Leading change in accounting: A step-by-step guide

Do you want to find more passion, connection, and fulfillment through your work? Do you want to foster deeper levels of trust and openness and cultivate stronger relationships with your people and clients?

Do you want to help build a stronger, healthier, human-centric profession?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you are not alone. Things are changing fast in the accounting profession, and what got us here won’t get us where we want to go.

WHY DO WE NEED TO EVOLVE?

Amid advances in technology, changes in client expectations, pipeline challenges, and the impact of private equity, we find the ground is shifting beneath our feet. As leaders in this profession, we must evolve in the following ways:

• We must learn to handle the ambiguity and uncertainty that comes with change. We must not only embrace change for ourselves, but we must also support change in others to create more human-centric organizations.
• As technology continues to automate more routine aspects of our business, we must increasingly rely on our human skills to lead and develop others. These human skills include trust, empathy, authenticity, awareness, and connectedness.
• We must create an environment where people feel safe expressing their desires, ideas, and challenges and know their contributions are seen and valued. The accounting profession needs diverse perspectives, opinions, and experiences to come up with creative, innovative solutions to our challenges.

CHANGE REQUIRES 3 THINGS

Three components are necessary to make meaningful change: your mindset, your skill set, and your habits.

Let’s start with the most obvious element of change and, perhaps, the easiest to accomplish — your skill set. If you want different results, you must learn a new skill, technique, or way of doing something. Most of us are comfortable with learning new skills because you can easily find a training course, read a book or blog post, or even watch a YouTube video.

Although you may invest significant time, energy, and money into building your skill set, your new skills aren’t valuable until you start using them consistently. Sustainable change requires you to integrate these new skills into your day-today work. This is where the power of habits comes in. When you create ongoing practices around your new skills, you convert what you learned into everyday change that sticks.

The most neglected component of change is your mindset. A mindset is a set of beliefs or attitudes your mind creates based on your upbringing, experiences, and the accumulation of (mostly unchecked) thoughts you’ve absorbed over time. A mindset is a lens through which you see the world. It is the birthplace of your actions. You can learn all the new skills in the world and attempt to implement new habits, but if you haven’t changed your beliefs and attitudes around them, any change you make will not last long.

When we embrace a new mindset around change, it makes the implementation of skills and habits easier. So, let’s start there and explore three core beliefs conscious leaders hold around change:

1. Reset your expectations around change.
2. Change starts with you.
3. Ground yourself in love. (Please note that the use of the word love here does not refer to romantic love. At Intend2Lead, we define love as 100% acceptance of who we are and a deep appreciation for who we are becoming.)

Reset your expectations around change 

Oftentimes, change feels so difficult because we hold unrealistic expectations about it. When you better understand the process of change, you can shift your mindset and hold more reasonable expectations.

Let’s explore a classic natural example of transformation — a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly — to shed more light on the change process.

The life of a caterpillar is quite good; it spends most of its life eating. Then, when it gets large enough, it stops eating, hangs upside down from a plant, and spins a silky cocoon or chrysalis.

Within that chrysalis, the caterpillar releases enzymes that dissolve cells in its muscles, digestive system, and other inner organs, forming a sort of caterpillar soup. A drop in certain hormones wakes up dormant cells that begin to build the parts that form an adult butterfly. Eventually, the butterfly emerges and flies away.

A butterfly’s metamorphosis teaches us three important concepts about the change process that can help us shift our expectations:

• Change takes time. It is a process, not an event. Take it day by day, one small step at a time. Instead of assessing your progress moment to moment (which can be disheartening when you inevitably make mistakes or take steps back every now and then), look at the long arc of your progress over time. Change is an iterative process and necessarily includes mistakes, struggles, and stumbles along the way. Instead of being disappointed by these moments, ask yourself, “What can I learn from this?” Let your answer inform you of your next step forward.
• Change is messy and feels chaotic at times. There will be times when you feel like caterpillar soup. When the process feels hard, instead of doubting yourself and asking, “What am I doing wrong?”, remind yourself that mess and chaos are necessary stages in the process of change. Allow yourself grace. Take breaks to rest and recharge.
• To create true change, you must let go of what is. The caterpillar’s life was comfortable. It got to eat (a lot). Yet, it would never become a butterfly if it stuck with the status quo. Caterpillars may not have a choice when it comes to transformation, but humans certainly do. Sometimes, we cling so tightly to who we are and what we know today (our comfort zone) that we miss out on transformative opportunities. Change requires you to let go of who you are and the way things are today, so you can create a new, elevated version of yourself. You must have the courage to wander into the unknown. Just like the caterpillar has the cells to build the parts of a butterfly within it when it goes into the chrysalis, trust that you have all you need within you today to successfully emerge on the other side of change tomorrow (even if you can’t see or feel it right now).

