The Strategic Accountant

John Hale

• Publisher: Hale Consulting Group
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780648659051
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business generale
• Index: Business

The Strategic Accountant will help you re-invent your firm's value proposition in the era of disruption. You will understand why traditional services such as compliance and reporting will be taken over by artificial intelligence. Following each section are capability building activities that support an accountant's professional development.

Keynote speaker, author and mentor, John Hale reveals that attracting and retaining clients requires accountants to juggle three value- based and time-driven conversations.There are lessons from history, entrepreneurs, finance, literature, psychology, operations management, global firms, leaders, technology and the author's life.

CHAPTER ONE

ACCOUNTANTS SHOULD LEARN TO JUGGLE

ACCOUNTANTS SHOULD LEARN TO JUGGLE

Would you rather live in the past or create the future?

Your answer may help with your decision to become a Strategic Accountant. It’s also a trick question. We always live in the present.

We recall the past, but we can create the future.

Today, many businesses and accountants are building bridges to the future with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Activities that are repetitive and predictable, like traditional accounting, keep being subsumed by increasingly smarter, faster and cheaper forms of AI.

In 1950, Alan Turing, a young British polymath, created the future of AI.13 Turing’s humble life is the subject of a brilliant movie titled The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley.

The Imitation Game

From humble beginnings, AI has become a megatrend. I use the term megatrend to refer to significant patterns that will not be changing anytime soon. When strategy aligns with things that are not changing, it succeeds. When we bet on less certain things, success can ellude us.

Success comes from betting on megatrends, such as ageing populations, surging urbanisation, the rising middle class, global warming, water scarcity, AI and sadly, now pandemics.

Siri’s perpetual evolution as a ‘bot’ is a good example of a megatrend.

Me: “Hey, Siri, has our company increased expenditure on water, wages, energy bills and office supplies in the last three years?”

Siri: “According to your Xero account, business expenditure on water, wages, energy and office supplies as a percentage of pre-tax income has increased in the last three years. I can alert the human resources system to downsize the workforce again, or would you like me to send a report to one of your devices?”

When Steve Wozniak had his turn at the conference, he explained that within a few decades, as devices take care of more and more things, AI would outpace human intelligence. Wozniak explained that in time software would think faster than people, and eventually, smart technology would get rid of ‘slow humans’ to help companies run more efficiently.

Whether we like it or not, the role of technology in finance, reporting, compliance and management accounting keeps evolving. In the last thirty years, when governments introduced taxes for capital gains, goods and services and fringe benefits, many accountants were lured away from traditional advisory work.

Soon, governments could take this massive tax compliance work away from accountants. In future, bookkeeping and traditional accounting functions, including tax reporting, will be swallowed up by advances in automation and AI. To survive and evolve, accountants will need to rekindle their advisory flame.

In recent years, with evolving ethics and better regulation in the tech space, Wozniak is less afraid. He now believes that human ‘intuition’ will provide the safety net needed to prevent computers from taking over. More positively, he now shares that AI systems will need to juggle, “They’re going to be smarter than us, and if they’re smarter than us, they’ll realise they need us.”14

The Art of Juggling

When someone first learns to juggle, there is no recognisable pattern.

Tossed balls spend less time being caught and more time on the ground.

Strategic Accountants are accomplished jugglers. They ensure their firm and their clients’ businesses keep three balls in the air. They have a ‘virtuous pattern’ of understanding the past, managing the present and creating the future.

Understanding which customer patterns are predictable makes the task of strategy straightforward. Successful firms know the answer to the question, “What out there is not changing?” This is at the heart of Amazon’s virtuous approach to strategy.

Once Amazon identifies a virtuous consumer pattern, they keep scaling-up their capability and capacity in that space until they dominate it. For example, Amazon realised on-line shopping, books, free-shipping, subscriptions, streamed movies, global logistics and cloud storage are all here to stay. Amazon juggles the past, present and future by deploying AI within its operations, products and services.

The physical act of juggling increases our intelligence. Juggling connects less-connected areas of the brain. Juggling a three-ball cascade is a rewarding pursuit and offers a cascade of benefits. If you don’t have access to juggling balls, you can learn to juggle by finding three tennis balls and following these three steps.

Step 1. Throw and catch one ball from one hand to the other.

Toss a ball from your waist level to a point 30 cm over your head and in-line with your opposite shoulder. Reverse direction and repeat. Left to right, right to left. Repeat until confident.

Step 2. Now start with a ball in each hand.

Toss one ball from your waist level to a point 30 cm over your head and in-line with your opposite shoulder. The moment the first ball reaches its highest point, toss the second ball in your opposite hand from your waist to a point 30 cm over your head and in-line with your original shoulder. Just after the second ball is thrown from your hand, that same hand catches the first ball. Soon after that, the second ball is caught by the original throwing hand. Repeat until confident.

Step 3. Now place two balls in one hand and one in the other.

Repeat the process from Step 2, making sure the initial ball tossed always comes from the hand with two balls. With a three-way toss, aim for three tosses (right, left, right) and catches in a row. Then four. Then Five. Then Six. etc.

World-famous juggler Enrico Rastelli, was born into a circus family. Despite being highly proficient at acrobatics, at thirteen, Enrico saw his future in juggling.15 He practised juggling tirelessly for six years. Practising a new business or life skill over and over for years can dramatically increase our chances of success.

Within a few short years, like Enrico, perhaps millions of accountants, once highly proficient at the acrobatics of accounting, could be in search of a new act. Making the shift from trusted accountant to a trusted strategic advisor might feel daunting at first. However, with practise, most people can master just about anything.

Once Enrico had mastered juggling, he kept on learning. Enrico could juggle multiple objects while balancing objects on his head. His world record numbers for juggling remained unbeaten until recently. His hours of practice made Enrico a master of combination tasks, being able to juggle six plates while spinning a hoop around one foot and skipping a rope that was spun by an assistant.

10,000 Hours

Back at the conference, I skipped the lunch queues to listen to Malcolm Gladwell share the 10,000-hour rule from his book, Outliers.16 Gladwell claimed it took 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery of a complex skill. This was the reason why Bill Gates became so good at computer programming and why the Beatles performed so sweetly.

However, 10,000 hours of practice can be bittersweet if the wrong skill sequence is being mastered. Having a good teacher can be just as important as practice. As a former regional basketball champion, I taught my son Lachlan the most important skills of the game. This included spatial awareness, ‘killer’ handles, shoo...

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE
• CHAPTER TWO
• CHAPTER THREE
• CHAPTER FOUR
• CHAPTER FIVE
• CHAPTER SIX
• FUTURE PROOF YOUR FIRM
• Conclusion
• ENDNOTES
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR