What you'll learn:
- Understanding the key components of change management theory and how they apply to the accounting profession.
- Identifying common challenges and obstacles to implementing change in accounting and strategies for overcoming them.
- Developing a toolkit of techniques and strategies for effectively managing change in accounting settings.
Heather Satterly (00:11):
So I believe that change management is the keystone to successful transformation within Affirm and understanding how people think, learning how to empathize with their feelings, and also learning how to create teams and understand the players both within your firm and within your clients' organizations can help you to drive change much more effectively in your firm and in your practice as a whole. So really excited to talk about change management with you today. I do have some exercises that we're going to be doing and there will be a group exercise at the end. So what I'm hoping is that you guys can break into groups. There's not a ton of us in here, but if we could break into groups and kind of talk about some of the points that we're going to be talking about today, that would be fantastic. So when we get to that point, I'm going to ask you guys to move and maybe form groups of five or six, so be ready for that.
(01:10)
All right, so my name is Heather Satterly. I am a CPA. I've been in the accounting industry for quite a long time, almost 30 years. I can't believe that I have a master's in innovation from Northeastern University. It was an 18 month program that focused on teaching leaders how to lead a team that innovates within their organization. And it was fascinating and the reason that I decided to take that program was because I worked very closely with technology companies such as Intuit and others, and I wanted to understand how do they come up with the ideas and how do they develop the products that we're using in our firms? Wanted to understand that process and it was absolutely fascinating. Loved it. And what I found was that where we are as an industry, the concepts and the strategies that these technology companies are using within their companies and their organizations, we also should be using within our firms in order to drive change and to keep up with all of the new innovations and changes in technology that we're seeing right now in the industry.
(02:21)
I have founded, ran and sold to accounting practices, and so I have built teams and transitioned teams into other firms. I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of that. It's not easy. And really the way to make this successful is to understand these principles of change management, understand how people think and how they react to change, and how you can influence their behaviors, their thought processes and their mindsets to help facilitate that change successfully within the organization. I am also the Editor of the Woodard Report, which is an online magazine that we bring content related to running a practice. Hope you check it out. It's at report.woodard.com. I'm the co-host of the Appy Hour, which is a super fun webinar series that's focused on technology within the accounting industry that I run with my really good friend, Liz Scott. We talk about accounting technology and we have a drink while we do it.
(03:22)
Super fun. It's at four o'clock eastern on Tuesdays this year. We actually have a new strategy for the last four years. What we've done is we've really focused on the technology, what it is bringing the partners on to really demo what their solution is. This year we flipped our model on the head and we're actually focusing on tech stacks, whole tech stacks at CPA firms and accounting firms. So we are having firm leaders come on to share what technology they're using both to run their firm and to service their clients. It's been fantastic and we've done three of those so far. This year we're going to be doing a whole lot more, and you can watch those episodes @thehappyhour.com. I am also the co-host of the Woodard Report podcast with Joe Woodard, which is exciting, so you can check that out as well. We interview industry leaders and we talk about important things that are going on in our industry.
(04:16)
And yes, I am a crazy cat lady. If you ever have a zoom call with me, you are 99% likely to see a cat behind me, at least one. And I love horses, and I got a horse. I bought my seven year old self a horse at the age of 52 because when I was seven years old, I said, someday I'm going to own a horse. And it was the coolest thing I've ever done and I love it. And now I don't think I could ever not have a horse. So I think we should all remember what we loved and what we wanted to do when we were seven years old and make it happen for ourselves. So all right, so that's enough about me. Let's dive in to how we can make change happen within our lives and within our firms. So these are our learning objectives for this session.
(05:02)
I'm going to start out with a quote by Charles Darwin. It's not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive, but those who can best manage change. And we all know this is true, right? Something changes in your life if you just put your hands over your ears, your head in the sand, they're not really going to go anywhere and it's going to be very detrimental to your life. So understanding that change is here and learning how to adapt to change and honestly to exploit change in your favor is a really, really great skill to have. So there's four primary drivers of change in the accounting industry that I see, definitely technological transportation transformation, not transportation. We're not going anywhere today. The evolving workforce and the way that we are meeting the staffing crisis in our industry right now, globalization, so expanding outside of our geographical location and our country and organizational and societal culture.
