Humanise The Numbers - for ambitious accountants in practice

Russell Watkins - Lean Transformation Expert & Co-founder @ SempaiGuide

• Paul Shrimpling and Russell Watkins

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When you're trying to unlock the potential that you know exists within your team, within your client bank, within your firm as a whole, it can feel frustrating that you just can't seem to get to it, you can't unlock it. 

In this podcast discussion with Russell Watkins, who's spent 30 years in the lean, process improvement space working with manufacturing and other businesses, we tap into a potential key for you, your team, your firm, to truly get to the levels of performance you believe exist within your firm. 

So why not go to humanisethenumbers.online or to your favourite podcast platform and hunt out the Humanise the Numbers podcast with Russell Watkins. I look forward to seeing you there. 

Please scroll down the podcast’s episode page for the contact information for Russell 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.

Russell Watkins:

And the ideal world is you get everybody in the business thinking like they own the business. So it's a shift from return and investment thinking to return on assets. And it's a problem in manufacturing. Any professional manager not any most professional managers in manufacturing they are well versed in return and investment. How do I put a compelling case together to buy something new and shiny? Yeah're pretty good at that. Working out net present values, discounted cash flows um, we don't want that. That's a professional manager mindset. We. We want to return an assets mindset first, which is look, I've already sunk x thousands and millions into this business. Please convince me that the assets I have you are getting the best out of them. So where are the losses? Where am I getting downtime? Where am I getting problems and defects? Where is it difficult?

Paul Shrimpling:

and let's optimize what we've got and only then will we spend money a good question to ask yourself about how your department runs, or how your whole firm runs, is how do you improve the fees per full-time employee? How do you drive them up by 20%, 50%, even, or maybe even more? Well, on this podcast with Russell Watkins, who's spent 30 years embedded in the world of lean process improvements within manufacturing businesses and others, you'll discover a number of key questions, key insights that help you change the conversation between you and your team. That helps you transform the results in your firm. Let's go to the podcast with Russell now.

Russell Watkins:

Hi, I'm Russell Watkins from Senpai. Senpai was formed in 2007, helping manufacturers and other companies who are committed to improving their businesses. We transfer true lean capability to people who are running those businesses, both at front end sharp end and at the top level, and the company was formed I'm co-founder. We've worked on four continents with about close to 100't know close to 100 companies now training 1,000 people, and we love being in and out of about 60% manufacturers and 40% other businesses from various sectors. When I'm not doing that, I like craft beer and I like walking around our local area, which is Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and any time I can combine the two on a circular walk is a tremendous thing.

Paul Shrimpling:

Well, a walk is not a walk, russell, unless there's a pub involved. In my view, there's just no way that works, so I've got to go there straight away. So, given that I'm also, with the Derbysh Dales Favourite pub walk, more interested in the pub than the walk Favourite pub walk.

Russell Watkins:

Well, anything that ends up near the old dog at thorpe is very good that's a very good pub.

Speaker 4:

It is um and.

Russell Watkins:

But to be fair, you know, we, we, we keep discovering new pubs, because if you're lazy, you end up going where everyone goes stepping stones at dovedale. And we, we bought the os app years ago, so we map our own routes, yeah, um, and so we end up seeing practically nobody throughout the day, but having to hack a new path through three places sometimes, yeah to get to the pub. To get to the pub, yeah, which which, by the by, is always worth it, absolutely so.

Paul Shrimpling:

We just recently rediscovered the uh, the george at um, um, alston field. Alston field, that's the one, the one which had different owners a little bit a while back. Now they've got this Essex geezer in who's really really welcoming. It's now changed. Oh, fabulous, we're really enjoying that and the food's good. Simple but good. Anyway, let's get into the meat and potatoes just to make the restaurant stroke pub reference. Welcome to the podcast, russell. We've known each other uh, a while and uh, I know you're deep into you know lean capability and it was interesting your intro we talk about you know working with you know um front of house, uh, sharp end, top level, the you know cross section of human beings across the firm. I'm just wondering what the phrase humanize the numbers from a lean process improvement space actually means to you.

Russell Watkins:

Yeah, that's an interesting question and it hits on a really, really nub point in manufacturing and in other businesses. We're talking about socio-technical systems. There's. There's stuff has to happen, but it's all. It's all run by humans and if you think about the numbers in most businesses that would be things like safety, quality, delivery, cost, people or there'll be a series of metrics that are used to run the business. This I see a lot of businesses who who use those, um, as very hard, non-human things and they forget three critical things about humanizing numbers. The first is strategic, the second is about a thinking way and the third is about how you can make people engage with the numbers. Do you want to start anywhere, particularly with those, or should?

Paul Shrimpling:

I just take them one at a time. So strategic thinking and engagement, yeah, Okay, let's start with the engagement piece. We work on the basis that you know, if you're going to humanise the numbers and you don't engage with the team, aren't engaged with those numbers, they aren't engaged with the customer and client and they're not engaged with the you know we'll get into strategy for sure then they're either, if they're not engaged, they're either neutral or they're disengaged, and there's just no way you can deliver on client value, client care, deliver on time, deliver quality product services, unless you've got an engaged team. So that's a hot button for me. So let's go with the engagement.

Russell Watkins:

So that's also partially linked to the strategy point and I'll come back to this later. There's a really smart fellow who once said you want to give people something for the heart and something for the head. Well, I'll park that point for a minute. In terms of engagement, people have to have a reason to do something beyond what they normally do. So almost everybody I meet anywhere working in any company, has an eight and a half hour to a nine hour day and 12 to 13 hours of work to get through every day. So if you're going to want them to engage with the numbers, you have to make it easy and give it a purpose. If people have to work hard, they have to interrogate. It's a real pain and a ball ache to get to the numbers. They ain't going to do it.

Russell Watkins:

Whereas if you take a Toyota style approach, which is a 1-3-10 approach you visualize everything and you make it simple to see how we're doing then they are more likely to engage. And a 1-3-10 approach is one second, three second, 10 seconds. Whatever business you're in a charity or an accountancy practice or a solicitor practice, whatever within one second you should be able to see whether we're on target or not. Within three seconds, you should be able to see what the biggest problem are that's stopping us meeting our target, and within 10 seconds, you should be able to see what the biggest problem are that's stopping us meeting our target, and within 10 seconds, you should be able to see who's doing what about it and who do I go and ask to get involved or find out what state this is. Whatever your version of 1, 3, 10 is, make it easy for people to do the right thing and become engaged so?

Paul Shrimpling:

so one second to see whether you're on target or not, three seconds to see what the biggest problem that's holding you back is, and 10 seconds to identify who's doing what to rectify the problem. Have I understood that right?

Russell Watkins:

yes, yeah, yeah, and and and to go and see them. And the. The critical one there is the three. You visualize this so that people, uh people see it, it's in their face and um, the three. Second bit is really important because the, the thinking behind, is Pareto You've never got enough time to get across everything you have to. And if you, if you follow our Italian economist friend Pareto, 80, 20, 80 percent of your problems come from 20 percent of your things. As leaders, as managers, is to point out and make it obvious which small number of things are causing the biggest number of problems. Because, after all, there's various definitions of leadership. My favourite current one is leadership is doing the right things when it's hard. Now, you can unpick all sorts of stuff from that, but at the very least, our job is to take noise and complexity and make it simple to see which way we should all be pointing and helping.

Paul Shrimpling:

So our job is to simplify process, manage identifying or helping our team identify the problems so that they can go and fix them.

Russell Watkins:

Yeah and yeah well. So this takes us into strategy, so something called Hoshin Kamri, which is policy deployment. It's basically every year you've got to run the business, yeah, you've got to run your accountancy practice, but also you have to improve it, otherwise you get left behind. But your time to improve it is scarce, of course, because you're running the business. So, any mechanism you have to work out how to improve the business, it better be simple and it better be easy. One of the key things you need to do is find out the vital few.

Russell Watkins:

So, rather than have a long list with a long tail of these are our problems in the business? Look, there's 60 things. Zero in on what are the key major things that we can align people around and really get some effort going Right. So, rather than broad, go narrow, narrow 80-20. Because the long tail will distract you, whereas the one or two top things because you think about it.

Russell Watkins:

You've got people in a business who are naturally wired to want to do things better, because they like an easier life, which is fine, and also they want the business to thrive. And then there's a whole load in the middle who are, you know, I come here and I clock in and I do my best while I'm here, and then there's a, there's a chunk at the end who are as long as I draw breath. I am not going to do anything to improve. I hate these people, but they're paying my mortgage. So all of those that top 80%, some of whom are keen if they're making improvements to the, to the business, if they know that, for example, as a business, we need to improve our retention rate on this, or we need to improve our quality on that, or we need to become smarter and faster at doing this bit, then their mind can start to think about ways to do that and you're aligning all the small bits of effort towards a good goal all the small bits of effort towards a good goal.

Paul Shrimpling:

So have you got an example story, russell, that can take you, know those insights and show how they unfold in a practical way.

Russell Watkins:

Sure. So let me talk about a manufacturing business. So, please, manufacturing business needed. Its quality wasn't good, it was losing customers and wasn't winning any new work, so they decided that they needed to become a b-hag a big, hairy ass goal from, uh, harvard approach. Um, we need to become number one in our market on quality. Now, that's all, that's all well and good. Saying that, i'm'm banging up my poster, how do you actually do that?

Russell Watkins:

So they then went and benchmarked what is our current gap in terms of quality from us to the number one in the market? They worked out it was 15%. Then they go to the senior management team and say OK, we are 15% worse on quality. So for every 100 parts that we or our competitors send out, 15 of ours are crap compared to our best in the market. They then go to the senior team and say right, how do we fill this gap? Any ideas?

Russell Watkins:

And the senior team come up with ideas and maybe manager a takes five percent of it, manager b takes seven percent and manager c takes the remaining three percent. And then they go to their teams and they look at their data and say, okay, 7% for me means that I've got to reduce our scrap by £135,000 this year. Let's have a look at a parietal of our scrap and let's focus on this one and this one and problem solve them. Because we know if we take 50% out of each of those that adds up to 135 grand. That contributes our bit to the goal and everybody's happy. So it's taking a large desire like a vague business desire and deploying it downwards and so there's hard numbers showing up in each of those spaces.

Paul Shrimpling:

Uh, how does that then impact on the level of engagement, given that we're in the you know that engagement space? What? What's going on there?

Russell Watkins:

so there are I'll. I'll flip the question. There are two ways that you'll lose people and turn them off there. Three ways first is if there's no what's in it for me? The second is if you just tell them what to do. And the third one is the third one I've briefly forgotten. It'll come back to me. So the first one, the first one, was what's in it for me? What's in it for me? The really smart businesses that I work with. They catch on fast to the fact that as a business, you might need to improve X at the top, but if you can align that to the pain of somebody doing the purchase orders or who's doing the billing all through the business, then as we are improving the business, they're also making their life better. You've got an alignment of incentives there. It's worth us doing it because there's purpose to it. If people can't see a purpose to it, it'll fall to the bottom, whereas if they can, you've got a strong chance of doing it.

Paul Shrimpling:

So you've just said, make their life better. So if we're going to align whoever's in the billing or purchase order department or unloading the van with all the gear on it, all people at all levels, something has to happen. There's a piece of communication that has to take place which is helping them see that it's going to make their life easier. How does that come to happen?

Russell Watkins:

How does that come to happen? You ask there's something called catch ball, where you go to your team and say we've got a target and the target is to improve this and that's because we're falling behind in the market. What have you got in your daily life? That's difficult and creates a problem for you and contributes to that waste. In Two Second Lean, they call it fix what bugs you. If you want to get people engaged in improving the business, you just say I'll tell you what, fix what bugs you and we'll try and work out how that connects to the business.

Russell Watkins:

I'll give you a practical example. I'm working with a company in Worcester at the moment. They're a multi-billion pound engineering services business. They don't manufacture a thing, nothing, but what they do is a design, spec and project management project, manage the installation of massive test beds and engineering things. I'm working with them because, uh, they're finance people and they're purchasing people hate each other and uh, the finance people. Uh, so I swear in blind that the purchasing people are giving them bad information and vice versa. The impact for the customer, the impact for suppliers is that they are getting paid late. The impact for customers is that things are being delivered late. So let's take that from the business has recognised this and the senior team I'm working with has recognised it, down to the people actually doing the work.

