The Rhythm of Business
In our first episode, CEO Denny Schleper talks about the rhythm of business. CLA finds itself in an optimistic time, which leads us to ask,… “How do we keep that optimism moving forward? And what results can we expect from maintaining a positive outlook?”
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Transcript
Narrator: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. On today’s podcast, CEO Denny Schleper talks about the rhythm of business. CLA finds itself in an optimistic time. So how do we keep that optimism moving forward? And what results can we expect from maintaining a positive outlook?
Denny Schleper: Hello, CLA family. This is Denny Schleper. Thank you for spending just a few minutes with me today. I hope to come to you each month with some messages that are really going around in my head, going around in the firm.
And, you know, so many things have already happened in 2017, it’s reminded me a little bit of back at the early part of 2015. The firm was really asking ourselves, “There’s a lot of great things happening within the firm. How do we actually keep those good things moving forward?” And one of the communications that we put out was really the rhythm of business. How do we keep that good, positive rhythm going throughout CLA, keeping us moving forward not only as individuals building careers at CLA, but also in helping our clients?
And as I look at 2017, I see that same optimism, that same enthusiasm that we had back at the beginning of ’15. A sense that the CLA Promise can really carry us forward to places we really haven’t taken it prior to this. And so what I wanted to do is just revisit this rhythm of business and communicate to you the things — really four items that I believe will continue to move this rhythm forward within the firm.
Many of you have heard me say rhythm is different than momentum. Momentum will come and go inevitably, but rhythm is something we can continue to move forward as a firm. And really, that first item of keeping the rhythm moving is communicating our vision. And that vision is the CLA Promise. We need to make sure that both our people, our clients understand that the Promise is really a commitment that we will live every day to help the person across the table from us reach his or her dreams and build the better world he or she envisions. Our three integrated businesses, our culture, our strategic advantages are the mechanisms for delivering this experience to everyone we come into contact with.
I had a great opportunity in our Ontario office this past week, which is obviously new to the firm and new to the Promise really going through “What does the Promise mean?” How are we different in the marketplace and how do those differences really tie right back in to the CLA Promise? It was a great opportunity and an opportunity we should all take to continue to communicate our vision.
The second area is celebrating our achievements. As hopefully many of you have seen, we have come out with the real-time feedback cards as an opportunity for all of us to celebrate the great things that our people are doing. Our people do incredible things for our firm and for our clients across the country, and we need to share that success. Now, we all know positive recognition empowers our people and our hard work and commitment inspires others to do the same thing.
The third area is around decision making. And I had a great experience — we were actually in front of the D.C. offices at a town hall meeting, and there was a recommendation made to really bring back, along with maybe the real-time feedback cards, real recognition symbols that people can share. Some people in our past legacies had leadership blocks or things like this. And so we made a decision right at the meeting that we were gonna start to work on that, and that is in process as we speak today. So again, decision making meetings just continues to keep the rhythm moving.
And the final one is connectivity — connecting with one another. And I just want to share with all of you all the great ways that we really are connecting within CLA. Obviously for many of us in the firm, this is a busy time of year, and it’s a great time to connect with our clients and with our staff, our people as we work together in teams. Obviously some of you will have busy seasons that are yet to come, but it’s clearly a busy time for the firm. So it’s a great way for us to connect on a daily basis.
We have the young executive team that has been meeting. We met last week out in Phoenix, and it was a great time for them to get together with a young advisory committee in Phoenix. And the young advisory committees throughout the country continue to meet and connect with one another and hopefully continue to move the firm forward. We have the future innovation team that’s been meeting and connecting with one another on some of the major initiatives within the firm. We have the D&I council, which I hope many of you have read about, which is an opportunity for a group of people to come together and really help us move the diversity and inclusion issues for the firm more forward. Just a great time to connect. The CLA Foundation — many of the committees within the foundation gives many of us an opportunity to connect with one another and move the foundation initiatives forward. I think many of you have hopefully seen on myCLA the leadership messages site which gives you an opportunity to hear from different leaders across the firm. Yammer — many of you have been participating in Yammer. And Yammer is really just the opportunity to connect with one another. Town hall meetings, I mentioned. We’ve had great opportunities so far in 2017 to get in front of various groups, and that is really just that time to connect with one another.
So I leave you today just with the encouragement. Let’s keep that rhythm going in this busy time of year. Let’s continue to communicate the CLA Promise, celebrate our achievements with one another, keep those decision making meetings going forward, and then take every opportunity to connect. I thank you all so much for connecting with one another and keeping this rhythm moving forward for the firm. Thank you so much, and have a great day.
Denny is the chief executive officer of CLA. As he goes about his duties related to the oversight of CLA’s direction, operations, expansion, and strategy, he is also an enthusiastic ambassador for the CLA Promise. He is fully committed to the firm’s position as a professional services firm that delivers integrated wealth advisory, outsourcing, and audit, tax, and consulting capabilities to help our clients succeed professionally and personally.
Rhythm is so important to any kind of endurance and as we all know Busy Season requires endurance!
Thanks for the positive words and pulling it all together into a message that we can easily breathe in and out in rhythm.