Moving Forward Out Of Crisis
Richard Brewin • May 22, 2020
When crisis hits a firm, whether it be a pandemic, flood, critical IT failure or a myriad of other catastrophic, unplanned events, the ability of the business to survive and thrive will depend on its ability to manage itself through 4 key stages:
Stage 1 is the most immediate and we call this the Assess stage. What just hit us? What is going on? Where can I find out more information? Your most pressing need, having called on any existing emergency service, is knowledge. Find out as much as you can as quickly as you can so that you can move onto Stage 2...
Stabilise. This is where you take the action necessary to stabilise your business for the short term, survival mode if you like. It’s the steps you take to buy yourself time for a more considered solution. For many businesses, this stage is about protecting your remaining resources, especially cash, and your ability to function, at least in some form. This gives you some breathing space to move onto Stage 3…
Progress. You’ve stabilised the business in the short term. This is where you now start looking at how you can move forwards again. The mistake too many firms make is in staying in Stage 2, survival mode, for too long. Stage 3 is where you look for the things that you can control, the steps you can take, however small. What can we produce? What can we change to allow us to move forward? Look for the ways that you can take back control.
Stage 4 is the final stage, Evolve. Once you have taken control of your business and your destiny again, Stage 4 is where you look at the lessons you’ve learned from the experience and consider what these mean for the longer term plans and strategies of your firm. We had a plan but what does it now look like, post crisis?
These stages are not mutually exclusive. In reality, rather than doing one after another, it’s more like learning to juggle, adding one ball at a time as you become more confident of your progress. Even once you are considering your future in Stage 4, you are still keeping a weather eye on Stages 1, 2 and 3 to ensure you continue to build on a firm base. You can’t afford to drop any ball.
So, get into survival mode as quickly as possible but don’t stay there. Decide where you want to be as you come out of the storm and take charge of your own direction, don’t let the storm just spit you out.
Look at any accounting firm website and there is a fair chance that the word ‘proactive’ will be prominent. Ask some business owners and taxpayers whether they consider their accountant to be proactive. There is commonly a gap between the two, between the intent of the accountant and the expectations of the client.
The tag ‘Trusted Advisor’ gets bandied around a lot. Without trying to be deliberately contentious, I often challenge its use. Undoubtedly, accountants were once the trusted advisor to their clients. When I came into the profession 44 years ago now, the older partners, especially, were seen by their clients as their trusted advisor, their ‘go to’ person on any issues, business, family or personal, that were troubling them. Without the filing deadlines of today, these clients were with their accountant primarily because they valued the relationship rather than the products.
All accountants are the same! We’ve all heard it said. It’s nonsense, of course, but, when you are asked what it is that your firm does that differentiates it from other accounting firms, it can be a challenge to come up with something tangible. Accounting firms tend to offer similar services, that’s what makes them accounting firms. Differentiating from competitors based upon services provided is therefore an issue.