june2021 - 35

BRIDGING THE GAP
6 Essential Measurements
of Firm Culture
SANDRA WILEY
President, Boomer Consulting, Inc.
sandra.wiley@cpapracticeadvisor.com
" In a growth culture, people build
their capacity to see through blind
spots; acknowledge insecurities and
shortcomings rather than unconsciously
acting them out; and spend
less energy defending their personal
value so they have more energy available
to create external value. How
people feel - and make other people
feel - becomes as important as how
much they know. "
It's easy for leaders to pay lip
service to building a supportive and
thriving firm culture. We can write
inspiring mission and values statements,
slap the right words on the
company's website, and fall into the
trap of communicating caring but not
following up with action.
As management guru Peter
Drucker once said, " What gets measured
gets managed. " So how can we
measure something as complex and
nebulous as culture? In my experience,
it boils down to six essential
measurements.
LEADERSHIP
In a growth culture, people feel safe
taking risks to drive innovation.
They know they won't be penalized
for failure because firm leaders
recognize that failure is an essential
part of growth. Failing forward and
failing fast is not only accepted, it's
encouraged.
Like culture itself, leadership can
be challenging to measure. These
roles stand for so much that merely
measuring the financial effectiveness
of each individual isn't enough.
FIRMS SPEND A significant amount of time and money creating a company culture that helps
employees feel supported and drives results. In recent years, forward-thinking firms have
focused on creating growth cultures rather than performance-based cultures.What's the
difference? In a Harvard Business Review article, Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of The
Energy Project and author of The Way We're Working Isn't Working, explained it this way:
Pulse surveys can be a great way
to gain feedback from employees,
and questions can center around
how employees feel about the leaders
within the organization.
COMMUNICATION
Continuous learning and personal and
team development are essential to a
strong growth culture, and all of this
depends on communication.
Because there are many different
ways of communicating, there are
also different ways of measuring
communication. Intranets are useful
for observing how departments
communicate with each other and
how internal communications are
distributed and understood.
Investigate work projects to see
how people communicate with each
other and look at the tools they're
using.
WELLNESS
In firms that focus on performance,
people often feel overwhelmed,
unsupported and even exploited. Partners
and managers pay little regard to
work/life balance and other employee
health and wellness elements, instead
putting pressure on people to produce
better results in the short term.
In a growth culture, leaders recognize
that short-term bursts of intense
productivity aren't sustainable. When
they focus on taking care of people,
employees find more meaning and
purpose in their work, are more
engaged and committed to the firm,
and sustainably produce exceptional
work in the long term.
When your firm practices wellness,
the results speak for themselves.
Employees who feel looked after have
higher retention rates, lower absenteeism
and are generally happier. Putting
a high priority on employee health has
an enormous impact on your firm.
People return to work quicker, are
more productive and save the firm
money that would otherwise be spent
on hiring replacement staff.
AGILITY
In today's marketplace, firms need
to respond to changing dynamics
quickly - a concept known as agility.
Agility can be used to describe a
lot of things, but in its essence, it is
adapting and refining the processes
and operating of the business to meet
changing technologies and changing
client demands.
You can measure how agile your
firm is by measuring time scales,
client complaints and quality scores.
If you're not already tracking these
metrics, start now to get a baseline
and continue to monitor them as you
make improvements.
ENVIRONMENT
Giving feedback on an annual, semiannual
or even quarterly basis doesn't
work in a growth culture. To learn and
improve, people need to be given feedback
on and discuss their strengths
and weaknesses continuously. This
helps people feel more confident and
be more creative and adaptable.
Opening up feedback is an
excellent way to create two-way,
continuous feedback in your firm.
This can be as simple as providing a
suggestions box or an employee forum
on your intranet, or as elaborate as
implementing a continuous feedback
performance management system.
INNOVATION
To get an edge over your competition,
your firm needs to constantly
evolve your services, marketing. and
business development practices and
processes. There is no way to succeed
other than to innovate, yet many firms
struggle to get people thinking in
innovative ways.
There are many effective ways to
measure innovation:
■ Do you have a research and development
budget?
■ Do your team members use the latest
technologies and communication
tools?
■ Are your everyday processes executed
efficiently?
■ Do you measure financial returns and
incremental revenues?
By demonstrating innovation and
providing the right tools, employees
will develop a mindset of curiosity
and growth.
The foundation of any successful
firm is its people, and keeping them
healthy and happy depends on strong
firm culture. Identify the essential elements
of your firm's culture, look for
ways to measure those elements and
seek continuous improvement. When
you start measuring what really matters,
your firm and people will thrive. ■
JUNE 2021 ■ www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com
35
http://www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com
june2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of june2021
