Welcome everyone to The Upstream Leader Podcast, my name is Jeremy Clopton. Excited to be with you for a conversation about creating a “people first” environment in public accounting. It’s something that we’ve seen a lot about, that people take great pride when they’re one of the great places to work or best firms to work for. And we see people first plastered over all kinds of things—I think my favorite is when it becomes a hashtag, because that typically, in my mind, indicates we’re probably not doing everything that we should, we’re just trying to use it for marketing. So I figured if we’re going to figure out how to do that, let’s talk to someone that is executing “people first” in one of the best firms in the profession. So for that conversation I have with me here today Shish Cherian, who is with Donovan CPAs up in Indiana. Shish, good to have you on the show.
Thanks, Jeremy. I’m excited to be here.
Yeah. I’m looking forward to the conversation. We chatted a little bit beforehand trying to figure out how we wanted to tackle this, and I’m excited with the direction that we’re going to go. But before we talk about making “people first” a thing, I want to get your thoughts on, how did you become the leader that you are today?
Yeah, that’s a great question. For me, leadership starts with servant leadership at the heart of it. To be a great leader, you have to be willing to do a task that you’re asking others to do. And so for me, in my role when I started, it was actually for a professional employer organization, on the client service side. And so with the rapport I had kind of built up with my clients, that was something that was recognized by our current managing partner at the time—he was the director of Audit, BJ Lippert. And so him and I had struck up a relationship and it’s not just what you know, but who you know, and so BJ had kind of identified me as someone who he wanted to lead the people initiative at Donovan CPAs. And so it was thanks to his trust that I was put into this seat and, fast forward three and a half years later, I now head up the people operations at Donovan CPAs. So it’s an honor and a privilege.
That’s awesome. And Donovan is one of those firms that every time I talk with someone there—whether it’s BJ, other partners, employees—you can tell it is a place where people thrive. They feel supported, they feel like they’re part of something bigger, that it’s not just a place to go get a paycheck and put in the billable hours and go home at the end of the day. You can tell that the culture there is one that is very people focused. So I’m curious, when you joined—it’s been three and a half years you said—the directive is something to the effect of “people first, let’s make this happen.” How do you even approach that in the profession of public accounting, because we’re very client focused, we’re very billable, hour driven, and a lot of what people interpret “people first” to mean isn’t billable. So how do you get an initiative like that going and what exactly does that take?
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ll tell you, you know, before you can execute, there has to be alignment in the leadership group, right? In the partner group. There has to be the belief that, you know, a firm is more than just the financial statements and that the most important thing is not just partner profits, but actually the experience and beyond. Why do you exist as a firm? So I’ll save you the long story, but that’s integral. And at Donovan CPAs, the partner group said, we want to be a firm that puts people first. And what that looks like is actually focusing on the team member experience. It’s one that we want our team members that come in to look at the lives of the partners and to say, “Hey, that’s something I want to aspire to be.” And that shows up because our team members are encouraged to not just be great professionals, but also to be personally ambitious, right? We want our team members to be serving in the community, we want them to be fantastic spouses or parents or whatever other things, and that can’t happen if you’re just trying to, you know, milk time for all it’s worth. So it starts with alignment at the top, and it’s not just a fluffy feel good idea, which oftentimes it gets kind of labeled into. The whole goal is to say we want to think of the long-term game, and we want to create a culture where we’re attracting the best talent, because they’re not only just great accountants, but they also care about the people that they are.
You used the word “alignment” a couple times and I could tell it was very deliberate, that it was “alignment.” What is the difference in your mind and from a practical application, what’s the difference between alignment and just simple agreement? Because I hear a lot of partners say, “Oh yeah, yeah, we’ve got to care about our people.” And then some would tell you, eh, they say it, they might agree with it, but they don’t really do anything about it. What differentiates for you, alignment from agreement?
Yeah. To me it’s the depth of agreement. So agreement is something where you can almost think of it as checking a box. “We want to care about people, yep, that sounds good.” And we didn’t ask the question how we’re going to do that? What does that look like? What sacrifices are going to be made? Alignment goes deeper. Alignment says, “Here’s what we’re sacrificing for the sake of this belief, here’s what this means and how it impacts me.” And at the end of the day, the hope is to have both agreement and alignment, but alignment in my mind goes a lot deeper.
Yeah, I really like that. And what you have to sacrifice is the part that a lot of folks tend to overlook. I know I’ve thought you know before, oh yeah, totally in alignment on this or in agreement on this, and you realize, “Oh wait, I have to give up what now? Maybe this isn’t exactly the thing that I’m going to go for.” But like you said, to get people first, it requires a change in focus, it requires partners to sacrifice time, energy, money, whatever it may be, for that greater good. Now, some people might come in and say, alright, that sounds great. The partners have to be aligned, but you were hired to be people operations. Isn’t this your job, not theirs?