(06:06)
It's changing. It's always changing. We are a very diverse country and we're a very diverse industry. And so these are all things that are causing change in our industry that we are dealing with every day. And so understanding how to drive change and how to manage change and really be a change facilitator both in our firms and with our clients is going to be the key to success. I really do firmly believe that the firms that can master change management will be the ones that lead us into the future and the ones who don't are going to be the ones that sadly are not going to make it through this time of whitewater within our industry.
(06:53)
So why do people resist change? It's hard. It's a really hard thing to do when someone comes to you and says you need to change your behavior. When you move, we all get a little bit of anxiety or maybe we get a lot of anxiety. There's lots of different reasons that people have that resistance to change. Pride is one, I've done a lot of consulting for clients in change because I have primarily supported those that were implementing new software throughout my career. And one of the biggest things that I see when I'm dealing with companies that are changing solutions and workflows is the people that created the existing workflows are very, very proud of what they created. And they're a bit offended that somebody thinks it needs to change. And the best way to counter that is to validate their feelings and say, yes, you worked really hard.
(07:52)
You're a huge asset to this organization, and what you've built is amazing, but we need to change with the times and then incorporate them into the solution. Give them ownership of that and give them a voice. We're going to be talking a lot about how we communicate as individuals and using empathy to drive change and to make sure that people feel heard and that they have power over the change and that they have a voice surprise. How many of you ever had somebody within your organization that just dropped a bomb on you? Middle of tax season, let's implement something new, right? That's really tough when you're looking at a whole bunch of returns that have to get out or a lot of work to do to have somebody spring that on you. So people are like, no, this isn't a good time. You can't force this change on me.
(08:41)
More work, right? It's more work to do. We have to create the space for change. You can't have a 70, 80 hour work week that is completely filled with deliverables and also facilitate change. You can't, the only way to do that is to create more hours, which unfortunately we can't do. Or to give yourself the time and your team, the time and room to actually facilitate the change, ripple effects. If we change this thing over here, it's going to affect that and that what's going to happen to the other parts of the organization. These are very real concerns, and I think one of the biggest mistakes that we can make as leaders is not validating people's feelings about the change, loss of control. What the one that jumps to my mind is offshoring. People are very concerned about outsourcing our offshoring services, that that's a big change in an organization.
(09:42)
And I think one of the big fears is loss of control. Another one is when we had to go remote, I remember the last firm that I didn't own that I worked in. I came up for my final, what turned out to be my final performance review. And I said, I don't want to work in the office anymore. I want to work at home. I spend an hour and a half every day on the road in traffic. It makes me an unpleasant person and I don't feel that it brings any value to the firm, and I don't think it brings any value to my life. And so they came back and they said I could have one day at home a week, and I gave my notice and I started a hundred, 100% virtual firm from day one, two years after I left. So I think that that loss of control, what they didn't realize was that I was super productive and that I was going to get the work done.
(10:42)
And I've done that. I've built a firm, sold a firm. I've worked in other virtual firms, and I am much more productive when I'm working from my home office because I'm able to give direction and attention to other parts of my life and I'm a more fulfilled person and I'm not stuck in traffic getting really angry at everyone else on the road. So I'm a better person past resentments. So there's dynamics within any organization between people in different departments in the same department at different hierarchies. We're going to talk about power and the role of power in change, concerns about viability. I talked about this yesterday when cloud came out, when first Cloud came out and everybody was on desktop applications, and all of a sudden they were saying, Hey, put it on somebody else's server. People were like, that's never going to work. How am I going to do that?
