Look, Lead, Love, Learn: Four Steps to Better Business, a Better Life, and Conquering Complexity
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It's a new world in the workplace. Groundbreaking shifts in regulation, demographics, leadership and technology mean that "business as usual" doesn't cut it anymore. Success today depends on our ability to collaborate, connect, innovate and inspire.
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Look, Lead, Love, Learn: Four Steps to Better Business, a Better Life, and Conquering Complexity
- 1. Four steps to better business, a better life — and conquering complexity in the process From the pages of CPA Success
- 2. The U-505 252 feet long Nearly 31 feet high 880 metric tons Sank eight ships before the U.S. Navy captured it in the south Atlantic on June 4, 1944. One of only four World War II-era German U-boats in existence as a museum ship.
- 3. View the full video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUuQIpVuhCg
- 8. “Innovation is the creation of new forms of value in anticipation of future demand.” -- Andrew Zolli
- 9. The world according to Peter Sheahan 1. Question all of our assumptions. 2. Be a driver of change. 3. Overcome the gravity of success. 4. Beware of specialization. 5. Action before clarity.
- 10. Anticipation
- 14. • Be relevant. • Improve. • Learn. • Adopt. • Help your clients adopt. • Look.
- 15. “Engaged people will do whatever it takes to get the job done. Engagement comes from conversations about the task at hand. Those conversations lead to dreams of what could be, which lead to talk of what must be done.” -- Emmanuel Gobillot
- 16. Be yourself. Define your roles. Prepare. Recognize your people. Be positive. Hire for culture first. Transformative leadership Barry Alvarez Athletic Director, University of Wisconsin
- 19. 1. Don’t hire unhappy people. 2. Smile. 3. If friendliness is top priority, relevance is a not-too- distant second. 4. Be generous. 5. Be empathetic.
- 20. Meet Seth.
- 21. “If you create something that somebody would pay for, but you give it away, not only are you building trust and a debt of gratitude but you shock them into sharing it. They share not only the asset itself, which is inherently valuable to the brand, but they share the fact that they are surprised that a brand would just give it to them and not try to sell them along the way.” — Joe Chernov, Kinvey
- 24. “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. “ -- Jeff Magee
- 25. Change
- 26. 4x = 1890 7x = 1670
- 27. Top five issues impacting CPAs 1. Keeping up 2. Information overload 3. Doing more with less 4. Being proactive vs. reactive 5. Complexity
- 29. “Thinking about information overload isn’t accurately describing the problem. Thinking about filter failure is.” Clay Shirky New York University new media professor, writer, and consultant
- 30. The age of adaptation “The need to constantly adapt is the new reality for many workers.” Serial mastery These workers “are often left to figure out for themselves what new skills will make them more valuable, or just keep them from obsolescence.”
- 32. The Look, Lead, Love, Learn Book Club "Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back," by Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy "Flip! How to Turn Everything You Know On Its Head and Succeed Beyond Your Wildest Dreams," by Peter Sheahan "Leadershift: Reinventing Leadership for the Age of Mass Collaboration," by Emmanuel Gobillot "Follow the Leader: The One Thing Great Leaders Have that Great Followers Want," by Emmanuel Gobillot "Linchpin," by Seth Godin
- 33. The Look, Lead, Love, Learn Book Club "The Likeability Factor," by Tim Sanders "Today We Are Rich," by Tim Sanders "Love is the Killer App," by Tim Sanders "Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past," by Geoffrey Moore "I Love You More Than My Dog," by Jeanne Bliss "Give and Take," by Adam Grant
- 34. The Look, Lead, Love, Learn Book Club "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Won't Stop Talking," by Susan Cain "Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible," by Daniel Burrus "The Silent Language of Leaders," by Carol Kinsey Goman "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and in Business," by Charles Duhigg "Positivity: Groundbreaking Research," by Barbara Fredrickson
- 35. The Look, Lead, Love, Learn Book Club "The Platinum Rule: Discover the Four Basic Business Personalities and How They Can Lead You to Success," Tony Alessandra and Michael J. O'Connor “Drive,” by Daniel Pink “Start With Why,” by Simon Sinek “Innovative Intelligence,” by David Weiss and Claude Legrand “Regeneration: A Manifesto for America’s Next Leaders,” by Rebecca Ryan
- 36. The Look, Lead, Love, Learn Book Club “Trust Your Vibes: Secret Tools for Six-Sensory Living,” by Sonia Choquette “Trust Your Vibes at Work and Let Them Work For You,” by Sonia Choquette “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” by Stephen Covey “Life’s Golden Ticket: An Inspirational Novel,” by Brendon Burchard “Lean In,” by Sheryl Sandberg
- 37. Download these slides at … Slideshare.net/BillSheridan
- 38. Questions?
- 39. Download these slides: Slideshare.net/BillSheridan Follow me: MACPA’s blog: CPASuccess.com Facebook.com/BillSheridan LinkedIn.com/in/BillDSheridan Twitter.com/BillSheridan Gplus.to/BillSheridan YouTube.com/BillSheridan SlideShare.net/BillSheridan Flickr.com/photos/Sheridan
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Hi, everyone. Welcome to “Look Lead Love Learn,” the admittedly awkwardly named but hopefully inspirational guide to better business, a better life, and conquering complexity in the process. I’m Bill Sheridan with the Maryland Association of CPAs and the Business Learning Institute. Thanks, first of all, for taking a break from shoveling snow to join me today. Believe me, I happy to provide the diversion. So let’s get started. I want to start with a bit of history from the high seas, if you’ll indulge me.
- I don’t know if any of you are World War II buffs or not, but I am, and since this is MY presentation, so I’m going to start with this. This is the U-505. It is a German submarine, used in World War II, and she was a pretty nasty enemy for the allies back in the day. She conducted 12 patrols in her career and sank 8 ships, including 3 American vessels. She’s one of only four World War II-era German U-boats in existence as a museum ship, and today she makes her home at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. In fact, it’s been there since shortly after she was captured by the U.S. Navy on June 4, 1944, just off the west coast of Africa. After she was captured, the Navy towed this thing clear across the Atlantic, up the Hudson River, through the Great Lakes, and then the plopped her down on the grounds of the Museum there in Chicago. And let me tell you, this is an impressive display. You walk down a long hallway and around a corner and – WHOA – there it is. A massive room with an entire submarine in it. For a history buff like me, it’s a jaw-dropping moment. And the display is so cool. There’s a simulator that lets you get a feel for what it’s like to drive a sub, you can look through a working periscope, and you can actually go on board and tour the sub. Get a feel for what it’s like to live in a tin can under water for months at a time. Definitely not for the claustrophobic. And they try to make it as authentic as possible. They pipe in sounds, so you can hear what the sub sounded like. They pipe in smells, so you can get an idea of what it smelled like to be in cramped room with 30 other men who hadn’t showered for weeks on end. Not the most pleasant thing I’ve ever smelled, but you get the point. They really went for authenticity with this one. Just an impressive display. But as impressive as it is, I was more interested in how they got the monster inside the museum’s basement. It’s not like moving a couch; you don’t just wiggle the thing through the front door and down the stairs. It’s a bit more complex than that. And this was a huge dilemma for museum officials. And here was the problem: Before it was inside the museum, the sub sat OUTSIDE the museum – for 60 years in fact, from the mid-1940s until 2004, in the harsh Chicago weather conditions, at the hands vandals. Museum officials KNEW they had to get the sub inside to preserve it. The question was, how?
- Well, their answer was brilliant. They altered the museum itself. They built a new underground wing by digging a hole, lowering the sub into it, then walling it up and building an exhibit around it. It was a pretty ingenious solution to a really big problem. What’s my point? Simply this: The big changes that are rocking our worlds often don’t fit neatly in the confines of our rigid business processes. Too often, we try to change the new stuff to fit our traditional way of doing business. But we’re the ones who need to change.
- That’s the kind of thing that Tom Hood and I and the staff at the MACPA have been writing about in the MACPA’s blog, CPA Success, for the past 10 years. Which, frankly, I find hard to believe. Ten years, we’ve been doing this thing. We launched the blog with the idea that we would write about the things that CPAs can do – or ARE doing, or NEED to do – to succeed in this rapidly changing world. It’s been a lot of fun, and a very rewarding experience as well. The blog has earned praise throughout the profession as one of the top accounting blogs around. A little more than a year ago, Tom and I noticed that a lot of what we had written seemed to fall in four distinct categories – four ideas, really, when it comes to the future of the profession, the changing face of leadership, change management, all of that. So I started to compile blog posts from throughout the years and drop them into these four buckets in the hopes of creating a short book. I wanted something that members could take with them that would offer them lessons in leadership, little nuggets of inspiration, or even just a way to kill some time on an airplane. That’s good too.
