How are you feeling about your job today?  Are you burned out?  Do you do an incredible amount of work just to keep your company competitive?  What frustrates you most?  Are you underappreciated or undervalued?  Respect, do you get the respect you feel you deserve?  How can you get more respect? What else can you do?

I really love my job.  I believe in our company and the services and products we provide. It’s a great company but maybe there is another opportunity somewhere else? Wait, if I love what I am doing and the company I work for, why would I consider looking anywhere else?

We all like to feel that we are of value and productive within our company and among our co-workers.  So what can I do to get the respect I desire?  The answer is, make myself invaluable to the company, even irreplaceable.  So, you don’t like everything about your job? If you make yourself invaluable, your boss may eventually take notice and a new opportunity will come.  Be the person your company can’t live without. Be a top producer. Be different. Be the "go-to” person.  Make yourself irreplaceable!

In the book Invaluable: The Secret to Becoming Irreplaceable by Dave Crenshaw, he follows a fictional character who is unhappy with his new job but finds wisdom from his visits with his mentor who challenges him to become invaluable, even irreplaceable to his company.

What are two things that would need to change for you to love your job?  More money?  More respect? More authority?  More responsibility? What have you done to merit any of those changes?  First learn all you can about your current job.  You went to college to learn your industry and field, however, you did not learn how to work in your position in your firm. Learn all you can about your current position and about how to become more valuable within that role. 

It’s important to understand that the amount of respect, money or responsibility you want will be in direct proportion to: 1) the demand for what you do; 2) your ability to do it; and 3) the difficulty of replacing you. You can only control the job you do and the quality at which you do it. So do your job better than anyone else.

How do you become invaluable or irreplaceable?  Reduce the less valuable activities you perform and focus on the most valuable activities. Your most valuable activities are the things you do that provide the most value to your company.  When you focus on your most valuable activities, both your ability and the difficulty of replacing you are increased. 

Which activities are you doing now that are wasting time? Which activities are just busywork and aren’t really contributing to the overall success of the company? You may need to discuss this with your manager/boss. Get their opinion.  What is it that you do that makes you of most value to your boss? What separates you from all the other employees?   Dave Crenshaw referred to these as:  

• MVA’s: Most Valuable Activities
• LVA’s: Less Valuable Activities

An example of MVA’s and LVA’s are expense reports. Expense reports for my boss, Sandra Wiley, COO and Shareholder at Boomer Consulting are LVA’s.  For Sandra, time spent on expense reports is a non-revenue generating activity, a low priority activity and not in line with her best abilities.  For me, as the accounting administrator, they are a MVA.  In order to invoice clients in a timely manner, I need to receive the expense reports.  Solution: I create and maintain the expense reports for Sandra; submit them to her for additions and approval.  We both get what we need in a timely manner and we both become more efficient by focusing on our unique abilities.  Now that makes both of us more valuable.

Again, the 3 things that determine how valuable we are: 

1. Demand for what you do 
2. Ability to do it
3. Irreplaceability or difficulty of replacing you
   

You have little control over demand, so you need to focus on your ability to do something (_____ you fill in the blank) and the difficulty of replacing you.  When you focus on your MVA’s, both your ability to do whatever it is and the difficulty of replacing you are increased.

Have you considered how your firm is replaceable?  How can you make your firm irreplaceable to your clients? What are you doing to make your firm the accounting firm of choice? What can you do today to make your client’s view your firm as irreplaceable?

Traps you may encounter are anything that causes you to spend more time than you should in an LVA. Things like interruptions, random assignments, getting caught up in minor details and just not knowing how to delegate properly.  You’re naturally drawn toward them because they are usually simple and easy to replace and take less effort.  MVA’s take more effort to get going, more practice, more skill and more inertia.  The LVA’s are like a sand bag pulling your balloon down vs. the MVA’s which are lifting you up as you focus on your unique abilities and activities. So when you have more activities, it’s harder to focus on the most valuable ones.  How do you get out of this spiral? You may need to offload some sandbags.  

Offloading activities to consider:

• Personal systems: Review your daily mode of operation.  Arrive at work; login to your computer; check with a co-worker (chit chat); make coffee; check with another co-worker, etc. Early in my career with Boomer Consulting, I started the habit of chit-chatting with Sandra first thing in the morning until finally she said, "Sue, I am into my work day and this chit-chatting takes away from my productivity.”  What a slap in the face and I thank her for doing so. I realize I was doing one of those "just wasting time” activities mentioned above that is not adding to my value with the company and certainly not making me irreplaceable. 
• What about busywork activities?  Many are a necessity but prioritizing and combining several busywork activities into a set time period increases your productivity.  An example is email.  Everyone receives notices daily, hourly, etc.; I could stop every time I receive an email but this would be an interruption.  Interruptions reduce efficiencies in work produced. Schedule a time once an hour to review and respond to emails. When you focus on your MVA, both your ability to do whatever it is and the difficulty of replacing you are increased. 