Russell Watkins:

If you're doing the work, if you're a purchase order clerk here and we know that problems with purchase orders are creating lateness for the customer if you ask a purchase order clerk, what problems do you have? They'll quite often say, well, this is a bit rubbish, that's a bit rubbish, there's nothing tangible to look at. But if you ask them a specific question, you'll you'll not be able to stop them talking and the question you ask them is around how often when you get a purchase order requisition, is it complete and accurate and you can make a percentage out of that and complete and accurate has three parts to it. Firstly, is it filled in correctly? Has every box been filled in? Or have you got to go and spend your time in your shoe leather and write multiple emails chasing people to give you to fill boxes in? They should have in the first first place. So is it complete? Second, is it accurate? Have you is?

Russell Watkins:

How often do you get them filled in and they're just plain wrong. There is wrong information and so you've got to go back and effectively rework. And then the really interesting one is how often do you get uh, requisitions where they are unclear? There is information that came to light later that would have been helpful to have first time round. So you say to that purchaser I tell you what, for two weeks, every PO that passes your desk can you fill in this simple data sheet as a gate chart right Against those three categories, and at the end of it I promise you we're going to pick the number one and number two and we're going to find out the reason why and their pain in doing that. If we can solve their pain in having to chase around, we'll also be solving what's making it late for the customer no-transcript and they can see that that is helping them.

Paul Shrimpling:

Therefore, they'll help you achieve the strategic goal or target.

Russell Watkins:

As long as you draw the link from them, from listen. There's an old Zen fable and do you like? Do you like a Zen fable on this podcast?

Paul Shrimpling:

Oh, I love a Zen fable, russell absolutely.

Russell Watkins:

It's the. It's about the. It's the rabbit and the fox one. So a Zen master is out walking with his student and the student observes a fox chasing a rabbit. And the student says the fox will get that rabbit and eat him. And the master says no, the rabbit will evade him. And the student argues well, hang on, the fox is faster, it's cunning, it's a fox, it's faster, it'll find it.

Russell Watkins:

And the master says the rabbit will. It will elude it. And that's because the fox is running for his lunch and the rabbit is running for his life. When you're running for your life, you tend to post a good time, so we have to create some urgency around this. So, as long as to get back to your question, when you are encouraging your purchase order clerk or your billing clerk to um to log data for you to find what bugs them, if you can draw a line from that to and, by the way, that will sort pain for you, but also it'll help us as a business with our number one problem, which is retaining clients because we're giving them late billing information or incorrect billing information.

Paul Shrimpling:

You have to draw that line so there's you're doing a job of um. Make the problem clear, transparent, measurable, draw a connection between solving that and making their job easier better day actually feels better and then tackle the one thing or the one or two things with a degree of urgency so that they can see quick progress. Is that the key here?

Russell Watkins:

There's a sense of progress. Yes, but there's two things there. Hang on, I'm just going to write something down. There's two things there. The one is um, you want to start on small things? Uh, so sometimes people aren't used to this and sometimes people don't trust their management team.

Russell Watkins:

Uh, paul, you'll be, you'll be stunned to hear that sometimes management teams have have initiatives and drop them, and then have another initiative and drop it. Yeah, um, it it's everywhere. So, uh, you end up with a team of people thinking, look, I could help these, these fools, but, um, why jump on this bus? There'll be another one along in in 10 minutes. Uh, so, if a bit of a tip, if you have got a team who are initiative fatigued and need some help to get on board, you have to be as honest and say look, I tell you what. We'll raise one, then we'll investigate it and we'll close that one. And only when we've actually done something about a problem will we ask you to give us another idea, idea. So I'm not going to try and persuade you, I'm going to show you that we're serious about this.

Russell Watkins:

Um, and the other thing is you can, you can do a brainstorm so you can gather the office together and say, right, we got this. This kind of problem can we? Can? We have a number of ideas about what could go wrong and what what's going wrong. You could end up with 40, 30 to 40 post-it notes on a flip chart.

Russell Watkins:

Yeah, you create a problem for yourself there and your problem is where do I start to get some momentum going? And that's where something like a a simple four box matrix of short-term low cost, short-term high cost, long-term low cost, long-term high cost and you put them into how long will it take to solve this and is it going to cost us anything? So short-term low cost is where you put the quick fixes in, and then long-term high cost is where, um, yes, it's a good idea, it's going to take a while to think about, we need to make some changes to the system and it might even cost a bit. You put them in there and then you focus initially on the short-term load cost, just to get some momentum going, to get a bit of momentum.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah, that taps into all the research that we've ever come across in that leading and managing change. It's when you're kick-starting this or you're fighting that upward battle of initiative overload that you describe well is start with the easy, quick wins before you dive into the costly but important big wins. It's built some momentum.

Russell Watkins:

There is only one caveat there, paul, and that's in a factory. The caveat is number one factory rule is safety. Everyone goes home with the same fingers and toes they came with in an accountancy practice. If you are losing people to mental health issues or you're not retaining your people, you've got a high turnover because they're burning out. There's overburden. They don't like something about the environment. I'm not sure the ease of sorting it comes into it. You have to decide how keen you are to keep people in a good condition.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah, yeah, that taps into. We've got a great story of a firm £5 million turnover firm, approximately 65 people, head of department it's a £5 million department. Head of department decides they've had enough, so they go to the competition. There's lots of other people within that team wondering whether they should say or not, because they're overworked. Classic, you know, overworked, underpaid, too much hassle, no sense of progress and there was no way a quick and easy initiative was going to have any impact whatsoever and so they had to resort to OK, core purpose of the business put the team first. What big thing do we fix? And that was in that case. It was lose some of the pain in the neck clients in order to demonstrate to our team that we're serious about their mental health, about their future enjoyment of the role, so that we could get the commitment to the next level of change Gotcha.

Russell Watkins:

So on their parieto of problemscha. So so on their on their parito of problems. One was uh, difficult customers are causing a high amount of stress. Yeah, it's essentially yeah, and then, and that's that's, that's a, that's a good, strong commitment to get rid of customers. I'm assuming they were customers that they ideally they didn't want anyway.

Paul Shrimpling:

Ideally, you know there's the high risk, low margin, disrespectful. There's three big boxes to tick aren't there? And OK, you might look at it and go, oh yeah, but they're contributing to the financial performance of the business, yeah, but if that results in you putting at risk lots of your key people, then that's a risk that you know. It's that one risk versus the other which you need to make a decision here.

Paul Shrimpling:

If you think this is real and they did and all credit to them were brave enough to make those, uh, the big, well, several big decisions around exiting the wrong clients, what's fascinating though there rus Russell is within 18 months they've clawed those lost clients back, plus more of better clients, and so a team almost the same size is doing instead of 5 million, is doing 6 million within 18 months, with less stress and a view that the future looks bright, and became arguably the best performing team in that firm.

