Humanise The Numbers - for ambitious accountants in practice

Stephan Meier, Professor and Author – Part One

• Paul Shrimpling

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You'd probably like to get your hands on a competitive advantage that would lead to the future financial success of your firm, one that would enhance, or even transform, the results you're currently achieving.

Where do you go looking for that advantage?

Once upon a time in the world of work, it was all about a product advantage or, in the accountancy space, a service level advantage. But at the end of the day, an audit service from one firm is not dissimilar to an audit service from another. The same goes for payroll, for management accounts, and so on.

There is therefore not much of a competitive edge arising from products and services. So, instead of going product-centric, go client-centric. Become really focused on client care, on delivering a client experience that provides an advantage and, don't get me wrong, I think in the accounting space there's huge potential for an edge there.

But what about the employee advantage? What if your team's ability to deliver work on time to a high standard and with a high degree of client care – ticking the client-centric box – is where a true advantage, a sustainable advantage, could be found?

In the first part of this 2-part podcast discussion with Stephan Meier, world-renowned author of The Employee Advantage, you'll be able to unpack – because Stephan does it for us – a large number of insights, ideas and strategies that could ultimately deliver a competitive advantage to you and your firm.

So please join Douglas, my colleague, Stephan and I on the first part of this podcast at humanisethenumbers.online and please scroll down the podcast’s episode page for the contact information for Stephan and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in the podcast.

Paul Shrimpling:

Welcome to the Humanize the Numbers podcast series Leaders, managers and owners of ambitious accounting firms sharing insights, successes and issues that will challenge you and connect you and your firm to the ways and means of transforming your firm's results.

Stephan Meier:

There is a guy which I really enjoy talking to him. Talking to him, he is at kkr, so it's a private equity, large private equity, globally private equity firm. Private equity firms are not particularly have a reputation of being employee centric. Um, and and he, pete stavros is his name, you know he figured out like that's actually the way to make stuff work. Now, he originally started everything with like ownership. So he said, like you know, if we give stock options to employees, you know that will lead to higher engagement and lower quit rates, and so they literally invest billions of dollars, millions and millions of dollars in companies and implementing this.

Stephan Meier:

But even he then figured out just giving stock options is not enough. In fact, about 50% of their portfolio company where they invest, where they do this program, it actually doesn't work. So he then looks at you know what is the missing piece? And he's still working on it. I mean, I told him it's actually the four motivators that I talk in my book about. He calls it leadership, empathy. At the moment, I mean it's more like putting this all together, but it's the humanizing part which then actually creates the profits.

Paul Shrimpling:

Even if you believe your team bring you and your firm an advantage, the chances are you can also see potential that's untapped within many of the people within that team. Well, on this podcast discussion with Stefan Meyer, we're about to unpack the strategies from companies like ING Bank, unilever, toyota, kpmg and many others to see how they have used not used how they have worked with their people to bring a real edge, a real advantage to their business. Let's go to that podcast with Stefan now.

Stephan Meier:

I'm Stefan Meyer. I'm the James B Gorman Professor of Business Strategy and the Chair of the Management Division at Columbia Business School. I'm extremely passionate about thinking and researching on the intersection of business strategy, human behavior and the future of work, and I love my job. But if I could do anything else, uh, I think I would be a lego stop motion movie maker. Uh, so I make in my free time, I'm making lego stop motion movies, um, and and my wife says I'm a little bit too obsessed, uh, doing so, but I, I don't, I don't think you can be too obsessed about this, because it's a serious business, uh, to make those, those lego movies brilliant, brilliant, my, uh, our sound engineer, who happens to be our number one son, joe um.

Paul Shrimpling:

him and his brother used to do lego stop motion videos when they were in their formative years, so he'll be giggling his head off in the background. That's fantastic. So, stefan, what's your journey, if you would, for the people listening to this, to completing or even starting the Employee Advantage which is the book doug and I think is a piece of genius? Uh, so what, what? What led up to what? You know? What were the key moments that led you to this place of compacting this insightful knowledge into the employee advantage?