- The result is “Look, Lead, Love, Learn: Four Steps to Better Business, a Better Life — and Conquering Complexity in the Process.” It’s available on Amazon right now. And I want to spend some time today sharing some of those stories with you. We’ve talked with some REALLY smart thought leaders over the years who have some REALLY amazing things to say about where the profession is headed. I think there are some important lessons here that we ALL can learn from … or at the very least get us thinking about ways in which we might begin to change ourselves to accommodate some of these huge opportunities.
- So let’s start by breaking down those four words. First: Look We’re busier than ever trying to solve today’s problems. We’ve got a ton of stuff on our plate and very little time to deal with it. But the key to overcoming change and complexity is not our reaction to what’s happening today. It’s our ability to see what’s going to happen tomorrow. Plenty of opportunities loom on the horizon—if we take time to come up for air and look for them. Here are a few tales about the rewards of looking ahead . . . and, equally important, the dangers of looking away.
- So here’s a question: What do you think of when you hear the word “Innovation?” If you’re like me or most other people, you are likely to conjure up images of some groundbreaking new device or idea, right? The iPhone. The Cloud. 3D Printing. Driverless cars. Things like that are the face of innovation right? But according to Andrew Zolli, that’s NOT what most innovation looks like. He’s a futurist and CEO of an annual and highly influential conference called Pop!Tech. And he says that real innovation is less about producing something new and more about anticipating what’s going to be new—and we all can do that. Here’s how he defines innovation.
- What he’s saying is this: In order to innovate, you don’t have to know what people need. You have to know what they’re going to need – maybe even before they do. Those types of innovation are what Zolli would call “weak signals of disruptive change.” They’re not here yet, but you can see them coming. Great leaders are the ones who detect those signals early and act on them before anybody else does. To do that, though, we have to look. We have put aside the day-to-day, pick our heads up and see what’s coming at us from the horizon – before it steamrolls us. “Our normal metaphors about innovation are all about breakthroughs, change, things that are different, a radical reframing of an industry,” he said. “The reality is that most innovative work is incremental improvement. It’s about staying ahead of trends as opposed to reacting to trends. Again, from Andrew Zolli: “We need to engage the very top levels of the organization in a conversation about embracing a different kind of risk portfolio. That means having an established set of processes in place in which you have no expectation of return. You make investments not only for operational excellence but for learning and adaptation.”
- Peter Sheahan has some suggestions along those same lines. He’s the author of “Flip: How to Turn Everything You Know on Its Head--and Succeed Beyond Your Wildest Imaginings.” Here’s how HE says we need to tackle change: 1. Our job going forward is simple . . . and supremely complex at the same time. Question all of our assumptions about what’s happening now and what it might look like tomorrow. Those assumptions will almost surely be wrong. 2. Are you a steward of the past or a driver of change? Are you a slave to clients, members, or employees who are stuck in yesterday, or are you committed to leading people forward? If you’re the former, you’d better figure out how to become the latter. 3. The hardest thing about staying awesome is the gravity of success. The more we succeed, the more we want to keep doing the same old things. In a world of change, that’s a mistake. 4. Complexity breeds specialization, and specialization breeds silos, and silos stifle communication, collaboration and innovation. We’ve tried for years now to tear down silos, yet we find ourselves in an era that promotes the very creation of silos. Walls destroy innovation and collaboration. Walls destroy our efforts to outpace the rate of change. Proceed with caution. 5. In times of great change, action must come before clarity. We don’t have the luxury of examinations, studies, task forces, and white papers. We need to act—and fast. Don’t wait for a blueprint. We’re building the blueprint on the fly. Take a leap of faith and adjust things after the fact. ‘
- The final word on “Look” belongs to Daniel Burrus, and that word is: Anticipation. In fact, Burrus calls anticipation “the key missing competency in business today.” See, we’re all really good at reacting, responding, and putting out fires. We’re really good at executing strategy, and as Burrus likes to say, that didn’t help Blockbuster, BlackBerry, Sony, Dell, Microsoft, HP, and countless others. What’s missing is the ability to anticipate problems before they happen, disruptions before they disrupt, customer changes and shifts and needs before others can see those things happen, new opportunities before your competition can see them. There are hundreds of certainties all around us, and once we learn how to see them, how to identify and take advantage of them before they occur, we’ll position our organizations for success long before our competition even knows what hit them. It’s not rocket science. It’s about identifying “hard trends” – those things that we KNOW are going to happen – and spend some time thinking about how those things will impact our jobs and our businesses. This is all part of a future-focused learning program that Burrus calls “The Anticipatory Organization.” When we get into that habit of actually looking toward the future, amazing opportunities present themselves. And then the magic begins.
