Conversations From CLA Tampa

• July 5, 2017
• Denny Schleper

In this episode CEO Denny Schleper records a “live” podcast from our Tampa location, where he invites four CLA professionals to engage in a conversation — sharing the thoughts and issues on their minds.

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Transcript

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, would be something that would be very innovative.  To your point, though, Ed, the world’s changing.  A lot of things are happening.  So the pressure on innovation becomes even more critical for any firm, including CLA.  When we look at innovation, there’s subtle things we’ve actually done that maybe people don’t really relate to innovation.

But we’ve done them to try to address what’s happening in the world. Such things as the future innovation team.  Now, that’s one that’s a little bit more direct, was created to say, they’re gonna look at the world.  Their experience level, generally the age, their acceptance to technology.  They’re gonna look at the world maybe a little bit differently than other people do, including the Dennys of the world.  Can we put them together, and come up with ways that we, again, can do things more efficiently, add more value to our clients, in more of an innovative way?

So that group has actually been given a lot of authority to take some of those innovative ideas and run with them. There’s been some pretty interesting things that have come from that.  I think the most interesting conclusion they’ve reached already is, when it comes to technology, it’s just one piece of innovation.  They’ve claimed we want to be, CLA wants to be first-generation knowledge of all technology, but probably second-generation implementers of that technology that makes sense for CLA.

So that was kind of an interesting directive along innovation. It’s really forced us to say, if we’re gonna be first-generation knowledge on technology, well, we better have a group that really understands that technology piece.  But that was one.  If you think about the Yet group, and I know, Ed, you participate on the Young Advisory Council in Tampa, that was really another opportunity to say, what kind of innovative ideas, even though those innovative ideas have tended to be a little bit more internally focused, what can CLA do internally to maybe, again, make life better, more exciting, more efficient, that type of thing.

That still was really an innovative type of approach that most firms have not taken. Beyond that, some of the programs.  We obviously have the CLA Accelerator, an opportunity for people to go right on to My CLA and suggest ideas.  And then to have a support group to help them, where do I go with that idea, and where do I take it?  Lastly, probably, would be the shark tank.  Currently, today, the applications for the shark tank are open until August 11th.

This is the third year, now, with the shark tank, where we have a group of people in the firm, call them the sharks, that will actually listen to the ideas people have. And we’ll get behind them, or we won’t, just like the shark tank.  What does it mean, getting behind it?  It means that the firm is willing to take somebody to help sponsor that idea, as well as the firm’s willing to put the resources, the money, the dollars, behind that idea to carry it forward.  So, we need more applications.

It’s been a wonderful experience the last couple of years, and we hope each year it just gets better. But, you know, these are programs, and all of this starts with, can we get it into our culture?  Can the culture be really based around accepting those innovative ideas, and the processes to actually implement and cause that change?

Ed: So, on your last point, you spoke to how important it would be for culture in order to implement those ideas. What do you think currently would be the firm’s largest barrier, from a culture perspective, that would prevent us from innovating at a pace that you would like, or I guess anyone in this room would like?

Denny: Yeah, thanks, Ed. You know, probably, I think of the industry first, before CLA, but I’ll get to CLA.  I think there’s barriers in our industry.  There’s regulations.  There’s standards.  You take simply the whole audit redesign process that we’re going through.  You immediately have to look at the regulations and say, what can we actually do?  How innovative can we actually be in this process?  So, I think there’s a barrier when it comes to our industry.

And it’s not just audit. It’s probably the same in the tax and the other areas.  I think as it relates to CLA specifically, it goes back to where we are in the Promise itself.  You know, if you look at the Promise, one of the biggest things we have to implement is the seamless implementation and integration of all of our services to our client base.  We have miles to go.  We’re at a good place, but we have miles to go.  When it comes to the innovation ideas, we’re still more at that infancy/adolescence stage of trying to get seamless and move in that direction.

I think as we just age a little bit more in this process, I think the innovative ideas will actually be more acceptable, once there’s a better baseline of how we actually deliver all of this seamlessly. If I were to answer your question maybe a year ago, I would’ve actually said it’s the “Dennys” of the world that are the barriers.  It’s the leaders of the firm that are the barriers, because we don’t understand some of those things as well as maybe other generations do.  I actually think over the last year again, with the fit, and the– we have a structure, but we also have more of an awareness of how do we get those things implemented.

And put cost aside, and put resources aside. And I think lastly, the industry itself is moving at a slow enough pace when it comes to the accounting world, and we’re fortunate in that way ’cause it’s not a fast-moving industry, that it will allow us this time to catch up on it.  Michele?

Michele: Thanks, Denny. Kind of following the innovative and, you know, implementing, and trying to catch up with the technology.  I mean, we’ve all seen the emails with the CLA apps.  But what is the ultimate goal of having these apps, and kind of bringing them to the employees of CLA?

