Get Ready for Change
Source: CPA Success
The following includes experts, reproduced with permission, from a blog entry by Bill Sheridan.
There's no bigger scam going than the predict-the-future racket. Still, there are glaring trends that point to logical steps we might have to take to survive. Smarter people than I are seeing clear opportunities down certain paths – and clear roadblocks down others.
A couple dozen of those people were on hand for the Maryland Association of CPAs' 2012 Leadership Academy. Their job was to pinpoint some high-leverage opportunities on which the profession must focus its efforts going forward.
In any series of future-focused exercises, the really important ideas tend to surface over and over. Consider the high-leverage opportunities identified by the 2011 Leadership Academy class and this year's group:
| 2012 • Multigenerational synergy • Social marketing • Leveraging technology • Work-life integration • Increasing complexity of regulatory environment • Globalization • Increasing the mobility of the workforce • Creating new client services |
2011 • Professional unity • Work/life integration • The evolving nature of leadership and new leadership models • Proactive, goal-focused planning • Networked collaboration • Embracing and adopting new technologies |
Now look at the top trends that CPAs nationwide identified as part of the CPA Horizons 2025 project:
- Technology as driver of change vs. enabler
- Pre-certification and lifelong learning
- A worldwide profession
- Pride in the profession
- The notion of CPAs as trusted attesters
- The notion of CPAs as trusted advisors
- Market permission
- Marketplace changes
- A focus on the profession's value proposition
- Demographic shifts
Certain issues keep repeating themselves, don't they?
If we don't stop to look up and notice the changes speeding toward us, we'll get trampled when tomorrow becomes today.
For the complete blog post, read “Job No. 1: Prepare for tomorrow's changes today.”
From CPA Success, the blog of the Maryland Association of CPAs, http://www.cpasuccess.com, May 14, 2012.