- Dan Burrus explains all of this WAY better than I ever could, so I’m going to let him explain it to you. Here he is speaking with MACPA Executive Director Tom Hood. Now, this video is a bit long, but this is a great conversation and the information here is really, REALLY important to the future of this profession, so I want to take a bit of time to have you watch this and learn. Here’s Dan and Tom. Really thought-provoking stuff there. If you’re interested in learning more about this stuff, visit BLIonline.org/AOAF.
- Let’s move onto the next word of the day: Lead. What does it mean to lead today? What separates the world’s best leaders from the rest of the pack? Here’s a guess: They use the word “we” more than the word “me.” Leadership today isn’t about barking orders and command decisions. It’s about nimbleness, flexibility, and THAT means it has to be about communication and collaboration. At CPA Success, we’ve written a lot about the changing face of leadership. Here’s a taste.
- Let’s start with something a bit off the beaten path. My wife Alison has a non-negotiable rule about eating out: Don’t order anything you’d make for yourself at home. No chicken. No salmon. No spaghetti. If you’re going to lay out that kind of cash for a meal, make it an experience. She took that rule to an extreme for my birthday dinner recently. We went to an incredible place called Stone Soup Cottage, just west of St. Louis. This place opened in 2009; by 2010, it had been named the top restaurant in St. Louis. It’s that good. When you go to Stone Soup Cottage, you eat what they decide to feed you. There’s no menu with a million options. In fact, when you sit down, you’re given a list of what you’ll be eating that night—take it or leave it. It’s called a tasting menu with six small courses, some of them paired with wine. Right away, I liked it. No menu meant no decisions and fewer things to worry about. I didn’t even mind that two of the courses featured truffles (which I hate) and that a third consisted entirely of something called “periwinkles” (obviously a fictional food). No matter—this was going to be a God’s honest experience. And it was. Simply put, it might have been the best meal I’ve ever had. Because the chef wasn’t spread too thin with an overpopulated menu, he could concentrate on a few things thoughtfully and artfully prepared. Awesome!
- So what’s the point? Here it is, leaders: Take a few chances every now and then. Sure, you can take the safe route, do the same old tired thing over and over again, and produce the same old results. You might even make money doing it. Here’s what you won’t do: Stay relevant. And why? Improve yourself. Learn anything new. Stay on top of the latest trends. And therefore … Help your clients stay on top of the latest trends. Notice the weak signals of disruptive change and the game-changing opportunities they provide. Look, you don’t have to do any of this stuff, people. You do have a choice. You also don’t have to stay in business. The choice is yours. Put another way, Gen. Eric Shinseki, he’s a retired Army Chief of Staff : “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” So do yourself a favor: Try the periwinkles every now and then.
- And one more thing – maybe the most important thing. Have conversations. Here’s what leadership expert Emmanuel Gobillot says about conversations. THAT’S the power of conversations. Finally, says Emmanuel – end each conversation with this question: Has this conversation made my team members feel stronger and more capable? If you can do that, you’re a leader in every sense of the word.