Stephan Meier:

yeah, yeah, thank you so much.

Stephan Meier:

First of all, thank you so much for having me on this podcast it's uh it's a, it's such an honor, uh, to be here, and I think we're very, very like-minded people in thinking about this. So it was an interesting journey. Because when I started at the Columbia Business School, I would teach business strategy. That's what I would do in the classroom. I was thinking about with the students discussing what should Walmart do in their upscaling strategy, should PepsiCo split up their snack business, should Disney go into streaming? And it was all about kind of what the customer, the positioning and then I would go into my office and start researching about what motivates humans in their life, how to think about incentive, and I will go back into the classroom and talk about customers all the time and I would almost keep those two separate.

Stephan Meier:

And what really changed for me was, quite frankly, the pandemic. During the pandemic, I thought that first of all, it put a bright spotlight on what is not working well in the workplace and also for me, I kind of thought more about like technology. So I started to think about, started to what I'm actually studying. What motivates human is extremely relevant how firms operate and how strategy works. And so then I started to combine those aspects of like business strategy what makes businesses successful and thinking about more what happens inside firms, how we lead, what motivates people, and so that's when I started to write the book.

Stephan Meier:

In fact, an agent reached out years ago whether I should write a book, and I said no, because I said I'm not passionate about a topic enough to write a book. But then I really was, and I'm now extremely passionate. I'm thinking about how can we, yeah, make the workplace more human in order to make the businesses successful. You know, and that's kind of the combination to the strategy piece, like it's. I mean, I think it's also the right thing to do, but I think it's also has a business case to putting your employees first.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah, this podcast is called Humanize the Numbers, and we usually start with the question so what does humanize the numbers mean to you? And it sounds as though you've just encapsulated it there in terms of yes, there's that strategic insight, there's the fact that actually we've got an eye on the future. It has to be about the numbers, but the route to achieving the numbers is in the customer employee space, because they're the humans in the business yeah, yeah, paul and dog, I completely agree.

Stephan Meier:

You know, and I love this what you call like humanizing the numbers, because it really shows what I feel very strong about. But there are those numbers, they are important, but behind the numbers are human beings. And so if you don't think about what the human beings, what they care about, how they're engaged, how they're motivated, I think you don't make the numbers. I think nowadays it's similar when we think about the technology piece, you know, and I think we're over indexed a lot on the technology, think like there is technology and magic is going to happen and I hope there is magic going to happen but like there are humans behind, in the human machine interaction. There is a human machine interaction and I love what you do and, like you know, thinking about it is it is about the numbers, but behind the numbers are human beings that we need to care about. You know, otherwise you don't make the numbers yeah, absolutely well, we.

Paul Shrimpling:

we set up, if you imagine, a chain link and the end chain are the, the numbers of the business. So, whether that be the capital value of the business or the earning capabilities of the business, bottom line profitability, ebitda, whatever labels you want to put in that link. So one link back from that is the client loyalty. Without client loyalty you are never going to hit those numbers. Another link back from that is well, your team serve your clients. So without a team you're not going to serve your clients, they aren't going to be loyal and not hit the numbers. And one link back from that is the manager skills, the leader skills that enable you to have an engaged team which then builds on client loyalty, which then builds the numbers. That's the chain of events as we see it. I'm wondering is there a story in your lexicon of research that clearly demonstrates that, outside of accountancy, that actually plays out as well?

Stephan Meier:

I mean, there are many firms who don't get it right, but there are some who do and there are a couple. So one which I it illustrates it well is costco in the us. So, um, a subscription-based kind of retailers, and they really care about their employees in multiple and and this is not, like you know, we're here not talking about tech jobs those are like frontline workers. You know you're working in retail shops and the margins are relatively slim. So this is a tough business to be in and they still care about their employees tremendously. And then you see the benefit of that, you know. And then the benefit come like turnover is much, much lower within that which has a direct implication to cost.

