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Progressbb, Ashby de la Zouch (2026)

25/09/2024

Be inspired by staring at the wall

We are very insular as a profession. Conversations tend to revolve around what is happening within the profession, what the latest developments and trends are, and yet there is a whole world out there that is creating new ideas, trends and thoughts that could help us as accountants to be more successful if only we were to look over the fence.

Part of my role as a mentor and coach to accountants is to keep looking over the fence at what the rest of the world is doing. I get much of my inspiration from doing so.

Those of you who know me will know what’s coming next!

Every year, at this time of year, I draw inspiration from one of my favourite programmes, Australian MasterChef. The differences between the tried and tested formula that is the UK original on the BBC and the Australian version mirror the differences that I seek to help accounting firms achieve. One is solid, reliable, okay in all that it does whilst the other is exciting, challenging, inspirational, delivering awesome chefs out of home cooks.

I recommend you watch it to see what I mean.

An example comes from a recent episode from Australia. The contestants number around 16 at this point. They walk into the trendy warehouse style kitchen that is the main set to be faced by a gigantic wall screen.

As they stare at the screen writing starts to appear, apparently randomly, around the screen. The contestants begin to realise that this is their handwriting and it is revealing, anonymously, the dreams that they had previously written down about their culinary future. What appeared were their ambitions, their passions and their visions. Some related to future business ideas, some to family members who’d sowed the seeds in their younger selves, some to personal drivers and points to prove.

“Wow”, said a contestant, “It is a Wall of Dreams”.

The judges then challenged the contestants to create a dish that reflected those dreams.

Inspired, motivated and personally invested in the passion of the task, the results were outstanding.

I’m thinking: What a fantastic idea! Accountants want to inspire themselves, their team and their clients. How cool would it be for accountants to have their ‘Wall of Dreams’!

So here’s my tip:

Create your Wall of Dreams. It could be a physical wall in your office, an onscreen wall in reception, a digital wall on your website…or all three!

Get you, your team and your clients to write down, anonymously, the personal hopes, dreams, goals and drivers. Get them to think about what they dream of achieving and, most importantly, why.
Put it all on display as a permanent source of inspiration for everyone connected with your firm. People will be able to recognise their own and have it as a reminder and point of re-focus. Being able to see all of the others adds a much wider context and will provoke more thoughts and ideas. People will be able to see that it’s not just them; that there not being daft; that they can dream bigger or in a different direction.

There is so much talk today about engaging clients and team members in different conversations and getting them to step up in their thinking and behaviour. Having a Wall of Dreams is like having an incubator in your firm to grow ideas and energy.

Why not give it a go!

14/08/2024

The key resource that accounting firms are seriously under-utilising

We talk a lot about the resources that the accounting profession feels short of. Deficits of time, people, skills and even money are subjects to be found in many firm owners’ in trays.

Yet we have access to a largely untapped resource that can help to address and even eradicate these other problems. We just don’t use it.

This resource is energy.

Not the National Grid but Human Energy!

Offices can be lacklustre places. People lack energy, drive and enthusiasm. They can be bored, going through the motions, stuck in repetitive processes that fill their day.

Why do we allow that?

I’m told that it isn’t about us ‘allowing it’ but the nature of the work that we do and the hamster wheel that we are all on. The work is repetitive, mundane, boring even. The problem with the hamster wheel is the faster you run, the faster you have to run, so better to settle into a steady pace below your best.

Here’s the thing…

First of all, accountants deal with a wide range of issues and tackle important matters that require skill and expertise. We can achieve amazing things for our clients. We are in a people business surrounded by many different individuals with a whole spectrum of challenges, needs and opportunities. We deal with the applications of law and the wheels of commerce. What’s mundane about that?

Secondly, as leaders of our firms, we set the pace and the mood. We create the vision and goals. We go into work every day and set the tone and pace. When did you last inspire and energise? When did you last have a conversation with your team around happiness, satisfaction, pride, drive and energy? When did you last explore strategies for raising these emotions and for doing things differently?

Working in an accounting firm is only as mundane as you make it.
I can hear the objections raised around our compliance work, the nature of bookkeeping, the challenges brought by deadlines and reticent clients but any negativity around our daily tasks is an internal issue for us to address, not put up with. The problems brought about by clients are something very much within our control. We choose our clients and tolerate their behaviour or not.