- There’s another important –VERY important – factor involved in leadership. That’s change management. Let’s face it: Change itself has become a constant today – so much so that the only real hope we have of wrapping our arms around it is sheer transformation – changing our very business models in search of our next competitive advantage. And that’s a tall order. Where do you start with something like that? And according to Barry Alvarez, transforming your business starts with transforming your culture. Alvarez is the athletic director at the University of Wisconsin, and he’s generally credited with turning the school’s losing football program into one of the nation’s best. I heard him speak at the Winning Is Everything Conference last week, and he explained that in his mind, transformation begins and ENDS with culture. To that end, Alvarez has plenty of advice. There’s no one-size-fits-all plan to leadership. Be yourself and work your plan. Those who buy into that plan will work their tails off for you. Those who don’t will shake out. Either way, your organization is stronger as a result. Make sure your team’s roles are clearly defined. For the team to succeed, each player must play his or her part. And remember that every job is important, from the C-suite to the cafeteria staff. Remember the story about the NASA janitor? As the legend goes, President Kennedy was visiting Cape Canaveral in the early-1960s – it was known as Cape Kennedy then when he encountered a janitor cleaning the floor. JFK asked the man what he was doing. “I’m helping put a man on the moon,” he replied. True or not, the story has a point: We’re all in this together. Everyone has a role to play. One loose screw can derail the whole thing. So define those roles … and help each person understand what their role is. A key part of culture. If you do the right things off the field, you’ll succeed on the field. Preparation, work ethic, education and training, a mindset devoted to doing the right thing — CPAs already have a leg up with all of that, and they’re all as important as what you do between the lines. As the old saying goes, failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Make sure you do the right things off the clock, because they’ll drive how you do things on the clock. Recognition works. It’s not hard to recognize your people for the work they do … and they’ll kill or die for you when you do. “It doesn’t take much to show your people you appreciate them,” Alvarez said. Positivity works, too. “If you don’t believe you’re going to win the game, you don’t have much of a chance,” Alvarez said. Put another way, courtesy of Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Maintaining a winning program is just as hard — if not harder — than building one in the first place. Change is always there, it’s always constant. Our change must be up to the task. Keep looking for that next competitive advantage. Perhaps most important: Do your people fit your culture? Hire for culture first. You can teach them the technical stuff, but you can’t teach them how to fit in. “Stop looking for GPA,” Alvarez said. “Start looking for F-I-T.” Great advice, and well worth heeding. Our success going forward will depend less on technical skills and more on our people, our teams, and our cultures.
- Speaking of people, we come to Love. I kind of struggled with this word, but in the end I think it works. The word Love covers a lot of ground. Love of family. Love of life. Love of work, justice, and your fellow man. It’s the notion that there’s something greater than self-interest at work here. We’re here to serve, not to be served. Once we learn that, the world is ours. Life sometimes has funny ways of teaching us lessons in love. Here are several of my favorites.
- Nice guys finish last? Not in Tim Sanders’s world. He’s not alone, of course. The notion that says you have to be a bastard to get to the top has been rotting in the corporate landfill for a while now. Sanders, though, goes even further. Not only is it OK to be nice—it is absolutely essential. The best-selling author of Love Is The Killer App, The Likeability Factor, and Today We Are Rich (which is required reading, in my opinion) offers this straightforward message: Relationships matter. Check that. Relationships don’t simply matter; they might be the only things that matter. “Your network defines your net worth,” Sanders said during his keynote at the 2011 CCH User Conference in San Antonio. “Relationship quality is everything.”
- So if relationships are the only things that matter, what must we do to take advantage of that fact? Sanders offers these ideas: Don’t hire unhappy people: Your culture is at stake the minute you sit down to interview a potential employee. Too often, we focus on a prospect’s skill sets. But the most important factor is not performance; it’s happiness. High-performance jerks suck the life out of the office. Hire for happiness first and performance second. This is vitally important. If you hire happy people, your office will be a happy place to work. How much more pleasant, productive, and progressive will you be if your employees are happy and engaged? I don’t need to provide the answer. Smile. A smile says, “I like you. I appreciate you.” That creates a culture of friendliness, making life at the office infinitely better. If friendliness is top priority, relevance is a not-too-distant second. Relevance is the only thing that keeps relationships going. And since relationships matter, relevance matters. You add value to your clients’ lives by being relevant. How do we remain relevant? By adding value, AND by being future-ready ourselves and making that future more comfortable for our clients and customers. And THAT drives those relationships forward even further. Be generous. Mentor others. Give away the stuff you know. Network relentlessly. And keep this in mind: Networking is not about you. It’s about connecting people to other people and then getting out of the way. If you do that well, it will come back to you. Be empathetic. Feel for the other person. Feelings are facts. “You shouldn’t feel that way” is not an appropriate response. To reach the pinnacle of relationship success, be emotionally available. Treat all feelings as facts. Listen. Respond. If you do that, you’ll have become the most important person in your clients’ lives. And THAT drives relevance, too. My mother’s favorite saying comes from the Disney movie “Bambi”: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Based on what Tim Sanders tells us, I might change that to say: “If you can’t say anything nice, you’re doomed to fail.” That’s because in today’s social world, relationships do matter. Friendliness is essential. Relevance is non-negotiable. Add value and do it nicely. And repeat. Fail to do that, and you risk becoming irrelevant. It’s your choice.
