One of the most valuable and highly paid players on a professional football team can go an entire season and never play a down. That player is the backup quarterback. Last year, one team paid theirs $17 million to play in one game.
The extraordinary value of the backup quarterback rests with the fact that the starter can be knocked out of a game at any time. The quarterback position is so important, the team must have someone waiting in the wings who is capable of taking over at any moment without the team missing a beat.
Public accounting calls that unexpected passing of the baton a “battlefield promotion,” and firms expect the number of these to increase dramatically and soon become a defining feature of talent management. Why?
Post-pandemic, many employees have opted to quit and find new jobs rather than return to their old ones. This so-called “Great Resignation” will soon hit the accounting profession hard, and less experienced staff will be forced to assume responsibilities well beyond their training.
In this new reality, everyone on staff is a backup quarterback.
The role of learning in the Great Resignation
Firms have already begun to revise their talent management approach. Many have opted to pursue a homegrown strategy. Others will look to recruit. Whichever direction they choose, firms will need to assess whether their current training approach can support the new strategy and develop backup quarterbacks.
Curricula must also be revisited. Most training plans are built on an implied assumption of staff stability. Firms train their staff on topics most likely to be needed in the upcoming year without much thought of preparing them for the likelihood of a battlefield promotion.
In the new reality, a firm must accelerate the development of its staff because lower-level staff most likely will assume advanced responsibilities earlier in their careers. Staff must develop new skills because those needed to step in when the starter gets knocked out are different from the skills needed to guide the team from the opening kick off.
Skills development
When supervisors leave, their unfinished work should not fall to the manager and partner, and neither should the partner and manager be solely responsible for training the recipient of the battlefield promotion. For the firm to succeed, the “backup quarterback” must be ready to step in with only minimal disruption to the engagement and to the client.
It is impractical for an organization to train someone on all the tasks their staff might assume. The best way to prepare a backup quarterback is to develop their ability to proactively figure out a new task with minimal direction. The most valuable skills needed by a backup include:
- Problem solving;
- Critical thinking;
- Decision making;
- Project management; and,
- Communication.
Building these skills will require different approaches to classroom learning. Firms will have to view the classroom as a place to teach staff how to fish, not one where they give out the fish. Consider the following examples:
Teaching them to fish and understanding the client’s industry
We worked with a firm to revise their staff training programs for specialized industries. At one point in the program, the industry practice leader suggested that he take 30 minutes to explain the most significant industry trends.
We suggested a revised approach. Provide a classroom activity that required teams to:
- Perform their own search of industry trends and choose a couple they think will most likely impact their clients; and
- Prepare a short presentation for the class to describe one of their trends, how they tracked down the information, and how they believe it will impact their client’s business.
The industry leader would observe and comment on the presentations and provide practical insight on the industry based on her 20-plus years of experience.
This approach simulates what the firm wants to happen in the aftermath of a battlefield promotion. The staff takes the initiative to learn more about the industry on their own before going to the partner or manager for help.
Teaching them to fish, a revenue recognition refresher
Despite several training sessions on the new revenue recognition accounting standards, most of the staff was unprepared for implementation. The firm’s initial thought was to deliver a refresher on revenue recognition by making a few modifications to the training they had delivered before. Upon further consideration, they took a different path.
We helped them build a module on how to research an accounting standard and work with a client to properly implement that standard for the first time. We built the module around a case study in which the accounting standard was — of course — revenue recognition.
This learning strategy achieved multiple objectives. Not only did it provide the needed refresher on revenue recognition, it also taught the staff a repeatable process for researching an accounting standard. The learning experience also helped them develop important tools for managing and guiding the client on how to assume their responsibilities for implementing a new accounting standard.
All of these skills are transportable. In the classroom, they worked with revenue recognition. On the job, in the wake of a battlefield promotion, it may be capitalized software costs for a healthcare provider. If the staff has the experience, having nothing to eat but knowing how to fish, then they stand a much better chance of surviving on their own.