(11:35)
So we have these preconceived ideas about what is possible. I think now we're starting to learn that we have to let those preconceived ideas go because technology is moving so quickly and sometimes the threat is very, very real. Changes within an organization will mean that somebody could lose their job. It could mean that somebody doesn't want to work at home and all of a sudden they're going to have to work at home. So in some cases, it's just a matter of this is a real threat. We have to acknowledge it's a real threat and figure out how to deal with it at the crux of the situation. This is why people are adverse to change, it's fear. All of those other things that I listed, it all comes down to this fear that something bad is going to happen or that things are going to be really, really hard and I'm not going to survive it.
(12:32)
That's a real thing and that's emotional. And so when we're talking about making changes in our lives and with our organizations and with our clients, we need to acknowledge these emotions. If you just ignore them and say, Hey, it's just the way we're going to do it. People are not going to be on board with your change. So we're going to spend a lot of time today talking about strategies that we can use to help people feel heard, feel like they're part of the process, that they have a say in what's happening in their lives because they're working when they're working, going to work within the organization, that's part of their life. They want to have a say and they want to be heard. So in times of change to quell anxiety with anyone, humanity is needed acknowledgement of the feelings, empathy, and most of all, leadership folks need to know that you're, that someone, hopefully the leaders of your organizations are in the driver's seat, that you have a plan and that you're going to lead them through it successfully.
(13:42)
All right? The change management core principles. Now, there's a whole bunch of change management thought leaders out there that have written books. There's different methodologies, but they all come down to the same core principles. So there's Lewin's change management model, T'S eight step change model, McKinsey's seven Ss model, the A car model and Bridges transition model. Anybody heard of any of those? Anyway, it all comes down to these three points is that people need to prepare for change. You don't just jump into it. You've got to prepare for it and think about what is going to be the result of the change. How is the organization going to navigate through it, and how are you going to get people on board to help you facilitate the change? Then you have the implementing change to the process of actually changing, and then you have the sustaining the change.
(14:37)
So I'm going to tell you a story about the last firm that I also worked. The last firm I worked for, same one I had implemented. We had decided we needed a practice management application, and I had selected one. The partners had approved it. I set it up, I trained the staff on it, and it was working, except for one thing, the partners wouldn't use it. Everybody on the team used it, but the partners didn't use it. We got about six weeks into after we had gone through the implementation, everything was working. The project died. It was heartbreaking for me. I'd put so much work into it because leadership comes from the top and the partners, they wanted it. They said it, they said, do it. This is great. We're really excited. They gave me budget to do it. They gave me time to train everybody, but they didn't buy in and they had the power. And so if they weren't going to do it, it affected everybody else on the team and it created a lot of frustration.
(15:44)
So let's talk about preparing for change. So when you are preparing for change within your organization or with a client, you need to create awareness of the problem, the need for the change, and you have to instill a sense of urgency. If we don't act, there will be consequences for inaction. And you need to lay that out so that people understand it and they feel the need to change. They understand it. You know, have a client, when you're talking to a client about making change within their business, they'll say to you, yes, I understand I need to change. That's when they're acknowledging that sense of urgency. They have to have that. If they say, oh, that's something we can handle next year, or I don't understand why we need to do it, there is no sense of urgency. They're not going to adopt the change, it's not going to happen.
(16:37)
They have to understand and they have to really feel that sense of urgency. You also want to form a strong coalition within your organization and your client's organization if you are implementing change with a client to drive that change forward. So you're going to want to build a team of distinct personalities, which we're going to go over in just a few minutes to help drive that change. And then you need to develop a clear vision. People need to know where they're going, saying, Hey, we have change. And just blindly going into it without giving any details for what the end result is going to be is even scarier and people aren't going to want to do it. I don't know why we're doing this. How many times have you had a change within your firm and you've heard somebody in your organization's say, I don't know why we need to do this.