- And by the way, this isn’t just touchy-feely stuff. This is about the bottom line, too. This is Seth Godin. Seth, of course, invented everything … and THOUGHT of everything before anybody else … and basically is here to make us feel worthless, then kick our butts and turn us into better people. That’s just what he does, and he’s good at it. Anyway, Seth has this theory: One of the first steps in becoming indispensable to our clients is to give them stuff for free. Specifically, share what we know with them. Share our knowledge. Add value to people’s lives. If we do that often enough, we build trust and respect with our audiences and expand our networks at the same time. People start to see us as leaders in our fields, and they start to turn to US when they help in our areas of expertise. In Seth’s words, “Generosity generates income.” The more we give away, the more we stand to make in return. It’s an entirely new business model, and one that’s perfectly built for this era of social business. Our opening play is no longer, “Let me sell you something.” It’s, “Let me solve your problem. Let me make you smarter. Let me give you something of value.” If you do that often enough, selling stuff becomes ridiculously easy.
- Here’s a great example of the power of giving stuff away. I was at a conference recently, and during one of the sessions, the instructor mentioned a book called “Youtility,” by marketing expert Jay Baer. During that session, I signed up for Jay’s blog “Convince and Convert” I received an immediate e-mail thanking me for signing up, and a link to download a free e-book of 21 great quotes about marketing. This was one of them. It’s a bit long, but it ties in beautifully with what we’ve been talking about here. That’s the power of generosity … and of love, from a business perspective.
- Never. Stop. Learning. It’s the only way to conquer change and complexity. Piece a’ cake, right? Actually, yeah. It really is that simple. And CPAs have a leg up here, too – the entire profession is built on this notion of lifelong learning. But I’m not talking about CPE. I’m talking about a much deeper type of personal development. Here are some ideas about what I mean.
- My daughter Molly had one of those “why do I have to learn this stuff?” episodes on the way home from school recently. Using math skills she’s learned on the way to 4th grade—and without a hint of irony—she said, “I can’t believe I have to go to school for twelve more years!” Partly because parents are required to say stuff like this but mostly because I believe it, I replied, “If you do it right, sweetheart, you’ll be learning new stuff for the rest of your life.” That’s what I love about CPAs—we get to learn for a living. Most of us struggle to carve out time to learn new stuff, but our designation—our very careers—depend on it. How cool is that?
- And yet I still hear instructors complain about folks who come to their CPE programs and hide behind newspapers or laptops for two or four or eight hours. “I don’t really want to learn anything,” these so-called students are conveying. “Just give me my credits.” Really? In a life this short, you prefer to blow this opportunity to learn something new? Jeff Magee is a Business Learning Institute instructor and thought leader, and he spends more time thinking about personal and professional development than almost anyone I know. He said something to me recently that really struck home. Here it is: “In today’s workplace, we’ve learned that just being average is acceptable. We’ve created a society in which everybody points fingers at problems but nobody gets into the game to fix them. The worst part is that we have clients and customers who are paying us to be trusted advisors. They want us to be the plus in the conversation. How can we help someone if we’re bringing a minus to the equation?” Given the rate of change and complexity these days, you could throw a digital dart at the MACPA’s online catalog and find a relevant technical topic you need to learn. Or ditch the technical stuff and brush up on success skills—leadership, sustainability, social media, change management, or personal growth. There’s plenty of that to be found through the Business Learning Institute. Or forget about CPE and learn something really radical, like computer programming, or web development, or pretty much anything MIT has to offer. Even places like iTunes U, TED, and the Khan Academy offer fantastic education opportunities—and they’re all free. Look, I don’t care what you do. Play guitar. Cook. Needlepoint. Map your family tree. Rewire your house. Create a blog and write a post every day. (Imagine that!) Just learn SOMETHING. Then learn something else. Then share it. Don’t forget about that part—share what you’ve learned with others. Help other people learn. (Using social media is a great way of doing that, by the way.) The point is this: Always be learning. Most everything else is a waste of our all-too-short lives.
- So let’s talk about what’s happening today that makes this conversation worth having. It all boils down to one word – Change. Always had change, but rate of change is intense today. -- legislative / regulatory changes. Makes SOX look like a walk in the park. -- demographic shifts. 4 generations in the workplace. -- that leads to all kinds of leadership shifts and succession issues. A lot of really complex stuff that we’re dealing with.
