Pay Your Partners to be Accountable: Here's Why and How

Does your firm culture inspire your partners to grow as professionals, gain new business, and work with each other to accomplish firm goals? Or do your partners accomplish their own work in their own way, with little or no accountability?

Poor accountability has negatively impacted CPA firms for years. As a result, firm cultures simply evolve for better or worse over time, rather than being guided by a vision and unifying goals.

Lack of partner accountability results in the “babysitting model” of accomplishing any task. The MP or other partners must follow up with the responsible party endlessly to make sure a project is completed.

And let’s be honest, no partner is going to be accountable if they haven’t chosen to be held accountable. To achieve a culture of effective accountability, partners must agree to be managed, and to be held accountable to something bigger than themselves — the firm.

Why does accountability to the firm vision and unified goals matter? Imagine that all your partners are together in a rowboat in the ocean. Some are rowing one direction, some are rowing another direction, and some aren’t rowing at all. Obviously that boat full of partners is going nowhere. Now imagine that the partners pick an island on the horizon and start rowing toward it — together. The chances of that boat of partners reaching its chosen destination just increased dramatically.

Accountability to a chosen goal is not a complicated concept, but it can be tricky to implement. Some of the barriers to creating an effective culture of accountability include:

• The high producer “trump card.” The highest producing partners might use their huge book of business or the value of their billable hours as an excuse to avoid spending time discussing goals and accountability. However, if one partner can avoid accountability, then all other partners are demotivated, and there is no genuine accountability.
• Many firms seem to accept the idea that individuals at the level of partner no longer require evaluations or goal setting to monitor their performance. If accountability is going to be practiced at any level of the firm, then it must be valued and practiced by the partners. Once again, if some are excused from accountability, the rest will lack motivation, and accountability will never happen.
• Some firms try to hold a group of partners accountable. In practice, group accountability is not much different than a group assignment at school. Even if the project gets completed, some did the work, others did not, and everyone knows it. Accountability must be individualized to be effective.

Individualized accountability in which the partner is committing to be held accountable could also be termed “self-accountability.” Self-accountable partners commit to doing what they have agreed to do, to the best of their ability, on time, without reminders.

Self-accountability can result in greater professional achievement, increased autonomy, improved working relationships, and moving the firm forward. Why wouldn’t firms want this for their partners, and why wouldn’t partners want this for themselves?

If you’ve endured a culture of non-accountability long enough, here are a few steps to help establish an effective system of accountability in your firm:

Step 1 

Have an open and honest conversation among the partners. Help the partners recognize how the lack of accountability is impacting your firm’s success. Agree that real accountability starts at the top.

Step 2

Develop a partner goal setting process, likely led by the MP. Link the individual goals to firm strategy and vision. Limit each partner to no more than four or five goals. Use the SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely) acronym to determine goals wisely. Plan quarterly meetings for follow-up.

Step 3

Establish a partner evaluation process. Evaluate progress in relation to the goals, performance criteria, and a partner commitment statement (established by the partners).

Step 4

Connect performance to partner compensation. When compensation is tied to firm goals and a partner’s success in reaching those goals, the firm motivates partners to help the firm move forward and rewards them for hard work in the right direction.

Implementing these changes will have its challenges, but it will also produce individual and firm growth. If you’re ready for your firm to move forward, it’s time to get everyone rowing in the same direction.

Gary Adamson is the CEO of Adamson Advisory, a CPA practice management consulting firm.  Bringing both his managing partner and consulting experience to the table, he specializes in succession planning and strategies, firm governance and management, merger and acquisition assistance, strategic planning and firm retreats, partner compensation systems, partner agreements and retirement, and partner coaching.

Learn more at http://www.adamsonadvisory.com/