Ep: 4 Top experts answer: "Will the next generation of accountants be any different from their predecessors?"
The Accounting Influencers Podcast, hosted by Rob Brown, asks critical questions of the experts, leaders and influencers who shape the decision-making of accountants, CPAs and finance professionals. Today we ask:
Will the next generation of accountants be any different from their predecessors?
You'll hear insightful and passionate answers from these 5 experts and influencers:
Bob Lewis | Accounting M&A specialist & President at The Visionary Group
Brannon Poe | Founder of Poe Group Advisors, the leading M&A
Brenda Jordan | CEO and founder of SOBI Analytics and SOBI Growth Academy
Bruce Ditman | Trigger CGO, Chief Seconds Managing Partner and Coach to Champions
Calvin Harris Jr. | Strategic CEO of New York Society of CPAs, renowned for expertise in accounting and leadership.
Tune into more on this weekly show for short, sharp episodes that keep you informed of what's happening in the accounting world and the whole ecosystem of consultants, organizations, vendors and advisors who serve them.
This episode was first published in an earlier season of this podcast.
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Well, once to know what the world is thinking and to stay relevant and competitive, you need to know what's working and what isn't. You want to peer over the garden wall of your peers and see what they're doing. This is the Accounting Answers podcast answering and asking the questions that you have on your mind. I'm asking the people whose opinions and insights are super valuable. I'm Rob Brown, your host, and in recent months, I've reached out to 111 of the world's most influential experts, leaders and advisors in the accounting world, and I've asked them the same five questions, and that means over 500 brilliant, passionate, and articulate perceptions inside viewpoints of professionals with skin in the game. All of these guests play in the accounting finance and tech sphere. They work in through or with accounting firms. They all have the experience, the viewpoints, the interests. They all care together. They give you the whole picture of what the next generation of accounts will look like. The realm of proactive advice, what's changing accounting and how and what the tech and software vendors can do better in this space. I'll also ask them to give three predictions for accounting over the next few years, and you won't believe the variety of answers and perspectives that come out from that one question. And in this show coming out every working day for the next few weeks, you're going to hear every single answer. Each episode will focus on one of the five questions and give you five answers from our experts. Let's get moving with today's episode. Today we're focusing on the next wave of accountants, CPAs, and finance professionals coming through to succeed the baby boomers and some of the older millennials. What are they like? How do they think? Are they any different to their predecessors? Do they want different things? How will they shape the firm of the future? Listen, as another five of our 111 influencers share their wisdom and insights. It's time to listen to Bob Lewis, an accounting M&A specialist and president at the Visionary Group, bringing a wealth of experience to guiding accounting firms to mergers and acquisitions to foster growth and success. My feeling is they will be quite less focused on the compliance part because that would be more automated. That does mean it's going to be, wait, let's get that message clear. People think, oh, compliance is going to be all automated. No, it's just going to be automated and the accountants are also going to be different on how they view and deal with the compliance side. But what this is really going to do is transform infirm into the advisory focus because they are going to use information and be able to analyze it and talk to their clients more about their business rather than just providing a straight compliance related function. And I know a lot of firms do more of that already, but some are just literally producing an answer report or attach a turn and not even explaining it to clients. That's going to go away. That might feel out of it. Welcome to the show. Brandon Poe, founder of the Poe Group advises the leading M&A advisory for accounting practices. Up in firm owners navigate the complexities of buying and selling their firms. So by having an owner with a more entrepreneurial mindset, they're able to serve the clients in a much different way because they're thinking differently. They're thinking more like the business owner. And I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with entrepreneurs about their accountant are very tapped into the entrepreneurial community. And there's so much frustration from the client side that their accountants are just not giving them what they want. They're not getting the insight. They're not getting the value add. They're just churning out the compliance piece. And it's just, I think the expectation from a lot of entrepreneurs is shouldn't the accountant be doing more? So there's thirsty for this sort of insight. And I believe these younger, more monitored firm owners, it's just natural to them to provide that, not in every case. I'm seeing that that's becoming, they're becoming more clients August in that way. Let's now dive into the insights of Brenda Jordan, CEO and founder of Sobie Analytics and Sobie Growth Academy, where she uses her expertise to help account in terms of leverage data analytics for growth and efficiency. They already are adding traditional services now are mostly commoditized and true technology. Accountants needs to use their expertise elsewhere. With the market, which took you to small to mid market, now demanding more support and advice from their accountants with nine out of 10 of them still failing. I think that accountants need to meet this challenge. So traditionally accountants focused on delivering a currency type services like auditing and taxation, bookkeeping and year end accounts, but an awful lot of that has now become commoditized through technology. So accountants now need to actually embrace what the market is demanding, which is more in the realm of client advisory services. And they need to