(17:28)
This doesn't make any sense. There was no clear vision. You need to communicate that vision to the team members so they understand why we're doing it. When you're in the process of implementing change, you're communicating the vision effectively and repeatedly and consistently. It's not, Hey, we're doing this change and we're going to get through it, and then you're done. You need to have continuous feedback loops from your team and check-ins to make sure that everybody understands what's happening, what their role is in the change. And to quell any uneasiness or answer any questions about how to make the change happen, you're going to remove obstacles and empower actions. So obstacles usually are people, and we're going to talk about that too. I've had many, early on, I've had many implementations and consulting engagements where there was someone within an organization that was dead set against what we were doing.
(18:36)
And if you can't get that person on board or out of the way, they will sabotage the entire project. So understanding what saboteurs look like is going to be really important for us, and we're going to go over that as well. And then you want to achieve short-term wins to build momentum. Now, my strategy on this is once I identify who the resistors are within the change, the people are like, I don't want to do this. This is dumb. This doesn't make any sense. Then I start to think about what aspects of the change are going to make them really excited and make their lives easier and get buy-in. And then I go after those first.
(19:18)
So an example could be a bookkeeper that's doing things the old way. They're on desktop. I'm not going to QuickBooks Online, this is awful. I don't know why I have to do this. Making my journal entries is fine, whatever it is. I start having conversations with them and asking them, so what is the worst part of your job? What is it that takes you the most time and really drives you nuts? And I'll listen to them and eventually they'll offer up something that I know that my solution is going to solve for, and that's the first thing I'll tackle. And as soon as I solve that problem for them, they're all in. They're all in because now they see the value of the solution, and I've made their life easier, which usually allows them that space that I talked about to make the change. And now they're like, okay, I can see where we're going and I can see that vision.
(20:08)
And now we're ready to move forward. Sustaining change, you want to consolidate gains and keep building on the change. So after you've had those smaller wins, now you're going to start to tackle those bigger problems. You're going to anchor new approaches in the organizational culture. If you implement something like Slack or Teams, you need to have guidelines and guardrails for how we're going to use it. And then you want to make that as part as an anchor in your culture and start to look at the other processes that will be affected by that change. Anybody using Slack or teams in their firms. So it's a messaging app that you can use to communicate with your team and make that, put that in your handbook. This is how we use teams, make it part of the culture and then reinforce and support the change for long-term success. So when you reach a milestone, celebrate it. Call out the people that were involved in making that change. Have them speak about it.
(21:08)
Reinforce positive reinforcement is an awesome way to get people to buy in and people to start changing their mind about change. All right, next, what we're going to talk about is understanding the players. So whenever you're dealing with change within an organization with multiple people within a firm, you have to understand a couple of factors. One is power. So the hierarchy of power and influence within a firm, and this is a very simplistic one, is really important. You need to understand who is making the decisions, who is reporting to somebody else? What are the relationships between the players and how are they interacting and who has influence over whom? So for example, here we see a CEO or managing partner, and then we have the EA, which is the Executive Assistant to the Managing Partner. That person doesn't report to anyone but the CEO or managing partner.
(22:16)
But I still have to understand the relationship of that person to the other people within the organization because it could turn out that the executive assistant has a really great relationship with one of the managers, and the managers has power over the team leaders and the bookkeepers. And if I can put a bug in the air of the EA and get them on board, as you know, somebody that's supporting the change, then they can drive and influence somebody's attitudes about the change somewhere else in the organization. So understanding the synergy between your team and there are exercises, I'll give you some books out there that I can recommend to help you kind of learn some actionable ways to go through exercises with your company to find out personalities, types, and how people interact with each other.
(23:12)
So we're going to understand the players. So these are the different change management personalities. So when we're driving change within an organization, we have six change management personalities. The first one is the champion. And the champion is a passionate advocate for the change that's going on. They're the persons, let's do this. This is going to transform whatever it's we're doing. They're all on board. They're the one out there just telling everybody how great this is going to be and how successful and how it's going to transform everything within our world just doing it. The influencer is that person that everybody loves. So your influencer is the person that knows everybody in the company, the person that's got the jokes and everybody's like, oh, there's Joe, the one that everybody loves and everybody wants to talk to and is a really great listener. The saboteur actively opposes the change and that a saboteur can actually be at any level within the organization in that hierarchy.