Russell Watkins:

So, as well as offloading customers they didn't want, did they also make an effort to be clearer on the kind of work they wanted to take on? Correct, absolutely Okay. That makes sense, because that's the flip side of that coin, isn't it? It's really interesting, though you say about people who are disrespectful and low margin In manufacturing. You see a lot of businesses hanging on to a long tail of products they don't want for difficult customers because they say it's contribution. It's contributing to our finances fixed cost, variable cost and sometimes we end up fooling ourselves because it introduces noise and destruction to the business.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah, workflow goes out the window. You're hacking off your team because they just know that they're doing work that they can't buy into, can't be fully engaged, because we're in that engagement space here. It is a big deal but it takes, like you say, it takes a brave business leader or department leader to go. All right, we're going to exit 300 grand's worth of clients.

Russell Watkins:

So the question is how can you encourage accountancy firms to do that before the crisis happens? This is always interesting. We act in a crisis because we have no choice.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah, so if that, crisis hadn't have happened.

Russell Watkins:

Can you create that crisis? Can you? Create the crisis.

Russell Watkins:

Yes, did you say yeah? So this is creating the crisis. Jcb, who are local to us in is Daffodil, derbyshire. They, they had a let's create a sense of urgency thing, trying to create urgency all the while, toyota have a really interesting approach and that's I'm going to tell you it, and it is.

Russell Watkins:

It is a delicate line to walk in terms of Stretching your capability without breaking people, and so creating the crisis is, let's say, for a manufacturing company. Let's say you have an assembly line that's performing beautifully 20 people on there and it's performing beautifully, no problems and it's getting a bit complacent. What Toyota would do is they would take somebody off of that line to surface the problems that are currently being hidden and then solve those problems so that it can run beautifully again with 19. So they would stress the process. That's one way of doing it, but you have to be a very mature culture to manage that, otherwise you just end up breaking people. But you have to be a very mature culture to manage that, otherwise you just end up breaking people.

Russell Watkins:

The other way they do it is when they set goals for the year. They'll set a very vague goal. So they set one a few years ago called MR50, maintenance Reduction 50. They didn't explain what it was and they said please tell us how you can contribute. And some people took it as Maintenance Reduction 50 is we're going to try and hold 50% less spare parts. Some said we're going to try and fix stuff 50% faster. So they created a. This is a something for the head, something for the heartbeat. They created a rallying cry and then opened up for people's creativity to fill the gap by creating the crisis On the basis that you're best off. You're best off fixing the roof when it's not raining, hmm, in fact, when it's sunny.

Paul Shrimpling:

Hmm, there's, there's something built into that, though, isn't there? It's about you've got high expectations of your team's ability to contribute to the fix here. Yeah, if you haven't got that expectation, are you? You think, uh, the resolution is all going to sit with the leaders and managers, it's not going to sit with the people on the tools? Yeah, because I think that's a challenge. The reason I bring it up I think that's a challenge in accountancy as a profession is that initiative, uh, innovation is a top-down piece mostly not not completely, but you know, I think that dominates. As opposed to having come from a manufacturing background a long time ago myself, having been into toyota at bernestown, having been into other lean process places the innovation initiatives are coming from the people on the tools. That's an uncomfortable concept in the world of accountancy.

Russell Watkins:

Yeah, but maybe, yes, I mean I was, yeah, I'd have to agree. Actually, many, many years ago I started my first degrees in finance. Unfortunately, so many years ago I was in finance in a function, paul, I think it comes down to the management of it. That doesn't happen by magic in Toyota. They're not somehow selecting a different breed of person. These are all just people who have marital problems, they have elderly relatives, have, uh, alcoholism, they have health issues. These are normal people. Yeah, the difference is the way we're managing um, and it doesn't have to be hard either. I, I was telling somebody, I was telling somebody's story the other day. It's to be a little bit generous of spirit here as well, because we we have to hold a mirror up to them and it's not pleasant. But also we have to recognize that if you've built a practice from 5 million to 10 to 15 million, you've been so focused on building that practice, winning and keeping clients doing the work that is on oil platforms.

Russell Watkins:

Yeah, yeah a firefighter, essentially. And and I said I said, I said to him you're very tired. I said to him you're very tired. I have rapport with him. You look very tired. I'm not surprised You're trying to put fires out all over the show. And his answer was well, my team isn't capable. I have to manage them hard a micromanager, because my team isn't capable. So well, you know, I'm not here to. I'm here to both hug you and to encourage you along.

Russell Watkins:

Some of that is your fault, my friend, and it's your fault because whenever somebody comes to you with a problem, your first question should not be your first response, should not be well, you should do this, because then you're just creating chicks in a nest who are waiting for a worm. Your first question should be what do you want to do about it? And then shut up and leave it five, 10 seconds, and leave a nice pregnant pause. And if they say I don't know, then you say okay, give me three options and then I'll advise you on what I think is best. And it will be painful to begin with, but you start to tease out of them. What do you think Now?

Russell Watkins:

There are multiple benefits for that one is you buy yourself some time. It's not so tiring, so if you don't know the answer, you can think of it. Second is you get a good sense of where that person's at in their capability. And the third is you're going to learn something, sometimes because you're shutting your mouth. Those small habits, if coached correctly, they're not difficult to do and you wouldn't do them all day long because sometimes you need to give the answer. But it's not hard, it's just a constancy of purpose, giving it a go.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. So that's us discussing the engagement space you were talking about. You, you know, three critical questions one strategic one, thinking, one engagement. So we very much um dived into, we've got to build bridges using pre-trial principles and focus around one, three, ten and so on um so that, uh, you align whoever's in production, purchase orders, goods in, uh, you know, the, the juniors on the accounts job or the people who are reviewing the file, are all connected with the big challenge opportunity you're trying to fix strategically. So I guess the next question is is going to be, because it's connected, you know, from engagement to what's the strategic piece here in and around bringing lean to bear so that we're a better firm of accountants well, I think so we've.