Stephan Meier:

To your point, the customers are obviously important. If you have happy employees, you have happy customers. In the case of Costco, that means that sales per square feet are actually much higher. So people spend more in the stores. They're really loyal customers. So that allows, allows in that particular industry, costco to introduce more private labels which have higher margins. So the private label within Costco is called Kirkland, and so there are higher margin items.

Stephan Meier:

So the customers are happy, they're spending more money. People are leaving, the employees are leaving less, and that also then leads to more innovation as a result, and so they're very, very successful in being very employee-centric. I mean, they're paying more money as well, but they're doing many, many more things for the frontline worker. One in particular is giving them clear career path. So it's pretty clear when you enter and you start reshelving the shelves that you know if you do X, y and Z, you can actually be promoted and you can make your way up, and, as a result, about 80% 90% of their managers are promoted internally, and that's a super motivators for everybody in the organization and really leads them to make more money as a result it's that that sounds that connects with your um.

Paul Shrimpling:

I was fascinated by diving straight into the practicalities of the, the, the four key elements. You know know that purpose, autonomy, just right tasks and social connections. So I think what you're talking there is the just right tasks, connected also with this career flight path. You've got going, those four practical pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, stefan. I want to unpack in a little while, but I just want to bring a conversation this week around a boardroom table in a substantially sized accounting firm into this conversation.

Paul Shrimpling:

And it's that you know you talk early in the book about. You know we've gone from being product-centric to being customer-centric, to being, if we get it right, team, team centric, but actually all three matter. But ultimately the emphasis has shifted over time and in around this boardroom table. There was one group around the board who were very much yes, we've, you know, this team first approach, and another, still anchored to the no, it's the services we deliver. There's this absolute obsession with service delivery, and by service I mean an audit service or a payroll service or, you know, an annual account service or management accounts and so on, and I just wondered what? What can we do to convince the audience that actually, yes, what you deliver matters, but everyone's delivering that in some way shape or form, and actually it's the interrelation between the customer, the client and the team member, and therefore your ability to influence those relationships, that matter the most. How?

Stephan Meier:

would you respond to that? Yeah, I mean it's a really important part because I do believe that, like, a lot of leaders need to change their mindset somehow and how to think about, like you know, fostering the right culture and treating their employees well Again in order to make the numbers work and be profitable. Be profitable, I mean how. How I try to convince them is, like you know, when you talk about like product to customer centricity, you know people were skeptical about customer centricity back in the days. Uh, they were.

Stephan Meier:

You know amazon, who is a very customer, not as employee centric, but even they got a lot of flag early on by being so customer obsessed and analysts say, like, well, where's the money? You're spending too much on the experience of the customer and whatever. Turns out that we're right, because there is actually win-win situations and if you think about your customer as like, if you make the customer happy, you're making a lot of money. And I think the same has to be true, like, if you make the customer happy, you're making a lot of money, and I think the same has to be true for your employees. But there is a long way to go. So I love this quote that Bezos says about his customer. He says I mean he says many things, but like one quote somehow he says you know, what is awesome about my customers is they're always dissatisfied. And what he means with that is, like I can always learn to be better. And, to your point, better also means in competition to others. You know, I want to be better than the others. Now, very few leaders would say you know what is great about my employees they're always dissatisfied. But it's the same logic like you can actually learn from them what is not going well and improve. And that's kind of the focus that we need to understand, like what do the employees need in order to be successful? Now, this is not a new idea.

Stephan Meier:

When you think about the Toyota way of making cars, the whole ideas of Kaizen, constant improvement is that everybody on this front line, on the assembly line, has something to say, has something to say.

Stephan Meier:

And if we can fix that problem, we make the assembly line better and we are improving, small steps maybe, in order to do that, but in order to do that and Toyota is a good example you need to be willing to stop the assembly line, which costs, I don't know, tens of thousands of dollars per minute. It's a very, very expensive proposition, but if you really believe there is ideas who come up from the ground up, you know you can be better. Now this is assembly lines, but I think the same idea applies to every single industry, including when you think about accounting firms. You know, think about, like, what is frustrating for our employees. You know how can we do everything better, and then, to your point, in competition, you're actually going to get better and the service is eventually also going to get better. Yeah, that you actually give to the clients, but you need to completely change how you think about the employees, how you think about the inputs of the employees and how to think about the human, humanizing the business brilliant.

Paul Shrimpling:

I'm going to bring doug in a second to talk about um employee voice and and the research we've been doing using the gallup q12 engagement survey, because there's a part of that which is about um voice isn't there, um, before we do. There's a part of that which is about voice isn't there Before we do. There's a piece that you talk about that employee expectations are changing and I was like, well, and I couldn't quite get my head around. What are you talking about there in terms of these changes? Is this because of the generational shifts or is it something more intrinsic?

Stephan Meier:

Where were you getting that? Yeah, I don't. I don't think it's the. I mean you know, I mean I have three kids, so I mean I, as, as every generation, since there are parents and that's many thousands of years, every generation thinks like kids these days, you know, like like dude. But I mean I show sometimes, when I teach about this, I show a quote from the greek philosopher, socrates, yes, who also talks kids these days, uh, and I showed a quote without the name and they all the leaders are, yeah, kids these days, and I was like, well, that's like thousands of years ago, um, so there is some of generational, but I think it's it's a much more uh trend that affects everybody, where you now, you know, are used to personalization. Now, of course, it has some like my kids do not know that.

Stephan Meier:

Uh, you know, sometimes if you order something, it takes more than than a day to arrive. When we grew up it took many, many. I mean you obviously couldn't order online, but like, even if you order something in the store, it would take like weeks to come. They have no idea that, like you know, back in the days, families and kids were like fight over TV time Because there was just one TV and there was just one program and when you missed the seven o'clock show of whatever you want to watch, you missed it.

Stephan Meier:

And then you know afterwards you could recording and now it's everything is personalized. And I think that changes somehow the expectations of the employees as well, because as a customer, they have a very different experience than what happened, you know, 30 years ago or even 10 years ago, and and that now leads also to them having different expectations when it comes to work. I mean, why would you have a personalized experience as a customer? And then you come into the office and it's a one-size-fits-all and that's part of what changes. So technology changes somehow everything we do, including, kind of what, how we think about being customers, and that I think will spill over pretty dramatically into the workplace.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah, how's that connected with giving our team a voice? You know, there's this. There's a real difference, isn't it, between, say, a command and control style of leadership management and, uh, let's call it trust and inspire, to quote, um, yeah, steven covey, uh, piece, um, there's a real difference. So, what's what does? Because, look, we're all can, we're all control freaks, and the accountants could be argued that they're especially like to be in control because there's regulation, there's compliance, there's this sensitivity around it, um, but that, um, you know the toyota model, the toyota production system, where innovation is bubbling up from the bottom, as opposed to in accounting firms, where innovation tends to be, um, pushed down from the top. It's, there's that there's a real contradiction in terms of command and control versus, yeah, trust and inspire leadership and the team voice.

Stephan Meier:

Well, yeah, I mean, I think like there is. There's two things, you know. One is their expectations might change. Now that feels a little bit like we have to cave into kids these days, you know, like just because they want it, like now we have to give them some voice and whatever. But but I think that this is not even the biggest part. It's like because the world is changing so fast.

