leadership

partner accountability: how and for what?

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13 things to hold partners accountable for, 10 ways to do it and 12 questions to ask. bonus: example of a personal accountability plan.

by marc rosenberg
cpa firm retreats

partner accountability means different things to different people. some quotations:

“if there are no consequences to failing to achieve a goal, then it is less likely that the goal will be accomplished.” – marc rosenberg

“if people are not prepared to be held accountable for what they do, it is unlikely they will achieve much.” – david maister

more on retreats: 30 marketing and growth questions to cover at a retreat | how marketing for cpa firms is different | why create a marketing plan? | thinking of merging? discuss it at a retreat | how to take action after a retreat | 12 simple rules for a retreat | leave your retreat with a to do list | every retreat needs a leader, but who? | retreats are no place for clowns | who should participate in a retreat? | retreat logistics: how long, what kind? | what should cpa firms discuss at retreats? | why do cpa firms conduct retreats?

“i’m a partner in this firm. that gives me the right to do whatever i darn well please, whenever i want to do it.” – firm partner to whom “accountability” is a dirty word
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5 questions for every mp to answer honestly

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businessman's hand separating letter blocks spelling "im" from those spelling "possible"before you can change your firm, you have to gauge where it is now.

by robert j. lees, august j. aquila and derek klyhn
creating the effective partnership

how do successful managing partners respond to the internal and external challenges they face?

more on leadership for pro members: 6 practical ways to innovate | the 4 best ways to use your senior partners | how to tell a culture change is due | 11 steps to building a better partnership team | why your firm should be a republic | partnership is about persuasion

without exception, all of the partners we spoke to talked about the need to have a clear sense of direction that the partners, in particular, could coalesce around. but what they considered even more important is the translation of that direction into a compelling vision and the strategies for achieving it.
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turning problems into opportunities

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business concept:problem solution success

what the highly successful do by habit and the rest of us need to learn the hard way.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间

every accounting firm has a problem. sometimes many problems. something is preventing exponential growth or inhibiting sales or tangling up the it system or requiring too many weekends at the office or causing clients to drift away or… well, the list could go on forever. no organization is perfect any more than any human being is perfect or any machine is perfectly efficient. somewhere in every firm there is a problem which, if solved, would make the firm better.

you need to find that problem and solve it. you need a system. here’s how some of the smartest people we know go about tackling their problems. read more →

best practices for client transition

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man watching handshake between two womenimproper transitions can lead to reduced retirement benefits.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 / succession institute

when a partner is retiring, there is a transition process that we recommend. let’s break it down into a few simple steps:

more on performance management: how client transition is abused | best practices for mandatory retirement | how retirement issues affect succession planning | succession: the questions to care about | 7 succession questions to ignore for now | how partner ratings factor into equity | hazards of not reallocating equity | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | develop your employees or suffer the consequences | cpa firm performance assessments: 15 core competencies, 21 questions | how to target what skills to develop now | what having your employees’ backs means | 5 harmful management attitudes (and how to fix them) | do cpa firms need management or leadership? |  job 1 for the practice owner: client management

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partners love, hate leadership

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aquila leadership context modelmanagement can’t be left to others. (drat!)

by robert j. lees, august j. aquila and derek klyhn
creating the effective partnership

regardless of their ownership structure, most firms either operate as partnerships or would prefer to operate as partnerships.

more on leadership for pro members: 8 ways leaders destroy firms | the 4 best ways to use your senior partners | 11 steps to building a better partnership team | 6 things leaders must do | how to build a growth-centric pricing strategy | how to combine two firms after merger: carefully

the tensions between being a business and the loss of the values and ethics of being a partnership feature strongly in our research.
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partner retirement and the war for clients

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retirement plan label on folderbonus checklist: 8 best uses for a retiring partner.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 / succession institute

once a firm is ready to phase out a partner in retirement, it’s time to move on to the client transition process. but this is the single most abused part of the entire succession process.

