Walk the Talk

Earlier this week, a fellow CPA sent me and several of our colleagues a link to a Simple Truths video. Since I am an avid fan of Simple Truths, I was interested to see which link he sent. He sent Walk the Talk.

Two of the statements from the video struck me.

Integrity –
Choose rightness over ease and convenience.

I immediately thought about how CPAs bill their customers.

I wonder, where is the integrity in hourly billing. Is it really “right” to take a customer’s information, rack up some hours, and send out a bill. In this scenario, the customer has no say as to the price until after the fact.

Would it not be more “right” to provide customers with up front pricing and payment terms regarding the services to be rendered?

Courage –
Follow your conscience instead of “following the crowd”.

Currently in the CPA industry, “the crowd” is billing by the hour. Yet, there are CPAs and Chartered Accountants around the world who are following their conscience and providing up front pricing.

Ask your CPA about their core values. Are they “just words”, or does your CPA “Walk the Talk”?

Is Your CPA Right for Your Bus?

First Who…Then What
That is the title of Chapter 3 of Good to Great by Jim Collins. The main point of this chapter is not just about assembling the right team—that’s nothing new. The main point is to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor needed with regard to people decisions in order to take a company from good to great.

The problem for small businesses is that when they look at their bus, there are still many empty seats. In order to fill all the seats, as a small business owner, this means that you must expand your concept of “The Bus” to include not just your Team but also your professional advisors and service providers such as their CPA, lawyer and IT consultant.

Core Competencies
When you think of your CPA as one of the “right” people to be on your bus, what core competencies would you like him/her to bring along? For each business, the answer will be a different combination of skills. However, most will include such things as tax knowledge, GAAP knowledge, financial savvy, and the like.

When you invite your CPA to be on your bus, be sure to ask about their core competencies and how they will meet your needs. Verify their core competencies by asking about the systems they have in place to control, improve and enhance their core competencies. Also, ask them what KPIs they use to measure the effectiveness of their core competencies.

The Disconnect
Recently, I was having a conversation with my friend Catherine. Catherine works at a local CPA firm in Seattle. Her firm started a “Good to Great” journey about a year ago. At first Catherine was quite excited. Each team member received their own copy of Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. Leadership roles in the firm were reassigned. And even though it was difficult, the firm took steps to get the wrong people off the bus. A committee was formed to discover and articulate the firm’s core values and the annual performance review form was redesigned to match those values.

However, Catherine has started to notice a disconnect between the firms stated core values and desire to add value to their customer’s businesses and lives and the systems the firm has in place for managing the day-to-day activities.

Catherine sent me the following interoffice memo that was sent to every team member of her firm:

Weekly Time Summary Report to be delivered starting Monday,
3/17

As another step along our journey from Good to Great, all team members and mentors will receive, via an automated email, a weekly Time Summary with both
summarized billable stats, including budgeted, and a detailed listing of non-billable time. It is my hope that by providing this information regularly, each team member can better monitor their progress toward their budget and in turn, toward the firm’s goals.

A couple things to keep in mind regarding this report: It will only report on time entered and/or released, so while we are required to enter time daily anyway, please make double-certain that your time is in by the end of the week. Also, when entering non-billable time, if you don’t enter a description, the report will ‘red-line’ the time entry with a reference of “Description Required for NonChargeable Time “, so please make sure to include references when entering non-billable time.

I expect that this report will lead to questions about time entry standards, especially with respect to non-billable time. After tax season, I expect to hold sessions for mentors and all team members aimed at consistency among time-keepers. In the meantime, continue to refer to the ‘XYZ Non-Chargeable Codes’ memo from the billing clerk, and forward time-keeping questions directly to me, as it will help me compile a list I make sure to address.

As a final comment, I hope this doesn’t seem like a ‘big brother’ thing. This information has always been available, and I believe that making it more visible and regular will help the ‘disciplined people’, ‘disciplined thought’, and ‘disciplined action’ of the Good to Great journey be just that much easier to implement.

Catherine feels that the onerous time keeping system and hourly billing techniques used by the firm distracts team members from the firm’s core values and provides no value to the customer.

I couldn’t agree more with Catherine. A firm this focused on time keeping can only bring one core competency to the table, and that is the ability to track every activity in their lives in six minute intervals.

