Passionate Practice

It’s becoming a buzz phrase in professional services to say “We add value to our clients” but what does this really mean?

Many point to technical expertise.  I think it’s more than being an expert. Technical expertise is getting ever closer to being a ‘given’ – relatively unimportant in deciding whether you should be appointed or retained over a competitor.

More important is your ability to connect.  To listen.  To provide fresh insights.  To make connections.  To lead.  To build networks and communities.  To become a central figure in your clients’ sector.

In a nutshell, to be relevant.

If you want to maintain your existing client base and build your accountancy practice further you’ll need to get out of the office (more).

Here are some suggestions:

1. “Hi + Coffee” – Ping a note to your clients and get out there for a brief business catch-up.  Half an hour over a coffee. No agenda necessary.
2. Sift through the local papers, LinkedIn and business press for local networking events.  Most accountants hate the thought of “networking” but needn’t – just be the real, authentic YOU and not some lunatic sales person.  Arrange a follow-up meeting if you hit it off and only then need you start talking business.
3. Never (ever) get to a client’s accounting year end without having had a Pre-Year End Planning Meeting.
4. Find relevant trade exhibitions and attend them.  Make sure you exhibit at trade shows that are key target markets.  Your clients expect to see you there.
5. Take each client out to lunch at least once in a while.  A chance to talk in relaxed surroundings.  A chance to deepen your relationship.  They will appreciate it – and so will you over the long term when you still have happy (loved) clients years later.
6. Ask for speaking gigs.  An opportunity to demonstrate your sector and / or technical expertise to clients and targets alike.
7. Don’t ignore multipliers or introducers.  Get out for a coffee, lunch or dinner.  Maintain and develop relationships for the longer term.  You never know when that elusive big ticket project or deal may drop….
8. If nothing else, get out of the office for some fresh air, a walk and some time away from the office to observe and reflect.  Just 10 mins time out can clear the mind and help return your focus.

Businesses are increasingly putting innovation at the top of the business growth agenda.  This puts increased pressure on accountants to become more innovative in their approach and thinking.

But how is this possible when the accountancy profession is so hard-wired toward left brain process driven, analytical thinking?

The good news is that anyone can become a BIG IDEAS person.  It just takes practise. (Ideally Passionate Practise).

Here are some simple exercises:

1. Start noticing everything. Become a traveller in your day-to-day life.  Notice more.  Start questioning the processes and assumptions under which you operate at work and in the office.
2. Every day, ask yourself a good open question and write it at the top of a sheet of A4.  Write a list of possible solutions and don’t stop until you’ve filled the page or written at least 25 answers (whichever happens sooner)
3. Get a whiteboard in your office and sketch out the key problems you’re trying to solve.  It’s far easier when you can see the problem (plus it helps others see the problem too).
4. Read more widely.  Pick up random magazines e.g. from weekend newspapers, and notice key themes and trends.  Notice the design of slick advertising.  Read articles that you might not normally consider reading.
5. Mix with more people.  Say yes more to invites from people who you might not normally choose to hang-out with.  Ask questions and listen.  Suspend your judgements or preconceptions.  You might just find that you’re way off the beat and learn a thing or two.
6. Mind-map your thoughts on a sheet of paper.  Use lots of colours.  (Your mind likes colours.  Trust me).  Look for connections and draw arrows to connect them.  Stick it up on the wall.  Return to it later and notice that you’ll spot even more connections.  Spooky.
7. Get up and walk about when you hit mental sticking points.  Extra blood flow to the brain via exercise could be just the stimulus you need to make that break-through.
8. Ask good questions.  Good questions are those that are open and invite possibility thinking e.g. “What if we opened an office in X, what might this mean for our business?”  See point 2 above.
9. Encourage a culture of idea generation within your team.  Eradicate cynicism.  Allow team members to feel empowered to challenge the norm without fear of being ‘”shot-down” or made to feel silly or embarrassed.  After all, initial seedling ideas can turn into giant market leading oak trees.
10. Develop an ethos of learning as a continuum within your team and become sceptical when things start to feel obvious, comfortable or black and white – revel in the grey and uncertain as this is where breakthroughs live.