Change starts with you

Leadership is an inside-out game that starts with asking yourself:

• Who are you?
•  What do you love about yourself and what you do?
• How can you bring more of yourself to what you do?
•  What do you really want — for yourself, for others, for your organization?

When you uncover the answers to these questions and increase your awareness and appreciation of yourself, you will become a better leader. You’ll cultivate a fuller sense of self that shows up at work and inspires others to do the same. This creates a ripple effect for teams and organizations — and ultimately for productivity and results.

Ground yourself in love

Vital change is needed for the sustainability of the accounting profession — a shift from fear to love.

Fear can certainly motivate us in the short term, but it limits our long-term potential. Motivation by fear requires significant energy and eventually leads to burnout. Fear incentivizes people to play it safe, stay small, and get stuck in what they already know. In contrast, love energizes and gives us the courage to explore the unknown and create new possibilities.

At Intend2Lead, we define love as 100% acceptance of who we are and a deep appreciation for who we are becoming. The “we” in this definition extends not just to others but to ourselves. When we believe in that bigger version of another person and their capacity to change, we can hold the vision for them, even when they sometimes struggle to believe it for themselves. We give them the opportunity to live into our belief about them and their capabilities.

Instead of pushing change on others, ask yourself, “How can I nurture change in myself and others?” Instead of motivating change, ask yourself, “How can I inspire change? How can I use empathy to encourage another person’s innate capacity for change?”

4 STEPS TO MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN

Once you lean into these three core beliefs of the change mindset, you are ready to begin taking actions to make change happen.

Step 1: Craft your vision of success 

Paint a picture of some point in the future that feels good to you but still stretches you enough to dream big. The following questions may be supportive:

• What do you really want?
•  What positive change have you created?
• What has brought you joy and fulfillment?
• What does a dream day look like?
• What does “wildly successful” look like?
• What difference have you made at your organization? In your life? To others?
• Why does this matter to you?

Step 2: Set 90-day goals 

Keep your goals clear and simple. Choose one personal development goal (focus on self) and one leadership goal (focus on others). You can always add a new goal once you exceed your initial goals.

• How will you measure success 90 days from now?
• What are your success indicators?
• How will you know when you get there?

Step 3: Create a specific action plan

• What leadership skills will you develop to help you reach your goals? How will you develop them?
• What daily or weekly habits will you adopt to support your progress toward your chosen goals?
• What resources will you tap into to support your growth? Remember you are not alone. Resources could be people (a coach, mentor, leaders at your organization, peers/ colleagues, family/friends, etc.) or things (books, articles, technology tools/apps, etc.).
• Put dates on your plan.
  • When and how will you develop the new skills?
  • When will you implement the new habits?

Step 4: Create a maintenance plan

• What do you need to hold yourself accountable?
• How often will you check in with yourself to evaluate your progress?
• Who can you enroll to support your success? Do you need an accountability partner(s)?
• How will you support yourself when things get hard?
• Remember that your vision, goals, and plan will evolve. Hold them lightly, in a spirit of learning.

If you didn’t meet a goal, ask yourself:

• What happened?
• What can I learn from that?
• What needs to evolve (the vision, the goal, and/or the plan)?

Once you answer these questions, you’ll have a detailed, step-by-step change plan. Then, take consistent action, day in and day out. Refresh your plan every 90 days, updating your vision and resetting your goals. You’ll be amazed at how much progress you can make over a relatively short period.

TAKE THE FIRST STEPS

The accounting profession is at a pivotal point. We need leaders who can better understand themselves, take care of themselves, and be authentic. We need leaders who can truly understand others and what is needed to tackle our toughest challenges. We need leaders who can create an environment of true belonging and deeper purpose. We need you. Are you ready to evolve with us?

About the author

Sarah Elliott, CPA, is an executive leadership coach and co-founder of Intend2Lead, a leadership development company that coaches accountants to access the “Dimension of Possible.” She holds a graduate certificate in Executive and Professional Coaching from the University of Texas at Dallas and is a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Jeff Drew at Jeff.Drew@aicpa-cima.com.

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