What are some of your busy work activities that could be more efficiently managed? Other activities to review for offloading would be business processes, time management and delegating specific jobs. The last and most costly would be to hire additional staff.

Striving to be irreplaceable is about taking control of your own destiny. It’s up to you to evaluate your position within your firm and determine what needs to be done to increase your value.  Take charge and start becoming irreplaceable today!

"Plans are worthless, but planning is everything,” said President Dwight Eisenhower.  Having served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces during the invasion of Normandy, the largest amphibious invasion in world history, he should be considered an expert on planning.  Eisenhower explained that a plan’s weakness was that it couldn’t account for the unexpected.  In contrast, the ability to plan was indispensable because it prepared you for dealing with change as it occurred over time.

Eisenhower’s point was obviously not that plans were worthless but rather that the bigger value exists in the process, not the outcome.  The outcome (the plan) is usually a list of assigned tasks with schedules and a ration of resources.  It’s like a map and if it’s perfectly constructed and completed, then perhaps you at arrive where you want to be.  But what if the world changes as you execute your plan?  A map can’t anticipate road closures due to emergencies nor can it guarantee that your destination will still offer what it promised when you set out.

In this article I hope to resell you on the value of investing time in developing a plan for your company and also give you three tips which will make your plans more effective.  As a first step, let’s consider some of the features a plan.

A plan is a tool for communication.  It communicates goals and priorities.  It can be used for marketing and to attract resources such as talent and investors.  At the end of its life it can be used to measure accountability and serve as a historical record.

Now think about some of the benefits that the planning process delivers regardless of whether or not you accomplish all the goals of the plan:

1. Since it is a proactive process rather than a reactive process, it helps you to identify and achieve what you really want – in part by prioritizing goals so you aren’t wasting resources on, or being distracted by, less important tasks.
2. It gives you an opportunity to address and solve issues that otherwise would be too easy to ignore – at least until they festered into bigger issues.
3. It provides an opportunity to brainstorm new innovations and discover new opportunities.
4. Participation in the process develops ownership – the more inclusive your process, the more buy-in you develop.  When your team feels ownership they are inspired and motivated to be more productive.

There are many techniques that can be used in the planning process in order to increase the return on your investment.  I want to remind you of three that are sometimes undervalued.

Simplify
If your plan involves other people then its main purpose is to serve as a tool for communication – and the easier it is to understand, the more people you will be able to attract as an audience.  In math it’s called solving to the lowest common denominator.  In pop music it’s called finding a hook.  In sales it’s called giving an elevator speech.

It is our practice to simplify any plan into something that can be printed on just one page.  Since you really can only effectively work on one thing at a time, the one page plan serves as a constant reminder as to which tasks should be prioritized the highest – especially if it is displayed in a prominent location on your desk!

How much detail should it contain?  While multi-year planning is conducted by our owners with the input of key staff members, our entire company works together to develop an annual company plan.  We allow one level of "nesting” initiatives within the annual plan but each team member must develop and execute a personal 90-day plan that relates to the initiatives of the annual plan.  Each plan keeps the detail level to about one page – any more detail than that and you’re just boring each other.

"Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly,” attributed to Plato.

Another related quote is easier to document:

"The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective," attributed to Warren Buffett.

An important benefit of this process is that your plan becomes a protective shield to keep you from being assigned "pet projects” that don’t benefit the entire company.

Practice
"A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals,” attributed to Larry Bird.

We live in a society that expects immediate and perfect results.  It would be disingenuous if this article led you believe that there are simple steps which guarantee success at developing or executing your plan.  The process of planning and the execution of the plan are both skills that can be improved.  The value of practice is often overlooked.

The process of planning is an exercise in change management and conflict resolution.  To thoroughly capitalize on the strengths of a team, participants must be willing to consider thoughts that are different from their own and be able to build a consensus that first serves the group – which often requires concessions from the individuals involved.  A skilled, independent facilitator will maximize participation – and thereby buy-in – so don’t miscalculate the value of a practiced, professional facilitator.

There’s also a tendency to be optimistic during planning sessions – in part because it’s an opportunity to express innovation and in part because it’s easier to quantify tangible rather than intangible costs.  It’s easy to build a plan without remembering that many new ideas require training and practice in order to become efficient.  If you neglect the need for practice, your resulting plan may exceed your capabilities and better ideas may be abandoned because of faulty comparisons.

"I had to spend countless hours, above and beyond the basic time, to try and perfect the fundamentals,” attributed to Julius Erving.

Evaluate
"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”  Colin Powells quoted in The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (2003) by Oren Harari.

Repetition alone does not guarantee improved results.  If you practice something badly you will just become good at doing that thing poorly.  Frequent review and evaluation helps you to stay on the course you desire.  Reviews and evaluations are inevitable but it is our experience that frequency and attitude affect effectiveness. 

An evaluation should be a positive experience.  If you take the time to review completed tasks you will normally have more accomplishments than failures – and even a failure in the short-term may actually be an important step in a long-term success.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work,” attributed to Thomas Edison.

At the end of its lifetime a plan serves as a template for accountability – which is good – but evaluations during the plan serve as opportunities for coaching and accurate improvement.  The more frequent the evaluations, the less the likelihood of major errors.

"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure,” attributed to Abraham Lincoln.

Plan to Grow
Simplify, practice and evaluate.  Add these tools to your planning process and continue to grow. 

"Have a plan. Follow the plan, and you'll be surprised how successful you can be.  Most people don't have a plan.  That's why it's is easy to beat most folks,” attributed to Paul "Bear" Bryant.

Are you feeling more confident in the economy?  Many are saying they are cautiously optimistic and the overall barometer is edging up, albeit slowly.  Are you starting to have visions of the "old days” when you were so swamped with new clients that you could not keep up with the demand?  Remember also your desire to hire new staff and your inability to find anyone at any level.  We were hanging on to our staff by paying signing bonuses, increasing our benefit packages, insuring they had valuable training and even offering on-site massages during tax season. 

The climate changed and many of those benefits and good feelings went away.  Firms began to get more conservative.  We managed expenses more closely, laid off staff, the massages went away and we became more focused on solid firm management principles. Now that we are starting to feel a little relief, will you be tempted to let go of those solid management principles?  I would encourage you to relax, but not let go.  Keep your eye on the strategies that will become a part of your long-term culture, not just a part of a temporary strategy.  

Let’s look at the foundational strategies that might have become a habit over the past few years that you should hold tight to as the recovery continues:

1. Focus on strategic firm initiatives:  Firms have worked hard to look at specific strategies that will drive firm growth, increase top talent, and improve processes as well as develop technology initiatives that support the overall firm strategies.  The plan was the roadmap that was used to maneuver through the tough times and now will guide you through the more prosperous ones.  
2. Focus on internal and external relationships:  Leadership in firms have always known that the firm is built on strong client relationships and most have subscribed to the idea that strong internal relationships are necessary also.  That formula is certainly not retreating now that the economy is beginning to recover.  Emphasis on internal and external relationship building is essential to the continued growth of the firm.  
3. Focus on creating value not just selling the next deal:  Growth is always a part of the public accounting practice, and during economic stress, the firms natural tendency is to have a laser focus on growth strategies.  The growth strategies must continue with the same intensity and commitment by the leadership group.  
4. Focus on new opportunities:  When stressful times are in our midst, we search outside the box for new opportunities out of desperation to find new services and new streams of revenue.  Don’t let that intensity stop simply because the pressure is off.  Keep encouraging your partners and team to look for new opportunities that will give your firm a vision to pursue.  
5. Focus on progress, not perfection:  When the whole world is spinning out of control and the firms stays flat everyone pats you on the back and says you are doing ok.  Now that the world is slowing down, some will have a tendency to move into the "we have to get back to 20% per year growth – NOW!”.  Slow down and remember that progress is good and some growth is far better than flat.  Perfection is a dream that can soon turn into a nightmare, so continued improvement is your goal.  
6. Focus on your talents and your ability to collaborate:  We are a profession that started out as a group of rough individualists and have learned that teams, collaboration and groups are far more efficient and effective to complete projects.  The momentum exists, so continue the path and expand the groupthink that is working so well in your firm already.  
7. Focus on being grateful:  Gratitude for team members, clients, projects, peers and partner group becomes much clearer when times are tough.  Work hard to continue to see the amazing resources around you and make a special effort to tell them how grateful you are to have them in your circle of influence.  
8. Focus on creativity:  Creativity within the firm often comes from a position of stress, and the firm may have developed some creative new processes, services, task forces and projects over the last few years. Don’t let the creativity stop.  Encourage your entire workforce to look for ways to improve the firm creatively by finding ways to do things faster, cheaper, easier and better.  
9. Focus on leadership:  Firm leaders have been forced to give up some control, responsibility and authority to other talented individuals in the firm with the reduction in workforce and the emergence of top talent at the manager level.  Leadership exists throughout the firm so don’t back off of that emerging trend now.  Continue the strategy of developing your top talent into the future leadership group in your firm.  
10. Focus on technology solutions:  We all realize that technology is an accelerator for almost every initiative in the firm.  Technology sometimes will ebb and flow in the firm if the leadership group does not see it as an asset. Don’t let technology become a simple expense line on the P&L statement.  Insure that it stays on the asset column on the spreadsheet.  

