Passionate Practice

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.

Monday morning.  So easy to get swept up in the day to day.  Busy being busy.  Spending time doing stuff that doesn’t really matter or have any significant impact for clients.  In danger of majoring in minor things…

Take the time to plan the week.  Remind yourself of the overarching mission and strategy of the firm and your personal and team objectives.

What actions will really matter and make a difference?