(24:15)
And believe it or not, even if they're not in a position of power by title, depending on their personality, they can have a lot of power and influence the possibility or the viability of the change. So identifying the saboteurs is crucial to driving change management within an organization. They're usually people that won't follow the rules when you're going through the change management. They're not, if you ask them to watch a video to get acquainted, they don't watch it, right? And we're going to talk about more of the attributes of the saboteur in just a few minutes. The early adopter is the person that's like, okay, let's do this. I want in. And they're really excited about it. They read up on it, they start the process. They're the ones that read ahead and are really, really embracing the change. And they're fantastic because they can be your poster child for change.
(25:15)
They're the people that can give testimonials, oh, I did this and it's really changing the way I work. I really love this. And they can also be a resource for some of the other members in the firm that really aren't kind of moving as fast as the early adopters. The late adopter is hesitant to embrace change. So the late adopter is kind of a, let's see what happens. So they're a little later to embrace the change takes them a little while. They need a lot of encouragement, they need more coaching and their strategies for them to get them moving a little bit faster. Things like additional training, guidance, coaching. So a late adopter isn't saying, I'm not going to do it. They're just a little bit slower to embrace the change. You also have the fence sitter, the fence sitters, not the saboteur. They're not saying, oh, I'm going to derail this project.
(26:11)
We're not doing it over my dead body. That's the saboteur, right? The fence sitter says, I'm just going to sit here and see what happens. I don't think this is actually going to happen, so I'm just going to wait it out. I'll go to the meetings. I'm not going to say anything. Just see, maybe if the influencer does it, maybe I'll start to reconsider, right? You guys know who those are? Anybody have anybody fence sitter in their firm? Oh, I've seen lots of fence sitters. I think I may benefits that are at one point. So by understanding these six different types of change management personalities, we can start to identify them within our organization and create a strategy for creating teams that mix these together to help facilitate the change. So for example, you can create groups. The first group is the supporters and the influencers.
(27:06)
So that group includes the champion, the early adopter, and the influencer personalities. These are the ones that are super enthusiastic about the change. They're onboard and they can be the ones that are telling other members of the firm or the organization, this is going to work. We're excited. They're the ones that are actually doing the work and using the new processes. And they can be an example for the other members of the firm that really are maybe a little slower or a little more afraid of the change. So the ways that you can really synergize this team is to encourage the supporters to share their experiences with the team. And one of the methods that I think is a great way to do that is town halls. So having a town hall regularly with your team where you're talking about what, what's going on, where you are in the project.
(28:01)
So this is what we've accomplished, this is what we're working on now, and this is what the roadmap looks like down the road. And then having your supporters share their experiences about what they've seen during their experience within the project. You also want to provide opportunities for the supporters to mentor and coach other members of the team. So if somebody's really, really doing a great job of embracing the change, they have a lot of ideas, they're excited about it, their energy can get other people excited about it as well and can possibly even change the minds of people either fenced that or saboteurs or late adopters. So really understanding, utilizing their attitudes and their energy about the change can be really, really helpful. You also want to pair the influencers with the saboteurs and the fence sitters. So those influencers are people that are really excited about the change and they have influence within the organization.
(29:06)
So they're going to be talking, they're well respected by the saboteurs and the fence sitters, so they're more apt to listen to the idea. Now, I was doing a big implementation for a manufacturing company and I had the support of the CEO. I had the support of the plant manager, but I did not have support of the controller, and the controller didn't want to change at all. And so I had to find somebody to be able to be excited and that had have influence over her. Now the interesting thing was the controller had influence over the c e o. She was his trusted advisor. This was a tough problem. There was a bookkeeper that the controller loved, and so that was the person that was the influencer and that was the person that I focused on. And I as the project manager, spent a lot of time with her explaining what the benefits were and how it was actually going to benefit the controller.