- -- biggest of all, technology shifts. Moore’s Law, developed in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel. – processing speeds, or overall processing power, for computers doubles every 18 months or so. Graph. Gradual, then sudden. -- Aspen Intitute rate of change: As it relates to science and technology, the rate of change in the next decade is likely to be 4 to 7 times faster than in the previous decade. If it is 4 times faster, it would be like planning for today in 1890. If it is 7 times faster, it would be like planning for today in 1670. Know what all of that means? It means that computers today are about 130,000 times more powerful that they were in 1988. That your iPhone 6 is as powerful as Apple’s most powerful laptop was just a decade ago. That an iPad Mini is as powerful as the world’s biggest supercomputer was in 1985. We’re all carrying mainframes in our pockets. But Moore’s Law has given us more than a bunch of cool new gadgets to play with. It also means that every job on the planet — yours and mine included — is going to fundamentally change in the very near future. Need proof? Ask a journalist, or a recording industry executive, or whoever’s in charge of the U.S. Postal Service. The day will come, I swear to God, when filing a tax return — any tax return — will, regulators and legislators willing, be a completely automated process. Now, regulators and lawmakers will undoubtedly want a say in how that all shakes out. But the technology will be there to make it happen. Moore’s Law will see to it. What will happen to CPAs who rely on transactional work when that day arrives? If they’re smart, they’re not waiting to find out. They’re figuring out right now how to add new value to their clients’ lives once their traditional services have become outdated and automated. If you’re not doing that future-focused work, you're putting yourself at risk of irrelevancy at best … and extinction at worst. It’s no wonder we’re feeling stressed and overloaded and under pressure.
- And speaking of CPAs? What’s keeping them up at night? This stuff is on the minds of CPAs everywhere. They’re worried about this stuff, and they want answers. They want help.
- So how do we get ahead of all of this change and complexity? My boss, Tom Hood, likes to put it this way: In an era of constant change, the most important skill we possess today is the ability to learn new skills. This is Tom’s formula: L > C. “To keep pace in your industry, let alone as a leader, requires your rate of LEARNING to be greater than, or equal to, the rate of change. But again, easier said than done, right? How do we learn in an era when we’re facing more change, more chaos, more information from more sources than ever? In my mind, we need two things to make that happen:
- The first is better information. Consider this, from Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “Between the dawn of civilization through 2003, there were just five exabytes of information created. That much information is now created every two days, and the pace is increasing.“ Not information overload, but filter failure. So that’s the first thing we need – better information.
- The second thing we need is a mindset that’s devoted to adaptation and anticipation. Fast Company editor Robert Safian calls this era “Generation Flux,” and here’s what he means. His words: “What defines GenFlux is a mind-set that embraces instability, that tolerates—and even enjoys—recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions. This is no simple task. The vast bulk of our institutions—educational, corporate, political—are not built for flux. Few traditional career tactics train us for an era where the most important skill is the ability to acquire new skills.” And that means connecting ourselves to as many people and resources as possible, people and resources that add value to our lives and help us learn.
- So what does all of this mean? To me, it all boils down to 3 letters – and no, those letters aren’t “CPA.” They’re Q.E.D. I don’t know how many math geeks are watching or if you know what that stands for. It’s Latin: “Quod erat demonstrandum.” It literally translates to “which was to be demonstrated.” It’s basically a fancy way of saying that you’ve solved a problem. When you get the answer, you put “QED” at the end of the problem. My high school calculus teacher used to tell us that it stood for “Quit. Enough. Done.” Your job, CPAs, is to solve problems. Your problems. Your company’s problems. Your clients’ problems. You’re problem solvers now. You’re trusted business advisors. And in an era of great change and complexity, to solve those problems, you need to look. And lead. And love. And learn. And then do it again.
