Lesson from Steve Jobs and Roberto Goizueta

I’ve been using the following two quotes to start my strategic planning retreats with CPA firms for over 20 years. They are thought-provoking statements that get retreat participants in the proper mindset to proceed.

“When you grow up, you are told that the world is the way it is and to try to live inside that world. Once you discover that the life you are trying to live inside of, was made up by people no smarter than you are, that’s when you realize you can change the world. The minute you understand this, life will never again be the same.” Steve Jobs, founder of Apple

“Challenging the status quo when you have been successful is difficult. If you think you will be successful running your business in the next 10 years the way you did the last 10 years, you’re out of your mind. To succeed, we have to disturb the present.”
Roberto Goizueta, legendary Coca Cola CEO

Jobs encourages us to question every principle upon which current success is based, to accept nothing as sacred, regardless of how powerful, successful, famous, revered and intimidating the founders or prior leaders were. Jobs risked Apple’s life early and often. His Board told him Apple retail stores would be a certain bust, but today Apple is one of the largest retail chains in the world. Apple was launched as personal computer company but today, computers share center stage with many other product lines.

People in CPA firms often have great new ideas – the younger the person, the more ideas they usually have – but people tend to bottle these ideas up for fear of rocking the boat and offending the legends.

Goizueta says that the world we live in is constantly changing. If we don’t change with the times, if we aren’t reinventing ourselves every few years, we will become stagnant. And when that happens, growth, profitability and pride gradually erode. Goizueta risked this hugely successful, long established bedrock of a company to create the New Coke (which failed) and Diet Coke (which has been phenomenally successful).

Recently, in re-reading these quotes I found myself  considering how things in our profession have changed:

• New partner buy-ins have given way to lower, more affordable amounts that are not linked to ownership percentage.

• Management by committee is passé; having a managing partner with an executive board is now the norm.

• Staff have been chained to their desks, either in the office or at clients, since the dawn of man. Today, Millennials want the flexibility of working when and where they choose. Progressive firms have committed to doing as much as possible to offer this flexibility.

• Partner compensation formulas used to be the system of choice for allocating income, especially at firms with fewer than 12 partners. Today, compensation committees dominate formulas as the system of choice at firms with enough partners to justify having a committee.

• Firms used to promote staff to equity partner as a retention tactic. Today, over half of all firms use the non-equity partner role in this manner.

DOES YOUR FIRM DISTURB THE PRESENT? REGULARLY? If not, a great way to jumpstart the process is by reading our monograph Strategic Planning and Goal Setting For Results.