!
