Are you too busy to lead?

In a profession that has an entire season named for being busy, it’s no surprise when firm leaders find themselves bogged down in day-to-day tasks, unable to use their time productively for higher-level responsibilities.

But there are ways to get off the busy-ness treadmill, to begin moving ahead with the firm’s most important goals, to lead rather than do. Leadership coaches and firm leaders share their insights for busy season and the rest of the year. (See the sidebar “Steps Toward a Successful Busy Season,” at the bottom of this article.)

DISTINGUISHING TRAITS

Hardworking and detail-oriented, doers certainly seem well suited to the accounting profession. When they are in a leadership role, however, habits can stand in the way of doers doing the job of leading. These habits include:

• Staying in production mode with a list of tasks to check off.
• Focusing on activities and deadlines rather than end results. “You can be busy but not actually producing anything,” said Tamera Loerzel, a leadership coach and partner at ConvergenceCoaching.
• Getting caught up in reacting to new developments, large and small, because there’s been no time to anticipate and prepare for them.
• Doing all the steps on a project or micromanaging it rather than assigning some or all responsibilities and ownership to staff.

These doer tendencies must be tempered when in a leadership role. A leader needs to:

• Delegate tasks to the person best suited to completing them.
• Focus mainly on the firm’s larger near- and long-term goals rather than current tasks. “It’s not so much about the task, but about getting to your destination,” said Kristin Murray, CPA, managing shareholder at Weinstein Spira, an 85-employee firm in Houston.
• Develop a big-picture vision and set business priorities for their practice area and the overall business.

“Leaders should be working at their highest and best use and then teach everybody at all levels to do the same,” Loerzel said. (See the sidebar “What to Keep, Stop, Start,” at the bottom of this article.)

UNDERSTAND THE RISKS

When leaders fail to shake off tasks, the firm is like a ship with no captain, Murray said. “You’re just out there bobbing along,” she said. This leads to a number of potential consequences:

• A failure to prioritize leadership can mean losing sight of important initiatives, such as taking on new clients, creating a new service line, or recruiting and developing the firm’s people, said Renee Moelders, a leadership coach and partner at ConvergenceCoaching.
• Firms can miss out on additional services because leaders don’t have time to build deeper relationships with clients, understand their priorities, and identify additional needs.
• Turnover may climb if staff members who lack access to leaders miss out on growth opportunities.

ESTABLISH EXPECTATIONS

How can leaders rise above the busy work? Documenting the problem is one answer. At 150-employee Ketel Thorstenson in Rapid City, S.D., the CEO and tax service line leader reviews partners’ total hours annually to analyze issues including how many hours were used on underlying tax detail work, how many were devoted to review and consulting, and how many were spent on other projects and administrative roles. The firm then works with partners to set goals for moving away from the preparation work and into more consulting, review, and mentoring.

Ketel Thorstenson is also working proactively to have managers also shift their mindsets away from a focus on preparation before they become partners, including providing them with leadership training, according to partner Michelle Minnerath, CPA. “[Doing the underlying detail work] right now is comfortable for them, so we have to get them out of their comfort zone,” she said.

Delegation of lower-level work is another critical part of the process, said Whit Addicks, CPA, a partner with Addicks CPA Firm LLP, an eight-person practice in Knoxville, Tenn. Last summer, he calculated the number of hours he would need to finish the work on his plate and found that it would require 150% of his available time. That led to a greater focus on delegation, including discouraging staff from relying on partners to guide a process and urging partners and managers not to jump in when a project hits a roadblock.

Proper communication is a particularly critical step for delegation. It’s important to give both staff and clients a clear sense of vision, priorities, expectations, and timelines, and to clarify which tasks or responsibilities are appropriate for leadership and which should be handled by staff. “Leaders work on issues that are important but not urgent,” Moelders said, “and communication is one of those issues.”

Guidelines for task ownership should also be clear. “Tell people that you expect them to own a responsibility through completion, when the work is client-ready,” Loerzel said.

Leaders should also provide continual feedback to staff on their job performance, acknowledging accomplishments and providing constructive criticism in a timely and specific manner. When leaders are too caught up in day-to-day concerns to offer input on employee performance, staff members are unsure how to improve their work. “They find out about problems during performance reviews instead of in March when they could have adjusted what they were doing for the remainder of the year,” Loerzel said. As a result, leaders then must set aside their own responsibilities and correct or rework staff output, she said.

MANAGE YOUR TIME

Part of being a leader is about protecting your time while still being open to your team. Murray takes control of her schedule by prohibiting meetings during certain periods. She may still allow some meetings, but placing limits gives her greater control over whether and when they will happen. “That’s one guardian of my time,” she said. To assess her productivity, Murray typically looks back over the previous week to see what she has accomplished for herself and the business, how effective she’s been in managing her people, and whether she was able to progress toward her goals.

Addicks finds it easier to lean into leadership responsibilities when he and his partner, Kathy Seagrist, CPA, are intentional about allocating time for strategic planning. There’s a tendency to postpone this type of planning until after you clear the next hurdle, he noted, but that may never happen when there is a new deadline around every corner. The two partners meet weekly to identify and consider ways to address longer-term issues for the firm. They try to maintain the meetings even during busy season.

