A Scaling New Heights Primer - How to Grow and Scale Your Accounting Firm

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I often say “filing tax returns doesn’t grow your firm, but strategy and planning do.” Nothing wrong with filing tax returns, but they simply support your current team, and serve your current clients. The higher level activity of strategy and planning are what truly allow you to run your business, think of new services to sell, change your business model, build processes, restructure your team, and the host of other activities that your firm needs in the areas of strategy and planning.

“But a whole day?” Yep. My partner and I actually need more time. We’ve seen what strategy and planning can do, so we need more. The level of strategy and planning your firm needs is correlated with the pace of growth in your firm, and the big things you are seeking to accomplish. All growth activities require a level of strategy and planning that must be planned and set aside so you achieve your goals. Goals don’t happen accidentally, so it is imperative that firm owners set time aside (we believe at least 2 to 4 hours weekly) to work on the growth of their firm. For example, if you plan to roll out a new workflow/project management system into your firm that your team has never used before, you know this will take additional time than what you are already devoting to client work. That is perfect time that could fit into a weekly calendar block for strategy and planning.

Developing a super skill in calendaring is a major component to being successful in growth. Time is static, and you can’t manage it (though we try). If there is only so much time, then it makes sense to set aside time each week for strategy and planning. In fact, my partner and I block off my calendar for the whole year. Different days and different hours are set aside for different types of activities each week. Of course, reality doesn’t work that way, so we are free to change these blocks around. Even moving the calendar blocks around becomes a strategic activity, as this forces us to prioritize and strategize about what we want to push to a later date, and what we want to accomplish now. Blocking off my calendar for the whole year allows us to make decisions like “is this new meeting worth pushing this calendar block out, or even deleting it?” That is a strategic question, and the answer impacts the growth of our firm.

A meaningful aspect to strategy and planning that is important for all firm owners to realize is that strategic activities are the responsibility of the owners. No one else will do it, and no one else can do it. It’s the job of the owner of any organization to step away from the weeds of operations, and intentionally step into the area of strategic thinking. In the book Uncommon Sense, Common Nonsense, authors Jules Goddard and Tony Eccles spell out how strategic organizations behave differently from their counterparts. Here are some aspects of winning firms that they highlight:

  • they take risks (with new hires, new pricing models, newly created services) that other firms won’t take
  • they develop new and unknown firm/team structures
  • they do NOT think like their competitors
  • they do NOT copy the profession
  • they avoid ‘best practices’

The following quote from the book further explains the concepts of uncommon sense, common nonsense:

“Winning strategies are grounded in theories that have greater veracity than those of rivals... we call this ‘uncommon sense’ – ‘sense’ because it is true, and ‘uncommon’ because it belongs only to the winning firm: THE WINNER KNOWS SOMETHING THAT ITS COMPETITORS DO NOT KNOW. By contrast, ‘common nonsense’ is the aggregate of all the false assumptions shared by every competitor (including the winning firm).”

The accounting profession is fraught with firms copying each other, and often copying theories of firm operation that are not optimal, or just do not work in a healthy way. In a sense, all firms look alike, and this means we could be blindly following the common nonsense of our profession. As Peter Thiel, author of Zero to One, said “today’s best practice lead to dead ends; the best paths are new and untried.”

If you are seeking to test, follow, and reap the rewards of paths that are new and untried, setting a focus on strategy and planning in your firm is a path to do that. 

Here are 5 ways my partner and I do strategy in our firm (the How):

  1. Use the rhythms and tools found in the Entrepreneurial Operating System, from the book Traction. These tools help a business to run strategically with a rhythm that works.
  2. Leverage the Visionary/Integrator model. My partner and I are the Visionary and Integrator in our firm, working symbiotically to achieve big growth that only this paired duo can achieve.
  3. We accommodate our brains. My partner and I are opposites, and thus we think and work differently. We consider these differences in how we work, and seek to stay healthy together in how we think about our work.
  4. Calendar all priorities and let execution fill in around the calendar blocks. As mentioned earlier, calendaring is a big part of the strategy of our firm. As we strategically plan out our calendars, we begin to see clearly what can and can not fit into our growth plan.
  5. Put Strategy Days on the calendar. We plan our strategy, or it won’t happen. Strategy work is no accident, so if it is not on the calendar it’s unlikely that it will happen at all.

Here are 5 activities my partner and I do while in strategy in our firm (the What):

  1. Team restructuring. We decide which team members should move around, and whether this would bring additional value to our firm model.
  2. Cash planning. We spend time thinking through how to plan large cash expenditures in the future, or what expenditures to put off.
  3. Build ‘Risk vs. Reward’ scenarios. If we are considering a major initiative (like a web site, or hiring for a brand new role in the firm), we’ll make a list of the rewards vs. the risks of these moves. Not only do we seek to ask “what will we get if we make this decision?” we also ask “what do we currently not have by not making this decision?”
  4. Fill out the charts found in our strategy books. Our strategy books are Traction, Rocketfuel, How to Be a Great Boss, and other similar great books.
  5. Work on our ‘Issues’ list. An issues list is a list of items you want to solve in your firm, but you can’t get to at the moment. It’s a term from the book Traction, and it’s a tool that allows you to keep track of things in a specific place, instead of letting these ideas fill up your head without ever doing anything with it.

If you are ready to grow your firm to the next level, consider strategy and planning as your guide. Blocking off 4 hours every week to do the work required to grow a firm, and stay healthy will work wonders for your brain, your work, and your future. Look for Jason Blumer at Scaling New Heights 2018.