The Future Ready CPA
AICPA EDGE Conference
Participants Report & Insights
Tom Hood, CPA, CITP, CGMA
August 5, 2016
1
AICPA FP&A Conference
Talent Development in the New Normal
Participants Report & Insights
Tom Hood, CPA, CITP, CGMA
July 21, 2017

Our insights…
One opportunity is to focus training and development on the critical skills participants
are identifying, especially in the area of ‘strategic thinking’ and ‘anticipation (being
aware, predictive and adaptive of future trends and issues). These skills elevate and
accelerate people’s ability to adapt to major changes in addition to finding creative
and innovative ways to add value to the business. Our research consistently shows
the need for. Here are three areas we can elevate and accelerate your talent
development with critical skills that will address these top challenges and skill needs.
1. Conduct a Strategic Leadership and Learning Development Summit that identifies
critical competencies and creates a comprehensive curriculum including e-
learning for your firm.
2. Leadership Academy for your managers to develop facilitation, collaboration and
skills to mobilize teams and prioritize projects.
3. Create a culture of proactive business advisors by implementing the Anticipatory
Organization: Accounting and Finance Edition Learning System to begin
developing.
You will find more information about these in slides 12-20 in this document.

What is your biggest talent challenge?
Critical thinking, skills mix (8)
Leadership development and Influencing Skills
(2)
Intellectual Curiosity (2)
Motivation (2)
Ability to hire and salary base
Ability to think and not just push out data
Acquisition
Being mixed with accounting creating a split
focus.
Bench strength / succession planning
Budget
Communication
Creative problem solving
Cultural fit
Dealing with stress
Demographics
Engagement
Finding persons with the right attitude
Finding qualified people
Focus
Forward thinking
Getting people to be proactive about
what information others are looking for
Hiring employees committed to long-term
with the company
Innovation
Lack of Experience
Lack of technical skills (i.e. Financial
modeling)
Leadership development

What generation are you?
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Traditionalists Born 192545 Baby boomers Born 194664 Generation X Born 196580 Millennials Born 198197 Generation Z Born after
1997
Votes
What generation do you belong to?

Poll: What are your top challenges? (pick the top five)
1.Being proactive vs reactive
2.Doing more with less
3.Finding the right people
4.Keeping up with
technology
5.Engaging our people
6.Talent retention
7.Generational Differences
Note: Overall these are consistent with our research across the Profession.
Finding and retaining talent has steadily risen in the last 12 months in our
polls across the Profession. “Engaging our people” has also increased
significantly in the past year. Generational differences are rising once
again.

Poll: What are the top skills for finance and accounting
professionals? (pick the top five)
1.Strategic and critical thinking
2.Communication
3.Tech Savvy Data analytics
4.Technical accounting and
finance skills
5.Innovation
6.Anticipating and serving
evolving needs
7.Inspiration and Collaboration

Top Skills Needed for Accounting
and Finance Professionals
BLI Research in 2015 with over 1,500 responses from all segments of the CPA
Profession identified these top skill needed to be successful in these rapidly changing
times.This confirms and reinforces the research from the Conference Board, AICPA
CPA Horizons 2025 report, Bersin, and Burrus Research..
75%
covered by
theseTop 5
Skills
http://www.blionline.org

What is you insight from this session?
Proactive culture in Accounting.
How to get started on effectively developing and retaining talent
Anticipatory CPA
Need to proactively work on development
Differing strategies to improve on employee engagement
Effectiveness of e-learning and nano
Focus on collaboration, technology, leadership & critical thinking skills development
Periodic collaboration instead of big classes in our internal program
Need to link expected business changes to employee learning now
We need to hire & develop talent for future needs
Collaborative learning
Growth (development) second most sought after, only behind compensation
Learning to learn in a different way
Collaboration more valuable than experience
Others are seeing the same issues.
Importance on training employee's to retain them
Identifying talents needs and resources to get there
Effectiveness of nano-learning
How to get ready for exponential changes
Need to adapt to our workforce
Embrace the changes in our profession which is essential to future development
Keeping in mind demographic changes in workplace

What is you insight from this session?
Still learning with collaboration
Options in learning
Strategic approach with change management
Critical thinking.
Critical Thinking essential
Develop learning plan for team
new and potentially effective learning concepts
Ideas on how to bring in learning in new ways.
generational gap will continue to increase issues in finding talent
Continuous education is essential to employee engagement
Adapt and prepare for the shift
Focus should be on continued learning for staff
Continuous education to keep up with change
The environment is changing.
Replace ROI with the new formula.
Direction of future accounting and finance
need offer development proactively
Eyes opening on education.
Present in 1 hour segments per week in order to see results
I need to rethink how my entire department works

#FutureReady
Is the capacity to be
anticipatory (aware, predictive
and adaptive) of emerging
technology and trends in
business, demographics, and
the social environment
impacting your organization and
industry.
Source: CPA.COM Insight into the
CPA of the Future Study 2014
92% of CPAs
Not #futureready

Relevance?

