Closing the Skill Gap
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Transcript of Closing the Skill Gap
Skill Gap CLOSING THE
How do you get more of your people to per-
form in the ‘virtual CFO or virtual counsel
arena?’
This is an area that causes major new busi-
ness strain for successful accountants and
lawyers; their ability to ‘push work down’ is
directly impeded by the lack of skill depth
within their team.
I’ve often spoken to accountants and
lawyers about ‘closing the skill gap’ but there
are 3 things you should know before you
embark on solving this business restriction.
The gap only exists because you’ve priori-
tised short term gain over longer term lever-
age; your income and growth is now restrict-
ed in direct correlation to the lack of coach-
ing you’ve provided to your team in the past.
Your ‘productivity’ measurement and reward
systems have also driven the behaviour of
you and your team. Having a ledger for
‘training and development’ is one thing but if
you don’t budget time for your team to actu-
ally try the ‘stuff’ with clients then it’s all in
vain.
Your clients need to get used to the idea of
leverage. They will sense every bit of nerv-
ousness from your new ‘virtual CFO/counsel
manager’ and will struggle to see their value
if you drive ‘too hard and too fast’. (You did-
n’t learn your skills overnight and neither will
your team)
My father often said, “You can’t make a silk
purse out of a sow’s ear”. So it is with the de-
velopment of people. In my early ideological
days of “empower everyone and you’ll get a
return” I would have happily recommended
coaching for all.
I was wrong.
Increasing Your Firms
Leverage
My father often said, “You can’t make a silk purse out of
a sow’s ear”. So it is with the development of people. In
my early ideological days of “empower everyone and
you’ll get a return” I would have happily recommended
coaching for all. I was wrong.
The trick is to identify those that are ready for develop-
ment and guide them towards the activities of the or-
ganisation that is best suited to their personality type.
Failure to do this will create greater strain on the individ-
ual and overload managers with repetitive monitoring
rather than ‘empowered learning’.
This requires a major ‘moral mind set’ shift as this theory
starts at the top and works its way down from Director
to Graduate. Let me explain...
Malcolm Gladwell (in his book “What the Dog Saw”)
raised the community issue of homeless people in New
York, research showed that of the quarter of a million
people that were homeless at some point in the previ-
ous 5 years, only 2500 were chronically homeless yet the
full cost of health care & social services to this minor
group was at least $62M annually!
The dilemma is that by treating these people ‘by the nor-
mal rules’, society was burdened with a massive financial
expense ,yet if treated specific to their condition, socie-
ty was taking a moral position that a chronic drunk
should be given free food and accommodation whilst
other hard working citizens get no help at all. Society’s
inability to rationalise the unfairness and identify that
you can’t “paint everyone with the same brush” wasted
millions of dollars which could serve many people more
effectively.
So it is with Accounting and Legal partnerships.
The moral position that “we must all contribute in the
same way” or “We should all be responsible for equal
fee bases” locks people into defensive positions and in-
hibits growth across the entire practice.
Such an expectation is driven by an ignorance of the
need to play people to their strengths at best,
Finder, Minder, Grinder
I have never seen anyone excel at
Finder-Grinder roles unless they
are forced to by virtue of being a
sole operator. (And in this
instance they don’t excel, they
cope)
FINDER, MINDER, GRINDER
and at worst, by an arrogance
of “this is how it’s always been
or my way or the Highway”.
The sooner a practice accepts
the need for a balance of skill
and perception, achieved by
various personality types, the
sooner they can set about to
meet the three reasons they
went into business for them-
selves; Time, Control & Money.
The two key objectives of an
accounting and legal practice is
“Get the Job & Do the Job". I
The three domains of focus is
“Finder, Minder & Grinder”.
I believe people can excel at
Finder-Minder and Minder-
Grinder roles, I have never seen
anyone excel at Finder-Grinder
roles unless they are forced to
by virtue of being a sole opera-
tor. (And in this instance they
don’t excel, they cope)
Everyone has a dominant per-
sonality type, this type surfaces
at times of stress by way of
predictable behaviours as part
of their ‘coping mechanism’.
If you place someone in a role
that requires them to be asser-
tive (selling) and they are natu-
rally withdrawn (grinding) then
you expose both the individual
and the practice to risk.
The risks are that the individual
fails to deliver on sales targets
and therefore starves the firm
of work, whilst simultaneously
overwhelming the individual
such that they become ineffec-
tive not just in the Finding are-
na, but the Grinding arena also,
due to guilt.
The order of creating an organ-
isational structure which best
serves the practice and those
within it, is to identify the oper-
ational tasks that are required
to be completed in order to
meet (your) clients expecta-
tions.
Then, match people to those
tasks by the following attrib-
utes;
Typology – Skills – Style –
Focus.
Your practice HR development
then sits underneath but must
be matched to the following
Ethos: “”The practice is best
served by the best person for
the role, if such a person
doesn’t currently sit within
the practice, go find them”.
I believe the most cost effec-
tive training comes from devel-
oping team members within
their current range of engage-
ments. (It’s not too far from
their comfort zone)
I call this “Engagement Relative
Templates’.
The focus should be on coach-
ing, not presenting, which
means Instruction, Demonstra-
tion, Focused Direction, Obser-
vation and Re-direction.
Typology—Skills—Style—
Focus
“”The practice is best served by
the best person for the role, if
such a person doesn’t currently
sit within the practice, go find
them”.
HR ETHOS
Once coached effectively, the team member should be
encouraged to focus their selling and consultancy
efforts within the domain of ‘client permission’ so they
build stronger relations and sound confidence and ex-
perience.
So with all that said, what are the basic steps you can
take to begin to ‘close the skill gap’ with your team?
Determine the financial budget for coaching (since this will direct much of your thinking in terms of scale and logistics)
Identify the directors that have ‘b or c’ clients and have yet to fully scope the engagement with those clients.
Identify the managers that are of the correct tem-perament (i.e. not just in the position because they’ve been there ‘x’ number of years) and ex-
press a desire to develop themselves. Quantify the number of hours that the director
will be available (on a weekly basis) to provide basic mentoring / feedback (of a technical or cli-ent background nature) to said managers.
Quantify the number of ‘face to face’ hours (weekly) that the managers will be required to engage with ‘b or c’ clients as above.
Identify the expectations around fee growth or ‘value add free time’. (Understand there is a cost for everything in life. Time spent learning new skills will provide greater opportunity to increase director leverage in future but may mean a few hours ‘written off’ whilst the manager is develop-ing their skills and resource)
Determine the number of managers that are pro-vided for development and agree on the basis of the training.