6 Tips for Fostering Leadership in Your Organization

Leadership is one of the top issues facing accounting firms today. We often hear firms say they can’t find or don’t have good leaders in their organization. As most of us know, leaders don’t usually fall off trees. In any organization, fostering leadership takes time and intention. As a current leader, you have to be…

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Sponsorship-Barrier to Exit for Talent

Jayne is a woman with ten years of experience in public accounting.    She is certified and versatile in multiple areas of practice in which she might contribute now and in the future.  She has deep community roots in the major metropolitan area in which she works and she has shown great promise in promoting the…

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Eliminate The Mystery through Communication & Inclusion

When I begin to work with a new CPA firm client, one of the most common issues I encounter is the lack of open, honest, on-going communication between firm leadership and firm team members. In many firms, some leaders are still in the mindset that many of the management and partner topics need to confidential.…

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Ransomware Awareness

There has been a recent surge of Ransomware attacks on accountants whose workstations were not adequately protected and backed up, leading to some firms paying a ransom and others recreating the data (and wishing they would have paid the ransom instead).  For those of you not familiar with Ransomware, it is a term for malicious…

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Improve Communication in Your Firm

As we survey firm team members and ask them what leaders could do to improve culture and engagement in their firm, the overwhelming #1 response we hear is “we need better communication”. The response I get from leaders is “we have been working on that every year, will it ever be good enough?”  My answer…

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Be the Firm You Want to Be

Every organization is perfectly designed to produce the results it’s producing. If you want a different result – you must change something. The originator of this phrase is debatable. Its premise is not. The business case for change is that firms that continue to do things as they have always done at some point will…

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People at the Center of CPA Firm 2015 Top Issues

The CPA Consultants’ Alliance (CPACA), a group of thought leaders working together to further leadership within the CPA profession, recently held its annual meeting to discuss the most pressing leadership challenges facing the CPA profession and identify solutions to address these challenges.  Following the meeting, CPACA members were asked to comment on the single most…

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HIRING TRENDS FOR 2015

According to a recent article on Fast Company, 70% of today’s workforce is actively looking for another job or is open to hearing about a new job opportunity. Another study tells us that a recent college graduate will hold between 15 to 20 jobs in their career. That means they are going to change jobs every…

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Building Your Bench For Succession

Thousands of firms are working through the succession and retirement of senior partners and deciding along the way whether or not they can pull it off internally and stay independent. The single most important factor for success is what we see when we look over our shoulder – is the bench of people there to…

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Can You Afford to Buy-out the Retiring Partners of Your Firm?

Many firms are struggling with the prospects of paying retirement buyout payments for their senior partners who will be retiring in the next few years. In some cases, several partners will be receiving retirement buyouts simultaneously. The financial burden can seem daunting. As we have emphasized in earlier blogs, make sure you first have the…

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