In this Generational Viewpoints article, we asked members of Green Hasson Janks (www.greenhassonjanks.com), a Los Angeles-based accounting firm with approximately 100 employees, to share their perspective on the importance of visioning. Generation Y accounting and audit manager David Sternberg, born in 1983, and Generation X partner Warren Shulman, born in 1966, replied to the following question:
"How important is visioning and strategic planning to your firm and its people, and why?"
SHULMAN'S GEN X VIEWPOINT:
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For a firm to grow and be successful and for its people to feel valuable and challenged, it needs to continuously look forward to see the impact that future trends are going to have. We also need to look back and critically evaluate what works well in our firm and what needs to be improved or abandoned.
We all get bogged down with our day-to-day activities of serving clients, managing our people, and our busy lives, and we spend most of our valuable but limited time reacting to the latest "fire drill." Visioning and strategic planning is a great way for us to become proactive, instead of reactive, helping us to prepare and plan for the future. Visioning is also a way of anticipating and preventing problems from arising in the future.
Our firm underwent a visioning and strategic planning process six years ago, and we are in the midst of completing a new vision and strategic plan for the next five years. This process has been an excellent way for us to include all of the different departments and functional areas of the firm, as well as people from different levels, all working toward a common goal. It has been a great team-building exercise and has allowed us to be creative and think outside of the box.
With the pace at which technology and the profession are changing, firms that do not regularly create visioning and strategic planning goals will fall behind. These firms may eventually need to merge or be acquired by competitors that are more actively evaluating the future of their firm. If we are not looking toward the future, then we will become stagnant and eventually may start going backward.
As competition heats up for talent, those firms that are doing visioning and strategic planning will have an easier time attracting, hiring and retaining talent, as they will be able to easily explain where they are going and where they see everyone fitting into the plan. Whether the recruit is a partner or an entry-level staff member, they are more likely to join and then stay with that firm if they have a clearer picture of what the future looks like and what their role is going to be.
Visioning and strategic planning is one of the most important exercises that a firm should undertake. When done right, it will ensure the continuity and success of the firm. Without it, a firm's chances of survival in this ever-changing profession are significantly diminished.