- Leaders are readers. "Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past," by Geoffrey Moore. He dives deeper into the notion of the "gravity of success" and looks at ways to pull free from what he calls the "gravitational pull of legacy business." "I Love You More Than My Dog," by Jeanne Bliss. Ever notice there are some companies that have fanatical followers? Trader Joe's. Harley-Davidson. Apple. Zappos. The Container Store. Wegmans. Jeanne Bliss calls them "beloved companies," and she takes a closer look at what these companies do differently to make that connection with their customers. "Give and Take," by Adam Grant. Great book. Grant looks at the givers in business -- people who go out of their way to help others -- and the takers, who are in it for themselves. He wanted to know which type of person is most successful. Surprising results. "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Won't Stop Talking," by Susan Cain. Who has read this book? Another great read. "Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible," by Daniel Burrus. Burrus has made a career of predicting the future of technological change, and he claims that we all can develop what he calls "flash foresight" -- a burst of insight about the future that produces a new and radically different way of doing something that will open up invisible opportunities and solve seemingly impossible problems. "The Silent Language of Leaders," by Carol Kinsey Goman. This one is all about body language and what it tells our employees, clients, competitors. Body language from a business point of view. Really fascinating. "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and in Business," by Charles Duhigg. Looks at why we do what we do and how we can change our habits for the better. "Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive," by Barbara Fredrickson: This isn't just touchy-feely stuff. There has been a significant amount of research done on the subject that proves positivity has a huge impact on how successful we can become. The 3-to-1 ratio: We need 3 truly positive experiences to overcome every negative experience.
- "Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past," by Geoffrey Moore. He dives deeper into the notion of the "gravity of success" and looks at ways to pull free from what he calls the "gravitational pull of legacy business." "I Love You More Than My Dog," by Jeanne Bliss. Ever notice there are some companies that have fanatical followers? Trader Joe's. Harley-Davidson. Apple. Zappos. The Container Store. Wegmans. Jeanne Bliss calls them "beloved companies," and she takes a closer look at what these companies do differently to make that connection with their customers. "Give and Take," by Adam Grant. Great book. Grant looks at the givers in business -- people who go out of their way to help others -- and the takers, who are in it for themselves. He wanted to know which type of person is most successful. Surprising results. "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Won't Stop Talking," by Susan Cain. Who has read this book? Another great read. "Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible," by Daniel Burrus. Burrus has made a career of predicting the future of technological change, and he claims that we all can develop what he calls "flash foresight" -- a burst of insight about the future that produces a new and radically different way of doing something that will open up invisible opportunities and solve seemingly impossible problems. "The Silent Language of Leaders," by Carol Kinsey Goman. This one is all about body language and what it tells our employees, clients, competitors. Body language from a business point of view. Really fascinating. "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and in Business," by Charles Duhigg. Looks at why we do what we do and how we can change our habits for the better. "Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive," by Barbara Fredrickson: This isn't just touchy-feely stuff. There has been a significant amount of research done on the subject that proves positivity has a huge impact on how successful we can become. The 3-to-1 ratio: We need 3 truly positive experiences to overcome every negative experience.
- "Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past," by Geoffrey Moore. He dives deeper into the notion of the "gravity of success" and looks at ways to pull free from what he calls the "gravitational pull of legacy business." "I Love You More Than My Dog," by Jeanne Bliss. Ever notice there are some companies that have fanatical followers? Trader Joe's. Harley-Davidson. Apple. Zappos. The Container Store. Wegmans. Jeanne Bliss calls them "beloved companies," and she takes a closer look at what these companies do differently to make that connection with their customers. "Give and Take," by Adam Grant. Great book. Grant looks at the givers in business -- people who go out of their way to help others -- and the takers, who are in it for themselves. He wanted to know which type of person is most successful. Surprising results. "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Won't Stop Talking," by Susan Cain. Who has read this book? Another great read. "Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible," by Daniel Burrus. Burrus has made a career of predicting the future of technological change, and he claims that we all can develop what he calls "flash foresight" -- a burst of insight about the future that produces a new and radically different way of doing something that will open up invisible opportunities and solve seemingly impossible problems. "The Silent Language of Leaders," by Carol Kinsey Goman. This one is all about body language and what it tells our employees, clients, competitors. Body language from a business point of view. Really fascinating. "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and in Business," by Charles Duhigg. Looks at why we do what we do and how we can change our habits for the better. "Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive," by Barbara Fredrickson: This isn't just touchy-feely stuff. There has been a significant amount of research done on the subject that proves positivity has a huge impact on how successful we can become. The 3-to-1 ratio: We need 3 truly positive experiences to overcome every negative experience.
- A great way of building up your list of followers quickly is by “power following.” Find an influencer in your area of expertise, and look at who he or she is following. Let’s take Tom Hood as an example: