ASSESSMENTS & ALIGNMENT OF SUPPORTING SYSTEMS SERVICES
METRICS, DASHBOARDS & COMMUNICATIONS INTEGRATION
Over the past decade, the uniqueness, speed of change as well as competitiveness of most firm practices has made many of the traditional accounting firm leadership and management metrics and dashboards untimely and ineffective. As a result, much time and effort of firms today is being expended in redefining, retooling and realigning accounting metrics and dashboards from which manage by. It is critical today to be measuring both effort and performance with properly aligned lead and lad indicators. Greg can perform this advisory service separately as a free-standing project or integrated with the strategy mapping and implementation services. Greg has significant experience developing and identifying lead and lag metrics integrated into dashboards that are essential in effecting change and sustaining desired performance in accounting firms today.
OPERATION ASSESSMENTS & ALIGNMENTS
In order for a firm’s vision, goals and strategies to be realized, it is essential that all parts of a firm’s operations be efficient, effective and in alignment with what is trying to be accomplished. Most often, they are not. Therefore, with Greg’s deep understanding of all corners of an accounting firm’s operations, he has significant experience assessing all areas and taking action to bring things into alignment. These operation alignment assessments can also be free-standing projects or part of the work performed when assisting firms with the implementation of their Strategy Map.
ACQUISITION & INTEGRATION ASSISTANCE
As most everyone in the public accounting profession today knows, practice or firm acquisitions are part of everyday life. And, as most managing partners also know, the ability to successfully identify, solicit, assess, acquire and on-board a practice or firm is very difficult. Once again, Greg’s many years of experience provides him with a significant amount of knowledge in this area. Not only when acquiring traditional practices or firms, but also when acquiring non-traditional advisory firms in the area of Information Technology, Operations and Human Resources… Greg’s unique area of expertise. Greg has developed tools over the years that help firms understand what is most important when working on acquisitions so that as firms work with Greg, they also become more self-sufficient in the future.
CAREER PATHING, COMPETENCY BUILDING & COACHING
The ability to properly engage with any organization’s entire ownership group and workforce is a critical ingredient of success today. And for accounting firms, it is flat-out essential! Over Greg’s career, those both working with him and within the profession have witnessed his thought leadership and tireless efforts to commit the necessary time and financial resources to building strong internal human resource support teams and systems needed in firms today.
Greg was fortunate to bring on board in the two firms he’s lead two “game changing” qualified human resource leaders that successfully changed the mindsets and behaviors of the people in the firms they worked within. By working with these two highly qualified professionals, Greg has implemented some industry-first HR support policies, procedures and systems that worked. One being in the area of Career Pathing which is essentially how leaders work with people to accentuate their desires and strengths as they grow both professionally and personally. The other being how firms no longer need to perform the “ever-painful” annual performance reviews, which studies have shown are dreaded by all and of little real value to both the person and the organization they work for. This is accomplished by simply teaching leaders how to slow-down and engage in caring yet crucial coaching conversations throughout the year. Much less time-consuming and much more valuable for all! Greg helps firms learn how to implement this game-changing mentality and simple processes within firms requesting this service.
Another human resource support process Greg worked with others to develop and implement is a process where people understand and focus on the five or six “core competencies” an organization believes are critical for all to excel at as they grow throughout their career. Like the core competencies of speed, strength and agility that athletes continually work on in order to enhance their performance on their field of sport. Just like athletes, accountants must continually work on strengthening the fundamental competencies within their craft that allows them to continually learn, grow and perform better. Greg can advise, coach and teach firms how to develop and implement this concept.
PARTNER TEAM ASSESSMENTS & ALIGNMENT
Today, more than ever, successful firms must have individual partners and managers work well together in teams of people with quite different qualities, characteristics and skillsets. Yet for decades, firms have pretty much recruited, trained and built talent to fit into one-size box. For the most part, this is because firms have historically asked their people to pretty much all grow up and do the same things the same way. As a result, most partners and managers struggle to succeed as probably less than fifteen percent of them can really grow to become what the one-dimensional training model is built for. Like trying to recruit and train every college football player to become a great quarterback. Makes no sense. The team needs multiple types of players with multiple talents to fill many different positions. So as one can see, the one-dimensional training model we so often use in our profession needs to change!
Over the years, Greg has worked with his human resource leaders to establish multiple career path models for people to best fit into, and by accentuating their strengths, making it easier for the person to remain engaged and contribute to their team. This service is one that is of strong value today to firms that wish to truly improve the level of engagement of their people and build much stronger multidimensional teams to best serve clients.
A dimension of this service can also quickly assess a firm’s current and soon-to-be partner group. This assessment begins with identifying a partner’s strengths and struggles as they relate to positions needed to be filled within a firm’s leadership and ownership group. Greg then works with firm leadership to reach consensus as to what position each partner and partner-to-best aligns with by focusing on how to accentuate their strengths. And then finally, how to establish future partner career paths, needed coaching and training focus as well as goals and metrics to coach and train to.
SUCCESSION MAPPING
Over the past ten years or so, ownership and leadership succession quickly rose to one of the top issues facing nearly every firm in the country. Firm leaders have learned the hard way that if not constantly focused on succession… and not just with people nearing retirement… they are exposing their firm to significant business continuity risk. Today, firms must work hard at continually building a team that allows the entire firm to collectively keep learning and growing. Because if not, Greg and most all other managing partner have heard too many excuses as to why partners are working at levels below where they should be. How many times have they heard this one… “we just do not have the people to get the work done that is on our plate today.”
Over the years, Greg has developed a unique way to create what is called a “succession map” that is constantly being reviewed and updated by firm and practice leaders. This “map” is a confidential visual for leaders to work with that makes it easier for all involved to reach consensus as to where the firm’s business continuity is or is-not at risk. And, if at risk, what to do about it. This again has proven to be a very useful tool and approach that those who have used it believe has helped in managing succession.
GOVERNANCE SYSTEM EVOLUTION AND ALIGNMENT
As firms grow and change over time, it is essential for leaders to continually ask themselves whether or not the firm’s governance system in best aligned with what they are trying to accomplish as a firm. For the most part, when firms begin to expand geographically and build practice teams in a manner where team members work from different offices, it is time to make more significant adjustments to their governance system. When this stage of evolution occurs, many of the client facing as well as support staff become members of three teams…. their office team, their service line team and finally, their industry team. The number of teams a person is on is not too difficult to understand, however, when all three teams need to work together each and every day, the difficulty escalates.
Again, from Greg’s unique years of experience, he has learned what works and does not work as firms venture through this stage of evolution. And once again, this service can be offered as a part of another service, or it can be handled as a one-off single standing project. Either way, those that Greg has helped have really appreciated his insight which has made life a lot easier.