Change Your Mindset

What do a cow, a snapping turtle, and a goat have in common? Ohio State Football (really, we’re not kidding)! This is just one of the fascinating anecdotes you’ll find in the new book Buckeye Reflections: Legendary Moments from Ohio State Football.

We’ve talked to both Jack Park and Maureen Zappala on previous episodes of the podcast (episode 13 and episode 39, respectively), but today they’re joining us together to discuss their two-and-a-half year journey co-writing Buckeye Reflections.

Even if you’re not a football fan, I think you’ll enjoy the work they’ve done and the stories they’ve uncovered while developing the book. You can download the first chapter for FREE by going to BuckeyeReflectionsBook.com.

“Games are won and lost at the line of scrimmage, but it’s the stories of the people that really make the legacy.” –Maureen Zappala

Resources:

• Buckeye Reflections: Legendary Moments from Ohio State Football
• Learn more about Brutus Mascot Camp

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Jennifer Briggs is currently the Senior Vice President and COO of the Indiana CPA Society, and she will be the CEO of the society beginning January 1, 2018.

On July 1st, 2017, the state of Indiana signed House Bill 1467 into law, which “allows competency based learning through professional development opportunities to qualify accountants for accountant certificate renewal.”

This all began years ago, around 2010, when the Indiana society created a board-level task force on knowledge management. Jennifer worked with the task force on competency to examine how things have changed in education, and everything snowballed from there.

Although the bill is passed, this is just the beginning – Jennifer is now working with a committee to create rules around the law. Nothing is finalized, but the idea is that this new system will be designed around those who actually want to learn (as opposed to those that sit in the back of a classroom to collect their 8 hours of credit).

Change is everywhere in our profession – technology, demographics, pricing models – so it’s imperative that the education change, too.

“If you want things to be different, you have to do different things.” –Jennifer Briggs

Resources:

• Learn more at about the Indiana Society at INCPAS.com
• Connect with Jennifer on LinkedIn

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Dr. Alan Patterson is the Founder of Mentoré, a consulting practice specializing in leadership and organizational development, and a thought leader at the Business Learning Institute.

Dr. Patterson also wrote Leader Evolution: From Technical Expertise to Strategic Leadership, which defines the four critical stages needed by individuals with technical or specialist backgrounds to move into leadership positions.

“So what can I say? I'm a lone ranger. Hired gun. You need help? The doctor is in.” –Dr. Alan Patterson

Although a lot of things have changed in the business world over the past few decades, one thing has stayed the same: we acknowledge that communication skills are important, but we don’t necessarily act like it.

Even in the digital age, these are three of the most important skills you need to master… if you want to attain a strategic leadership position, or be considered a trusted business advisor:

1. Active listening
2. Communicating at the level of audience understanding
3. Understanding the perspectives of the people you're talking to

Dr. Patterson will tell his clients, “I can't believe I'm making money going to organizations telling them that they have… to be better at listening,” but it turns out no one is immune from underdeveloped communication skills – being in a senior position doesn’t guarantee that you're a better listener (and sometimes it’s just the opposite).

“You need to go out, talk to people, and listen. Do you know what we call that? That’s called a dialogue.” –Dr. Alan Patterson

Dr. Patterson has a personal challenge for you: Think of one person you know that's a good listener, then talk about that person and what they're like and what they mean to you. The results will likely be pretty dynamic.

Dr. Patterson believes that people who don’t develop emotional intelligence, empathy, moral character, courage, relationship management, influence, and persuasion skills will, guaranteed, top out in their career; they will be frustrated because they will be passed over or put in a box.

“People want the easy answer, so I say okay: You have to learn how to influence other people, and influence is based on credibility. There is no shortcut.” –Dr. Alan Patterson

So what do people need to start working on today if they want to go from technical expert to strategic leader?

Broader visibility, broader understanding of the business, providing guidance, and selling those ideas to others – And you won’t get seen, learn about the business, or have credibility if you don’t first learn to listen with empathy.

