octobernovember2022 - 4

FROM THE EDITOR
What's for Dinner?
IF YOU SHARE a home with someone, or even if you live alone, you likely hear, or ask, this
question frequently. Unless you have planned and shopped for your meals in advance (as
accountants, that concept is not foreign to us), you might find yourself turning to your
go-to list of family favorites when it comes to dinner plans.
For me, it's spaghetti (my mom's
recipe), tacos (a throwback to my
college days), chili
(that's when
it's my husband's turn to cook),
chicken stew, vegetable soup, and
a few others. A big advantage is that
I can usually count on finding all
the necessary ingredients in the
freezer and pantry, so there's no
last-minute running to the grocery.
(Of course, there's always, " Let's
order pizza! " as a fallback.)
What does this have to do with
accounting? I believe there are
certainly days when we feel like we
want to try something new, we're
ready to get out of the regular grind.
But often we jump into our workday
and pull out the same familiar recipes.
We look at our master schedule,
take care of what is pressing and
what is on the agenda for the day,
make sure we're meeting deadlines,
respond to client requests, make
ourselves available to colleagues
when necessary, attend required
meetings, do whatever we need to
do to get to the end of the day, set a
similar schedule for tomorrow, and
on and on.
Instead, it might be time to
think like the meal planners who
work out their week in advance,
decide to try some new recipes,
shop for the necessary ingredients,
and add variety to the daily menus.
We can start with a bigger picture
- what do you want to accomplish
(or cook!) that you haven't
tried in the past? Is it improving
your skills? Adding a new service
line? Reaching out to new potential
clients? Updating your work-fromCPA
home
policies? Cutting back in order
to have more free time? Adding
staff? Starting a client newsletter?
All of these seem like major
tasks and thus often they get set
aside and we stick to what we've
been doing on a regular basis. In
order to make a change in your
business, consider breaking that
change into small, manageable
steps. I was moderating a webinar
recently about adding CAS (Client
Accounting Services) to an accounting
firm, and the response from
attendees was that the concept
of adding a service line was overwhelming.
Webinar participants
cited problems like, our traditional
partners don't want to change, we
don't have the right staff, we can't
find the right clients, we don't have
the right technology in place. Confronting
that list of problems was
causing people to back away from
adding the services even when they
believe it would be good for the firm
to do so.
Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm
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Advance planning (the menu),
knowing what's needed to add the
service (the ingredients), and then
setting up a step-by-step plan (the
recipe), and assigning someone who
will be in charge (the cook) is the
way to get any large task accomplished.
You may notice that this
equates to the concept of a formal
business plan, and that in itself
might seem overwhelming, but you
can create a plan much more easily
when you think of what you want
to accomplish in terms of the small
tasks that make up the whole.
Adding small tasks to your daily
project list is much easier than trying
to deal with the overwhelming
idea of making a major change. Try
thinking about what changes you
would like to make to your business
or your regular routine, and use the
concepts presented here to move
forward. ■
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4 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2022 ■ www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com

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