Conducting a Firm Summit Meeting

Source: Accounting Today

L. Gary Boomer, of Boomer Consulting in Manhattan, Kansas, gives advice on how to conduct a summit. Retreats are backward looking. A summit, says Boomer, will “bring leaders and firm members together, along with outside expertise and facilitation, in order to initiate strategies for exponential growth.”

A summit should:

• Use a professional outside leader to assure concentration on strategy.
• Begin with a celebratory retrospective on successes of the past year.
• Stick to the agenda and its time parameters.
• Be strategic, not tactical, and concentrate on the big ideas.
• Not allow money or time to rule out great ideas.
• Be memorialized with a set of minutes shared with the entire firm.
• Appoint task forces for follow up.
• Be reinforced with a one-page laminated summary including vision, mission, values, and strategies on one side, and a list of strategies on the other, with action steps, accountability, due dates, and measurement processes.

From Accounting Today, October 2, 2006, SourceMedia Inc., One State Street Plaza, 27th Floor, New York, NY 10004. For the complete article, click on the following link: http://www.webcpa.com/article.cfm?articleid=22063&;pg=acctoday.