Resources:

• Learn more about Mentoré: Mentore.com | Twitter | Facebook
• Leader Evolution: From Technical Expertise to Strategic Leadership by Dr. Alan Patterson
• If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating by Alan Alda

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Only 8 percent of CPAs believe that the profession is future ready, according to CPA.com’s study Welcome to the Fast Future. This is a rather concerning statistic because the future is coming, and it might be closer than you think.

Bill Sheridan, Chief Communication Officer at the MACPA, is on the front lines trying to prepare CPAs for the future, and he recently published a new white paper that every CPA should read: Human Work in the Ages of Machines: Five Steps for Building a Future-Ready Finance Team.

Basically, the paper asks what happens when more and more of the things that accounting and finance professionals are trained to do are being done by machines, and what does that mean for our profession?

Because these technological changes are going to happen whether we like it or not, there's nothing we can do except learn how to do the things that machines can't do and work with them (or go out of business).

We have to go beyond being just number crunchers and become number interpreters; we have to be able to understand what we're viewing and become better communicators.

The futurist Peter Sheehan puts this another way: we've entered an age when humans should only do work that only humans can do, and everything else is going to be automated.

This means that CPAs will need a new set of eight core skills, if they want to remain relevant going forward:

1. Communication
2. Leadership
3. Critical thinking and problem solving
4. Anticipating and serving evolving needs
5. Synthesizing intelligence to insight, or providing the insight to the numbers
6. Integration and collaboration
7. Tech savvy and the ability to analyze data
8. Functional and domain expertise.

6/8 of these skills were also identified in the Horizons 2025 project. We tend to ignore stuff like that until it's almost too late – until the stuff that is on the horizon suddenly gets closer and is threatening to steamroll us.

We waited, and now it’s crunch time.

Bill doesn’t believe that the problem with CPAs is that we’re too introverted to learn these soft skills. Bill believes the big problem holding us back is that accounting is a rear-facing profession. We've been trained to look in the rearview mirror, and so that's what we've done for decades and decades.

Now we're at a point where we have to start looking through the windshield a little bit more and learn how to become a more forward-facing profession, which means figuring out what we need to do to stay relevant tomorrow rather than just accounting for what happened yesterday.

Bill developed the Five C’s for staying relevant through the change:

1. Context - What are the big changes going on around us? There’s three hard trends converging: technological advances, changing demographics, and new legislation.
2. Certainty - What can we be certain will happen? The futurist Daniel Burrus says your odds of succeeding go up and the risk of failing goes down, when you start basing your strategy around things that you know are going to happen.
3. Capacity - It’s going to take time for us to learn how to become future ready, and we're all busier than ever before. But we make time for the things that are important to us.
4. Competencies - As discussed previously, we're going to have to learn an entirely new set of skills. Key among them is anticipation: learning how to spot future trends before they happen and position our organizations to take advantage of them, before the competition, is actually a skill that you can learn.
5. Core Values - In a world where everything seems to be changing around us, it's really kind of comforting to know that there are some things that should never change: our core values. The core purpose of this profession, as established by Vision Project, is to make sense of a changing and complex world.

How to Take Your First Steps Towards the Future

Trying to become future ready all at once is overwhelming, and more or less impossible. However, now is a great time to start building future-ready habits.

Bill suggests you start with a simple exercise: schedule one hour a week for yourself, and actually put it in your calendar. During that hour, do something like read a book that will help you prepare for the future, or ask your team what productivity apps they like and start implementing them.

In the resources below, you will find a number of valuable books and resources to learn from during your weekly time block, including Human Work in the Ages of Machines.