Ask yourself some questions:

• Does your work environment energise or suppress your team?
• Does your messaging to your team around your core work emphasise its value and importance, the difference that we make, or focus on its pressures and repetitiveness?
• Does the office chatter highlight your clients’ successes or moan about their failings?
• Do you talk about business opportunities or just delivery needs?
• Do you encourage training and development or complain about lost hours through CPD?
• Do you raise your own energy levels for work or hideaway behind a pile of tasks?
• Do you lead your team from the front or let them get through their day as you try to get through yours?
• Do you actively try to be better and progress every day or is your focus on survival?

I know that I get sneered at but, after over four decades within this wonderful profession, I still refuse to accept that we can’t be as creative, energetic, interesting, rewarding and as much fun as any other business sector. We should feel passionate about what we do.

If accountancy is truly a people business then we are the people who make it mundane, nobody else.

That’s great because that means that we are the people who can do something about it and do things differently.

Where to start?

First, put a smile on your face!

Second (sigh, he’s going to say it again!) make sure that you are so clear on your vision and goals that you can confidently share them.

Third, sit down with your team and a blank piece of paper and ask yourselves this:-

“How do we take what we do and make it more fun and more interesting for us and our clients? Let’s start by looking at…….”
There is so much that we can do to make our workplaces and services more enjoyable. To do so, we should look at them with a fresh set of eyes. Creating a more enjoyable work environment will raise energy levels so what can we do around us to achieve that? Is it about redecoration, changing desks, changing the sounds and smells of the office, looking at different work patterns? Maybe!

Creating more enjoyable services and work patterns requires a different approach to education, learning, development, understanding both team and clients better. The final delivery of our services maybe the same but how we perceive them and approach them can always change. It’s about understanding the true value and not forever putting ourselves down.

It's not about changing what we do but changing our attitude towards how and why we do it!

How we approach our working lives is a choice. Focusing on energy levels, having a better appreciation of value, looking at how we can mix things up in the office, these are not just tips for a better day but make a real difference to your performance as a firm.

Next time you want to have a conversation with your team about how much time you have, or don’t have, how about talking about what would make things more interesting and fun instead.

Time to focus on energy!

24/07/2024

Turning the focus onto ourselves

I’ve had a thought-provoking couple of days.

It started with me joining a webinar hosted by the engaging David I Eriksson, talking about the importance in business of relationship-centric thinking in this digitally driven world, something at the core of my own mentoring and coaching. It’s always great to listen to the views of others when they are so passionate about them and so creative in their thinking.

That was followed up by me reading an article by my friend and colleague, Kim Searle. Kim wrote about her own experience in getting help evaluating her core values and, as a consequence, completely re-evaluating the position she found herself in with surprising outcomes.

This is why I talk so often about the importance of being outward looking, seeking the thoughts and energies of others and building relationships and collaborations of real value. We cannot take on the world today, even our small corner of it, on our own! If we want to achieve our goals then we need the right people alongside us.

These two excellent coaches got me thinking about just how important it is that we take time out to think about ourselves. I talk a lot about the power of understanding your personal vision, values and goals and how these need to reflect in your business. David and Kim have reinforced this for me with their own thinking.

As accountants, we are familiar with the concept of SWOT analysis: looking at the strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats that lie within a business and building core strategies accordingly. Have you ever applied this approach to yourself though? Not to your business but to your own human self?

What are your strengths – not just as an accountant, director or manager but as a person, as a human being?

What are your personal weaknesses (chocolate doesn’t count!)?

What opportunities could your personal strengths bring to your business and business relationships?

What threats do your personal weaknesses bring to your business and business relationships?

Thinking about your own fundamental strengths and weaknesses as a person, not just an accountant, can help you to shape more powerful and effective business strategies.

Ask yourself:-

• Does my business and my working day reflect my strengths and make the best use of them? Does it focus on magnifying my strengths?

• Have I done enough to minimise the impact of my weaknesses and the threats and disruption that they bring? What steps can I take to minimise the impact of my weaknesses? Are their things that I can do personally to eradicate them?