(30:21)
The controller didn't like me at all. And just so you know, the saboteurs typically do not like whoever is introducing the change because they really are vehemently against whatever the change is and they do not want it to happen. So by getting that influencer to come in and show them what success was going to look like, she started to have conversations with the controller and was able to go in and help change the mind of the controller. And she was also able to help me identify where those wins were, those early wins, what can I focus on right now that's going to win her support of the project? And together we were able to accomplish that and the controller got on board, started to see the validity of the change that we were trying to incorporate and the project got done. We were never friends, the control, and I never did become friends, which is not uncommon. But we did get the project done for the benefit of the company. So understanding the players here, I've kind of added in the different personality types that the way they may look within an organization and you can start to create synergies based on who the players are to help drive the change forward.
(31:44)
So let's talk about the saboteurs. Saboteurs are consistent and persistent resistance. So that's a lot. Try and say that three times fast. It should be a poem. So they are all, they're against it. They're very actively against it. They talk at the water cooler about how it's a waste of time, how the project really isn't going to go anywhere. It's going to fail. They try to convince people within the organization not to follow the directions. They have a negative impact on team morale. They look for failures or the possibility of failures and then they try to push that along. There are a hindrance to the progress of the project. So there are people that basically if you're having a meeting talking about something, there's some, they will take 20 minutes in the meeting telling you why you shouldn't be doing it or everything that's wrong with the project.
(32:45)
They have failure to improve after coaching and support. So you try to help try them with the change and there's no improvement. And many, many times they have a misalignment with the company values and the culture and they're just not open to looking at aligning themselves with where the company is going. Now that doesn't mean that you can't convert a saboteur. I just told you that I've done that before. You can absolutely do that. So how can you do that? You can communicate change clearly and honestly and acknowledge change is hard. I know this is hard for you. I know that the process that you created is fantastic. Avoid using words like, but use and the process that you created is fantastic. And this change that we're going to make is going to take it to a whole new level. Your process is going to be even better form a change management project team.
(33:51)
So build a team with different people that are within that organizational structure to meet regularly to talk about how the change is coming along, any issues that are coming up, have they identified additional saboteurs? Do they understand what the sentiment is within the organization? Involve team members in the decision making process. So decision making doesn't have to be make it or break it decisions. They can be little decisions. One tactic that I used in an engagement where I was doing a change management of software where I had somebody that wasn't on board, I asked them in a meeting, we can choose the font and the color for this application on how it's going to appear in the user interface. SALY, what color do you think is best? What font do you like? All of the sudden that person was so excited to give their feedback about the font and the color and all of a sudden felt ownership in the change.
(34:56)
It was a tiny thing. It wasn't going to make or break anything, but it was something that they felt now their fingerprints were on it and all of a sudden we had buy-in the little things. And it's acknowledging that these people, people are heard and that they are part of the process and they're that they are affecting the change within the organization. Provide support and training for new skills. So don't just throw a change at the team and expect them to adopt it. You need to be methodical about letting them know what's going on, what's on the roadmap, and then providing the support for that. And you can incorporate your team and have your team with the early adopters and the champions and the influencers to help those that might be a little far behind. Acknowledge and address emotions and concerns, manage expectations, and be transparent about potential challenges. One of the biggest mistakes that I made early in my career when I was implementing technology is I said, these two or three fatal words, four, sorry. It's going to be easy.
(36:11)
It's not going to be easy. It is never easy. And that really is the kiss of death, especially to those people that are not on board with the change. Change is hard. And so I switched that out after having several people at the end of an engagement say, you said it was going to be easy and it was not easy. I took that feedback and I'm like, all right, I'm going to flip this on its head. And so now I start every engagement with, I just want to tell you right up front, this is going to suck, right? There's going to be points where you are not going to want to do this and it's going to be awful and you're going to hate me and that's okay. I'm here for you and I want to know about it. When you're feeling that way, send, let's get together and talk through what you're feeling and figure out a way to make it easier.