Resources:

• Connect with Bill on LinkedIn
• Human Work in the Ages of Machines: Five Steps for Building a Future-Ready Finance Team
• The Second Machine Age by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson
• Humans are Underrated by Geoff Colvin
• Only Humans Need Apply by Thomas Davenport and Julia Kirby
• The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab
• The 2020 Workplace by Jeanne C. Meister
• Traction by Gino Wickman
• Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman
• Brain Rules by John Medina

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We’re doing something a little different today: Peter shares his favorite places to eat all over the country. He was inspired by former guest Clarke Price, who keeps a record of every restaurant he visits and often suggests new places for Peter to try.

New Orleans:

• Gump Shop - GumboShop.com
• Mr. B's Bistro -  MrBsBistro.com
• The Pelican Club - PelicanClub.com
• K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen - KPauls.com
• Drago's Seafood Restaurant - DragosRestaurant.com

The Greater Baltimore Area:

• Cunningham’s - CunninghamsTowson.com
• Gachi House of Sushi - GachiSushi.com

Bloomington, Minnesota:

• Ciao Bella - CiaoBellaMN.com - Best Customer Service Award
• • Read Peter’s article about Ciao Bella’s customer service

Seattle, Washington:

• Purple Cafe and Wine Bar - PurpleCafe.com

Bellevue, Washington:

• Seastar - SeastarRestaurant.com

Atlanta, Georgia:

• Canoe - CanoeATL.com
• One Flew South - OneFlewSouthATL.com

Charleston, South Carolina:

• S.N.O.B. (Slightly North of Broad) - SNOBCharleston.com

Nashville, Tennessee:

• Puckett's Grocery and Restaurant - PuckettsGro.com/nashville

The Greater New York City Area:

• Taverna Kyclades - TavernaKyclades.com
• Estiatorio Milos - milos.ca/restaurants/new-york

Lincoln, Nebraska:

• DISH Restaurant - DishDowntown.com

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Annie Conderacci is a change management consultant and a passionate student of improv. She studied and performed improv at The Second City, Annoyance Theater, and IO Chicago, and she performs improv and sketch all around the city.

As a change and management consultant, Annie frequently uses her improv skills to facilitate growth and positive change in organizations. Throughout the interview, she does an outstanding job of describing how improv can be applied to business, and discusses how you can use improv to defuse difficult situations.

Annie fell in love with Improv the first time she saw Second City – she went to business school in Chicago so that she could also take classes.

She was first drawn to the culture of imperfection. When she saw that you can make mistakes sometimes, and you don’t have to be perfect or even scripted, something clicked.

As she moved up through the levels at Second City, it got more challenging… but it never stopped being fun or supportive. One of the most important lessons that she learned, and that she still applies in the workplace, is that you can challenge people in a way that makes them feel supported and taken care of, and that allows them to take bigger risks than they might in a safe environment.

The freedom to fail is important, and that can mean something as simple as framing failure as a learning opportunity. Improvisers will have so many bad shows – way more bad than good – but it's the bad shows that they really learn the most from.

And it’s important to note that, even if you are in the worst culture in the world, you can still do something within your own space, and you can make the conscious decision to not perpetuate a culture that is counterproductive. If you're fun to work with, people are going to want to work with you, especially if your methods create results.

Improv also teaches us greater empathy, and it teaches us to acknowledge the way other people feel. Always saying Yes, And forces you to consider the other person’s point of view and add to it, as opposed to dismissing it; Yes, And helps you unlearn unproductive behavior. This is a powerful life tool that helps on stage, at work, and at home.

Can you imagine how powerful it would be if people learned these skills as kids?

If we started with kids, and kids could start acknowledging these behaviors early, building good teams, developing leadership skills, thinking quickly on your feet, and supporting each other... that may actually make a great difference in the world.

Annie works with an incredible non profit called Room2Improv that works with children in Chicago. “By teaching them how to explore, embrace and adopt the techniques of improvisation into everyday living, we motivate individuals to care about themselves and others, make healthy choices and effective decisions and use their confidence to overcome their fears.”

