Programming Your Firm's GPS

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could simply enter a destination for your practice and a voice would immediately tell you all of the necessary steps to get you there?  Of course it would - but mapping out your strategic steps is not that short a process, and it can’t be based on one person’s voice.  After tax season it is very common to evaluate the road that you and your practice have traveled, and to see whether a change in course is appropriate. While the answers aren’t as simple as plugging in a destination, the mapping process can be very easy if you take the following three steps:

Use Structured SWOT Analysis:
Every organization has strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – Agreeing on them and then addressing them are crucial to strategic success. Provide all of the owners, owners-in-training and upper level staff with a SWOT form that limits their response to no more than 5 issues and potentially isolates the SWOT to specific areas of practice and concern. Each participant must return the analysis within a week of receiving it. Responses must be very specific and examples should be encouraged.

Survey Your Team:
Coordinate a face-to-face and confidential survey/outreach process. Once the SWOT has been completed, meet with participants to probe and get a handle on the passion and credibility of their responses. Survey the entire staff as to the highs and lows of busy season and selectively test issues raised in the SWOT.

Confer & Consult:
Convene an offsite meeting with the owners and owners-in-training to process the SWOT information and the surveys. The meeting should be planned out in advance, and if need be, an outside facilitator should be engaged to build the agenda, navigate the meeting and coordinate the follow up. Success will come from developing priorities in a tactical fashion and creating buy-in.  An outsider is often the best resource to utilize to establish these results. At a minimum, it may be worthwhile for different owners to take ownership of different elements of the meeting. The conclusion of this process should bring an action plan that the participants believe is both rigorous and attainable.

By following the three steps noted above, you will channel the many voices of your firm so that you can hear a central message that will assure you are all on the same page for making the right turns to get to your destination.