How do you and your managers hold accountability conversations that work really well? By really well, I mean that they work out for both the manager and for the person they’re working with – holding them to account. Never an easy conversation.
On this podcast with Graeme Tennick, you'll hear Graeme share his commitment to his own accountability, as well as how open and transparent he is with his team. He allows them to see that he’s being accountable himself and thus earns the right to hold others in his team to account. I push Graeme on the actual process of accountability, and I think he handles it very well.
But this podcast isn’t just about accountability, it’s about how you work with your clients in a 360-degree, future-focused and past-focused way. You do, of course, deal with the annual accounts, but you’re actually holding conversations with your clients, which they see as being of greater value because they're future-focused.
Graeme shares brilliantly how he holds those conversations with clients.
There are other great, valuable insights in this podcast, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Graeme brings his Northeastern sense of humour, which makes for an entertaining conversation. So go to HumaniseTheNumbers.online or to your favourite podcast source and seek out Humanise The Numbers and the podcast with Graeme Tennick.
The Solution:
Ten to fifteen years ago, every Business Owner had a bank manager who filled a lot of gaps that are now not being covered.
The accountant needs to come in and try and support where they possibly can, but they need to find their place, they need to be comfortable in that place, they need to educate the business owner of that place existing and then they need to deliver on it.
I think it would be really rewarding if we get it right, but there is a lot of pressure being put on accountants, and not all of them know where they fit in and how to cope with all the noise, because it's very easy, and I have done it before, to get software drunk.
Quite a while ago when we were a stereotypical compliance-based firm - I was hammered.
I went to Zerocon and decided, I’ll have that, I like that, I love that, this, that and the other…I was falling all over the place.
I never even chatted with the clients. It looked glitzy, it looked great, I was on the dance floor and was I away with it. And then I stopped and thought too much too soon, let’s get back to basics.
Software drunk, but I'm sober now…
SHOW NOTES
Connect with Graeme
Connect with Paul
Resources relating to this podcast:
Listen to Paul and Graeme talk about the importance of Accountability. Accountability of the team, clients and how Graeme holds himself to account.
Values run right through the heart of everything that Graeme and the team at Tennick & Co do and these values drive the accountability process.
The team has targets, Graeme has targets and these targets and the numbers behind them are visible to the rest of the team and dovetail with the behavioural standards and values of their business.
Graeme also places a lot of importance on holding clients to account when it comes to driving the changes they want in their business forward. In fact, many of the clients that Graeme has accountability conversations with call it a good 'Therapy Session'.
This Bitesize Business Breakthrough will show you how to embrace, learn and build the skills of healthy accountability conversations. Work on yourself first then build a constructive accountability conversation.
Click the link on the button to read this report and discover how to get the accountability conversations right in your firm.
In this podcast, Paul and Graeme talk about Graeme's team and how he has repositioned the business to manage with fewer people during and after covid.
The business has since grown with fewer people. Graeme puts this down to having the right people, that are the right fit for his business.
The corporate values for the business were created by Graeme's team without him in the room and the team agreed on the words which encompass the true value of the business.
Having established this set of business values and behavioural standards, they are now used in the appraisal process to ensure that they continue to be embedded in everything they do.
This Bitesize Business Breakthrough will show you how to better grow your people when you build, use and execute brilliantly, a simple, methodical performance review (appraisal) process that fits the culture and values of your firm.
Click the link on the button to read this report and discover how the performance of your firm will improve when the skills, knowledge and abilities of your team improve.
