It Must Be the Altitude

More years ago, than I care to remember I attended the University of Denver and graduated without fanfare. I think my sole accomplishment during my tenure there was being listed in the Metro phone book.

I had always heard about how being 5,280 feet above sea level affects you both physically and mentally – a fact hammered home convincingly after participating in a touch football game the second day on campus. After six or seven plays, I was wheezing like a 40-year chain smoker and had to sit on the sidelines for a while.

But I believe it does funny things to your cognitive processes as well, another Denver-centric fact that became blatantly obvious last week during my CPE sessions there at a major vendor conference.

Okay to be fair the annual event was primarily focused on tax and technology and the attendance at my dual 100-minute sessions for lack of a better term “reflected” those major segments – as succession planning was obviously far down the list in terms of interest.

So, with over 1,300 attendees crammed into one venue, only 40 or so of them (and that included the audio-visual guys) felt succession planning was important enough for them to attend.

And that was unfortunate because if I may be shamelessly immodest for a moment, I felt they were two of the best sessions I’ve ever facilitated in nearly 15 years of teaching CPE. Seriously. Although standing for that long resulted in a rather painful plane ride home the following day.

But back to the topic de jour.

Despite seven years in this position I still am astounded at the number of people who either refuse to address what is obviously a critical issue in the profession or kick the proverbial can down the road promising to “confront it next year for sure.”

The ones that did come however seemed interested and asked some very relevant questions. Several of them even approached me afterward, asked for my business card and promised to reach out to me afterwards.

Will they? If they’re serious about succession they perhaps will. But my experience tells me that most of them won’t. I’ve seen this movie before. In fact, next month I’m again scheduled to present at a New York tax conference for the seventh year in a row. And like clockwork, the same four men have attended my sessions over that span and to this day not one of them has done anything to address succession. This year they likely will be front and center again.

And just think, they’re not even a mile above sea level so there’s no excuses.