Time to focus on the new skills
In the middle of a discussion with a room full of accountants on the steps needed to develop an accounting firm today, I asked for a show of hands from those who didn’t feel that they were doing enough to build the relevant skills in their firm.
Every hand went up.
It’s interesting isn’t it. Everyone recognised the need but, equally, everyone recognised that they weren’t addressing it effectively.
Training in our profession has always centred around exams and CPD, Continuing Professional Development. These, in turn, have focused on our technical skills and knowledge. Don’t get me wrong, if we are to promote ourselves as an accountant then we have a professional and legal responsibility to ensure that we are technically competent and to maintain and refresh that competence. However, technical competence only partially meets our clients’ needs and our own commercial requirements.
For centuries, the accountant’s role has primarily been to turn the client’s incomplete records into compliant returns. Much of that time, this was a manual process and so the technical competence was a much greater slice of our overall role. Accounting firms flourished on a recurring income model and clients’ needs were met by the compliance services.
We live in a different world today. Digitalisation, greater competition, more challenging commercial pressures and changing client expectations mean that being a competent technical accountant is now only part of our role and only part of what our own firms need.
In addition to our knowledge as an accountant today, we need:
- IT skills
- Business management skills
- Client service skills
- HR skills
- Communication skills
- Project management skills
- Creative development skills
- Sales and marketing skills
To be honest, the list could go on for pages.
In a nutshell we need the skills to not just deliver compliance but to run an accounting business successfully and keep the modern SME business owner happy.
Fundamentally this means tech skills and people skills.
This was the point at which the hands went up!
Firms are pretty good at sticking to their technical CPD training but lag behind in developing tech and people skills. The reluctance with tech training can often be put down to cost but what is the price of not investing in using your tech more effectively?
As for people skills, often, to be blunt, this is down to ignorance. Generational change and social change mean that people think and act differently. The client of today and the team member of today are different beasts to when we were training. Firms have to recognise this and invest in training to meet the newer demands of both. On top of that, our role as accountant is changing.
- Clients want competent accountants but they also want an accounting firm with empathy, care, support, understanding and input.
- Team members want to build their technical competence but they also want responsibility, the skills to better perform and progress, the skills to be better at their interactions, more interesting (to them) work.
- Firms need to change client behaviour and perception as the role of the accountant changes and so need people with the skills to deliver and manage that change.
Clocking up the CPD hours will not bring success or change to your firm. Teaching you and your team the tech and people skills to drive change, performance and client behaviour will!
Take a look at your training programme for the next 12 months.
Are you doing enough?
Good luck!
