The Morse code

The Morse code

Today's brilliant young accountants are missing something. RobbieCowan rediscovers the lost skills of old-style client management.

Like a good whiskey, old-school accountants blended their virtues and expertise into something that was at once charming, likeable, yet with an often fiery spirit which commanded a healthy respect. And like all good blenders, these qualities were handed down from generation to generation, and nurtured during the course of professional life. Like television’s Inspector Morse handing down his skills to the experienced but unimaginative Lewis, old hands often know the best approach.

The separation of technical abilities from other professional qualities is a relatively recent phenomenon. This trend was typified during the boom years of the 1980s when there was more work available than many firms could handle. No longer were the traditional professional qualities of client management and rain-making as highly valued. Increasingly, high value was being put on the intellectual and technical skill needed to churn out high volumes of high-quality work for largely anonymous clients.

Young talent

The professions face a crisis of confidence now accentuated by the old school retiring from practice. Younger partners, often promoted for their intellectual and technical abilities, may be less adept at managing client relationships and business development.

Perhaps even more worrying, they have not had the opportunity to develop the mentoring and management skills needed to train younger people in the practice at pre-partnership level. This makes for poor succession planning and raises the spectre of firms relying on a few seasoned rainmakers to generate revenue and manage key accounts.

Good relations

To make matters worse, clients (yes they do still exist) have noticed the gap. More and more clients are demanding to work with ‘like-minded people’, ‘someone who understands our business’ – and more are becoming increasingly discriminating in their selection of advisers. The irony is that in 1996 the client wants someone to talk to. They require professionals to challenge their thinking, to participate in management decision-making and to add value by developing creative and innovative solutions.

The modern professional may be likened to the immigrant son who fondly remembers the exotic flavours of his grandmother’s food. Yet despite his yearning he has neither the skill nor can he find the ingredients to reproduce her recipe. But for the aspiring accountant, reproducing this ‘flavour’ is no exercise in nostalgia. It is a direct response to two overwhelming commercial objectives. First, the market is demanding that professionals get out from behind their desks and engage with clients, consulting and advising them on the real issues they face in their businesses. This surely involves technical input but it also requires an ability to establish and develop strong bonds with clients, to consult and advise. The revenues flowing from providing added-value advice already represents a high proportion of fee income for many large firms.

Then there is the internal question of succession planning. The danger for today’s young professionals is that in all likelihood they have never sampled the ‘exotic flavours of granny’s food’. In many cases they do not have role models for effective client management. Even where those role models do exist, there is no framework for imparting these skills.

Accounting firms usually have highly structured training and development programmes; in fact, arguably some of the best of any profession.

Yet the weakness of these programmes is that most often they are not directed to nor do they attract the participation of partners, especially more senior partners. Consequently, junior professionals often have neither the role models nor the on-the-job support necessary to nurture non-technical skills. Also, the mechanisms for promotion and advancement often favour more measurable technical abilities. The structure and culture of many firms do not support the development of true client relationship skills at either senior or more junior levels.

Traditional roles

Stock solutions no longer apply. The solutions to the dilemma facing the professions will not be found in a vogue training initiative or an ad hoc development programme. A substantive realignment of practice development strategy is required. Typically, accountants approach the job by looking at what they can do and define their professional practice accordingly.

In a rapidly changing environment, the question asked should change to ‘what opportunities are created by evolving client needs?’. To answer this firms will need constantly to reassess client requirements, and identify both key areas of revenue growth and those skills necessary to achieve this growth. In this way they will be able to plan their development, ensuring they buy or develop the skills necessary to service market demands.

Priorities need to be redefined. In order to respond to the challenges ahead, accountants will be required to redefine the essence of their offering to the client. To do so will require a broadening of their skill base emphasising, for example, client-facing and communication skills, consulting, as opposed to advising, skills, client relationship management, and mediation and facilitation.

This will enable the accountant to approach clients with a clearer understanding of how the client’s business style and culture influences decision-making and how to respond accordingly. With this as a foundation, all development initiatives should strive firstly to be business-driven: ie the skills required should be driven by overall business objectives.

For this reason, structured feedback and information from clients should be added to internal perceptions of development priorities. General market trends should also be considered. The initiatives should also be top-down because the primary responsibility for developing junior professionals must lie with their senior colleagues. Rather than a devolved (send him on a training course) solution, the top-down approach helps create a vibrant intellectual environment in which client needs are brought into focus.

Moreover, it underlines the commitment of a partnership to change and establishes role models for more junior colleagues.

The format need not be formal training. One to one mentoring, think tanks and facilitation at senior level are powerful development tools. In each case the initiative should be adjusted to suit the individuals involved and the firm’s culture, however the principle of top-down development is non-negotiable.

Expert advice

Given some of the sensitivities involved, particularly at partner level, the assistance of an external expert is most often advisable. The added independence and confidentiality introduced offers a level of comfort to partners who after all will themselves be spearheading the development process.

There is no doubt that the professional firms who will succeed in the future will be those who are agile, responsive, with a clear set of values, yet not handcuffed to traditional roles. These firms will internally mirror the communication and management skills they seek to impart to their clients.

They will promote individual thinking, ensure the walls between departments are transparent from the outside and see departments as profit centres but not power blocks.

The culture will be centred on the customer rather than on finding ways to make the firm’s structures work. It will in addition focus on equipping partners and professionals to create, generate and develop business. It will distribute profits, recognising the individual’s overall contribution not only billable time. It will have the guiding belief that an obsession with quality will lead to revenue growth. Above all, it will be a culture that allows progressive definition and change to occur.

This is not a call on the nostalgia of days gone by. Although some of the skills we refer to have the status of fables, the idiom is entirely modern. The challenge for professionals is to link their outstanding technical skills with the ability to deliver these skills in uniquely human terms.

If ever confirmation were needed that the division of professional skills has outlived its usefulness, one only has to listen to the client. Uniquely and with irksome consistency, they have an instinctive talent for requesting that which we are most stretched to deliver.

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