Resources:

• Connect with Annie on LinkedIn
• Support Room2Improv

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Byron Patrick, Managing Director of CPA practice at Network Alliance, is a nationally-known industry thought leader and a multi-recipient of the CPA Practice Advisor's 40 Under 40 award.

Byron has been an active member of the Maryland Association of CPAs since the beginning of his career, and he credits much of his professional success to the support and membership of the MACPA.

Personally, I know I wouldn’t be where where I am today without my local association, and I wholeheartedly agree with Byron – The benefits from volunteering at your state CPA Association (or any professional association) are endless, and the financial and personal investment you make will pay for itself many times over.

Too often, CPAs don’t want to participate with their association because they look at membership as a cost, when really it's an investment in your network and career.

When Byron was chair of the MACPA’s young professional network, his message was to be selfish – get involved with the association. These relationships and these opportunities will absolutely have a positive impact on your career trajectory… if you are willing to make the investment, meet people, and take advantage of those opportunities.

“As much as I do to give to the industry and association, and everything else, my take away is a thousand fold. And it's okay – I am perfectly fine with you getting involved if it's to be selfish, because once you show up you're not going to leave.”

Resources:

• Connect with Byron on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Network Alliance

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We’re talking to returning guest Greg Conderacci, the energy management expert who wrote Getting Up!: Supercharging Your Energy and, at the age of 66, rode his bicycle across the United States in just 18 days.

In Getting Up!, Greg writes about the important difference between time management and energy management. Doing more, and living a happier life, isn’t about having more time – It's all about having more energy. We don't get any more time, but we can all get way

more energy.

Throughout this three-part series, Greg discussed four types of interrelated energy, which you can remember by thinking of P.I.E.S.

• Physical energy is the ability to just get up and get going, and it’s the type of energy that a lot of people focus on... but it’s the least important of them all.
• Intellectual energy is what people usually get paid for. Do you have the energy to solve puzzles, solve the problem, meet these needs, etc.
• Emotional energy is the one that often causes the most problems. In episode 46, we discussed the “energy vampires” who drain your emotional energy, and how you can combat them.
• Spiritual energy fuels passion, commitment, and endurance. Although for many it's religious nature, it doesn't have to be – spiritual energy is embedded in each person's mission; his or her's life purpose.

Spiritual energy is the most powerful source of energy, but often people don't really understand it until they work their ways through the first three.

If you look at people who make a powerful impact in the world, they all do that on the basis of spiritual energy. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa: these people didn't get elected to anything, they didn't have armies, but the sheer power of who they were came through, drove their lives, and changed the world.

You can learn more about managing energy, reducing stress, and balancing your career in Getting Up!: Supercharging Your Energy.

Resources:

• MorePersonalEnergy.com
• Getting Up!: Supercharging Your Energy by Greg Conderacci

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Tom Hood, CEO of the Maryland Association of CPAs and the Business Learning Institute, is on a mission to help CPAs make sense of this changing and complex world. Tom and I spoke on the third episode of this podcast, in June of 2016, and a lot has changed in that short period of time.

We discuss how technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing are impacting the accounting profession (and the world), and how CPAs can begin transforming themselves into Anticipatory CPAs.

What is blockchain?

Tom says that blockchain is best described as the Internet of Value. Using secure peer-to-peer data, blockchain basically conveys transactions of value with multiple parties to, effectively, create a public ledger.

