strategy

the six essential habits of successful leaders in tax & accounting

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aquila
aquila

by august aquila
creating the effective partnership

every book you read on leadership will tell you certain things you need to do to become a good leader. however, you can do these things and still not be someone who people want to follow.

more on leadership: research, but also be ready to act | leader training is time well spent |  successful strategy execution requires focus on people | managing partners must remember partners’ needs | like herding cats: partners must ‘walk together’ | 5 questions about your firm’s direction | partners have love-hate relationship with leadership  | what does being a partner mean? | mirror, mirror on the wall | the 8-point financial tune-up for your accounting firm | three ways to run a firm: but only one is sustainable | eight key goal areas for partners

why? leadership is all about trust. if you cannot trust me, then you will not follow me or believe in me. read more →

research, but also be ready to act

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businessman hand press play button sign to start or initiate projects as conceptone key: accept that there are many different ways of achieving the same objective.

by robert j. lees, august j. aquila and derek klyhn

not every firm can be the market leader.

more on leadership: leader training is time well spent | managing partners must remember partners’ needs | 5 questions about your firm’s direction | like herding cats: partners must ‘walk together’

but every firm can have a culture of excellence, of striving to be the best at everything they do and of reinventing themselves as the markets for both clients and people change.

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why i became a consultant

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by ed mendlowitz the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 practice doctor while i was working full-time early in my accounting career, i was also picking up clients that i did on the side, also known as moonlighting. one of the clients was a … continued

leader training is time well spent

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leader addresses co-workersfour questions to test your leadership culture.

by robert j. lees, august j. aquila and derek klyhn

being a good coach is just one of the expectations firms must have of their partners. they are expected to be leaders, as well.

more on leadership: managing partners must remember partners’ needs | 5 questions about your firm’s direction | like herding cats: partners must ‘walk together’

while most of the partners we know understand and accept that need, not everyone does, and not everyone understands what being an effective leader means.

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what if accounting firms were apps?

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smartphone12 ways the app phenomenon could change the way you think about your practice.

by hitendra patil

consider, for a moment, the new “app economy.” there are over a million apps in apple and google stores, with hundreds of them doing much the same thing in almost the same way. according to pew research, 90 percent of americans have cellphones and 67 percent find themselves checking their phones for messages, alerts or calls — even when they don’t notice their phones ringing or vibrating.

so, are accounting firms like apps already — offering the same services, same deliverables, same outcomes at the same or similar prices? if so, the only thing missing in the accounting marketplace is an “accounting services app store.”

more on entrepreneurial strategy: top 10 entrepreneurial traits of successful accountants | four leadership strengths that define accountants | as block and liberty add accounting services, independents face 3 options | readers sound off on liberty, h& r block plans to launch bookkeeping services | threat or opportunity as h& r block, liberty jump into bookkeeping services? | six secret keys to the mind of the entrepreneur | 8 seconds into the future: meet generation z | 5 reasons gen y will make or break your firm

wisdom tells us to “hang out where clients do.” yet, there are hardly any “accounting firm apps” on the app stores. read more →

successful strategy execution requires focus on people

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business people working in group in the officeby robert j. lees, august j. aquila and derek klyhn

momentum is critical in driving change, so it is no surprise that the initiation of activities that drive and support the strategy is key.

more on leadership: managing partners must remember partners’ needs | 5 questions about your firm’s direction | like herding cats: partners must ‘walk together’

it is also one of the reasons why focus is critical. and yet one of the mistakes we see are initiatives having too much time between them.

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managing partners must remember partners’ needs

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a businessman with some jigsaw puzzle pieces in his handand 4 questions to consider.

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

professionals loathe anything bureaucratic. but we know of many firms who ask their partners to account, in detail, for every minute of their time.

to ask high-need-for-achievement professionals at the top of their field to provide what, to them, is bureaucratic data immediately implies a complete lack of trust and respect for their expertise and their position. it is simply a motivational disaster, which distances the partners from the firm. partners know that they have to account for their time but we know too many firms that, often at the behest of the finance function, ask for a level of specificity that drives the partners to distraction.

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like herding cats: partners must ‘walk together’

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businessman hand holding puzzle pieces

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

in our work with managing partners, we always talk about the importance of the partners “walking together,” of sharing that common vision.

but if the partners are to share the vision, they have to play an active part in determining the firm’s direction – and, critically, how it’s going to get there.

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5 questions about your firm’s direction

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businesspeople moving along corridorsetting direction is the first step.

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?

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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partners have love-hate relationship with leadership

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aquila leadership context modelby 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.

the tensions between being a business and the loss of the values and ethics of being a partnership feature strongly in our research.

but accounting firms are different from their corporate counterparts in a number of ways, which impact their functioning and, therefore, their leadership. read more →