Golden Practices Blog

The Exuberant Accountant

The newest CPA firm blog is that of Scott Heintzelman (CPA, CMA, CFE) a young partner at savvy McKonly & Asbury in PA. Scott's blog is aptly named (if you've met Scott!): The Exuberant Accountant.

He writes primarily for audiences consisting of family owned businesses, second generation businesses, and non-profit organizations (leadership, I believe).

I met Scott a year ago in Charleston at an IGAF Worldwide conference and he was pretty keen on the idea of blogging. He started with an internal blog that he very much enjoyed and decided to go public.

Welcome to the blogosphere, McKonly & Asbury!! Scott's is the 51st "practice" blog on our Accounting Blog List!

Don't Just Recruit Cool, BE Cool

Rita Keller brings up being "cool" if a firm is going to remain competitive. I agree and expand the point to emphasize it's a two-parter!

The first step is attracting great people. The second and more important part (and much more difficult one) is inspiring them to want to STAY so your firm has the talent AND attitude to continue to do great things for clients.

Rita's post, "Do you speak their language" talks about texting. Specifically, texting used in an accounting firm's recruiting ad. And, sure, it's a clever ad. I don't know the firm, but I hope they have the second part down-pat, too.

Just this month, I've been privvy (with great disapproval) to several firms' conversations about their policies on ipods, text messaging, and so forth. Basically, they say "don't" because "it interferes with productivity." 

Funny. How many of those staffers jammed to their favorite tunes through every homework assignment they've had while they earned their grades that qualified them to join the firm. (Take yourself back a few years...there was definitely a stereo, maybe even a favorite record or cassette, cranked up while I did MY studies. How about you?)

Maybe they're just trying to tune out the office chatter-box so they can get some work done! (Is there a no office chatter-box policy??)

And when I spoke in June at the AAM conference about blogs, a number of attendees said their firms' internet security won't let them access blogs from the office!

A number of firms also deny access to Linked In, Facebook, YouTube and other social networking sites in order to "control timewasting." Blogs and social media tools facilitate some of the most effective marketing and networking going on these days. And firms are blocking them!!

This lockout occurs among roughly 25% of businesses, so it's not just accounting firms who are short-sighted. See David Meerman Scott for that figure on his excellent (and sad) post called "Facebook and YouTube blocked by paranoid corporations at their own peril."

A commenter on David's post says people take advantage and waste hours on the internet to which David wisely responds:

... it is a management issue, not a technology issue. If people mess around at work, it doesn't really matter if it is on Facebook, or chatting by the water cooler, or taking a three hour "shopping lunch". It's all the same - people not doing what they've been paid to do.

I would deal with the behavior. If required, fire the employee who is not working.

Amen.

At any rate, policies like these stink. Most contradict what firms are trying to claim they are: great places to work. These policies (attire, perfume, internet use, ipods...) are insulting because they treat every person on your team as the worst behaved child by making everyone "pay" for the sins of one or two who show poor judgment and ought to just receive a talking to, and maybe a boot, if the talk doesn't work.

I'm picking up Rita's post today because I want to reinforce, all the great "cool" recruiting in the world won't solve the talent crisis. The problem is people leaving once they came, they saw, and they experienced. A lot of firms DO have amazing and cool cultures. And those firms are not seeing the turnover like the ones who get uptight about ipods and blog-reading.

Treat all the people like grown-ups and if some don't choose to act like it, then deal with them individually! But stop punishing the masses or you won't have a mass...there are too many other places for them to go.

It's time to get with the program.

High Satisfaction Day (HSD)

My friend Ron Baker taught me about HSDs. HSDs are the days when something happens that makes you swell with sense of accomplishment and think, "this is why I do what I do!" - your raison d'être.

Ron credits John Heymann, founder of NewLevel Group in Napa, CA, as the creator the High Satisfaction Day (HSD) term which Ron wrote about in one of his books: Measure What Matters to Customers.

Some companies and firms encourage employees to note their HSDs on a calendar in the employee lounge. Others, like Brendon Harrex's accounting firm, use technology to capture HSDs with a computer desktop button that, when pressed, launches a celebration fanfare and notes, somewhere, who had an HSD today.

