June 14, 2023

Episode 82: Des O’Neill of The CPD Store

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The Story

How effective are you and your leadership team at holding people to account for their behaviour and for their results?

It's one of the challenging, thorny aspects of leading and managing people, of leading and managing accountancy firms. In this podcast discussion with Des O'Neill of OmniPro, you'll hear Des and I unpack the detail behind how you determine the boundaries you should put in place, as well as what standards you set, minimum and aspirational, in order to make expectations clearer, so that accountability is easier.

And that's only one of many subjects Des and I touch on in and around the ‘humanise the numbers’ topic – humanising for the team, humanising for your clients – so that you are certain to get something of real value that you can directly apply to your firm, with your team and with your clients.

I hope you enjoy this discussion with Des O'Neill as much as I did.

Please scroll down this episode page for the contact information for Des and for the downloadable resource mentioned in this podcast.

The Solution:

Really what the accounting firm is doing is it's building a platform to serve the wants and needs of those customers, and that's never been more apt than it is now in this day of AI and technological revolution, because it is about building a platform. It's like an operating system to get the results.

The technology, systems, processes and this business will bring us so far, but the biggest limitation to getting the results we want is the people, so we need to shift our culture.

Our customers are no longer the number one customer. The real number one customer is the people who are going to help us get a result for the customer.

I think there needs to be a mindset shift and this is very challenging for the accounting profession because, despite the fact I only started my accounting career 26 years ago, I started on a clerk-style contract where I was paid a minimal wage for the honour to become an accountant.

This is deeply embedded in the DNA of every accountant, but the war for talent is over and talent has won, so the people are now our number one customer.

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Connect with Des

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Resources relating to this podcast:

Paul and Des discuss the importance, when it comes to leading or managing change, of having a growth mindset – acknowledging the skills you have but believing that we can all learn and develop new skills.

People with a growth mindset will believe that they can learn something new. Some will seek new ways to learn at every opportunity and others will simply embrace learning when it comes along.

If you want to understand more about the importance of a growth mindset and how to use it to manage change in your firm, click the button below to read the Business Breakthrough report, ‘Growth Mindset’.


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