Russell Watkins:

We've, we've kind of explored that uh a bit as well, and that that that was all around the hoshin camry. How do we set the strategic need for the business that high level and link it to the, to the um, all the way through the business throughout um? There's a. I have one point to say on strategy. Um, so I I work from boardroom to shop floor. I gotta say I enjoy. I enjoy all of them. My favorite times are when I can get the leadership onto the shop floor listening to and talking to their people and understanding what's actually going on, the magic to do. You know, there's a fellow called Fujio Cho who said six words that I will never be smart enough. To sum up, I can live a thousand lifetimes, paul, I'll never be this smart. He was summarising how he wanted people to behave in their business and his managers to behave and he said go see, ask why show respect. Go see, ask why show respect, show respect.

Russell Watkins:

So go see means don't assume what you're told. Don't just look at your numbers. Go and look at what's actually happening and go and talk to the people who are doing the work, and that can be an office or a shop floor. It could be anywhere. That's go see, ask. Why is not ask who made this error it is, why do we think this happened in the first place? Or why is this such a difficult thing to do? And that takes you towards the problem solving five. Why's?

Russell Watkins:

Getting to the root cause and then show respect is be clear that, um, in a manufacturing plant, the people who truly add value are those who are putting stuff together. The rest of us are just here to support that. And so, for example, in an it's, it becomes really interesting when you, when you talk about an accountancy or a or a firm of lawyers, because nothing is made except the definition of value is is very clear for me. So, in a manufacturing plant, the definition of value is something that transforms the product towards what the customer wants physical transformation. In an accountancy firm or this engineering services firm, I define it as you are anytime you pass on usable information. Usable information for the next step in our process that delivers something for the customer, because accountants and, uh, all other financial services, for example, they are full of unclear processes with necessary unnecessary steps and multiple rework loops, the kind of things I was talking about earlier. Sorry, paul, I answered a different question and I'm I have a habit of answering a question. Don't worry about it, it's because we're in that.

Paul Shrimpling:

I think you've dropped into a really powerful space actually, because you know team engagement and strategic connection and you've gone to like go see us. Why show respect as the methodology for resolving the thing that's holding your firm back from achieving what you want to achieve. And, by the way, what you want is to deliver better for your clients, because only if you've got client loyalty will you improve the results of your firm, and I think that that's often not connected up in most firms. So if you go to, whether it's a three-person team, a 30-person team, a 300 person team or a 30,000 person team of accountants, have they really got the bridge crystal clear in their minds and their hearts around? We're here to serve the client, the customer key point. How do we deliver value to the client? And what you're saying is we're doing our job if we give them usable information. Now I might challenge that in a little while, because usable information.

Russell Watkins:

I'm talking internally. We are passing on from stage to stage usable knowledge that can create what the customer needs. Brilliant, ok, but but. But. But, paul, I 100 percent agree. Funny enough, I I train a lot of team leaders and supervisors and engineers and I've done a training program for a couple of billion pound business. In fact they're about a 40 billion group. This is about two billion um.

Russell Watkins:

And the very first part of the course is do you know who? Do you know who your customer is? Let's connect you to your customer. We have to take you and cast you forward into your customer's life so that you can understand what matters to them and what you do can cause them pain. Because if your customer's crying, you want to know about it. And so, for example, in in an automotive company, we ask them uh, who do you think your customer is and how come what you do affect their drive in their car? And what's the impact of you passing on or creating a defect? So let's say you have a specific defect of a hole in this or a defect. So let's say you have a specific defect of a hole in this or a gap on that. How's that going to affect your customer? Because you're trying to connect them to the end customer pain.

Russell Watkins:

That's step one. Step two is starting to understand, and this is what the totals of the world get right, it's a series of customers and suppliers. So if you that, that company I'm working with, purchasing and finance. Finance, excuse me, is a customer of purchasing. They purchasing past paperwork to them all the while and emails. Purchasing is a customer of finances, information and feedback. So it's that customer supplier thinking way. The next stage is a customer of finances, information and feedback. So it's that customer-supplier thinking way. The next stage is my customer. I'm with you is what I'm saying in a long-handed way.

Paul Shrimpling:

So I just want to extend that further for Ken and go let's go to the end of the chain, the end of the journey. And so, whether it be a car buyer, it's their experience of living with that car for the next two years or whatever. There's all sorts of detailed description about their appreciation of the value of that driving experience From an accountancy perspective is they've got their tax return, they've got their annual accounts, they've got their management accounts, the payroll has been delivered every month. They're the outcomes of the services. Yeah, does everyone in the team appreciate the value of that to the client and the pain that they may cause if they don't get it delivered in the right way?

Russell Watkins:

Yes, the very specific pain that they might cause by not doing their bit thoroughly and on time, and it's yeah but, but, uh, but also you can.

Russell Watkins:

You can put up, you can put a positive slant on that, as in, you are critical here. You know this, this step in. It might appear tiny to you, but it is a critical part in the chain and a cog in the engine kind of a way. But it takes us to a broader point, paul, which is whatever your business is, how are you harnessing the voice of the customer? And the voice of the customer is really important, so I wouldn't. Somebody is hopefully somebody is asking the customers somehow that works for them. How is it going? Are we giving you what you want Beyond just questionnaires? Whoever that person is, they have to work for somebody who hasn't got skin in the game. They have to work and directly report into the MD or the person running the business, so that there isn't a functional neutering of the message or a massaging of the message. What's the problem there that you're referencing?

Paul Shrimpling:

Russell.

Russell Watkins:

So the problem is right. I'll give you a manufacturing example. If you buy anything, if you buy a washing machine, and you have a problem with warranty, that warranty, the washing machine seal leaks. You'll, you'll, you'll, you'll shout at Curry's or Amazon and they will then contact the company and they'll get in touch with the quality department. Yeah, quality might pass on to operations, but there is a chance that quality will solve it. There is a chance that quality will solve it. There is also a chance that it will get lost in quality's massaging of the information so that they don't get a shooing or a bollocking off of the MD. So, whatever the voice of the customer is, however you harness it, it has to go unfiltered, raw into the person running the business in a time efficient way so that they can see without filter what our customers think of us that's interesting.

Paul Shrimpling:

There was a, an md I work with I'm going back over a decade now and nigel, when he stepped in as managing partner, managing director, he said wherever there's a customer complaint, I want it in my inbox. Boom, I don't care what complaint it is, I want it in my inbox. Yeah, and I will credit the people who put those complaints in my inbox. They will be recognised as doing something really good for this business. It is safe to send me the complaints.