Here are just 10 ideas.  Try some today.  Let me know how you get on or any other suggestions you have?

[Photo credit to ViaMoi]

What was the reason for your last call to a client?

Likely, it is when you needed some information to be processed or collated or even to chase up that unpaid bill?

Given this, what do you think goes through your clients’ minds when your telephone number flashes up on their ringing telephone?  A sense of excitement and anticipation of yet another cool client experience or a sense of dread?  Probably the latter.

Monday morning focus: Call at least 2 clients this week just for a catch-up chat.  No agenda.  No sales pitch.  Just a conversation.  An investment in your clients.  Who knows where it might lead from a new work perspective?  (This is not important right now.)  The key is that your clients will appreciate it and it can only go to strenghten your relationship over the longer term.  Try it this week.

You can market your brand and pay hard cash for the privilege.  Or you could develop cool services and do cool stuff for clients and society and let this do the marketing for you.

This is the choice.  (+ the challenge).

How can you spot new break-through opportunities or areas for improvement within your office or department?

Developing a traveller mindset within your office may hold the key…

Remember the last time you went somewhere new – perhaps on holiday, on a business trip or simply to the other side of town?  Recall how you felt.  More alive, curious, noticing more perhaps?

We enter into a state of high alert when we visit new places.  We are ready to respond to dangers – the fight or flee mentality kicks-in.  This is part of our evolutionary make-up to make sure we don’t get eaten by predators.  Less useful in this respect now but still of much use to us today if directed properly.   We experience heightened awareness and notice the small details.  We are critical where things seem unfamiliar and ask for help where we are unsure.  We are curious and open to suggestion and learning.  We have a beginner’s mind.  Or a traveller’s mind.

Compare this with your day-to-day mindset in the office.  All is familiar and ‘normal’.  You’ve stopped questioning the things that don’t really make sense or could be better as you’re busy with the day to day work.  You’re losing the ability to spot what’s wrong or where improvements could be made.  Things have always been done this way – right?  Your critical judgement has become mellowed.  The small details (that make all the difference) go unnoticed.  You have developed an expert’s mind at your office (or so you thought!)  This is not your fault.  It is the result of moving from a traveller’s mindset (when you first joined the organisation) to becoming a native.

Actions

You need to regain that sense of being a traveller within your work.  This requires reinvention on your part.  Re:thinking.  Here are some suggested steps to assist:

• Start asking the BIG why question?  Ask WHY? about everything you and your team do at work.  Is this process really necessary or are we following (misguided) convention that’s developed over years?  Will this action be of benefit to clients and / or the team?  Cascade this mentality across the team for every process, service and action.

• Take a holiday – ideally a long one.  Reflect.  Wallow in your traveller’s curiosity and look for opportunities, new connections or breakthroughs derived from your new surroundings.  What can you learn to take back to the office?

• Consider a secondment e.g. into industry (become a client for a while – I found this experience to be enlightening)

• Work from somewhere different – become a traveller by working like one on the move e.g. why not draft that proposal or presentation on the train or in a coffee shop?  Different sounds, views and surroundings can stimulate new insights

• Visit other offices within your organisation (if applicable) – spend some time there.  Soak up the atmosphere.  Take notes of areas for improvement.  Compare with your office.

• Take new joiners and existing staff out for a coffee and discuss areas for improvement – they may still have traveller’s eyes

• Ask clients for feedback on service quality, breadth and value.  Also ask for suggestions for new services

• Get out of the office more.  Go see clients your clients!

The easiest way to get cracking in your journey to reignite your traveller mindset is to get out of the office!  Go do it.

This could have been just another talk.  Yet more instructions to customers.  Drilled out 5+ times per day.  Formalities spelled out.  Dull.  Uninteresting.

Or you can choose to change it.  Make the otherwise uninteresting INTERESTING!  Re:think.  Make it an experience. Think about it…

Nothing is more engaging than being sat in a business meeting with someone who picks up a pen or pencil and starts to sketch out their idea, argument or point on a napkin or pad of paper.

