How to Get Partners to be Accountable

Source: Accounting Today

How do you get partners, who have historically focused on their personal performance, to also focus on the firm?

Here are some of Gary Boomer's imperatives:

• A culture of accountability can thrive only under a formal system.
• Partners must be taught to think about executing the firm's strategies, and work towards realization of its goals.
• Partners should be formally evaluated in terms of (among many others):
  • How they contribute to the firm's goals.
  • Their degree of participation in the planning process.
  • Participation in community affairs.
  • Whether they are good role models.
  • Their personal accountability and expectations of accountability from others.
  • Their devotion to training others.
  • Their recognition of the achievements of others.
  • Creating and working with teams.
  • Their degree of delegation.
  • Their realization of their own strengths and whether they concentrate on them.
  • How well they follow firm systems and policies.
  • How well they develop successors.
• Finally, firm leaders should ask this question about each partner--"What are three things the partner should stop doing?"

For the complete article, click here and select the article "Boomer's Blueprint: Hold Your Partners Accountable" under Technology in the November 16, 2009, issue.

From Accounting Today, November 16, 2009, SourceMedia Inc., One State Street Plaza, 27th Floor, New York, NY 10004, 800-221-1809.