Make a Decision – Please!

My high school football coach often employed a memorable axiom about making mistakes.

He would always lecture his players that if they made a mistake, at least make sure it’s an aggressive one. I road tested that theory in a late-season game when I took it upon myself to blitz the quarterback from my safety position getting there a millisecond too late and leaving my assigned wide receiver to gather in a soft pass and waltz into the end zone.

Instead of getting his usual reaming if a play blew up, he consoled me and said he liked the fact that I at least took a chance.

My father often spouted a similar philosophy, “a bad decision is a bad decision but it’s better than no decision.”

I don’t think that happens very often in the CPA world.

During my 20 years of either covering or consulting on the profession, I have seen little evidence of brazen decision making – particularly when it comes to succession planning – or more accurately, a lack thereof.

In fact, I have witnessed quicker decisions from nervous first-time skydivers jumping out of a plane.

Case in point. Earlier this month I was consulting with a two-partner firm in the Northeast whose owners were each 64 years old.

As you may have surmised, I’m using them as an example because their succession plan was non-existent and there was no one internally who, was capable of taking the leadership reins. One initially said he wanted to work 5 more years, then, after thinking about it, lengthened his exit to 7 years, Ditto for his partner who surpassed that mark by stating his intention to retire from full-time work in 10 years.

In full disclosure I told them it would be tough to hang around that long as many of the larger firms have a mandatory retirement age. Although I pointed out that they could probably remain for several years on a part-time basis.

Let us think about it was their reply.

I don’t have to tell you what happened next. After weeks of going back and forth they determined that they would kick the proverbial can down the road and wait until next year to address their succession strategy.

I wish I could say that this was an isolated incident but sadly, it’s all too common from where I’m standing. I think I can guess that either of them never had to make a decision with the game on the line.