Forget the 21st Century Cliché’s, Just Get Busy!

In the late 1960s, Alvin Toffler a former labor columnist for Forbes Magazine wrote a book that chronicled the earliest stages of a quantum shift in America as the country began to evolve from an industrial workforce to an information society.

“Future Shock” became required reading in a number of secondary schools (including mine) and it was, if I’m not mistaken, the first written work to coin the term “knowledge worker.”

Years later I had the privilege of sitting down with him in an interview where he explained that seismic shift in a way even I could understand.

As an example he compared shareholder ownership of both McDonald’s and Microsoft.

At the time I was a shareholder of McDonald’s and in one of my incredibly stupid financial decisions (and believe me that’s a long list) passed on buying Microsoft stock in the 1980s.

So as a result he had my full attention.

He said that if someone owned one share of the hamburger giant, that person would own a piece of the buildings, the kitchen equipment and the ingredients.

By contrast, 90 percent of the value of one share of Microsoft was contained in the knowledge of their employees as opposed to the hard assets of McDonald’s. Think about that for a moment.

Fast forward 40 years or so where the noun “future” is almost an all-too- frequent pre-fix or suffix to describe the modern day CPA Firm – “firm of the future,” “future firm,” “21^st century firm” – well you get the idea.

With every conference, webinar or CPE session, it seems there’s an overload of information and strategies to help your firm become future ready - and that does not necessarily stop with technology and advances such as cloud technology and curved screens.

Think about what you as an accountant are selling. If you’re still mired in the belief that you sell your time to your clients, then hurry home and catch a rerun of Charlie’s Angels. In reality, you sell your clients your knowledge and expertise and have to price that accordingly. Hint, hint – it’s time tear up the timesheet. You are an official knowledge worker.

How about social media? Years ago someone joked that social networking should have the more accurate nomenclature “social not working.” Today, most CPA firm have rescinded their prohibitions about social media and have used it as an effective marketing and recruiting tool.

And I could go on. But I won’t drone endlessly – there are enough resources out there to get you started.

So, if your firm isn’t ready or at least working toward the future, you’ll likely to be in for a shock.

Sorry, that I couldn’t resist.