Activity-based learning and classroom coaching
Most classroom training follows a knowledge transfer model in which a subject matter expert delivers a lecture on the topic with an assumption that the participants will absorb the knowledge, retain it, recall it when needed, and apply it on the job. This learning strategy will work for some topics, but not for skills development. Skills development requires a different approach.
To effectively use the classroom experience to develop skills, start by reframing its purpose. Let’s return to our original analogy, the firm is a football team with each staff member assuming the role of backup quarterback. Can you imagine what would happen if a football team took the knowledge transfer approach to preparing its players? What if the coach spent most of the team’s preparation time watching film and explaining to the players what he wanted them to do during the game.
Full preparation requires the team to get on the field and practice their plays under the watchful eye of the coach. The coach teaches by observing what works and does not work during practice and providing players with immediate feedback and corrective action.
Think of classroom training as preparation for the game, part instruction and a large part practicing plays. The previous two examples illustrate many of the core principles of this approach to skills development.
- Classroom experience built around an activity or case study that simulates a situation the participants are likely to encounter on the job;
- Lectures limited to only the information needed to complete the activity; and,
- Leverage the practical wisdom and experience of the subject matter expert, not their command of raw information. Put them in the role of a coach not a professor.
Intuitively, the benefits to the learner are obvious. Learner engagement improves dramatically when the classroom experience requires them to solve problems. Engagement improves retention. Solving problems helps build confidence; not solving problems creates an equally valuable learning experience. Practicing new skills builds proficiency.
The less obvious benefits are those that accrue to the facilitator and that allow the firm to significantly increase its return on learning.
Improved coaching skills: Firms typically require senior staff, managers and partners to develop their subordinates, and some go as far as to make the ability to do so a component of the annual performance and compensation review. Those charged with developing others may receive training on this skill, but rarely are they given the chance to practice.
Activity-based learning provides managers the chance to practice their coaching and to observe first hand the difference it can make in staff performance. That experience of working with a group of staff and seeing “the light go on” can transform how managers view their role on the job.
Acknowledge and develop managerial skills that matter: The subject matter expert/lecture model rewards those skilled in making presentations and keeping a crowd’s attention. But how often in the average career will someone be called on to stand in front of a crowd of people and deliver long presentations about technical topics? Certainly it happens, but most firms would rate this skill as a “nice to have.”
The ability to work with and develop staff falls into the “must have” category. Activity-based learning not only allows the managers a chance to develop these skills, it also signals that leadership values the ability to develop others.
Build employee engagement and firm culture: Learning experiences built around teams working together to solve a common problem help build employee engagement and reinforce a culture of accomplishment. Values of that culture include:
- Teamwork: Working as a group to solve a complex problem and engaging in the free exchange of differing points of view provide a solid foundation for delivering team-based services. In a typical lecture-driven classroom, many learners remain quiet even if they have valuable contributions to make. Working in small teams allows these less vocal individuals to engage and contribute in ways they could not before, which enhances the learning experience for all.
- Relationships: Firms recognize the need to build relationships by and among staff, managers and partners. To accomplish this, training events often include dinners and cocktail events. Getting to know co-workers socially is helpful, but working collaboratively with someone to solve a problem provides first-hand experience with their skills and work habits, which can be even more useful on the job when you need someone’s help getting things done.
- Self sufficiency balanced with a willingness to seek help: Firm leaders describe two staff behaviors that create inefficiency and drive down realization: those who drop the ball and leave the work to others, and those who spin their wheels rather than ask for help. Passive, lecture-driven classrooms reinforce rather than remedy these behaviors. Case study-driven experiences require the learner to produce a work product, which drives them to take the initiative to try to figure things out and seek advice from their facilitator to complete the required task.
At its best, learning has always been a lever to be deployed to enable the execution of broader strategies. As firms work to cope with the fallout from the Great Resignation, firm leaders should rethink their learning approach and willingly embrace the changes necessary to effectively function in a world of continuous battlefield promotions.
For most firms, these changes mean shifting away from a knowledge-based curriculum to one that emphasizes skills development. Activity-based classroom experiences based on case studies, role plays and scenarios will be required to implement this revised approach to learning.