Stephan Meier:

Uh, you know, stuff is like moving so dramatically fast that this top down, which works really well in a well-structured, very stable environment, then if we know, okay, for the next 10 years we need to do this, yeah, and like just map it out what we need to do and push it down. But that's not happening anymore because it's moving so, so fast. And now you need to flatten organizations in order to create, kind of whether that's agile or like just a more innovative environment. And with flatten the organization, you need to empower everybody on the organization much more, because this top down is just not working anymore in this new environment. So I think it's it's not. It's not a reaction to the expectations. It's a reaction to the expectations, it's a reaction to the different business environment and it's necessary to be agile and to move forward and to beat the competition in being much more nimble, much more agile, much more innovative and empowering the employees to do their part.

Paul Shrimpling:

Amazing Doug. Do you want to just reference that employee?

Doug Aitken:

voice and the challenges in that space.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, I've made about 40 questions so far just from what's been said. The Toyota thing actually challenged me a lot because I was trying to think what the equivalent was in accountancy of pulling the Andon cord and stopping the production line and all hands diving in to get the job finished. I thought there's a real challenge there in accountancy firms, because they often pick up and then put down a job because they can't finish it, because they're missing something or they need to ask someone or whatever it might be, um, but they end up with loads of work in progress with, which makes it very inefficient. But I want to go back to one thing that you mentioned before, stefan, if I can. Um, because it intrigued me about you saying about leaders needing to change their mindset, and I'm really interested in that because is it a case that they still see it being a trade-off between profit or people or is it?

Doug Aitken:

I was intrigued as well and I did an MBA, so I can relate to the education that took place during that. There was nothing on people in my MBA, literally nothing. It was all about strategy, all about trends, challenges. It was all about you know what's happening in the world, what models can we apply, but there was nothing on people. So you know what is that mindset shift and how can we do it yeah, yeah, it's a it's.

Stephan Meier:

It's a very good point, dog, and you know, I'm teaching in a business school and we have we have a strategy division, we have a marketing division. We don't have a people division. I mean, we have psychologists who do like organizational behavior, so there's a little bit about that, but there is very little about people and I think that has to change. And I do think there is this mindset shift to thinking not about what you said, this trade off. You know that it's either profits or we treat the employees well, and thinking much more about like no, there is win-win. And part of the problem with thinking about the trade-off is, if we have this view and I'm an economist by training and in the economic model, what economists think about work is like work is painful. You know, people are only working because they get compensated monetarily. That's kind of the model we have and that's a lot of people still think that that, like you know, people show up to work because they're either controlled or they're compensated financially. And if, if you just think about money, it is actually much more a trade-off. You know, like, I give you 10,000 more, that is, 10,000 out of the bottom line, out of my margin, but I think the shift has to be that people are not just working for money. I mean to stress the customer centric analogy again. You know, like customer centricity is not lowering the price, customer centricity is increasing the experience and then actually increasing the price as a result. And I think when we start to think about, people are motivated by much more than money. Now you can actually think about how to improve the experience to make them more productive in order to actually lower the cost per unit, because they're doing more work, they're more innovative, they're less likely to leave and you know, they actually have an effect on the service and the experience of the customer um as well. But it but it takes time, you know, and I have how I try to convince them at the moment is um, there is, there is a, a guy which I, I, I really enjoy, uh, talking to him. He is at kkr, so it's a private equity, large private equity, globally private equity firm.

Stephan Meier:

Private equity firms are not particularly have a reputation of being employee centric and and he Pete Stavros, is his name, you know he figured out like that's actually the way to make stuff work. Now he, he originally started everything with like ownership. So he said like you know, if we give stock options to employees, you know that will lead to higher engagement and lower quit rates. And so they literally invest billions of dollars, millions and millions of dollars in companies in implementing this. But even he then figured out, just giving stock options is not enough. In fact, about 50% of their portfolio company where they invest, where they do this program, it actually doesn't work. So he then looks at you know what is the missing piece? And he's still working on it.