Companies can keep an eye on increases or decreases in HSDs to get a sense of morale or personal fulfillment. This is why Ron calls it a KPI: or Key Predictive Indicator. No HSDs could imply an unhappy team member...someone who may not enjoy their job, or want to stay.

Anyway, Ron recently posted one of his HSDs which inspired me to post my best HSD ever. It's an email I received in May from a new client's lovely wife (edited a little for privacy) after my first project with the firm.

Michelle,

I just wanted to send a quick note to let you know that, even though you aren’t aware of it, you’ve made a tremendous difference in my life in the last few weeks!! It seems funny because we don’t really even know that much about each other, but I wanted you to know how much I appreciate you and your professional contribution to the marketing efforts at M's firm.

M is so proud of the proposal for the [prospect] project and having made the transition to having a product like that get out the door in such a short time was HUGE! Sometimes it’s nice to have input from “outside” .... M thinks the world of you and feels very lucky to have such a valuable resource for the firm.

Needless to say, he is a much more relaxed husband this weekend and of course that makes me a much happier wife!!

Anyway, I hope that you have time to spend with your family this holiday weekend and that the weather where you are is better than the cold and rain that we have here this weekend! I truly enjoyed your stay here with us and I do hope that we have more opportunities to share and get to know each other better in the near future.

Sincerely, J

Having positively impacted the family life of a client is probably the most important thing I've ever accomplished as a consultant. This, to me, was the ultimate compliment...definitely reminded my why I love doing what I do. And it feels good to share!

Can you think of your most recent or best HSD? We'd love to see what inspires you and makes you feel rewarded!

If you don't have a blog, feel free to post your HSD in a comment to this blog post. If you do have a blog, consider posting your HSD on it (trackback here, if you like).

Also, if you want to participate in a meme on it, here's a starting list to add to your post:

Ron Baker's HSD
Michelle Golden's HSD

"Are Employees Really an Audience?"

With permission, I post an e-newsletter article by a St Louisan in the PR profession, Les Landes. Les also recently started a blog called "Inside Out" which addresses "aligning marketing communications with employee engagement."

(I'm kinda proud of Les' entering the blogosphere because I helped introduce him to blogs at my presentation for the International Association of Business Communicators St Louis Chapter meeting awhile back!)

Anyway, here's his e-newsletter article:

Are Employees Really an Audience?

A few years ago, The Journal of Employee Communication Management published an article entitled "Employees Are Not an Audience." It was written by Glynn Young, who currently heads the Issues, Employee and Electronic Communications function for Monsanto Company. His basic premise is simple yet significant - the job of organizational communicators should NOT be mainly to create and deliver messages to the employee audience, but rather to facilitate conversations within the employee community.

That distinction is more than an exercise in semantics. It goes to the heart of why organizations struggle - and often fail - to generate meaningful employee engagement. It also explains why organizations get caught in the wrongheaded notion that they need better "two-way" communication.

Seriously - is there any other kind? Bottom line, if it isn't two-way, it isn't communication. It's message distribution.

Community of Professionals
Even if we're not conscious of it, we know in our guts that employees shouldn't be treated as an audience when it comes to communication. Just look at another metaphor often used for them - team. Can you imagine how Michael Jordan or Tom Brady or Albert Pujols or other sports team members would react if their organizations communicated with them like an "audience?" Pretty weird, huh?

But they're different, right? After all, those people are "professionals." Consider for a moment, though, how an organization might run its business and communicate with its employees differently if they viewed employees as a "community of professionals" - professional accountants, professional order entry clerks, professional maintenance workers, professional production line workers -- and so on? You get the picture.

Sure, the challenges are different when you're communicating with 12 to 50 people instead of 12,000 to 50,000. But the need for people to feel that their organizations are communicating with them as professional members of a team is much the same.

Shifting from Messages to Conversations
Admittedly, logistics are more complex with larger groups, and the options for communicating differ from one organization to the next depending on numerous factors. What's more, truly interactive communication simply isn't possible in all circumstances. If the building is on fire, for example, that's no time to engage an employee discussion group in considering various options on how to respond.