AOAF recognized as 2016 Top learning Product
“Everyone keeps telling accountants that they
need to change their focus from the historic and
the backward-looking, and to start being
proactive and offering future-focused advice – but
no one tells them how.
The beauty of the Anticipatory Organization
program is that it actually gives you a set of tools
to harness the hard trends that are shaping the
future, and use them to create new value for your
firm and your clients.”
- Daniel Hood, Editor-in-Chief, Accounting
Today

• Anticipation
• Strategic Thinking
• External Awareness
• Vision
• Continuous Learning
• Innovation
• Creativity
• Problem Solving
• Prioritization
• Business Acumen
• Decisiveness
• Influencing/Persuading
• Emotional Intelligence
• Consensus Building
• Collaboration
• Inspiration
• Risk Management
• Communication
www.blionline.org/ao

ANTICIPATION
Strategic Thinking
External Awareness
Vision
Continuous Learning
Innovation
Creativity
Problem Solving
Prioritization
Business Acumen
Decisiveness
Influencing/Persuading
Emotional Intelligence
Consensus Building
Collaboration
Inspiration
Risk Management
The competency of “anticipation” actually includes a number of
competencies included in many of the top companies of today and
the CPA Profession as well.
Across these models, you'll see a common theme of "strategic
thinking," "innovation" and "leading change."
Many of these organizations build (and validate) fantastic
competency models and know what they want people to do.
The beauty of the Anticipatory OrganizationTM model is
that it offers a clear process that makes highly-abstract leadership
competencies attainable and trainable.
If an organization wants to make "strategic thinking" or "innovation"
a core competency, we can provide clear, trainable activities that
can be targeted to a wide range of learners (from individual
contributors to senior leadership).
We provide the bridge between the competency model and the
desired observable behaviors.
Anticipation –The Critical Competency

28 lessons – 4 modules – 1 hour/week
• Very short single-concept videos (mini TED Talks)
• Rapid application exercises
• Visual job aids to reinforce learning
Anticipatory Organization - First Nano Learning for Accounting
and Finance Professionals designed to learn more in less time

E-learning versus Traditional Learning
• $1 invested in e-learning
= $30 increase in
productivity
• 18% increase in employee
engagement
• Reduces learning time 25
to 60 percent
• Increases retention of
learning dramatically
• Keeps them productive
and able to self-pace
around busy schedules

17
Our MBA Express
and 8-Hour MBA
program were
featured in an
Inc. Magazine
column.
http://blionline.org/featured/mbaexpress/

http://www.blionline.org

XCM has:
• Global Presence with 350+
employees
• 500+ Customers
• 25,000+ Users
• 35% of the Top 100 CPA Firms
• More Than 2,000 Client
Accounting Businesses
XCM Solutions:
• Focus on Tax, Accounting,
Finance & Operations
Productivity
• For Businesses and Firms
• Browser & Device Agnostic
• Scalable Technology and
Resources
XCM’s Productivity Platform:
• 1,000,000+ Processes Annually
• Customers Report ~30%
Productivity Gains
• Over 140,000 Tax Returns
Processed
• Largest Tax Return was More Than
2,600 pages
Productivity Simply Enabled
with Offices in Boston, Bangalore & Chennai

Why Are We Overwhelmed and Disengaged? ASK
A QUESTION – Rank your top 2
Visibility
Control
Accountability
Flexibility
• I don’t know…where things sit, our progress, who has the work.
• I don’t have enough time.
• I have too much work, I can’t keep track of it all.
• I don’t know What to do.
• I don’t know How to do it.
• I’m not sure Who’s doing it.
• I have changing priorities.
• I can’t change the way we do things.

The XCM Productivity Enablement Platform is a solution
that’s indispensable for Tax, Accounting and Finance Executives.
Visit XCM at: xcmcorporate.com or xcmsolutions.com
From Overwhelmed to Energized
• Organizes the Chaos
• Creates a single thread of the truth for
ownership
• Manages tasks, resources, and deadlines
• Centralizes information across systems,
functions, and tasks
• Absorbs existing technology, without
disrupting your culture
What does Productivity Enablement look like for you?
Find out how this looks for you—contact:
Mike Sabbatis
Mike.Sabbatis@xcmsolutions.com
Tom Hood
Tom@macpa.org