Bill Reeb talks with Steven Sacks on Management in the COVID Era

What this episode covers

CPA firms are ill-prepared for the new era of virtual, work-from-home partners and staff, according to Bill Reeb, a leading CPA firm practice consultant, in this conversation with CPA Trendlines contributor Steven Sacks. Management at all levels will need to adapt, Reeb says, requiring new processes and procedures.  But more than anything, it requires new metrics of productivity. And, most of all, new habits. After a painful, wrenching re-positioning, Reeb says, firms will emerge stronger, more agile, and more profitable than they were before. Sacks covers a lot of ground with Reeb, including: We have a lot of fictitious mechanisms we use as tools to manage. You can’t get away with what you’ve been doing to manage people in a remote-work environment. We really don’t know how to manage output from our staff in normal times. And it will be more difficult in this era of remote working. Management at all levels will need to adapt. It requires new processes and procedures. But more than anything, it requires new metrics of productivity. And, most of all, new habits. To build the right habits, we'll need the right systems. Systems to create single accountability, with one partner designated as responsible for each staffer. Firms are trying to move toward a more corporate model. Leadership is not clear when it communicates expectations. Firms need to cut the marginal workers and focus on the clients that really matter. Firms and staff need to address the fundamentals of blocking and tackling and listen to what the different generations in the firm have to say. If you want to run a good organization, you have to do the basic stuff. This is an opportunity for firms to take the hard decisions they may have been putting off They’ll be jettisoning marginal clients. And they should be looking at picking up some good talent. The influx of new talent will allow firms the running room to eliminate some lagging personnel. The result will be a marked shift from the matrix-management model. To a more corporate, top-down, command-and-control management. With more accountability at every level. And firms will emerge stronger, more agile, and more profitable than they were before.