Paul Shrimpling:

And what's really interesting is, over time, nigel took that firm to one where the people costs as a percentage of fees was down towards 26%. Now that's a very strong number in the world of accountancy. I was with the firm yesterday and they they had, um, uh, people costs, salaries, national insurance, training costs, outsourcing, pensions and so on. The people costs at 48 percent of the total fees of the business. So contrast that with 26. You can get a sense as to how nigel was doing something really well. And one of his fundamental pieces was we've got to always be connected with what really really matters to the client, the customer. We've got to be really connected to the numbers that really matter every day and every week in the business. I would argue very strongly that they were Nigel's two really powerful approaches as managing director, and he transformed that business.

Russell Watkins:

It sounds like a smart approach and it circles back to our earlier conversation about how do you engage people. But there is a mindset shift here that it takes a bit of strong leadership for, and that's that problems are treasure. The mindset shift is problems are treasure and what I mean by that is, um, accountants will be will be acutely aware that they have to keep becoming competitive to keep hold of their, their client base. Uh, there's nothing I can. I can tell you about the existential threat of ai and uh and and other means of doing the lowlevel accountancy stuff that they need to move up the food chain. But you can either hope that you find a silver bullet to improve your business or you can create a culture where people will be honest about the customer issues and you've got a voice of the customer coming through.

Russell Watkins:

But people will also surface problems. They'll tell you about their problems coming through. But people will also surface problems. They'll tell you about their problems. Then you have a whole pot of potential improvements you can make to improve your business. They're giving you the way to improve the business, to make you more competitive, to make things quicker, to reduce that labor time. You're talking about the uh human time and to get things done right first time brilliant and I think aren in this change the thinking space.

Paul Shrimpling:

You teed up those three critical questions you know, in the strategic space, the thinking space and the engagement space. Isn't this one of those thinking pieces? You know, a problem isn't a problem, it's a treasure.

Russell Watkins:

Yeah it is, it is and the other part of that. Coming back to humanize the numbers and where you started from, um, I think there needs to be a thinking switch and that's listen, these are. These are all in and of themselves. None of these are simple, but in the hurly-burly of running a business, it's hard to do all this stuff in it. So you have to, you have to, you have to pick your approach and stick with it for a few months and see if it works. It's all just running a series of sensible experiments and learning from them. And as long as you're running experiments that are useful, you can mitigate the risk and you give it a few months. If it doesn't work, just run a different experiment. And I guarantee you, if you do that, for three years you've run eight or nine experiments and somebody else has run none. And of those eight or nine, one or two might work. Well, that's one or two more than everybody else. But the thinking way, this other thinking way I, we want people to think like a founder. I was listening a while ago to charlie munger and warren buffett um, and the ideal world is you get everybody in the business thinking like they own the business.

Russell Watkins:

So it's a shift from return and investment thinking to return on assets and it's a problem in manufacturing. Any professional manager not any most professional managers in manufacturing they are well versed in return and investment. How do I put a compelling case together to buy something new and shiny? Yeah, and they're pretty good at that. Working out net present values, discounted cash flows um, we don't want that. That's a professional manager mindset. We, we want a return on assets mindset first, which is look, I've already sunk x thousands and millions into this business. Please convince me that the assets I have you are getting the best out of them. So where are the losses? Where am I getting downtime? Where am I getting problems and defects? Where is it difficult? And let's optimise what we've got and only then will we spend money Return on asset thinking rather than return on investment does that?

Paul Shrimpling:

just flipping it into the accountancy space? Does that, um, is it worth it? Because there's not many assets in an accounting practice, there's lots of people, because that's the number one excuse the language the number one cost, the number one charge to the business. The number one investment is in salaries and training and development. Albeit, there's a question mark where there's enough time, effort and money spent on training and development, but let's just go. Is it a return on assets or is it return on the people, capital, you know, the intellect, the number of people? Is that the sort of shift from manufacturing into the professional service space?

Russell Watkins:

uh, I that that wasn't where I was thinking, but it can be, I've got, I've got no issue, that that makes sense as well. I was thinking, um, I buy, there isn't much kit, but there are some large non-people outlays that go on. In accountancy firms, for example, there's probably a not a, not insignificantly costed, uh, mis information system, saying you've got all kinds of packages and software, yeah, uh, where somebody somewhere is, and, and, by the way, all sorts of legacy systems that are joined up by excel, because excel runs the world, um, and are trying to link everything together, as well as some infrastructure issues. How much office space have we got? How are we making the most out of our investment in our operating expenses? So I would encourage people to think along information systems first off. Are we getting the best we can out of what we've got? And, by the way, this is where where low code, no code, is very useful.

Paul Shrimpling:

I've gone right off beam now, but low code. No code is. So what's that low code? What we're doing?

Russell Watkins:

what's this about? Uh, so you know, you know in ah a question first. Do you see and have you seen in many accountancy practices they have multiple systems, legacy systems, that are joined up. There's problems with some of them and people use Excel to bridge them and run parts of the business.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah, and they might tap into Power BI as a way of smoothing the flow of that.

Russell Watkins:

But yes, yeah, so low-code, no-code, is an approach whereby there are intuitive front ends like Yellowfin, Power BI, and you can it's APIs effectively. So I think we're talking the same stuff. You can link legacy systems and make intuitive interrogations. To be clear, that is containment. So I'm pretty certain that accountants they need their information systems to work well To use things like Power BI and APIs. That is a containment. So you are finding a way around your current information system IT carnage around your current information system it carnage. The question is, the question is what? What are you doing longer term to position yourself with a, with a better system that doesn't need that front end to sort it all out? I?

Paul Shrimpling:

love that. It carnage which, just on the back of a meeting yesterday with a two-office firm where they're doing everything they can to help with their team to overcome that inverted commas IT carnage. The house that Jack built, approach to management information within the firm and also in terms of what they're delivering for the client on a consistent basis as well terms of what they're delivering for the client on a consistent basis as well.

Russell Watkins:

But I think, paul, we have to be a little bit generous of spirit here as well, because we have to hold a mirror up to them and it's not pleasant. But also we have to recognise that if you've built a practice from 5 million to 10 to 15 million, you've been so focused on building that practice, winning and keeping clients doing the work that the chances of your IT system not having evolved to keep up is slim. So it's not surprising that the sin isn't that systems evolve. The sin is that at a point when you can take a breath and do something differently, you walk past the opportunity. That's the sin.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah, I remember going to. I visited. You might be familiar with ProDrive on the M40. If you drive up the M40, you can't avoid the ProDrive site. And it was when they were working with Subaru in the World Rally Cross Championships and they also had the top three cars in the saloon champs across the UK as well Really successful. And the day we were in there they just sold 49% of the stock for 75 million or whatever. I can't remember the numbers specifically, but the founder was a very happy bunny, still pickled from the night before when he came in and introduced himself. Understandably so, you know, understandably so.