Sometimes, looking in the mirror isn’t enough. Most of us will do it every morning but a mirror only reflects you and your thinking, it doesn’t challenge you on it. It doesn’t talk back and push you to go deeper, think harder. The mirror only throws your strengths and weaknesses right back at you.

Talking to others and listening to others is how you face up to your true self. Only by being the best that you can be will you bring out the best that your business can be. Taking time out to address that is probably the most important piece of SWOT analysis that you will ever do.

18/07/2024

Delving into the mindset of an accountant

Generalisation alert!

There are millions of accountants in this world. The number seems to lie around 2m-3m but it’s hard to pin down because some don’t admit it! Anyway, I readily admit that I have not delved into the mindset of them all and my views in this article are based just on the hundreds that I have come across. You may not recognise yourself in some of the words that follow….that is great!

I refer to mindset a lot in my work. I believe that changing the mindset of the leaders of accounting firms is fundamental if we are to change the mindset of their team and, subsequently, change the mindset of their clients and, most importantly, deliver greater value.

Changing mindsets leads to changed outcomes.

That is the point.

What is the accountant’s mindset though?

Why does it need to change and what should it be?

Mindset is a person’s established attitudes towards life. Our mindset shapes what we say and do and how we do it and, as a consequence, it goes a long way in influencing our outcomes. It can be a reflected experience though in that our experiences can shape our mindset which shapes our experiences and on we go in our own self-fulfilling world.

To instigate change, I do an exercise where I ask accountants to describe their firm. If I were to do this exercise but on the accountant themselves, the list, in general, would probably start by looking like this:-

1. Nice
2. Trustworthy
3. Honest
4. Professional
5. Caring

These are our human characteristics, the reasons why, as accountants, we want to do a good job for our clients and stand by them.

The list would then go on:-

6. Cautious
7. Cynical
8. Negative
9. Risk-averse
10. Immersed in the numbers

These tend to be our work characteristics, they are how we are trained to be by a profession that looks for what could go wrong and not what might go right.

Then, to finish off the list:-

11. Time-pressured
12. Frustrated
13. Stressed
14. Under-valued
15. Insecure

These are the outcomes of those work characteristics. If we are going to change these outcomes then it is those limiting work characteristics that we are going to have to address.
Moving from cautious, cynical, negative, risk averse and immersed in the numbers to more entrepreneurial, open-minded, positive, embracing and creative isn’t something achieved by the flick of a switch. We are talking about changing embedded habits, thinking and expectations. Even those accountants who recognise the need to change or have a desire to be something more positive struggle to gain any traction.

It can be done though.

There are three important steps to take:

Step 1: Commit to change

Even if you don’t know how, make it your goal

Step 2: Decide what you want change to look like

What sort of accountant do you want to be?
What do you want to be known for?
What sort of firm do you want to be? (big/small, human/online, compliance/more than
What do you want to achieve? (for you/team/clients)

Step 3: Accept that you can’t do it on your own

When setting out on a journey we all need:
• a guide to help light the way
• a coach to focus our improvement
• a mentor to support us

It’s a plug, of course, but no less important.

Change does not come through a piece of software, a book or a new recruit. It comes through addressing the barriers within ourselves.

Committing to change means committing to yourself first.
Take the first step and commit to change.

14/05/2024

How much?

Accountants don’t charge enough (usually!)

When I look at the average fees per client in a ‘typical’ accounting firm then, all too often, two things become painfully obvious:

1. We don’t charge enough for the services that we already offer

2. We leave far too much money on the table when it comes to the services that we could/should offer but don’t.

It’s very easy to get sucked in by the social media hype but the reality for smaller firms is an average annual fee per client (even excluding ‘tax return only’ clients) of less than £3,000 ex vat, considerably less in many cases.

How much this figure means to you will, of course, depend on the type of firm you are and your target market. For online and physical firms focused on the compliance needs of small businesses and taxpayers, that isn’t really a benchmark but, if you are a firm seeking to work with SME business owners and looking to offer a CompliancePLUS service then it becomes relevant.