Stephan Meier:

I mean I told him it's actually the four motivators that I talk in my book about. He calls it leadership, empathy. At the moment I mean it's more like putting this all together, but it's the humanizing part which then actually creates the profits. And again, the private equity firms they're not in there for altruism or like they're actually in there to make the numbers, to make the returns. And it's very surprising to me maybe not to the world like if I tell that story, if Pete Stavros tells the story, suddenly everybody's like oh yeah, that makes sense. And I was like I told you. So I mean there is evidence on this. But I mean I can see he puts like really his money and the company's money behind it, so he really strongly believes in. You can actually make the numbers work by humanizing the workforce, but there is still work to be done to convince people leaders that there is win-win leaders that there is win-win, yeah, in that leading and managing change space, stefan, they talk about.

Paul Shrimpling:

You've got to change your skills, but you've got to change your mindset. You've got to improve your skills. You've got to improve your mindset, which is easier said, hard, hard to do, and we can. We can logic that and, you know, be very intellectual about that and share examples. I'm wondering what do we do to tap into a deep emotive response reaction? I mean that story from Steve Stavros helps because we can connect with the emotional challenges that must be going on in a private equity firm to actually acknowledge the fact that we've got to invest time, effort, energy in the way we work with our team to deliver the results that we really want. So I get that. I just wonder is there anything else which you know gets the buy-in of managers and leaders so that they become employee-centric managers, as you call them in the book?

Stephan Meier:

Yeah, I mean I don't know. I mean they should probably hire you to do this stuff, because I think what is important and I mean the two of you know this but it's hard, you know, it's not easy to do. Now, as I always say, in everything strategy, hard is good. If it were easy everybody would do it. But if it's actually hard, if you put in the work to, you know, and that's true for customer centricity as well, everybody cares about customer. You know, like I've never met somebody who says like I mean I'm sure you never met the leader who says like I don't care about my clients. I mean like they should suck it up what I showed up. I mean everybody cares.

Stephan Meier:

But to be really, really customer-centric, to really improve the service, needs a lot of dedication and a lot of effort. And the same is true with talent. Everybody says I care obviously about my talent, I want motivated workers and I want the accountants to be really top notch. But to really create an atmosphere where they are extremely engaged and productive is hard. I mean that's where you kick in, you know, and help them to do that, because you can't just do it just by thinking about it or printing it on the wall.

Stephan Meier:

You know there is probably very few firms who there is no. You know, in the break room it says respect and people care and teamwork and whatever, but there are very few who can actually pull it off. Yeah, but in competition, that's the edge, then. Where you then actually make a difference compared to your competitor and and I think that's how I try to convince leaders is like you know, you want a competitive edge, you're in it. Competition is tough, it's hard and it's getting probably harder because there is more international competition. You know there is a there's a lot of competition going on and so if you can get an edge, you should take it.

Doug Aitken:

I was talking with a group of managers maybe two or three weeks ago, stefan, and we were referencing the Gallup Q12 poll because there's a direct question about I've got someone that cares about me. So I said I challenged them about. You know, do you care about your people first of all?

Doug Aitken:

Oh, yeah, yeah yeah, of course we do. And I said how do you show it, how do you actually show that you care? And they were stumped. There was a lot of violence in the room and someone eventually blurted out well, but they just know, they just know that we care. And I said well, how much time?

Doug Aitken:

do you spend with them and you know the answer to that as well. Well, we'll see them. No, no, I mean organized time that's just between you and them, where you sit down with them and you have a chat and you check in with them and you don't just, you know, flippantly ask. You know, are you having a good day? You're deeply serious about how are you, what's going on in your life?

Doug Aitken:

and it's amazing still, most leaders still view that as a cost. They're very much in p and l mode and and they need we need to get them to capital investment mode that this will show a return on their investment over time, when they show that they care by deed and actions, not by just saying that they care. It's a real struggle even today to get them to spend time with people.

