Change: Whether Behind or in Front of the Door

A number of years ago, one of my former managers who had been charged with reversing a extended slide in advertising sales at our publishing company addressed a room full of editors and sales staff on what to expect in the coming months.

Most of us were fearful of wholesale layoffs and divisional restructuring and many in secret, including yours truly, were scouring the want ads (remember those?) in case we were summoned into the office and summarily handed the dreaded pink slip.

Instead, he held up a piece of construction paper with a picture of a clock – both hands on 12. He then took a Sharpie and drew one hand so it was five minutes past the hour.

“Change doesn’t have to be 24 hours,” he said. “This is change.”  We all breathed a sigh of relief that we would at least be employed for the short term and, in a storybook ending, within three years our division turned in the best performance in the company’s 50-year history.

Not to sugar coat it, “change” is often a scary word. For most, change is often perceived as a negative although it often can be quite the opposite.

Clients of CPA firms in particular are fearful of change – especially following a merger when their long-time firm is tucked in to another practice.

A number of questions come immediately to mind when they receive that visit, phone call or letter announcing an affiliation.

But as we teach attendees at our various CPE sessions, there are changes behind the door and changes in front of the door with regard to clients.

For example tax software. Clients of the merged won’t care if the successor firm uses a different tax software program – as long as their 1040s are complete. That’s what we refer to as a change that goes on “behind the door.”

But if say, a client was paying $500 for their individual return and post-merge they receive an invoice for $800, that’s a change that impacts them directly or what we refer to as “in front of the door.”

Or, if a client is used to driving two miles to his accountant and now has to navigate cross-town traffic to get to the new offices on the other side of town, that’s also a change that they will feel immediately.

As a result post-merger changes have to be implemented gradually and needless to say with some degree of sensitivity to put everyone at ease.

I harken back to my one-time manager who took baby steps and elevated us to a place we’d never thought we could get to. “The only constant is change,” he told us. “And it’s how you react to it that will ultimately pay off -or not - in the long run.”