Why is drawing in business meetings so important?

1. Drawing brings ideas to life.  You can witness ideas shaping and emerging before your eyes.  Ideas seem more tangible.
2. Drawing helps develop the idea in itself.  Seeing provides an opportunity for new insights and connections.
3. Drawing gives important visual clues for those of us who prefer information in visual rather than (solely) auditory form.
4. Drawing feels participatory and engaging – like you’re making the effort to draw just for me!
5. Drawing allows for connections between ideas to be spelled out – arrows and connecting lines help.
6. Drawing can make difficult or complicated ideas seem simple.  Sketch out a simple bar chart to emphasise differences in quantity.
7. Drawing displays a playfulness and willingness to think differently.  Re:thinking (Always).
8. Drawing allows for easier emphasis of specific points e.g. by circling or underlining.  Afterwards the image lies in front of the participants – continuing to wield its subconscious influence…
9. Drawing provides an opportunity to make an impact in a meeting.  “He / she who holds the pen, holds the power.”
10. Pass the pen to other participants for their input and collaboration to maintain a balanced conversation rather than a dull monologue.

What skills do you use to add a bit of passion and engagement to business meetings?

A simple Google Blog Search says a lot about the digital evolution of accountants compared to lawyers online.

A disappointing 294,000 hits for the search term “accountancy” within Google Blog Search.

Yet well over 130,000,000 hits for blogs on ‘Law’!

But why have lawyers seemingly embraced blogging as a communication tool whilst accountants have been caught napping?

One or more of the following could be at work:

• Lawyers are more technology savvy – doubtful
• Lawyers have been quicker off the mark to spot change coming – possibly part of the story
• Lawyers are more adept at networking (of which blogging is an (online) form) – doubtful
• Lawyers are less scared of the risk of publishing something litigious on the internet – pah! Highly doubtful
• Lawyers outnumber accountants by some serious factor – (by this much!?!) you can see I’m struggling here..
• Lawyers have more trailblazers who have been shining the beacon to show the benefits of blogging to the business of law and to law firms and lawyers’ personal profile
• Lawyers ‘get it’ (more) – they understand the increasing need to reach out to clients to better understand their needs.  To enter into meaningful conversations (you can’t see the benefit until you’ve tried).

It could of course be none or a combination of all of the above – I would be interested in your views!

[Postscript - I took the above screenshots a few weeks back.  The search hits have increased since but the trend continues...]

Like me, you’ve probably dedicated many years of your life to working hard and building your accountancy career from school to university and then professional practice.

Throughout this process I suspect you’ve been busy nurturing those all important left-brain analytical, logical and linear thinking skills.  After all, these are the skills that today’s successful accountants need – right?

Wrong.  These skills may have been sufficient to succeed but they’re woefully insufficient going forward. We can perhaps muddle through a few more years but someone (or something) is about to eat our lunch!

A new world economy demands new skills.

So what’s the solution?  These are some suggestions (but they’re only the beginning). We need to be able to:

• continually create new service offerings, ideas and business solutions
• move away from reliance on routine process-driven audit, accountancy and tax compliance work
• adapt and move quickly to meet new market needs
• think on our feet
• develop our emotional skills for better client relationships
• focus on the client experience rather than just the output
• keep asking WHY? we do the things we do (do our clients know, like or even care?)

To achieve this, we need to rapidly improve our right-brain thinking skills.  But is it too late for us left-brainers?

Not necessarily.  There is hope as right-brain creative skills can be (re)learnt.  We can reconnect traditionally left-brain thinkers (i.e. typical accountants) with right-brain creative, innovative and emotional skills.  By achieving this we should be able:

• To unlock potential new client solutions, ideas and services
• To connect and communicate with new and existing clients in new ways
• To build confidence in our abilities to continually innovate and create new services
• To be able to think on our feet and adapt as necessary
• To become more resourceful in an ever changing economy

The future lies in the hands of those accountants who also master right-brain thinking.  This takes passion, practise and commitment.

If you wish to join us on this journey … welcome.