Stephan Meier:

Yeah, no, I completely agree, doug, and I think you know when they again think about like another stakeholder, which is the clients, the customers, you know they think differently. I mean, if you go to a marketing executive and say like is it a good idea to ask your clients or customers once a year how they're doing, they would like laugh their asses off. They're like, of course not. I need like constant feedback and inputs and pulses and surveys and focus groups and whatever. But with the employees we do it best case, you know, once a year, those engagement surveys, and then we ignore everything that is in there. Everybody knows that, so nobody participates in the first place.

Stephan Meier:

So we kind of need to think about this very differently. And again, like very cost. To your point, you know very customer-centric organizations like require their. So there's um home depot like the, the store in the us that does, like you know, home repair all those goods. They require executives, I think, once a month to visit the store and talk to clients, talk to customers on the floor. It's a structured way. I mean you can probably even do that better, but, like you know, do we have a systematic way to your point in understanding, how are our employees doing, you know, creating a safe space, that they're also okay to voice criticism.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Stephan Meier:

Because if you just, you know, have a town hall meeting, it's like, how are you guys doing? I mean, there's nobody who says like you know, this is not working or this is a pain, or I see, this is like really slows us down. Or why are we having this regulation or this policy that really affects the services that we give to our clients and creating kind of this safe space to for people to really express um their discomfort or like something that go that, that should go better, I think goes a long way. But to your point, dog, you know it, it needs a shift that we're actually investing in it as leaders in that.

Paul Shrimpling:

So just picking up on that shift piece.

Paul Shrimpling:

Uh, you tell us the story of the shift in the bank, ing, in your book to you know, small squats, and and the reason I just wanted to pick up on that ing story is because we've got and I had it this week a pushback on the fact yeah, paul, you're telling a toyota story or you're telling a higher story.

Paul Shrimpling:

These are manufacturing businesses, professional services is different and it's like really um, and so I turned to your book, to, and I couldn't respond well enough in that, in that particular meeting, and then, oh, I wish I'd got this ing story hardwired because they made the shift to smaller teams. I'm just wondering is creating a sense of psychological safety so that team members have got more of a voice, is directly connected to those smaller teams that higher have made so successful? And if those who don't know higher, they're the, you know, I think now the largest white goods manufacturer in the world, the chinese company, and then ing bank did the same shift. As I can't remember the um, the ceo's name, it'll pop back into me, I'm sure. Um, they made a big shift to create an environment where innovation started bubbling up from the bottom. Yeah, I think, like the Small teams.

Stephan Meier:

Yeah, exactly, it's not just you know the small teams is a good start, but actually the culture needs to change as well. How you know how those innovation and how you create those psychological safety that people are actually willing to express voices and obviously they need to empower. You know, if you have no power and there is nothing you can, I mean, why would you express anything or put in effort in doing so? And ING is a really good example. I mean, they also got hit by competition, you know, by more nimble, for technological reasons somehow as well, and I could imagine that might happen in the accounting industry as well. You know like suddenly smaller firms with technology together might suddenly be a competition.

Stephan Meier:

That were not before and now you have to. Ing had to change because they were now competing against those fintech firms who are organized very differently. You know, much smaller, much nimbler, and they needed to completely change their operational model smaller teams, flatter hierarchies and then on top of it, kind of the culture shift. You know, empowering the employees, creating those safe psychological safety environment to actually get those innovation going.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah, so I guess that's back to Doug's point a little bit in terms of is there actually diary time allocated to those conversations? That you establish a safe space for individuals to talk in, not just small teams to talk in, and that's very powerful yeah, I mean, I think, like a lot of it has to, one has to be very intentional about those.

Stephan Meier:

You know you have to it.

Stephan Meier:

Just it doesn't just happen by accident.

Stephan Meier:

Um, I mean, that's true with you know, the water cooler moments, or the innovation, or checking in, uh, the mentoring aspect, the learning, whatever we do we have to be much more intentional.