more on performance management: best practices for mandatory retirement | how retirement issues affect succession planning | 7 succession questions to ignore for now | how partner ratings factor into equity | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | cpa firm performance assessments: 15 core competencies, 21 questions | what having your employees’ backs means | 5 harmful management attitudes (and how to fix them)

the reason why this part of the process is the most abused is because both sides – the partner nearing mso (henceforth referred to as retiring partners or retired partners) and the remaining partners – are motivated to do the wrong things. for example, it is in the best interest of retiring partners to not transition their clients because if they don’t, the firm will need to keep them around to continue to work on them after mso. if this isn’t bad enough, because they did not transition their clients properly, the retired partners have a great deal of leverage since they are now entitled to their full retirement pay and still have control over some or most of their client base. this allows the retired partners to gain additional benefits from the partner group by basically reselling their clients to them again. unfortunately, this situation is more the norm than the exception.
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the true measure of practice growth

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yellow retractable steel tape measurethe three critical questions you should be asking.

by lee eisenstaedt
leading with courage academy

question: is your firm really growing as much as you think?

you probably celebrate when you win a new client, but what do you do when you lose one? which leads to this little exercise… what are your revenues and profits over the past 12 months after you:

• take out any mergers and acquisitions completed during that time?
• take out any price increases implemented in the past 12 months?
• take out all the new clients acquired in the past year?

what’s left? what kind of real growth remains? even with those questions answered, you may be ignoring three fundamental considerations. read more →

how to decide who decides what

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stack of cards labeled with question marksbonus charts: 15 habits that make a partner. plus: equity vs. non-equity partners, and a voting decision grid.

by marc rosenberg
cpa firm retreats

“i can’t manage this firm if i have to take a vote every time i want to make a decision.” – tony kendall, ceo of top 200 firm mitchell & titus, shortly after taking over from the firm’s founder.

more on retreats: 30 marketing and growth questions to cover at a retreat | how marketing for cpa firms is different | why create a marketing plan? | thinking of merging? discuss it at a retreat | how to take action after a retreat | 12 simple rules for a retreat | leave your retreat with a to do list | every retreat needs a leader, but who? | retreats are no place for clowns | who should participate in a retreat? | retreat logistics: how long, what kind? | what should cpa firms discuss at retreats? | why do cpa firms conduct retreats?

goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

there are decisions that managing partners should make without a partner vote.

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8 goal types for leadership, accountability

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numbered running track at a stadium“production” and “client service” aren’t specific enough. nail it down.

by auqust aquila
creating the effective partnership

as leaders of a firm, partners need to do more than pay for themselves and contribute to overhead expenses. their duties to the firm and to each other extend to bringing in new business, improving their own skills as well as developing skills in others, contributing to strategy and a passion for continuous improvement in all things.

more on leadership for pro members: 8 questions that staff ask in a merger | does your dashboard need fine-tuning? | 6 practical ways to innovate | the 4 best ways to use your senior partners | today’s top six partner compensation trends | why your firm should be a republic | partnership is about persuasion | 6 things leaders must do

most firms don’t take enough time to develop meaningful partner goals because it is a very time-consuming process. but, if you want to get better results in this highly competitive environment, this is the road you need to take.
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best practices for mandatory retirement

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time to retire clock facethe work retired partners should – and shouldn’t – do if they stay on.

by bill reeb and dominic cingoranelli
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 / succession institute

once “fair” retirement benefits have been determined, for this moment in time, we can move on to the next step in building our succession plan. the reason i mention that we are simply putting stakes in the ground is because as we set additional stakes in the ground, those new stakes might require us to rethink a decision made when setting a previous stake.

more on performance management: how retirement issues affect succession planning | how partner ratings factor into equity | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | develop your employees or suffer the consequences

for example, if the firm later establishes premium perks for past owners who want to continue to work for the firm after sale of ownership, then that might require reassessing the retirement benefit calculation agreed to when setting that earlier stake (because in the end, the retirement benefit is about the whole package offered, not just one component).
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how retirement issues affect succession planning

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an old-school bronze justice scale with inequal stacks of moneyif you believe your firm will be dysfunctional without you, now is the time to fix it.

by bill reeb, dominic cingoranelli, and tommye barie
the succession institute

when we take our clients through succession planning, eventually the focus turns to implementing the best practices for running a firm – but first we normally have to start with short-term retirement issues.

more on performance management: succession: the questions to care about | how partner ratings factor into equity | the pitfalls of equity allocation and reallocation | cpa firm performance assessments: 15 core competencies, 21 questions | what having your employees’ backs means

why? because typically you won’t get any buy-in for change until the partners have looked at whether the current retirement system is paying at least roughly a fair market value to the near-term retiring partners.

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