Take the basic needs of a small SME limited company for example:

• Accounts compliance
• Personal and business tax compliance
• Payroll
• VAT and bookkeeping
• Company secretarial
• Advice on typical financial issues
• Advice on the issues of being an employer
• Help with the bigger and more urgent challenges
• A degree of tax planning

There is nothing special here and no areas that we might consider to be ‘advisory’ or value added, just a typical client’s needs over a typical year.

Even for a fairly small client, there is comfortably £3,000 plus of annual fees and value there and yet we struggle to achieve that sort of average fee across the client base as a whole.

Of course, I am generalising here and you’ll easily be able to find exceptions but, if you are worried about your average annual fees then you’ll relate to my point.

Why don’t we get as much money from our clients as other professional advisors, such as lawyers, IFAs, banks and a whole range of other consultant/advisors do?

There are many reasons and you will recognise those that apply to you:

• We may lack the confidence to charge what we should: a factor of our training, environment, experience and much of what follows below

• We may fail to demonstrate our true value: we often don’t value our own work so how are others supposed to

• We maybe don’t deliver a great job: in too many cases we may deliver a reactive, low-key service that doesn’t address the major client issues

• We may fail to agree fees in advance: the absence of clear pricing creates a reluctance to then charge more than we think the client expects

• We may fail to clarify the scope of our work: the absence of a clear work schedule invites over-servicing

• We maybe don’t believe in our own worth: the number of accountants who tell me that there is little value in compliance is quite scary!

• We maybe are weak commercially: do we really walk the walk and follow the advice that we give clients?

• We may lack consistency and transparency in our pricing: do you have two clients with similar businesses but very different fee structures who you don’t want to meet each other?

• We maybe allow the client to be in charge of the relationship: we are the professionals and should be driving the relationship and yet, too often, there is a master-servant profile to it, dictated by the wishes and behaviour of the client

• We maybe don’t actively upsell for the client’s good: We use the excuse of being too busy, or the client not being interested, but we are aware (or should be aware) of a greater range of client needs than we actively drive to address

• We may think that ‘sales’ is an unprofessional word: Still, in 2024! Being professional and being commercial are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite!

• We may fear being undercut by the competition: Competition has always existed in our market but no two accountants are the same. Do we highlight this enough?

• We maybe don’t focus the client on their real needs: Again, we may use the excuse of being too busy to avoid doing enough to change the behaviour and thinking of clients

• We maybe don’t educate our team in the true value of our work: Achieving CPD hours should not be the only training goal. Training our teams to see and deliver true value is key to individual and firm performance

• We may not maximise the value of our professional networks: We may see our contacts as just introducers when there are many collaboration opportunities out there

• We may continue to work with the wrong clients: So many of the above points are addressed once we start to focus our firms on the right clients

Back in the 1980’s, the performance model for an accounting firm was built around a simple three way split of fee income:

1. A third to cover staff costs
2. A third to cover overheads
3. A third left in profit for the partners

Since those times, systemisation and technology has driven down both the number of people required to work in an accounting office and the length of time that tasks take to complete. You would expect that profit share to therefore be significantly higher these days, say 40% plus?

We saw it fall during the 1990s and 2000’s as employee salaries soared, typically to around 28%, but digitalisation should have balanced that out by now. The bottom line, quite literally, is that:-

• We don’t charge enough!

• We don’t earn enough!

All of the points I make above can be fixed but it does become a race to the bottom if the desire isn’t there to fix them.

As a profession, and as individual firm owners, it’s our call and in our hands.

03/04/2024

How are you feeling

I wonder if there are any other trades or professions that are as ‘glass half full or half empty’ as accountancy?

I spend much of my time digesting the thoughts of people in and around the world of accountants and bookkeepers. I come across lots about what we are apparently getting wrong, less so about what we get right, and I see the decline of the profession forecast more often than the hopes of a rosy future.

It feels different when I’m out in the field.

Back in 2022, accounting firms, like their clients, were finding their feet again after the chaos of the pandemic and lockdowns. Most had done an exceptional job in supporting their clients through the trials and tribulations of 2020/2021 and 2022 seemed like the year to draw breath and assess the health of our own firms. This in itself was a challenge. The pandemic may have been behind us but a growing tidal wave of digital disruption and transformation was sweeping through. The pressure of change added to the weight of the rebuild.