(36:58)
But I don't try to tell them it's going to be easy because the easy is subjective. What's easy for you could be really hard for me. What's easy for me could be really extremely difficult for you. So it's all subjective. And making wide statements like that when you're about to embark on a change is setting yourself up for failure. You've got to acknowledge people's feelings and let them know that they're going to have bumps along the road, manage expectations. It's trace transit about potential challenges. And then false foster a culture of adapt, adaptability and resilience. So reward people that are adaptable and resilient. So termination of these saboteurs, and I think this is really important because I don't want you guys to think that the saboteurs just need to be kicked to the curb. I don't think that that's something that should be a last resort.
(37:55)
And typically I've only seen a few times within my entire career where somebody had to be let go because they were so against a change and we weren't going to be able to move forward with them still on the team. This is, I'm not going to say it's out of the question, it does happen, but with the right support and the right strategy, you can win them over. So continuous communication, you want to maintain that dialogue with them, make sure they feel heard, coaching and guidance, provide support, monitor the performance and give them actionable feedback and be as positive as you can, but also hold them accountable. And then if after the monitoring the performance, they haven't made the change, then you're going to have to consider termination in order to move the project forward. Right? Alright, are we ready to put some of this in action? And before we move on, does anybody have any questions? Yes. Can you just
Audience Member (39:00):
Hang out with me for a week?
Heather Satterly (39:04):
Sure. As long as we go to Hawaii or Caribbean. I'm in San Diego. Oh, you're in San Diego. Any other questions? All right, so let's do case study one. I just wanted to go through, so you guys can see a little bit of this in action, and then I'm going to, hopefully we have 10 minutes, hopefully we could break into groups for just a minute or two to talk through it at your table on what strategies you think for a case study that I have or some topics that I have coming up. So the first one is overcoming resistance to technology adoption in an acquired accounting firm. So in this case, a smaller firm. And how many of you by the way, have gone through an acquisition? Either you're the acquirer or you have merged with the firm. Okay, so you know exactly how hard that is.
(39:53)
So smaller accounting firm is acquired by a larger firm. Larger firm uses more efficient and technology dependent processes. So the smaller firm doing things a little manually and all of a sudden the team needs to come in and learn all of these new things. It's very disruptive, they're resistant, they're, it's scary. They feel like all of a sudden there's new people. There's people that they don't know. The resistance for employees of the acquire firm, especially the lead of the client accounting services team are resistant to this. Why do we have to change? Our clients love us. What we're doing, what we're doing is fantastic. Why do I have to do this? This is going to take me time. I don't need to do it. And my team, it's a waste of my team's time. Now that's going to be really hard. Anybody ever dealt with this situation before?
(40:46)
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, right. The managing partner of the acquired firm respects the lead's attention and was the lead of his or her firm, but recognizes that they have to change, they're in it, they've been acquired, they're going to have to do it. So what does he do or she do? What can they do to get their team to stay positive, learn the technology, keep up with their client work, possibly take on additional work from the new firm? That's a tough one. I went through this a couple times. So challenges faced, the employees feel overwhelmed with their existing workload already the client accounting team lead is resistant to change. And right now, as a saboteur, we're not doing this, we're not doing this. Our process are right. Our clients love us, we're not doing it. And the mag managing partner has to balance the lead's opinions with the need for a smooth transition.
(41:49)
So this lead has a lot of power, has a lot of power in two ways. First of all, the hierarchical power, it's the team lead, but also has influence, right? Over other members of the firm. This is a really tough one. So how can we get them to come on board and be okay with the transition? So communicate the benefits. Clearly this is why we need to do it could be there's a career path for you that's going to take you from being the accounting accounting team lead to maybe a manager, maybe even a partner. You get this on board, this could be something fantastic. This is an opportunity for you to step into a bigger leadership role, address concerns via a town hall of the entire organization and with the acquired team by themselves. So both sides, both fishbowls that we saw, they have different feelings.