So ask yourself: “Is the inordinate amount of resources that your CPA is putting into time based billing really making them the “right” person for your bus?”

Business Boot Camp

Every so often something NEW comes along.

Of course, it’s even better when that something new also happens
to be something that adds terrific value to your business.

With those two things in mind (new and adding value) I would like to tell you more about the Business Boot Camp™.

It is exactly the sort of program small business owners have been asking for.

Research from last year’s Good to Great event indicates that business owners want to be educated about the following:
Understand their business
Understand their financials
Understand problems and solutions
Enhance business ownership skills

In addition, business owners also mentioned that they enjoyed the opportunity to meet with other business owners to talk and learn about business processes.

The Business Boot Camp™ is an opportunity for small business owners to come together and develop their CEO skills, and in turn create extraordinary businesses and extraordinary lives.

Business Boot Camp™ groups are now forming.

If you would like to learn more about the Business Boot Camp™, please attend one of the following complementary meetings:

Friday February 1, 2008
5:30 pm – 8:00 pm (includes light dinner)
Location: 801 Garden Street, Santa Barbara

Also, if you know any other business owners who might be interested, please invite them to join you. If you would like, I can send this information to them.

RSVP to: Brenda Richter, CPA
Brenda@BrendaRichterCPA.com

If you are unable to attend either of these meetings, and would like more information, please contact me and arrange for a separate meeting.

I look forward to meeting with you. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Development of The Arc of Greatness

Earlier this year I was the event coordinator for an extraordinary business seminar that took place on September 17, 2007, in Santa Barbara.

Legendary business documentary film maker, Sam Tyler, gave the presentation combining clips from 20 years of film making with what he’s learned along the way.

Sam’s first film was based on Tom Peter’s In Search of Excellence. His most recent completed film, Good to Great based on the book by Jim Collins, began airing on public television in January 2007.

At this point in his career, Sam has decided to move out from behind the camera. His thought was that he would present his Good to Great film to the management team or entire team of a single company and follow the filming with a group discussion on how that company could apply the Good to Great concepts to their company.

Then I came along with another idea – that businesses shouldn’t limit their potential for greatness because of their size. Or as Jim Collins so aptly put it, “Big does not equal great, and great does not equal big.”

When I sat down with Sam to discuss the possibility of having him do his Good to Great presentation for a group of small business owners and their service providers, I indicated that the emphasis of the event was going to be “Who’s on Your Bus?”.

First Who…Then What
That is the title of Chapter 3 of Good to Great. The main point of this chapter is not just about assembling the right team—that’s nothing new. The main point is to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor needed with regard to people decisions in order to take a company from good to great.

The problem for small businesses is that when they look at their bus, there are still many empty seats. In order to fill all the seats, a small business must expand its concept of “The Bus” to include not just their Team but also their professional advisors and service providers.

The second request I made of Sam is that when he discussed the concepts after showing the movie that he frame the discussion and commentary towards small business. As we discussed this approach, Sam’s eyes started to light up. He realized that some of his previous work would do a better job of explaining Good to Great to small businesses. He suggested that rather than watch Good to Great in its entirety, he could discuss a concept and follow it up with a small business film clip.

Our event was a “Great” success. Sam could see that this format was perfect for a mixed group audience of business owners, CPAs, attorneys, bankers, and the like. He also noticed that this type of event was put together only through the hard work of volunteers.

So Sam has developed a new program called The Arc of Greatness.

The Arc of Greatness is a turn key event solution that local business communities can use to bring together small businesses and professional service providers to be inspired and motivated to work together to create truly GREAT businesses.

The turn key portion will provide the event organizers with tools, templates, suggestions, hand outs, follow up material, and on going support to streamline the event planning process.

The presentation itself covers the management revolution that started with Tom Peters’ In Search of Excellence and concludes with Jim Collins’ Good to Great. The presentation is a combination of film clips, case studies, discussions, and Sam’s personal insights. All-in-all, the presentation is like having Tom Peters, Stephen Covey, Walt Disney, Jack Stack and Jim Collins in the room at the same time.

In addition to being an event that can enhance your business community, it can be organized to serve as a fund raiser.

For more information on The Arc of Greatness, please contact:
Brenda Richter, CPA
Brenda@BrendaRichterCPA.com

For more information on Sam Tyler, visit: http://tylertalks.com/