Paul Shrimpling:

But the the most fascinating part of that visit was talking to the uh, the, the head of. He wasn't the uh ops director, uh, he reported to the ops director. He reported to the ops director but he was in charge of systems development and he said what's happened at ProDrive three times now and we're just about to go into a fourth is we grow rapidly for 18 months and then we have a six-month moratorium on winning new work and in that six-month moratoriumatorium we then look to all of the key systems and make them fit for the next stage of growth. So very much a preventative approach to it all breaking down and using. You know we talked earlier, didn't? We say let's not wait till it's too risk. The risk's so high on losing customers that we change it. We actually go. No, hang on a second, let's just take a little time out six months and then around the key logistics systems, because the you've got to ship engine parts all over the world to the different rallies and different races and so on.

Paul Shrimpling:

Uh, they, they had a deep dive. Look at all the key handful of key systems that would determine whether they can go from let's just choose a number 75 million in turnover to 150 million turnover. Right, we've got to make these systems fit for purpose, invest some of the hard earned cash we've generated over the recent growth period. And I just thought that was a. Because we work with accountants, they go, yeah. You just can't stop growth. I said, well, thought that was a um, because we work with accountants, they go, yeah you just can't stop growth and say well, yes, you can, yeah, yeah, you can just say we're not taking new clients for a little while builds huge credibility in your marketplace because we want to make sure they were looking after our existing clients.

Paul Shrimpling:

And, by the way, we're in a systems improvement so that we can be better, better placed to work with you in the future paul.

Russell Watkins:

That's, that's a fabulously enlightened mindset. That that is a tremendous example, um, but it takes us back to humanize the numbers and it takes us back to lead a mindset. So, um, I've got a good friend who's who's run many manufacturing businesses, um, and he was from, uh, northern scotland. He had a very, very poor upbringing, always struggled for what he had, yeah, so he had. Naturally, he's hardwired for a scarcity mindset, as in, I never want to go back to being hungry. Now, if your leader has been driven from a place where they had a scarcity mindset, from a place where they had a scarcity mindset, to ask them to pause or to expect them to pause, there is some, some reframing, some psychological work to do to make that pause palatable and to have a good reason for it, because, um, uh, there there are these things. So, and where someone like you can can have value, I suspect, is to challenge the right person one-to-one in a rapport way and say hang on, this is where this is coming from.

Paul Shrimpling:

So it's really interesting yeah, I've been revisiting an old mentor of mine and a couple of conversations with him recently, peter thompson, and he has a phrase which goes something like people won't consistently do who they aren't. So if they're coming from a you know that scarcity mindset, they're going to behave like they're coming from, because that their identity are connected with themselves, is in that space. That's who they are. Therefore, they know they're going to behave like that or even unconsciously will behave like that, without even knowing. And unless that's challenged and they can work on just to use your reference point, which I think is very powerful both their heart and their mind to see themselves in a different space, then they'll behave just like they've always behaved and the human brain's set up to be habitual and do what we've always done, unless there's something significant, an event or conversation challenges the way they look at things strategically, the way they think and the way they engage with their team just to use your big three points of this podcast and the way they feel.

Paul Shrimpling:

Absolutely Well, you've just tapped into a whole raft. I always think. Ultimately, ultimately, what's going on in this is, uh, all of your uh key questions and key comments in this podcast which I'm going to have to revisit and pull out and highlight. For my own learning is connected with changing the conversation between you and a team member so that they're better connected with the value equation for the client and how it makes their job easier. That's how I'm trying to summarize this conversation, cause if you're in that space, you're moving in absolutely the right direction. How would you respond?

Russell Watkins:

Yeah, Uh, I, I a hundred percent agree, and I think you are in a really interesting market because so it is all about people. You know, even as I say that I realize how bland it sounds. I hope some specifics have come across about how you can actually engage your people, but we've talked about the need to engage people throughout and in the latter part of this conversation we've talked about the leader and the leadership team and their thinking way. There's one thing we have to be mindful of, we have to talk about. We have to encourage people to talk about how they feel their backgrounds.

Russell Watkins:

What's stopping, what's the constraint on growth, what's the bottleneck here? And quite often it'll be found in the leader's mind, because you find me, somebody who runs a 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 million pound business, who at some point hasn't gone all in and remortgaged their house or something of that ilk, and I'll show you somebody who has some fear about. Maybe they have some fear about doing that again or maybe it's liberated them, but we ought to explore that space as well as engaging people in the business.

Paul Shrimpling:

The journalists have occasionally asked us you know what's holding the profession back from? You know achieving greater results for the firm? Sure, I would then push that and go well, they'll only do that and you made this point earlier They'll only do that if they deliver brilliantly for their clients, their customers. Because only if you deliver brilliantly for the customers do you earn the right to earn great results. And I think what you've also done today is built a bridge with. Well, if you want great results, we've got to deliver for the client. But we can only deliver for the client if we work better with our team. And we'll only work better with our team if the managers and leaders of the business get into their own heads in terms of how they change, they communicate strategically, think differently and better engage with the team so that they can deliver for the clients. That delivers the results for the film, I mean, it's a simple chain of the connection, isn't it?

Russell Watkins:

nice summary. Yeah, you know. Do you know? Do you know I've been, uh, I was speaking at a conference this week and, um, I told the story about.

Russell Watkins:

For the last 20 years, I've written down regularly my definition of lean, my definition of lean, and it's changed over the last 20 years. In fact, I'm up to definition 22 now and it's gone from very basic to very complex to, I think, wildly off the beam. My current definition of lean, 30 years deep into this, is's very simple now and it's all we're trying to do is create useful habits. Um, uh, I don't think it's complete. It's missing some, some stuff.

Russell Watkins:

You know, I can talk about alignment to customer, I can talk about all sorts, and I can go and, and and and, but I'm trying to, given the complexities of cruise day, I'm trying to distill in my mind what have I learned, and I raise that because there's a risk here of there are a million podcasts out there and every day podcasts are added to that great big podcast bin and I would suggest that anybody should just take something that resonates and maybe feels a bit uncomfortable, that is small and doable, and try it for a bit. Don't try and do everything you hear on every podcast, because it's just not doable into how you take lean thinking, lean strategic insight, lean team engagement into your firm.