“Taking an hour to stop and look at the big picture helps to refocus and redirect priorities,” Addicks said. “And, when the deadline passes, you are prepared to make the best use of the available time for new initiatives.” Main considerations include serving clients, who won’t get the best service if the firm is only reacting to circumstances, while also ensuring firm members can have an enjoyable and fulfilled lifestyle.

The ultimate goal is to achieve sustainable growth.

MAINTAIN CONTACT

While stepping back and getting a big-picture view is important, Murray also noted that she gets some of her best ideas in conversations with others. “Sometimes hearing people talk about their problems will spark an idea I hadn’t thought of before,” Murray said. “If you’re busy all the time, you miss that.”

She takes several steps to create a culture that will ensure she is aware of her team’s ideas and concerns. At “Coffee With the Managing Shareholder” meetings, for example, people are encouraged to share their ideas and observations about the firm and their own work. Murray also attends firm-sponsored lunches and other activities. Knowing that many people may be reluctant to approach her, she asks the firm’s in-house coaches — who mentor and help develop team members — to encourage the staff to do so. She also asks firm members, including her accounting manager and HR director, to point out ways in which she is letting her time be stolen or wasted. “I’m pretty transparent and pretty thick-skinned,” she said.

Addicks believes failure to maintain contact with team members is one indicator that a leader has gotten too busy. “It’s hard to delegate when you can’t communicate your expectations and be accessible to staff,” he said.

He and his partner meet one-on-one with each staff person for half-hour weekly meetings throughout the year to address questions or issues and assess progress on their assignments. The team members create the agenda and lead the meeting, and partners offer feedback and answer questions.

“They’re not passing work back to you, as sometimes happens, but letting you know how they’re dealing with the process and getting your input,” he said. The meetings also help the partners identify new responsibilities that they can easily teach staff to take on. This type of contact “is an opportunity to remove roadblocks and also determine who’s checking in with clients and what they’re hearing,” Loerzel said.

CLIENT ACCEPTANCE MATTERS

For all firms, and smaller firms in particular, poorly defined client acceptance policies can also undermine leadership efforts. Providing clients with the highest level of service will require taking on only those clients who will advance the practice in some way, Moelders said.

Attractive clients may include those who offer a wide range of service opportunities or access to a new industry or size of business or a strong referral network. Practitioners who don’t set client acceptance standards are more likely to get bogged down in work with less chance to provide oversight or to focus on the most valuable clients, she said.

LEADERS REQUIRED IN CHANGING TIMES

At a time when the profession is having an ongoing discussion about the need for a changing firm business model, leaders must make time to address big-picture issues, challenges, and opportunities, according to Moelders. Tackling business model changes requires leadership and can pay great benefits to team retention and client satisfaction in the long run.

Steps toward a successful busy season

Leading rather than doing throughout the year can help owners lay the foundation for a more supportive and less stressful busy season. Specific leadership steps that firms take during peak times include:

• Michelle Minnerath, CPA, a partner with Ketel Thorstenson, said the firm keeps an open-door policy that enables staff to bring questions or issues to leaders (unless they’re in a meeting) and ensures the problems receive a follow-up.
• Whit Addicks, CPA, a partner with Addicks CPA Firm LLP, said the firm emphasizes the importance of a positive busy season by discussing the topic in weekly firm meetings. “I think that makes a big difference in everybody’s mindset,” he said. Among the topics the firm has discussed are ways to finalize lingering projects to take them off the team’s plate and documenting processes with flow charts. “When everybody knows the whole process, they can look for ways to jump in and help,” he said.
• The firm of Kristin Murray, CPA, caps hours during busy season at 55 hours per week, and after busy season there is no mandatory overtime. The firm also provides flexibility for team members who need an alternative schedule and for those with a one-time need to adjust their hours. “Because we value our people and would not want to lose them, we encourage them to come talk to us” in these situations, Murray said.
• Addicks’ firm brought in a nutritional consultant to discuss positive eating choices during stressful times. Although CPAs may enjoy the satisfaction of meeting deadlines and growing their practices, “if we don’t take care of ourselves and look out for each other, then it’s not sustainable,” he said.
• Firms can minimize stress by being open to feedback on process improvement and using technology to enhance efficiency and productivity, said Tamera Loerzel, a leadership coach and partner at ConvergenceCoaching.
• Loerzel also recommended that leaders recognize their employees for accomplishments such as handling a crisis or providing good communication with a client. “These acknowledgements reinforce the understanding of what leaders expect and give team members an incentive for meeting those expectations,” she said. “The leader sets the tone at the top and supports the message that you want to send.”

What to keep, stop, start

In their workshops, ConvergenceCoaching consultants emphasize thinking about what to keep, stop, or start by asking:

• What am I going to keep doing that will enable me to work at my highest and best use?
• What do I need to stop doing to make that possible? This can mean more delegation or simply dropping tasks or protocols that are no longer worthwhile.
• What can I start doing? Proactively meeting with clients to strengthen your relationship and identify new service options is one example.

About the author

Anita Dennis is a New Jerseybased freelance writer. 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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