adapt and change the delivery of their services and the use of their skill sets to meet this challenge. So we know that currently nine out of 10 businesses are still failing. And this is the challenge and an opportunity for accountants to actually meet this head on. Hey, with us now is Bruce Dittman, trigger CGO, chief seconds managing partner and coach to champions dedicated to helping coach business leaders and professionals to achieve their highest potential. And by next generation, there's going to be a line of demarcation and I don't know yet how to identify or quantify it, but there will be, I actually wrote, I just wrote a little blog post about how generational change happens at accounting firms. And the way it starts is the same way it starts in our house, which is we fake it. We pretend. When we have children, we pretend that we don't like to drink so much beer or we don't like to swear as much as we do in the hopes that we will raise children who don't like to swear that much and don't drink that much beer. There's an interesting generational shift to a generational transition between one and the other. Right. So how if we want to know how the next generation will be different from the current generation, let's look at the things that the current generation are either struggling with or doing their best to pretend to believe. So if we do that, I suspect that the next generation will have an expectation that technology in particular automation and artificial intelligence will play a role in everything that they do. An expectation, not an anticipation or an assertion, I suspect that they will genuinely be sensitive to the different ways that people like to work. I suspect that they will understand that there has to be more of a value proposition than a deferred 20 or deferred compretirement. That new reality will necessitate that firms will change fundamentally, okay? If we're going to compete with equity events, with exits, with people having multiple exits by the time they're 45, if we're talking about the banking world or the entrepreneurial world or the startup or technology world, which is the world that the people live in now, very few young professionals within their peer group, my generation or even really the one before me, in the peer group, some people went into trades, some people went into white collar trades, and some people carried on their family business. So your peer group might have centers taking over the car dealership, another one became a lawyer, another one is a salesperson, another one is a technician of some kind, totally normal. That doesn't exist anymore. The pressure, the peer pressure of generationally people having equity, having exits, having events that change their lifestyle and that redefine the way that people look at their financial future, the firms will have to adapt to that. Tune into the thoughts now of Calvin Harris Jr. Strategic CEO of New York Society of CPAs, renowned for his expertise in accounting and leadership, shaping the future of the profession through innovation and advocacy. Oh, yes, the next generation of accountants will absolutely be different than their predecessors, because that's the way it always is. When I started my career, 30 years ago, I came into a profession where I started doing accounting work on ledger paper. And just a few years later, we were doing all of the work, one's breechy, whether it was load as one, two, three, that could go way back, or it's sell, or even a calculator. And each generation finds ways to be more efficient. If you don't, you find a way to not be relevant. So absolutely the next generation will be different in many ways, because they will use the technology even better. What's interesting is, if you think about a more traditional path of someone just entering the profession, let's say, 20 years, 21 years, they just finished university. They would have been four, maybe five years old when the first iPhone was launched. Their entire life, or at least what they'll remember, always involved a screen they could touch, always involved the ability. Here I'm sitting right now. I have one, two, three. I have four touch screens in front of me right now. Two on laptops, one on this phone, one on watch. And that's just perfectly normal these days. The technology and actually utilization of technology and the ability for technology to let us be wherever we are will allow next generation, actually the current generation is already showing this, but it'll allow us to be so much more mobile, so much more now and so much more out. So I think it's going to be wildly different. I think it'll be exponentially different than what we've seen in prior generations. And what I think that will mean for accountants and the people they serve is that it will allow us to be more, you know, that's where people naturally expect right now. I can pull up my cell phone right now and tell you what my bank balance is on all of my account. Rightness. Just a few decades ago. I would have to wait for it to come in the post and just see what was happening. No one expects that anymore. So that technology and the generation being able to be more nimble will allow us to serve clients far more effectively and now will really be able to be proactive and strategic. So there you have five per year answers to the question. Will the next generation of accountants be any different from their predecessors? Each working day of the week, Monday through Friday, we give the insights of five top influencers in the accounting world on this critical area of next gen accountants. It's 25 valuable perspectives, viewpoints and best thinking every week. And with a fresh week comes a fresh question and more thoughts from the best accounting leaders and influencers we can find. Thanks for listening to the Accounting Answers podcast and sharing the show with your friends. If you want to join the conversation, you can plug into our community of influencers at accountinginfluencers.com and check out our virtual speed networking events. These happen every few months for North America and UK Europe. The opportunities to raise your profile, build valuable connections and share your thoughts with influential peers. Until next time, this is your host Rob Brown saying stay informed, stay relevant and stay connected. [MUSIC]