Paul Shrimpling:

why not check out the business breakthrough that you'll find in the show notes unpacking how you can make lean-made, simple work in your firm? Try and create a different habit. Yeah Well, like Yoda would say, there's no trial, there's only do or do not, isn't there so?

Paul Shrimpling:

which is a bit glib it's a bit glib, but it's not glib, it is not glib. No, no, it's right. It's right and your point earlier in this discussion was you know, pick something up and run with it for a few months, because installing a new habit doesn't happen on, because you do something once. It happens because of repetition. So multiple days, multiple weeks, a few months gives your chance, yourself a chance, your team a chance to hardwire that new habit that then looks after the future success of your business.

Paul Shrimpling:

Because you've looked after the value of you, of your clients quite right, and it's it is.

Russell Watkins:

It is just about constancy of purpose, and that habit can be as simple as going to a different person once a week in your practice and saying how do you do that and do you have any problems, and that can be a five minute conversation once a week. From there, the correct habit will reveal itself.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah, yeah um, russell, I could. I could talk to you for another hour or two or three or a week on all sorts of things I'd like to unpack, so maybe we'll have to revisit this conversation another time. My last question, russell, of everything we've covered in this discussion if you were to pick on one thing to leave with the people who've taken time out to listen to this podcast, one thing that you'd want them to pick up and run with and do something with, what would it be?

Russell Watkins:

Get an understanding of where you're hurting your customers specifically and where, also, that makes life difficult for your people.

Paul Shrimpling:

Because you can't fail If you your people, because you can't fail If you can find that you can't fail, and I love that because you've connected with the two most important people in all of our lives as business owners, leaders, managers which is our team and our clients, and what we're looking to do, our job as leaders and managers, is to help prevent or resolve those challenges and we'll end up with a better business and a better life as a consequence. Love that, yeah. Love that, yeah. Love that, russell. It's been a joy. I can't believe we've been on in a discussion for the best part well, just over 60 minutes. It's just flown by. Um. Really appreciate you taking time out and sharing some really powerful insights. Uh, some of the questions you've posed, I think, are profound and I'll be looking to flag those up in the in the show notes and we'll get you know how people can hook up with you and connect with you on LinkedIn and what have you in the show notes as well. Great, can't thank you enough. Thank you, my pleasure. Thanks, paul. Isn't it funny how often, when you think you finished a conversation, another gem or two shows up.

Paul Shrimpling:

Thankfully, our sound engineer, joe, kept the recording running following the podcast and here's a couple of extra gems which only takes a minute or so for you to grasp. I think Russell makes a couple of really powerful points here, russell. The potential in every firm we work with is off the charts. Yeah, helping them tap into that potential is, um, what we do, and it's really hard and, um, you know, we're talking to them about strategy, we're talking to them about how they think differently and we're talking to them about how they better engage with the team. So you've just essentially given us a shot in the arm in terms of all. Right, we're on the right bloody path if we're connecting with the sense and history of the Toyota production system and everyone else who's picked up and run with that piece of genius that it is.

Russell Watkins:

Great, great. And there's something you know, there is something in the room that's there's an elephant in this room. A lot of it comes down to what does the person who's in charge want? So for me. So for me, that's uh. Whenever, whenever I'm contacted by, by a manufacturing business who want to talk, my initial qualification, informal qualification, is uh, if you wanted to talk to me because you want to do lean, that's not a strong enough reason. Tell me about some specific pain or gain and what do you want from this? Tell me what you want. And if, if that's not a strong enough reason, tell me about some specific pain or gain and what do you want from this? Tell me what you want. And if what they want is tepid, it's hard to make it work Because at some point somebody has to stand up and make this happen when you're not on site.

Paul Shrimpling:

You're absolutely bob on, which is why, for us, we talk about helping ambitious accountants humanise the numbers. Yes, because if people aren't ambitious enough for their clients, ambitious enough for their team, ambitious enough for their firm and themselves. They won't deal with the pain. They won't do enough consistently enough, habitually, around what really matters in order to move the pain. They won't do enough consistently enough, habitually around what really matters in order to move the dial.

Russell Watkins:

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. That makes perfect sense. So you're essentially pre-qualifying in your tagline in the way you market your business. A final point on that so you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. That means that we think quite binary in this way. Either they're up for it or they're not. Somebody told me a while ago that that saying is missing a bit on the end. You can lead a horse to water, you can't make him drink, but you can make them thirsty on the way. Yeah, I love that.

Paul Shrimpling:

Well, how is he can if you put some salt in the oats there? Yeah, I love that Well hour as you can. If you put some salt in the oats there, you go, which is so that means. Your job and my job isn't it?

Russell Watkins:

Yeah, well, still to this day, we end up working with people where I'm thinking I'm not sure about this, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But I prefer that to being too binary and writing off people who shouldn't be written off.

Paul Shrimpling:

And you know what I'm. I'm 100 with you on that because there's the well, this looks hard, this one. But you know what I'm going to do it? Because I'm going to learn shed loads here. I'm going to learn shed loads on how to better work with. You know, the firms are people that aren't easy. They're hard.

Russell Watkins:

Yeah, yeah, fair play Well, Paul. I also enjoyed that. It was fun.

Paul Shrimpling:

Yeah good. In the discussion with Russell, he unpacked a whole variety of different ways to change the conversation between you and your team, connecting everyone better to the way you deliver value for the clients, which, ultimately, is what the Accountants Growth Academy is all about. We want you to improve your fees per full-time employee in your firm, and you can only do that when you work better with your team and better with your clients. If you want to find out more about the accountants growth academy, check out the link in the show notes. 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.

Speaker 3:

You're about to hear a short excerpt of a conversation with Sherlyn Cowles, the Chief Business Development Officer at Gooding Co. If you want to hear more, go to humanizethenumbersonline or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so we set up a training academy. Basically one day a week every week, all the new trainees come in and the people who are doing the AAT and Sam. He trains them all up. They go away, do their exams at the local centre, which is actually Local Twisters in Bristol, and they've all passed their exams so much quicker than if they were at the local college. They're progressing so quickly. They're all getting really high pass rates, as well as being trained by one of our guys. It's all there. If they've got any queries, he's there on hand to ask all the time. So it's worked really well. So the idea is that we could maybe roll that out further in the future.