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One of the biggest challenges professional services firms face today is implementing long-term planning inside their organizations. So much is changing so quickly that it can be overwhelming to put together a one-year plan, much less a three- and five-year plan, about how you’ll address challenges and opportunities years down the road.
As former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson liked to say, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Many of you feel like you’ve been getting punched in the mouth regularly with endless deadlines, fee compression, staffing shortages, succession challenges and technology issues.
But it doesn’t have to be this way for CPAs or other professional services firms.
That’s one of the reasons I explored “Odyssey Plans,” essentially a brainstorming methodology for how you would like your future to look using two different lenses:
1. You draw/write out the current trajectory for how your firm might look over the next five years if you stuck with the status quo (i.e., did nothing).
2. You imagine what your firm could look like if you could change anything you wanted.
The standard planning we’ve traditionally used doesn’t allow for possibilities and other outliers. Unfortunately, that rigid philosophy makes people feel defensive and they get stagnant or discouraged. By contrast, an Odyssey Plan allows you to think through the pros and cons of what you’re currently doing, and then it permits you to ask, “What if we blew some things up? What could that mean for us in the future?” It’s a different way of looking at planning in today’s environment which is so inherently unknown and volatile.
Odyssey planning in action
Here’s how your firm might use it.
1. Stick to the current plan: Recruiting and retaining talent at your firm will take a lot of work. Your senior team will continue to age. Older clients will age out as they retire or exit their businesses. Technology will continue to encroach on typical accounting/tax work. Ask yourself this: How does that feel if you do nothing, and the status quo is your future?
2. The alternative plan: Suppose you could break out of your current path and try wildly different things? Where might that take you five years from now? Let’s look at how things might be different in four key areas of your practice:
- Clients: How would your client base be different?
- Team: How is your team structure different?
- Technology: What does your technology look like?
- Processes: How are your processes different?
Review the four key areas above (clients, team, technology and processes) and compare your answer to each under your current plan vs. your alternative plan? Once you’ve answered, take a step back. Do you like the alternatives? If so, what do you need to start working on now? What will move you on the alternative path so five years from now, it becomes your reality?
I realize there is some nuance here. For instance, you might say, “I love the service our team is providing current clients, but I don’t love that we’re having trouble bringing in the right kinds of clients. Our processes may need to be overhauled. Our technology needs to be revamped.”
When people are scared, they tend to take the “do nothing” route. But maintaining the status quo is one of the worst decisions you can make because it puts you in a race to the bottom. An Odyssey Plan can help you break through the inertia. It forces you to think about alternatives in the four key areas above.
Put yourself into crisis mode to break through inertia
I know we’re all busy trying to get through the day, the week and the busy season. But there will always be an excuse to put off long-term planning. It’s hard, and it doesn’t generate an immediate ROI.
As with any type of behavior modification, there is the cost of doing vs. the cost of not doing. What is the cost of kicking the Odyssey Planning can down the road? It could be higher than you might think and could result in a crisis. So, why not move your crisis forward? That way, you won’t have to try to resolve the inevitable crisis while in the middle of it. That’s what high-performing firms have taught themselves to do.
I get it. Behavior modification is complicated. But if you can imagine stagnation — the status quo — continuing for five years, it should become abundantly clear that your firm will need to make adjustments. But when you look at your alternative plan in which you must change something in each of the four core areas (team, clients, technology and processes), you can ask: what would be different?
For more about goal setting and dealing with change, see my articles “Becoming an anti-fragile CPA “and “A goal is not a plan.”
Next steps
Go through the four critical areas of your business: team, clients, technology and process. In which of those areas would significant change have the biggest impact on your business? Put together a 90-day action plan of things that need to be done over the next quarter that will redirect you to your alternative Odyssey Plan. It’s not realistic to do all four. Just focus on one area at a time so you can put your entire focus and energy into it.
After looking at the four alternative scenarios, something that will drive the most urgency might stick out. Drill down into that issue and redirect your energy into it. Once you feel like you’ve got that moving in the right direction, you can move on to the next issue or opportunity.
For most firms, making no decision is the worst decision you can make. Get everyone together and pull your crisis forward. No matter what, you’ll have to agree to change something. How is your firm planning for the future? I’d love to hear from you.
