Is Complacency Endangering Your Firm's Future?

Source: Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by Rita Keller.

I believe that complacency is a way of life for many, many owners of public accounting firms.

Merriam-Webster defines it as “self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.”

I have recently observed that some partners/owners in CPA firms are increasingly becoming aware of the significant dangers or deficiencies inside their accounting firm.

Here are some actual comments made to me by CPA partners recently:

• I want to grow the firm and investigate making some acquisitions but I can't get my partners on board.
• We don't have a managing partner so no one is pushing things.
• At our firm there is no accountability mechanism – no managing partner. We just appoint a chairman every year to make sure that we at least have partner meetings.
• We have conducted our annual retreat the same way for the last 15 years. It's getting a little stale.
• Most of our partners are not rainmakers. We don't know much about marketing or social media.
• Succession is an issue. We have some younger people in the firm but we're not sure about their future. They can't take care of clients and bring in business.
• Execution is an issue for us. We have some good ideas but no time to carry them out.

Will these small grumblings begin to grow and expand into something much larger and actually cause a chink in the armor of complacency? Maybe it's time to have an open, honest conversation with your partners.

For the complete article, read “Observations on Complacency.”

From Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders, the newsletter of Rita Keller, May 2, 2012. Visit http://ritakeller.com.