Don’t worry. I’m not turning this into a fitness blog. This obviously applies to our professional lives as well as our personal lives. While we face plenty of obstacles and challenges with the seasonal nature of our business and other demands, we need to minimize the deconditioning cycles in those periods and focus on an increased level of overall conditioning in the areas of personal development, management and leadership, relationships and communication, project management, and technology skills as well as our critical technical skills.

Note that this should not be confused with maintaining a level of responsibility. We understand that not everyone aspires to make partner or to move past their current position. That’s completely acceptable. To use another sports metaphor, we don’t need everyone to constantly look for a more challenging slope to ski down, but we do want everyone to work on technique so it looks easy and they’re not exhausted at the bottom. Then they can decide whether to go up for another, look for a more challenging run, or just call it a day knowing that they achieved some incredible results for our clients, themselves and our firm.

But if you looked further, the guidance from the State regarding B CE read – Such programs may include, but are not limited to, the areas of communication, quantitative methods, behavioral sciences, statistics and practice management.  Although it isn’t very clear, it doesn’t sound all bad.  Coursework aimed at being effective at communicating with clients, mentoring co-workers and running our practices.  Maybe it just got overlooked because of the presentation.

I love the new format.  No more A and B CE.  No more good and bad.  Just twenty three equally weighted fields of study that do contribute to the development of the professional skills necessary to be good at what we do.

Good communication skills won’t get you very far in the tax biz if your technical skills aren’t there.  But top-notch technical skills combined with communication, writing, counseling, leadership, time management, technology and other skills that the State is now promoting?  That’s where it’s at!

I was talking with a friend last week and he was frustrated with his sales results.  He had identified the problem; his sales force and channel partners were not being effective.  We talked about it for awhile and it became clear that the problem he identified was only a symptom.  The company had not clearly identified who its customer was.  Pretty tough to develop a go to market strategy when you haven’t identified who your market is.  He needed to dig deeper to diagnose the tumor.  To get to the root cause.

When I interview people about their public accounting experiences, I typically ask what they love and what they hate.  They typically love the people, the clients and the caliber of work.  They hate the problems; the long hours, tremendous stress, and lack of control over their schedules (along with plenty of others).  These are symptoms folks. 

Likewise, we’ve talked with hundreds of companies over the past years.  There is a common theme to the message we hear.  Most of the pains we hear about are symptoms stemming from the symptoms described in the previous paragraph.  The headache affects one’s ability to focus.

In order to be the professional service firm that provides better results to the people that work in it and the clients that benefit from it, we are digging deeper in order to tackle the root cause.

I had lunch with a colleague recently who is a partner at a national accounting firm. The conversation turned to staff and he communicated how frustrated he was with his. Apparently he had just returned from vacation, reviewed timesheets and was very disappointed in the level of effort that they put in while he was away. He commented on how he needed to be on his people all of the time in order to get any work out of them. When I mentioned that I never feel that way, that our people are very focused on producing results and are even more so when I’m not there, he responded that we have different people and that his firm doesn’t have “those people”. So who are “those people” and how did our firm get them?

We only recruit from the top firms. Firms like his. We recruit high achievers who have a history of success in academics, career, and other aspects of life such as athletics and community service. Successes that require personal responsibility and accountability, hard work, discipline, and devotion. But we don’t have an HR department or recruiting staff to post positions, screen resumes or interview candidates like the national firms do. That can’t be our advantage. As a matter of fact, I am sure that they recruit the same people that we do and have an easier time doing it.

So how did his people, who are such high achievers, become so lazy and unmotivated that they won’t do any work unless someone is standing over them? I doubt that the people changed. I am positive that they are still out there achieving tremendous things in life and in the office. Maybe they are just being measured on, and held accountable to the wrong thing. Maybe when no one is looking, they feel like they can stop the charade and actually get something done. Maybe they should be held accountable for their results instead of activity and time. Maybe then, they would be viewed as one of “those people”.

Please join us in welcoming Rebecca to the TaxOps team!

Equally important, is a focus on personal goals and accomplishments outside of the workplace, whether it’s photography, running, scuba, book clubs, or killing yourself on mountain passes, and how the achievement of those goals fires up all aspects of our lives.  The day before my ride, I was scheduled to play in a client golf tournament.  Due to an injury that I had, I felt that playing would seriously jeapordize my ride, so I asked Dan DeLau, a Director at TaxOps (not a golfer), to play in my place.  And he did!  I know he ended up working over the weekend to catch up so that I could ride on Saturday and achieve my goal.  I don’t recall that focus at the Big 4.

To step back for a moment, the results that we are after are significant.  As we continue to build our world class tax team, we strive not only to compete with the largest firms in the world in the tax arena, but to simply be better.  However, we are significantly different in our methodologies as to how we will achieve those goals.  We feel, very simply, that it’s better.