Finding the Best Future for Your Firm

Source: Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders

The following is a complete reprint, reproduced with permission, of a blog entry by Rita Keller.

Younger partners and senior managers, you need to play an important role now before the older, Baby Boomer partners begin leaving the firm.

Bill Reeb has an article in this month's Ohio Society Voice magazine. He touches on something that I have been contemplating throughout most of 2011.

I've come to realize that Gen-X and Millennials have a lot of power inside their firms. But they don't take advantage of it. It's time for them to step up and build their own future. It's time to quit sitting around and waiting for older partners to hand you something, something that may not be anything like you are interested in buying.

In some firms there are senior partners who are a few years away from retirement. They don't want to invest profits in talent, technology, marketing, or niche development to keep the firm growing. They just want to maximize their earnings for a few more years. If the senior partners do this, what value will the firm have in five or six years? Will it be something worthwhile for the younger partners and senior managers to invest in?

As Reeb notes, a lot can be done in five to seven years to shape an exciting culture that will take the firm well into the future.

Senior partners and younger partners should all read this article and then have the “we” not “me” conversations that are mentioned.

Young partners, don't sit around and wait for something to happen. Make something happen and begin this fall.

For the original entry, read “Younger Partners & Senior Managers – The Firm of The Future Is Yours.”

From Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders, the blog of Rita Keller, president of Keller Advisors, LLC, [email protected], September 29, 2011. Visit http://ritakeller.com/blog/.