This is a real example of a supply chain using blockchain technology, which may help you understand how it works in practice:

• There’s fishermen in a boat off the coast of Malaysia, and they have smartphones.
• When they catch a tuna, they use their smartphone to take a picture. The phone geo locates the photo and it creates the first block of data. The data says this tuna was caught at this location, at this point in time, with these people, and it includes the picture.
• On the dock, the fishermen hand the tuna off to a processing plant, and that creates another block of data showing it was transferred.
• Now it’s being processed. The really good meat is going to go to the sushi restaurant and the other stuff is going to be processed further down to canned tuna.
• The sushi tuna is in another block of data that says it's going on a truck, and it is delivered to some number of sushi restaurants. Each one of those restaurants is another element of data all about that fish. The restaurant owners and customers can trust, with certainty, that the fish is fresh and high quality.
• In the canning center, the cans come out with a bar code that basically connects it back to that block of data. When someone picks that can off the shelf, they can trace it back to that tuna on that day in that place off the coast of Malaysia. Consumers can trust that these fish weren’t caught using illegal or morally questionable practices.

The Convergence

The real power of blockchain technologies is realized when it converges with cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

If you’re not aware, “the cloud” isn’t just for storing data – cloud computing harnesses the power of any connected device to process tasks more quickly than any single computer possibly could. This exponential increase in processing power has made artificial intelligence significantly more tangible.

Oracle, for example, have a machine called Hana. It could process every tax return in the history of the world, since 1957 to now, in under four minutes.

If accountants can leverage these technologies to do the grunt work in a matter of minutes, or even seconds, they can focus their time and energy on delivering substantial value to their clients by interpreting and analyzing that data.

On top of that, blockchain databases will create an extra layer of trust and accountability, possibly even removing the need for audits entirely in many areas of the accounting industry.

Be an Anticipatory CPA

The idea of being anticipatory is to be aware, predictive, and adaptive. Do you even know that the trend is real? Can you predict what it might do for you or your client or your company? And then what would you start doing to adapt to it?

A CPA’s greatest value is taking complex information and putting it in a context that somebody who doesn't have that knowledge can understand.

To help prepare you, the Maryland Society of CPAs is working with IBM to create a future-ready learning portal for CPAs to learn about artificial intelligence, big data, data science, deep machine learning, and blockchain.

The portal will give CPAs a familiarity with the technology and an understanding of the terms so that, as this technology starts to unfold, they'll be able to see the potential and understand the major concepts well enough to communicate with the people controlling these technologies.

Resources:

• Learn more:
• • Maryland Association of CPAs
  • Business Learning Institute
  • Five Steps for Building a Future-Ready Finance Team [PDF] - by Bill Sheridan, CAE (Business Learning Institute)

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Karen Eddington is a comedian, speaker, researcher, and the author of Understanding Self-Worth. She uses her experience in stand-up comedy and improv to teach laughter as a form of self-care.   For 15 years, Karen has researched identity to look for patterns and create original solutions that help people “Under Pressure.” Although The Under Pressure Project started as an effort to understand the biggest pressures faced by teens, it has grown into a mission to heal the most universal and dangerous experience we all share.   The one thing that we all have in common, which Karen describes as “the most universal and dangerous experience we can have,” is mental isolation: The times we feel alone in our mind because we feel diminished, flawed, or excluded   The best solution for getting through this terrible but universal experience is to develop a support network, and anyone can learn how to create supportive communities by practicing comedy.   Comedy vs Pressure   While Karen was researching The Under Pressure Project, she was also getting into comedy for the first time, and she started making some useful connections. She was able to bring in comedy to relieve that pressure and isolation.   As we’ve mentioned on the podcast before, the principles of improvisation and comedy are incredibly powerful in networking situations, professional environments, and just regular ol’ social situations. One extremely powerful tool that Karen likes to use is shared laughter: those moments where we connect as humans through vulnerability and humor.   When you combine Karen’s research with a repertoire of practiced comedic tools (like misdirection or Yes, And), you can learn how to create experiences of shared laughter in any situation, and as a result, create communities that support each other; you can heal mental isolation.   “Laughter heals and strengthens us, when sometimes nothing else can.” –Karen Eddington Resources: Learn more at KarenEddington.com Watch Karen’s TEDxTalk: “The connecting power of shared laughter” Watch Karen’s speaking & stand-up -- Production & Development for Improv Is No Joke by Podcast Masters

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