In accountancy, as with any business, the skill level of your team is not always reflected in their productivity. You may have the brightest accountants and bookkeepers, but they’ll still be rushing at year end, pulling their hair out with frustration over your clients – why do some of your clients routinely ignore all of your requests for information? Or perhaps they make silly mistakes because of the time pressure which can be costly for your clients and catastrophic for your reputation.
So how can you help this? How can you harness the power of your team and become a well oiled accounting machine?
Does your team know what’s expected of them?
Your people systems and the way you manage your team is just as important as your ability to complete a set of accounts. We’ve worked with excellent accountants, helping them to improve their productivity and systemise their business. The problems are rarely around the skill set of their team, but around the culture of the business, the way the team are managed both by the Business Owner and the Managers within the firm, and the consistency with which they operate.
Do you have targets set within your business and are these enforced? As an example, do you have targets in place for the completion of X amount of tax returns each month, so that December and January aren’t the absolute worst months? How do you measure this?
How motivated are your team? Do you have regular performance reviews with them and listen to their thoughts and ideas for improvement?
Do your clients know what you expect when working with them? (Yes, it is ok to tell them!)
When you take on new clients, and meet with your current clients do you make it crystal clear when you need their information by? Do you explain to them in plain words how important to is and how much more organised and less stressful it will be to operate in advance? Do you have reminder emails, automations to run this?
Perhaps you could build into your teams’ targets – follow up on X amount of clients a week. You can create email templates that are ready to go which serve as reminders, and you can impose rewards for the clients who submit their information to you ahead of the deadline.
Imagine if you received all the information you needed 9, 10, 11 months ahead of the submission date, and that each of your team had a target of X amount of returns each month, with a view to finishing a month, or two months before the crazy hits?
Do you have plans in place for achieving your deadlines and goals?
Say you wanted to increase your client base by 50% in 5 years. Ask yourself what would need to be in position in three years for this to be on track. Then in 12 months. And finally in 90 days. We call this 3-1-90 planning and it really works to drive and motivate towards achieving your goals.
So let’s get planning, here’s why:
1. Helps you to spot opportunities
A consistent planning system, and planning calendar, forces you to step off the
hamster wheel once in a while and get your head up. It gets you to review your
progress to date – what’s worked well, what hasn’t, what lessons can be
learned. It provides space and time to think – about what you want to happen,
what might get in the way, how you can get round any obstacles. It opens you up
to opportunities, that you might otherwise miss.
2. Brings individuals and
teams together and breaks down silos
All too often, specialist teams, or individuals within a business can get lost
in their own little world, and not be able to see the value that others bring
to the business, or the challenges others face to get things done. Regular
planning creates the opportunity to bring people together from different areas
of the business to review the way work is done from the customer’s perspective
and make plans based on what is best for the whole business.
3. Creates a safe environment
for new and creative ideas
Meet ‘that’s not the way we do things round here’ – first cousin to, ‘we tried
that before, and it didn’t work’ It’s this type of statement that will prevent
the flow of ideas in your business, and even your best people will not put
their creative heads above the parapet if they know they’ll be shot down in
flames. Your planning system offers a structured way to talk openly about the
challenges facing your business, and ask for new and creative solutions to
overcome them.
4. Gives everyone the chance to
contribute
How
motivating and exciting to be part of something that is growing and achieving
success, thanks in part, to your contribution. Involve your team in your
planning, and you involve them in your Vision for the future – you give them
the opportunity to create it. How much more engaged do you think they will be?
How much more ownership do you think they will take?
5. Exposes your blind spots
We all have
them. We can all be blind to our own strengths and weaknesses, to our innate prejudices,
to other people’s talents and the value they add; and often we need others to
shine a light on our blind spots. It’s the same in business – we all see things
from our own view point, and benefit enormously from understanding how others
see things. Planning gives us a framework for this.
6. Puts the customer first
Life planning
puts you first. Business planning puts the customer first, and ensures that the
focus is on what’s best for the customer, building trust and ensuring that
everyone is focused on what really matters.
7. Keeps your products &
services relevant
It’s your
customers who decide whether your products are relevant to them or not, and it’s
your planning system that will ensure that you check in with them – that you
look for more innovative and effective ways to meet their needs and satisfy
their wants.
8. Builds a stronger
management team
Regular
planning, focused on the business as a whole, brings the management team
closer, and helps them to see the value – skills, experience and expertise – that
they each bring. It’s also a great way of developing them, teaching them to
focus on the end goal, and the strategies and tactics that will get you there.
9. Determines priorities
Your planning system is a key element in your continuous improvement cycle:
plan – implement – review – plan. You start the exercise looking at what’s
possible, and by the end it’s all about results. You understand your long term
goal and you’ve plotted your course to get there. Together you’ve agreed your priorities,
you’ve decided on your 90 day goals, you have your action plan, you know your
first step. It’s simple and it’s logical, and it’s all about getting the right
things done.
10. Builds ownership and
accountability
Any effective
plan assigns the who as well as the what, where, how and when. It gives
everyone ownership for their own little piece of the business – their role,
their goal, their action plan. Ownership and accountability are the key
differentiators between a regular team, and a high performing team. Your plan
will drive this.
Take time out to look in in your business and you’ll be amazed at what you’ll discover.
Marianne Page, For more information, please visit https://www.mariannepage.co.uk/