Stephan Meier:

And that's, you know, when I started talking about like how I think the pandemic for me changed, because if you some, the pandemic kind of for me showed that, like you know, certain things we take for granted just because we're in the same space, we thought like, oh, stuff happens. You know, I can check in on how you're doing. Uh, you know we meet at the coffee, at the coffee or the coffee machine or the kombucha tap or whatever. You have fancy, fancy free snack bar or whatever, um, but but it's like we were phoning it in, we were hoping those things happen. And if we're much more intentional and during the pandemic we had to be when we're not on the same, when we're not in the same space, and I think that should be a learning, even if we go back to the office five days a week some firms are not. But even if we do, we should be much more intentional about creating those check-ins, those interactions, those social connections.

Paul Shrimpling:

So I think if I hear you right, stefan, you're saying the way the managers and leaders behave with their individual team members and their group teams ultimately determines how effective that business works, because that has an impact, either positive or negative, on the team, on individuals, which then has a rub off impact on the speed of work, the quality of work and the client care.

Stephan Meier:

Yes, I think, like the, you know there is this classic saying I mean I'm not, I definitely didn't invent it and you know people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses. But I think there is a lot of research as well to show, you know, the effect leaders are very, very important. I think there is one study you show, like if you are a leader is in the top 10 percent of the distribution of leadership skills. You know that's that's as good as adding a ninth person to to an eight person team. Uh, it's a very important way of doing so.

Stephan Meier:

But the problem with leaders often is we're promoting on, like past skills. You know you're, you're an amazing accountant and then you're going to be promoted to lead the team of accountants. Now, just because you're a good accountant or a good salesperson doesn't mean you're a good manager of accountants and or salespeople and you can, obviously. I mean you should train them. I mean that's one or, and you know, select also on like who is actually going to be a good leader, which is a very different quality than being good in, you know, accounting or sales or or whatever. Or running, or being a doctor or whatever. It's very different than like actually running a team of doctors there's it is that.

Paul Shrimpling:

That's an interesting segue into the four motivators. I think, stefan, in in terms of you know the um skills can be built, can't they? It's, it's, not's not. You know it's nurture versus nature. We can build, like we can learn to drive a car, we can learn to give people a voice. By investing in a weekly one-to-one, for example, we can learn those skills. So I think it would be prudent for us to ask you to unpack the key elements of those four motivators, the key elements of those four motivators. So far, stefan's unpacked some powerful, valuable insights to help you build an employee advantage in your team with your firm. On part two, stefan's going to dive into the detail around how you put the four motivators to work with your team.

Paul Shrimpling:

In this discussion with Stefan Meyer, we've been unpacking an awful lot of insight, strategies, ideas, skills even that help you build the human skills into your accounting firm, which is exactly what we do with like-minded, ambitious accountants coming into the Accountants Growth Academy. If you want to join in, go to the show notes and you'll find a link to the Accountants Growth Academy. You'll find more valuable discussions with the leaders of ambitious accounting firms at humanizethenumbersonline. You can also sign up to be notified each time a new podcast is made available. Be notified each time a new podcast is made available. You're about to hear a short excerpt from a podcast discussion with Dan Crowther, ceo of Thorn Widgery. If you like what you're hearing and you want more, please go to humanizernumbersonline or go to your favourite podcast platform humanizethenumbersonline or go to your favorite podcast platform.

Speaker 3:

How are the client's expectations changing? So they one thing is quicker. The communication is an awful lot quicker than it would have been previously. So I think that they have an expectation now of the service level which is higher than perhaps it was in the past. So you know, and it's like, it's like the data, um stuff, I suppose, if that you know, that does need to be up to date. You know it's not. It's not okay for it to be kind of, um, nine months behind or however long. Now that needs to be up to date. The communication piece is really important. You know that. Making sure that we hit that, because you know you used to send letters back in the day. Do you know what I mean? It takes, you know, three days to get there and take three days for them to respond, but that that no longer I mean an email is like I said. We have a. We have a one day working day response time on that. So, um, that's much quicker than perhaps what it would have been back then.