Change your approach towards when the heat is on

 I expect working within the accounting profession to always be a demanding, pressurised job. We are a profession that is not only governed by professional and legal standards but driven by deadlines and important matters. We work within an agency style world, providing services on behalf of others who have high expectations of our abilities and capabilities. Although technology is speeding up our processes, we fill the notional holes with more services and clients to meet the commercial needs of them and us.

It's never going to be a stroll in the park.

A demanding job can be fulfilling and rewarding. There can be a high sense of achievement, of personal satisfaction and of reward in such a role… but not if the levels of stress and frustration are continually beyond the levels that a person can personally manage.

If we accept the premise that we will always be busy then there is no point in just hoping that things will get better. If we want to be more fulfilled and less stressed then we need to do something about it.

Take the kitchen of a quality restaurant. Like us, it is a high pressure world, driven by deadlines, quality, standards, and expectations.  As a paying customer, would you be happy with a restaurant whose goal is simply to get through the orders, get the food served up and get the plates onto the tables or do you expect better? Is this a kitchen that a quality chef or restaurant manager would take pride and satisfaction in?

Compare that with what we see in many accounting firms when things get busy.  The team member sits down at their desk with a whole list of tasks and demands facing them and with more coming in throughout the day. Understandably, it’s time to get the head down and plough on through, getting as much out as possible before the day runs out.

It's an admirable commitment but one with very little personal satisfaction. There is also a quality issue. Very few of the tasks on that list will have an objective that is to simply be got out the door. We may say “just get it done” but we don’t mean that.

The team member may have an objective of “just getting things done”, usually driven by deadline,  but many of the tasks on the list will have entirely different objectives around quality, standards and expectations.

If a chef simply gets a steak ‘done’ then chances are that neither the chef nor the customer will be satisfied. Yet, in our haste to get through our worklists, we find ourselves making that mistake.

In a quality kitchen, the team, under the direction of the head chef, have learned that quality, standards and expectations trump hasty delivery. Part of the solution, of course, lies in good preparation, great processes, strong systems and quality equipment, and we can always work on those, but mindset, discipline and communication, within the kitchen, with the ‘front of house’ team and with the customer are the bedrock. We have to get better at this approach.

The second area of comparison lies in understanding capabilities. A chef may have grand ambitions: to have a menu with dishes and choice to die for,  a wine list fit for a connoisseur. However, they understand that to fall short is to fail when it comes to quality and customer service. If they don’t have the skills, budget or resources to achieve their ambition then they will make the best with what they have. An awesome Sunday roast beats an average chateaubriand every time and keeps the customer happy.

As accountants we often hold back our own firms because we can’t do what we wish we could do. How often do we hear it said that “I don’t have the time or money for that”.

What we can be poor at is recognising the resources and skills that what we do have and making best use of them. I think it is a throwback to our time-based fees heritage. In the past, a firm grew by more clients, more staff, more hours, more bills. Today, not only is the fee model different but the production model has changed and more staff is a challenge that isn’t going away any time soon. So, we have to get better at making the most of the resources and skills that we do have, being more efficient and profitable as a result, and then building from a stronger foundation.

So:

·     Don’t panic: Make decisions based on the real objectives within the work pile and not simply the size of it. Hold your discipline and you will break the cycle over time

·     Focus not on what you can’t do but celebrate making the best of what you can achieve. Again, you will move forward better over time

Sorry for the lecture but sometimes we have to face up to what real change actually requires. Discipline is rarely an easy or welcome topic but someone has to raise it!