Announcer: Welcome to Own the Promise, a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make in every relationship we cultivate.

Denny: Hello, CLA family. I had an opportunity today to be in the Tampa location, and was speaking with some of the people in Tampa.  And I thought the conversations that we were having were really good conversations, and some questions and issues that were on their minds.  And I thought it would be a great opportunity to share some of those questions, and even the thoughts beyond them.  So I have with me, today, I have Aaron, Michele, Ed and Katelyn from the Tampa location, and I thought we’d kick it off with some thoughts or questions from Aaron.

Aaron: Thanks, Denny. One question that’s always struck me about the CLA promise is, you know, one of the strategic advantages there is that we’re the premier resource provider for owners of privately-held businesses.  As a member of the public sector group, it’s always felt like it somewhat excludes our group from the Promise.  How would you reconcile that, you know, for members of the PSG group, how should we approach that strategic advantage?

Denny: Thanks, Aaron. You know, when the CLA Promise was developed years ago, that was an issue that was brought up quite a bit.  So we had to address it.  And there’s really two items I think I’d respond with.  One is understanding that the Promise is made up of a lot of different things, and four basic, strategic advantages.  One of the strategic advantages is the one you mentioned, and it does very clearly relate to owners of privately-held businesses.  But another strategic advantage we have is around industry specialization.

And when it looks at industry specialization, and knowing that specifically, the public sector group is the largest industry that we have within CLA, clearly there’s no doubt in my mind that the CLA Promise really does address the public sector group, and it does it really through the industry specialization. But the other way is, I know within many individuals in public sector, they’ve also taken that strategy of a premier provider of the privately held, and they’ve somewhat modified it, and they’ve said, we are the premier provider for the stakeholders of our organizations and the clients that we serve.

And therefore, that’s perfectly fine, modifying, really, that promise to say the stakeholder, in effect being the board member or whatever type of governance that non-profit or government organization has, is really the owner, really is the stakeholder of that organization. So, while we never want the Promise to be exclusive, we clearly want it inclusive.  This is the way that we really address the Promise within CLA, never meant to be exclusive.

And again, serving as many public sector clients as we do, I think it really is pretty clear, our dedication to that industry and the importance to CLA. Ed, did you have a question?

Ed: Thanks, Denny. One thing that’s always on my mind, as a profession, as a firm, we constantly need to be innovating.  Can you talk about some of the projects the firm has been working on, is currently working on, and plans to roll out in the upcoming years?

Denny: Thanks, Ed. You know, innovation, maybe the best way to answer that is kind of understanding the way CLA and maybe even the world looks at innovation.  Innovation is not something we look at as necessarily inventing.  So that would be wonderful in the firm, if that occurred in certain situations.  But it’s really not the expectation.  The expectation is, can we be more innovative?  Can we take things that have already been invented, already designed, created, and simply can we improve upon them?

It could be, can we just become more efficient? Or even another answer, is there ways that we could change the things we do to add more value to the client,