Pushing the Reset Button - Vital Steps To Reposition Your Firm For Success

We are all conditioned to push the reset button when our favorite technology toy freezes or does not work, but what button do we push when our practice does not work right? If there actually were a button, when would be the right time to push it and what result should you expect? In contrast to our favorite technology gadgets, the reset button for an accounting practice is not something that will react to a delicate finger - It takes a powerful force and many well coordinated hands. The current business climate and the intense competition among firms has made it very clear that accounting firms throughout the country need to hit their reset buttons. To muster the right resources to reset takes at a minimum the following types of advanced preparation:

Investigation – you need to understand the value system of your clients and the business community. In general, clients are much more aware of their costs and are much more comfortable being demanding. Focus groups are a valuable mechanism to gain intelligence on your local business community, the views and values of clients and new innovations that may be part of your future efforts. Your future is linked not just to meeting the expectations of the business community, but to exceeding them and controlling them as well. Focus groups allow you to collect the data and responses that will dictate the level of effort that a reset will take and the potential timing for the results to become visible. To gain maximum value - be sure that you turn to experts to run your focus groups and that all participants are handled with the utmost of confidentiality. Depending on how much investigation you are going to do, the time line for meaningful results will vary. Investigations of this nature are not to be handled internally and should be well thought out with your outside consultant.

Empowerment – your staff and partners have to be confident that they have the authority to orchestrate change. Survey your staff and follow up with face-to-face meetings to determine how they would like to see the firm progress and how they can feel more comfortable with their contribution. Create task forces that include owners and staff and charge them with the responsibility of dissecting and reinventing your deliverables. The ground rules should be simple - all ideas are valuable but not all will necessarily prevail or be accepted. Accepting new ideas and making strides with their implementation is more important than simply setting a random quota on new ideas. Empowerment in this context is expected to have its share of compromise so that both management and staff make progress towards the firm’s benefit. Facilitating empowerment may require the help of an outsider and certainly will require patience. A business thrives when there is unity and cooperation – empowerment for the benefit of the firm should get people on the same page much more frequently.

Stratification – each person in the organization needs to understand their role, the importance of that role and how they should progress to the next station. Job descriptions and criteria for advancement should be easily understood and available for all to see including clients and centers of influence. Accountability needs to be defined so that it is not just a reporting upward concept. People need to be accountable to their peers and not just their supervisors. Firms that function as a team will generally enjoy strong performance. To have a functional team, the members of the team need to weigh in on the performance and impact of others on their team. Upward review of the owners and executive group is a must, and that includes input from the administrative and clerical crew. The ownership group must recognize that they are accountable individually to the other owners and employees and in totality to the entire organization. Stratification must not be all about reaching the more superior title but rather the more advanced level of accountability. Coaching, mentoring and goals programs when administered by the right people make stratification successful.

Taking the right kind of actions before you hit the reset button will enhance the results that you will experience. The right kind of reset will bring you back to success, not to how you were operating before. That kind of reset is only for toys.