2022 was a year when many individuals and firms took stock:

• What do I want out of life from now on?
• What sort of firm do we want to be going forwards?

Enter 2023 and what I experienced was lots of firms focusing inwards, getting themselves prepared for their new personal and business goals.

We did lots of work on systems, processes and structures, responding to digital transformation and the changing visions and needs of firms, their people and their clients.

We did lots of work with directors on their revised leadership aims, leading onto more work with managers and teams to aid retention, development and growth. ‘Stepping up’ was very much the buzzword of 2023.

If 2022 was a year of consolidation and re-appraisal then 2023 was the year of internal focus, of getting fit and ready for the future.

The progress kickstarted in 2022 and 2023 continues and now we find ourselves well into 2024 and the reason for my question about how you are feeling.

I’m excited!

I see so much opportunity for accountants and bookkeepers to throw off the perception of our profession that we’ve allowed to hold us back for so long, and the key word for me here is ‘perception’.

Without doubt, technology, especially through digitalisation, AI and automation, is replacing many of the mundane, repetitive and time consuming tasks that have occupied us, and been barriers to growth, for so long. The pace of change has undoubtedly increased but the principle of human tasks being replaced by technology has been happening since computers became mainstream in the profession during the late 80s and 90s. The issue has not been the advancement of technology but our failure to make the most of the wins in time saving, cost reduction and service expansion that it has brought.

We had no time for a reset in the decades leading up to 2020. The pandemic has brought that reset. Firm leaders are now looking forwards at the challenges and opportunities, rather than reacting to a legacy of pressures and problems.

If you’re a glass half empty sort of person then technology is a threat to undermine a future previously perceived as secure. If you believe in the perception that accountants add little value and don’t have anything interesting to say then there is little to fight for.

However, if you’re a glass half full sort of person then technology is the missing link in our professional progression, freeing up our leaders, teams and firms to grow, build better client relationships and deliver a faster, better, more valuable service. If you detest the perception commonly held of our profession then now is a fantastic opportunity to blow it away, once and for all.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We have a real opportunity through 2024 and 2025 to up our game and turn plenty of heads!

I’m excited, how are you feeling?

26/03/2024

Where does all the time go?

If I may steal a line from Take That:

“We've come a long way
But we're not too sure where we've been”

In music terms, the digital pathway is clear. From the time it took to record your music onto a C90 cassette (ask your parents!) and then spend ages fast forwarding and rewinding to find the right track, to today’s instant download options from thousands of songs, the progress and time saving is tangible. Our music is available to us in an instant.

Back in 1981, in a pre-office computers, pre-digital accounting world, a set of accounts could take weeks to prepare:

• Book the incomplete records in
• List out the cheque stubs and banking slips
• Tick to the bank statements (multiple times!)
• Grab your trusty 16 column analysis pad and trawl through the invoices
• Prepare your control accounts for sales, purchase, cash, payroll, vat etc
• Stress for hours finding the differences
• Sort out the opening balances that hadn’t been finished off in the last year
• Post up all you’ve done onto your extended Trial Balance
• Do your journals, accruals and prepayments.
• Balance your job off
• Handwrite out your draft accounts
• Get them typed up
• See the client
• Do all the adjustments manually (The TB is getting messy by now)
• Manually prepare the final accounts
• Get them typed out again
• Call over and Proof read the final sets (a two person job)
• Finally, post out to the client

Like I said, weeks of work!

Today, accounting firms go through the same processes, but digitally, and measure the time spans in minutes and hours, rather than days and weeks.

The time savings are huge…so why are we not all sitting around twiddling our thumbs?

Part of the answer lies in the size of the workforce.

The firm that I joined in 1981 had four partners and forty staff. A progressive firm with a similar number of clients today would typically be one/two partners and no more than twelve team members. We need far fewer people to do the work, even though the compliance levels are greater, as a consequence of computerisation and digitalisation. Automation will see those numbers drop even further.

That’s only part of the story though. The reality is that we’ve filled the time savings with other ‘stuff’ and failed to adapt our thinking about the potential in accounting firms and how they fundamentally operate. The time has been absorbed by more of the same, with more mundane work and more un-commercial clients.

