That’s the way we’ve always done it!

During college I worked in a restaurant that had just hired a new general manager. He had trained at one of the large hospitality companies and wanted to work at the unit level until he went off on his own.

He was what you would call a very “new broom” and the one thing he made clear on his first day is that if he heard anyone use the phrase “we’ve always done it this way,” he/she would be well advised to start scouring the classified ads.

This restaurant had been stumbling of late, and if we were to fast forward to today’s reality television it might have been a candidate for chef Gordon Ramsey’s trademark wrath to help turn it around.

Within one month, the new GM had let go three servers and two bartenders he felt weren’t pulling their weight and had changed both the meat and seafood purveyors. Within six months the business had done a near 180 reversal and was even written up in the local paper.

One day between shifts I got up enough nerve to ask him the secret of the turnaround. To my surprise he asked me in the office, sat me down and proceeded to draw a clock on a piece of paper.

It Always Catches Up with You

During a business law class in college, the professor said something that not only would remain with me the rest of my life, but I would experience in person several times.

We were dissecting a case study on a Fortune 500 company that he was not impressed with despite a better-than average track record on Wall Street and rising demand for their products.

He cited several infrastructure problems that scant few analysts had identified and told his captive audience “remember, volume hides many ills.”

Nearly 20 years later I experienced that first hand. I had just come aboard a B-to-B magazine as an associate editor. But there were problems - we were third in terms of revenues and readership in our market and the publisher was getting constant pressure from management.

But within two years, via a series of strategic hires, laying off ineffective ad salespeople and restricting travel, the publication not only turned itself around, it recorded the best year in the company’s 60-year history.

The Five Most Hated Words

I once had a boss who, shall we say, lent new meaning to the word “impatient.”

His management style was from the old school – like Charles Dickens old school - and chances are when he asked you a question, he, like a good attorney, already knew the answer.

But if there was one phrase that ignited his temper like no other, it was someone offering the following as a defense for a miscue – “I didn’t think of it.”

When he once assigned a reporter to investigate why so many accidents seemed to be occurring at one intersection, and the completed story did not include quotes from either a local highway official or someone who had been involved in an accident, he heard those five most despised words.

The next assignment for that reporter was a local PTA meeting. And if any of you have ever had the misfortune of sitting through one of those, you would quickly understand what a field demotion that was.

Relationship Building at 35 MPG

Last week I was speaking to the owner of a large automobile dealership in the tri-state area who lords over a vehicular empire that moves roughly 25,000 cars a year and generates some $800 million in sales. Let me repeat that - $800 million.

At 66 years old and with a 45-year pedigree in the business that his grandfather started nearly a century ago, I asked him point blank how he stays motivated and maintains his edge over the competition – including the influx of start-ups and existing entities that allow customers to purchase cars online.

He broke it down in the most basic terms.

“In the end it’s all about relationships. People don’t have to come into a dealership anymore although we want them to keep coming. Take Amazon. They’re talking about getting into online car sales, but they haven’t said how they plan to service those vehicles. We build a trust with our customers and that’s why we have many of them for life. Online companies like Amazon and others can’t do that.”

Prior to the advent of cloud software and other remote-enabling technologies, the relationships between clients and their CPAs were not that different from that of a faithful customer and their local car dealer – or insurance salesman for that matter. When a client had a problem, he/she would pick up the phone and call their accountant and more often be granted a personal audience with them.

“Engaged” to a Best Firm

Some years ago, I got the chance to interview Arnold Schwarzenegger prior to his breakthrough in movies and later, politics. He was at the time a 7-time winner of the Mr. Olympia contest – the most prestigious bodybuilding competition in the world. After the rounds of traditional questions that accompany any profile, he revealed something that to this day I still remember.

He confided to me that when he is in a strange city he can walk into any gym and tell within 30 seconds whether he’d enjoy working out there. It was just a visceral feeling he got but could not fully explain, nevertheless he knew that it was likely a combination of things – atmosphere, equipment, clientele etc.

I can sort of relate.

Throughout my working life, I could usually tell very early in a job whether it would be a long or short-term tenure as I’m sure many of you have. Fortunately, over the last three decades, it has been more the former than the latter.

I mention only because I noticed my former publication has just released the 2018 winners of Best Firms to Work For. The competition spans three categories – small, mid-sized and large firms but all are judged on the same criteria – submitted anonymously by their own employees.

So, what makes a CPA firm or any workplace for that matter a clear favorite over another to work for?

Casualties of Technology

One of my first editors was a wizened veteran of business to business publishing, who never got technology. And I don’t mean writing algorithms, but even using Microsoft Word on a PC. Instead, he would employ a rustic Corona manual typewriter to draft his stories and columns - using only his two index fingers at warp speed- and then instruct his exasperated assistant to re-key the stories on her computer.

Nevertheless, he would occasionally attempt to make the switch to his computer, but after a few minutes, he would frustratingly bellow for help, a cry that was heard clearly around the newsroom.

Not surprisingly when a new publisher came on board bringing with him a plan to modernize the news and sales departments, it was clear that the editor was going to be one of the first casualties of the new regime.

He hung on for nearly a year before the inevitable axe fell and was summarily replaced by someone nearly 30 years younger and far more familiar with technology and its future in publishing.

The Dangers of Listening to the Wrong People

I once knew a plumbing contractor who had overseen a thriving business since the early 1960s. His company serviced both residential and commercial properties including many of the HVAC projects among New York’s three major area airports.

But along the way, he placed far too much trust in his office manager who for years and unbeknownst to him, had miscalculated the payroll tax deductions and a resulting audit revealed the company was in arrears for six figures.

So, despite his family’s urging to go see a well-known local tax attorney who specialized in such matters, he foolishly entrusted a lawyer friend to oversee the matter whose solution was to have the company declare bankruptcy.

It was all downhill from there. His family went from a comfortable suburban sprawl to a box-sized condo with a lot of collections notices piling up in the mailbox.

After decades of hard work, he and his wife were relegated to subsisting on their Social Security payments as retirement income.

Had he not listened to an unqualified hack, things might have been very different.

Fast forward several years and much closer to home.