Denny: Thanks, Michele. Maybe back to the philosophy of what we were trying to accomplish by the CLA app, and really, the mobility experience.  Clearly, this initiative came from the YET group, so it’s another great example of Ed’s question, related to where does this innovation come from?  And what forces change within CLA?  Because if it wasn’t for the YET group somewhat demanding that this has to be a 2017 initiative, I’m not sure it would have.  In fact, I’m sure it would not have been.  So, it’s something that really came from the YET group.

As we started looking at it specifically, you could take an approach with the mobile experience to say, “CLA’s gonna create its own app.” Well, that approach, when we started to go down that path, was probably quickly diverted, because we’re not a technology company.  And for us to try to figure out how to develop that app and then probably more importantly, how to maintain that app in an appropriate way, probably not the right path.

So, the YET group, working with our internal technology folks, they went down a different path, and that was more of this mobile experience. So that, could we take what looks like an app, but once opened, really contains all of the third-party apps that we could utilize within CLA, hence creating the experience.  The other advantage to that is, you know, we all have data and different things on our phones.

We only want to use so much data, for most of us. If you went with a CLA app, you’d almost be forced to have all the apps, and all the data usage and so forth.  This allows you to actually do kind of like a suite.  What do you want to choose?  What apps make sense for you within CLA?  Those are the apps that you would actually utilize in this CLA mobile experience.  And then use those accordingly.  So, maintaining it goes away, because the third parties will maintain it.

All we have to do is to make sure that those apps are properly functioning for all of our people. And the one that’s still yet to be rolled out, that I think will have the biggest impact, and will actually catapult, maybe, some of the other apps, is when we can actually do our time and expense and so forth.  I mean, that is the big one, and we’re working with Star now.  There is a mobile device.  We feel very confident before the end of the year, we’ll have that rolled out.

I think once people get used to utilizing the apps, and even that one app in that fashion, I think the other apps will become more utilized. The reality today is we’ve had a lot of apps out there that people are not even aware of.  I think it was even, the Yet group said it would be nice to be able to book all your travel and everything on an app.  Well, that Concur app had been out for, I’ve been using it, I think, at least for a couple years.  So, this will actually make it more aware to our people what’s available.

But it was meant to, again, be very customizable. One of the things we know about the younger generations is, we all like to customize things.  So this kind of falls into that category as well.  Thanks, Michele.  Katelyn?

Katelyn: Thanks, Denny. My question is, what initiatives does CLA have or plan to implement to promote diversity and inclusion?

Denny: Thank you, Katelyn. There’s been a lot of, I would say, awareness and efforts around the DNI issue.  In fact, so much so that there’s been some interesting, I would say, movement in the last couple months where CLA has decided, we’re gonna take a certain path along the DNI issues.  What would some of those paths be?  Well, one is, and this actually came from one of the leadership series last summer, is to create a DNI council.

So that DNI council has been up and running now for about three or four months. Laurie Simms, Linda Rubenstein actually head up that DNI council.  Their charge is to come up with really what is the overall strategy and mission, if you want to call it, of the DNI efforts for CLA?  So they’ve been working on that, and already have started to roll out some efforts.  But the overall emphasis of DNI comes back to really similar to the innovation, is it has to be built into the culture.

We always wanted to avoid having programs or numbers or statistics that somehow indicates are you diverse or not? And we really wanted it part of the culture, hence even the use of Yammer as one way that, you know, from a diversity perspective and an inclusive perspective, people can get together and come together, and hopefully feel more inclusive and feel more comfortable within the firm.

I know, and we always know that there’s still unconscious biases that happens within any firm, and it happens within CLA as well. That’s where this awareness issue comes in.  I always want to stress, though, it’s under a one significant common belief, and that is, CLA will be a much stronger organization, a better firm, the more diverse we are and the more inclusive we are.  If we don’t start with that belief, then nothing will really change.

But it even relates back to Ed’s point on innovation again. The more diverse you are, the more innovative ideas you will come up with as an organization.  It’s just one example of how we can be better.  There’s another thought that while diversity is always gonna be a difficult issue for people to get their heads around and their arms around, in and of itself, it can be somewhat divisive, if we’re all honest with each other.  I mean, the word is diversity.  It’s divisive.  It can be.

So, as an organization, we’re gonna move more and more towards just being inclusive under this thought and philosophy. The more inclusive we are as an organization will drive our diversity.  And so everything we do around being inclusive– it’s too soon in our culture to get away from the diversity and inclusive tagline, and even the word diversity.  But eventually, it would be great, and I would know as a firm, we reached our real ultimate goals around diversity and inclusion if we just really just spoke about being inclusive in all regards.

I appreciate your time, everyone, today. And CLA family, I hope this has been helpful.  And as always, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email.  Go ahead and call 12709 if you have any questions or any follow-up items on these issues, or anything else that I could personally help you out with.  Have a great day.

 

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