For instance, how many client relationships still rotate around quarterly cycles of bookkeeping, vat returns and management accounts, like we did in 1981? And how many of those are still on the March/June/September/December peaks, like they were in 1981?

How many jobs still sit around for days and weeks to get reviewed, like they did in 1981?

How many clients do we still have to chase on multiple occasions, like we did in 1981?

How many team members do we limit in their development by following rigid training routes, like we did in 1981?

I could go on, and, no doubt, you can think of many frustrations to add to the list too.

My point is this:-

We can (and should) continue to invest in digital progression, updating our systems and processes to take advantage of the latest tech advances, but, unless we change our thinking around the human and people management side of our work, we are never going to fully benefit from the time savings in the way that other sectors have.

I spoke with an accounting team recently about the advances in automation and how we could utilise them in their firm to free them up from repetitive and mundane tasks. Their first question was “but what will we do then?”.

It feels like, for the last forty years, we’ve just filled the gaps with more repetitive and mundane tasks. My response to the team was that “it is time to use your imagination. What do you want to do?”.

We need to be more creative around:

• Individual and team development of skills and knowledge
• Client management, building more effective relationships
• Service offerings, delivering more worth and having greater impact
• Firm progression, thinking outside the standard accounting box
• Life balance, doing more of what we all enjoy

What’s the point of saving time to just fill it with something just as frustrating. It feels like that’s mainly what we’ve done as a profession to this point.

Hats off to those firms breaking the mould.

23/02/2024

Don’t just be part of the herd

In 2008, Professor Jens Krause and PhD student John Dyer of the University of Leeds, conducted an experiment into human herd mentality and how people, quite literally, follow the crowd*.

Groups of people were asked to walk randomly around a hall. They were not allowed to communicate with one another but had to stay within arm’s length of another person at all times. Among the groups, a few individuals were given more specific instructions on where to walk. The researchers found that, very quickly, people started to follow the select few who appeared to know where they were going. The researchers found that it only took 5% of confident looking people to influence the direction of the other 95%.

In nature, many animals demonstrate a herd mentality for safety reasons and to make life easier when it comes to finding food, shelter and a mate. That same herding mentality though can also make them easier to be controlled by others, something long used by farmers, nomadic tribes and animal herders but also in nature by whales, dolphins, sharks etc.

As accountants we are trained to be cautious and risk-aware. We are taught to be wary of exceptions and be more comfortable with established patterns. That can make us more susceptible to herding and developing a herd mentality whereby our thinking and actions are determined by the behaviour of others and, especially, by the behaviour of our peers. Rather than conduct our own research, we rely on the assumed research of others.
This can be a nice place to be. It’s warm and safe in the middle of the herd. Someone else has the stress of the big decisions, we can just follow them.

It can also be dangerous. The classic boom and bust of stock market investments are examples of following the herd and of panic buying and selling based on the actions of others.

It is wise to learn from others but, to essentially sub-ordinate your own decision-making to the actions of others can hold back your own progress, even if it keeps you safe.

Choosing to run your own accounting business isn’t a ‘safe’ decision. Accepting a senior role or management position in an accounting firm isn’t a ‘safe’ decision. At the point you commit, you are backing yourself. The challenges of the job can then push us down a pathway that we didn’t intend to take but seems the easier, or maybe the least difficult, option. But aren’t we just reacting in the same way that the flock reacts to the sheep dog?

Deciding on your own path, doing your own analysis and making your own decisions is harder than simply following the accountants that surround you but there is a freedom and a reward that comes with being bold. Yes, there is a risk, but you’ve taken considered risks before to get to this point.

Many accountants are frustrated by the way that their working day pans out. The root cause of that can lie in allowing ourselves to be herded, to adopt a herd mentality and follow pathways that are inconsistent with our own vision and goals and therefore bring little satisfaction. If you want to break free then:-

• Do your own analysis
• Establish your own path
• Make your own decisions
• Take the actions that you believe to be right

Listen to others but, ultimately, back yourself to make the call!

* "Sheep in human clothing – scientists reveal our flock mentality". University of Leeds Press Office. 14 February 2008.

Progressbb

25/09/2024

14/08/2024

24/07/2024

18/07/2024

14/05/2024

03/04/2024

26/03/2024

23/02/2024

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