(42:48)
So the smaller fishbowl is like we've been a team more intimate environment. The larger fishbowl, they have more defined processes. There's a lot of things going on there. So you want to address them separately so that you can validate the feelings of both. And then you want to meet them, meet with them together so that they can validate each other's feelings. Does that make sense? Use empathy and acknowledge the work involved. It's not going to be easy guys, but we're going to do it. Awesome. We're all rock stars. We can do this. Both firms have provided exceptional client service. We're just going to make it better. Involve that team lead in the decision making process. We know that we need to get your team onto this new technology. We need you to help us create a plan to do that effectively. What I'm going to be in charge of it, the initial reaction is be like, no way.
(43:42)
But there's ways that you can phrase it right to get them on board and get excited about making the change, especially if they feel like they're in charge of that change and that their performance is going to be related to the success of the change. Whole new ballgame. When you think that your performance is at stake, implement changes gradually. Don't try to do it all at once. You're going to overwhelm the team, offer training and support and give them time to do the training and support. Don't give them like five webinars to watch in a five day period and expect them to have the new technology implemented within a week. One of the things that I did with my team, we actually did a conversion from G Suite over to Office 365. And what we did during that process is we actually started implementing pieces of it six months before our go live date.
(44:36)
So we switched from Slack to teams, then we switched from, I think we were using share file to SharePoint and we also had weekly meetings that ended up going to every two weeks and then once a month where everybody could voice their opinion about what they were experiencing with the change. And then I always asked them to share one thing they learned that they were really excited about with the team. And it was awesome because people would share a tip that was actually a pain point for someone else on the team and they'd be like, oh my gosh, that's life changing. That's great. And all of a sudden the energy is really positive and celebrate each win. We did it. We're off of share file. Awesome. So the results retreat achieved in this case study is successful integration of the new process, increased efficiency and improved client satisfaction. The client accounting team lead becomes an advocate for the change because she has ownership, she's had some wins, she's got more capacity and a strength and collaboration between the acquired and the acquiring firms.
(45:44)
Any thoughts on that? All right, I have another case study, but I think what I'm going to do is we have about three minutes left and I just want to go through and have you guys discuss amongst yourself and maybe share a strategy that you think would be helpful in driving change in a particular scenario. Before we do that, John Kotter who wrote a fantastic book called Leading Change says Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there. They cause the change. We have to lead change. The title of the session is Managing Change, but it really should be leading change or facilitating change. They motivate and inspire others to go in the right direction and they, along with everyone else, sacrifice to get there. Acknowledge that sacrifice. Change does require sacrifice. Always. It's uncomfortable. Alright, I'm actually going to go past this one.
(46:45)
And what we're going to do, we only have two minutes, so we'll see how this goes. If you guys want to stick around and finish it out with me, that's great is break into groups, brainstorm your signed scenario and I'm not going to sign it. You guys can pick your own and then share the biggest challenge and the most impactful change management strategy based on what you guys have learned today. So here's some ideas. Implementing new software, going a hundred percent virtual or going back to the office because some firms are doing that. A new service line, introducing a new service line. Switching from time billing to value pricing or outsourcing to an offshore company. So I'm going to give you guys a minute or two and then you can share. And just because I have two minutes left, I'm going to go through my toolkit and say thank you and then we can continue our conversation.
(47:39)
So the toolkit is clear outcomes strategy, just a recap of what we discussed. The project team communication plan, these should all be in your change management strategy, training and development plan, feedback mechanisms. How are you going to get that feedback from your team members? Change champions. We need those. Change champions and influencers got to know who they are and where strategically they need to be placed. Metrics and evaluations and celebration and recognition. And it isn't the changes that do you in, it's the transitions to change. Thank you William Bridges. Alright guys, thank you. I definitely want you guys to take a minute all you got left to talk about that, and then we can share if you guys want to stick around. So thanks.