This article was originally published in the August 2012 issue of CPA Practice Advisor. 

We are headed toward a massive transition in leadership at firms across the country as the current leadership gets closer to retirement.  Some firms have already successfully transitioned, others are preparing, and then, there are those that don’t yet have any plans in place.  The transition discussion is abuzz at the conferences I’ve recently attended – both among attendees and speakers.  And, tensions are high between the very generations whose roles are about to shift, which is extremely concerning.  

The State of the State
Current leadership often complains they can’t find quality candidates to fill the pipeline.  Pointing to a generation that doesn’t want to put in the hours or work for it.  They use words like lazy and entitled to describe them and say they waste time using technologies like mobile and social media.  The younger generation uses terms like out-of-touch and archaic to describe the people they will succeed.  They point to a need to do things differently to succeed in the future and some suggest throwing out the old model completely.

So who’s right?  I’ll show you here how the correct answer lies somewhere in the middle.   

Listen Up Emerging Leaders
I’ve been hearing an increasing number of people from my generation (the emerging partner group) spreading a message that the old model is antiquated and needs to be replaced by completely new thinking.  I agree that we need to do things differently but a complete reboot isn’t necessary.  Emerging leaders needs to step back and understand a few things about those that have come before us.  

• First, they have years of wisdom and professional experience that we can and should tap into if we are smart business people.  
• We also need to appreciate everything they’ve done to set up the opportunity that is currently ahead.  It would not exist if not for the hard work they put in throughout their careers.  
• We need to realize it’s hard to let go of something you’ve been doing your whole life.  We may have to temper our expectations of how quickly we are going to ascend in the firm.  
• We also need to present our new ideas with respect and ask how they fit in with current leadership’s view of the environment.  
• Finally, don’t push too hard.  This is an emotional transition that takes time.  They need to work through it personally before they can work share the plan or roadmap with anyone else.

Tips for Current Leaders
Seasoned professionals must think back to earlier in their own careers so they can better empathize with what the emerging professionals are thinking, feeling and doing.  A few years ago I listened to Bill Reeb speak on generations – he read an article to the audience that listed all the gripes current management had with the next generation.  Only after the audience (made up mostly of seasoned professionals) had finished their wave of head nods in agreement did he reveal that the article was from many years ago and was actually written about the Baby Boomer generation.  Truth be told, you’ve been in their shoes and, likely, someone judged your perceived intentions (or lack thereof) at some point in your career.  So let’s look for the positives that we can leverage to move forward toward a successful transition.

• First and foremost, the up-and-coming leaders bring a fresh perspective that is important to the future of the firm.  They also bring new ideas and skills to the table as well; especially in the area of technology.  Leverage these to the firm’s advantage.
• Open your mind to new ways of thinking and doing things.  Considering how these ideas might fit into how you’ve traditionally done things.
• Coach & mentor young professionals but also challenge them.  This involves stepping back, which can be emotional and difficult to do but is necessary to the transition.  

Finding a Middle Ground…TOGETHER
Although Thoreau wasn’t referring to the accounting industry when he said "things don’t change, we change,” I think this quote is a great way to approach the coming of ages.  The sooner we stop throwing daggers at each other based on what the other perceives to be wrong and start focusing on the positive aspects we all bring to the table, the quicker we can start blending our perspectives and planning the transition – together.  This building tension and divide must stop.  It will derail, delay and even destruct the impending and important shift in leadership, and we must all come together now to ensure a successful transition. 

Put an action plan in writing that spells out the transition timeline, what/when activities will be transitioned and how approaches can be melded.  This will probably require many emerging leaders to ‘tap the brakes’ and current leaders to ‘hit the gas,’ but working together you can figure it out.