Still, organizations of any size and circumstance can and should shift from "sending messages" to "facilitating conversations" wherever possible by operating on two basic principles:

1. Stop using the phrase "communicate to," and replace it with "communicate with." If the best you can do is send a message, say so - but don't call it communication.

2. Where it's feasible and appropriate, frame "messages" as "conversation points," and create systematic ways for employees to converse and provide feedback on those topics.

While those principles are important for everyone in management to understand, it's vital for people in charge of internal communications to follow them if they want to get employees truly engaged and strengthen working relationships within the "employee community."

Les has an impressive list of communications of interest to people who understand that appreciation and respect of human capital is especially critical for firms who rely on Knowledge Workers. I hope you'll enjoy his messages as much as I do.

Excellent Meeting Tips (Especially Sales Meetings)

Came across this fantastic post on the blog of Alexander Kjerulf, aka Chief Happiness Officer.

We've all heard that the more someone else talks, the more brilliant they'll think you are! (or something like that.)

There are truly many different sorts of people in our world. But in general, we fall to two extremes, those who don't talk much and those who don't shut up. By nature, I'm pretty well immersed into the second group, but it is something I really do try to work on a lot. It's even part of why I became a facilitator...because we're not ALLOWED to talk much. Yet we still get to maintain some illusion of control. :-)

So, I'm always up for learning new methods of piping-down. Read the post for some great methods on biting one's tongue and, ultimately, becoming more self-aware.

As Alexander concludes:

Remember: good meetings are not characterized by the amount of talking but by the amount of listening going on.

If you’re a habitual talker like me, I’m sure that you will find that learning to say less and listen more will be a huge boon. People will find you more sympathetic, they will respect you more and even though you may end up saying less, what you do say will be received more appreciatively and have much more of an impact.

Blog Content Sources

As a starting point for blog content, I always (and I do mean that as an absolute) recommend that professionals interested in blogging start going backward through their sent emails for ideas.

In combing through those sent items, you'll no doubt find answers to clients' or prospects' questions or at least responses, maybe even supported by your research, that you've provided to internal clients (your bosses) if you don't yet have direct client contact.

These are perfect future blog posts.

Simply going through the email text, do two things...

1 - sanitize the email for names and other information that would be proprietary to the asker, and

2 - at the top of the e-mail/post, provide context such as "A situation arose for a $5M retailer in an urban marketplace [frame any helpful facts PARTICULARY industry, business size, and other good keywords]...in which it would be wise to consider [put forth your suggested approach or alternatives]."

This is really very easy for you, or someone on your staff, to do. Voila. You have a blog post. And a very helpful one indeed.

Don't be tempted to pare down the context or the approach suggestions too much so that they become extremely general in nature. The real benefit and value in blogs is that they make it quite easy to address specifics. In general, accountants are leery to recommend specific approaches. This doesn't help you much when it comes to looking like an expert.

But when framing the issue very specifically, you can begin to throw out some of the nuances that would affect a final choice. That is where the real meat is in a blog post that makes it better (more valuable to the firm) than an ordinary website. Even if you don't state the "best choice" under the circumstances, your knowledge demonstrated in listing the nuances will benefit you and the firm.

Remember, too, you would naturally have a broad disclaimer on your blog that says your content is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as specific financial advice...that a reader should always consult his or her professional advisor for advice specific to their situation.

It would appear I'm not alone in the belief that this is a good way to find what I'll call "blog fodder." Hat tip to Kevin O'Keefe for pointing me to "8 Reasons Why Client Questions Make Great Blog Content" by The Blog Squad...enjoy the post...

Accounting Blogs Sprouting Up All Over the Place!

Ya know how accounting marketing season begins in May and June? Well, this is my favorite marketing season yet.

The past two years delivered only teeny-tiny accountant blog growth despite growing awareness by accountants of blogs as business development tools. This year is a bit different. Lots of new blogs are popping up and I'm adding new ones to the Accounting Blog List almost monthly now.

Can't wait until it's weekly. (Be sure to let me know if you are a practicing accountant with a blog, okay?)

Anyway, here's a neat little story by Scott Sanuk who creates blogs for accountants (egads, a competitor, but a friendly one, at that) who talks about the last few years of accounting blog evolution. It's called "Where are the Accounting Blogs? Pt 1" <--check it out