Yeah. You know, that is a common thought of, and even in the HR industry of, I talked to kids coming out of college to early professionals and this idea that, “Oh, you know, in HR we’re going to just make this a great place to work,” and what they quickly realized, and what I did in my career is that, my character or, you know, my position cannot make this firm more or less generous, it cannot make this firm more or less kind, and ultimately it can’t make this firm more or less “people first.” That has to come from leadership and from a leadership team that is aligned that then asked the question, which was posed to me, “Hey, Shish, here’s where we want to go. Can you help us get there?” And that’s where we come in, when it comes to actually creating strategy and execution, you know, that’s where great HR professionals shine.
And that’s such an important message for leaders to hear is it’s not like—“People first” is the example we’re talking about, but there are probably many other examples of this where somebody thinks, “Well, I’ll just go hire somebody to do that.” But the really important message here is look, if you’re a leader, you can’t just go hire somebody to do that and not believe in it and execute on that belief through your actions. That’s what I’m hearing you say, that leaders have to demonstrate that it truly is what they’re trying to create. Yes, they have hired someone whose expertise is execution of that thing, but they’ve got to be as all-in committed to it as well in order for it to be successful. Is that fair?
That’s fair, that’s well said. You know, what firm doesn’t want to project that they care about their people? That goes across the board. It’d be silly to not do that. But on the HR side, it’s a little bit unique, right? We’re involved in the benefits renewals, we’re involved in the creation and execution of a comp structure, and so you can present to your people one image. But when the doors are closed, when things aren’t leaving the room and you’ve got decisions to make that either align with the values you say that you have or not, on the HR side, we see it all. And so that’s what I loved about my experience here at Donovan is, it’s not just something we say, it’s something we do.
Yeah. You mentioned HR, and I don’t know that it’s fair, but HR probably doesn’t get the best reputation. I mean, look, I grew up, you know, working with internal auditors, they were the gotcha folks. Auditors probably feel that way. Tax professionals are probably like, yeah, well we’re the tax people, right? And somebody maybe is thinking, well, we’re HR and you know, people have all their opinions on us. But the way that you talk about it, yes, it’s HR, but you are in charge of people operations, which to me is more than just compliance. What exactly is people operations in a firm that’s looking to be “people first?”
I think it starts with the theory of organizational behavior. That was very impactful for me, learning how organizations behave, and how do we at the end of the day, both increase organizational commitment as well as increase performance, right? And so when you start with that, you then on the people operations side say, “We’re going to apply the principles of organizational behavior to the way that we do HR, and so that’s from recruiting to offboarding and everything in between, how do we ultimately create processes, procedures, and policies that are increasing organizational commitment and increasing performance?” And it sounds simple, but you’d be surprised at how many organizations lack clear roles and responsibilities, how many organizations—we were in that place. And also, you know, even pointing towards many times there can be frustration at behavior that’s not exhibited, and there’s just no clear communication or training on that behavior.
Yeah. So what’s required? You know, again, “people first,” I think some folks probably jump to, well, it’s got to be fun, we probably need a ping pong table, maybe an open bar on Fridays, and often it seems like when we think “people first,” we probably overdramatize to the fun and the Silicon Valley, you know, tech startup life that was always portrayed in the early 2000s where “people first” means that it’s all about the people and they run everything and everything should be super fun and enjoyable and it should never feel like work. I know the folks at Donovan well enough to know they’re working, they’re getting things done. So I’m going to go out on a limb and say, “people first” isn’t all about fun and making sure it doesn’t feel like work. So what goes into “people first?” You talked about clear roles and expectations. Obviously there’s the traditional side on HR, like you mentioned: benefits, pay, those things. But I’m going to go on a limb and guess there’s probably quite a bit more to that, that truly makes a firm feel people first. What are some of the most important areas in your eyes?
Yeah. Let me first go on the record to say if a firm owner is considering a ping pong table or a beer tap or whatever fun idea. Let this not be the reason you don’t install that or get that perk. It’s just more than that.
Sure sure sure, yes. We’re not taking the fun out of it. It’s just more than that.
Yeah, exactly. But no, you’re right: That’s the icing, it’s not the cake. And there’s a lot of ways you could approach that question. Probably my favorite though, and I’m going to borrow from the book, Radical Candor, and that’s creating a people first firm means challenging directly and caring personally. And if you just do one of those things well, you actually end up with ruinous empathy or a dictatorship, right? Where you’re not, you know, developing trust. Xut the caring personally, it goes to what we’ve talked about before: Are you willing to be generous? Are you willing to be patient? Do your team members feel like you or the leadership team or the management team that you have in place cares about who they are as a person, that they care about. If they have a bad day, they care. They don’t just say, “well just do your work.”
What does that look like behaviorally, to care personally? Because I’m thinking of, you know, a partner that may say, “Hey, I’m not really a small talk person. I tend to be a little more private. You know, I’m not going to go into what’s going on outside the office for me, but I’m a leader of people. How do I show up in a way that is authentic to who I am, and it feels like I care? Because it’s not that I don’t, I’m just not, you know, small talk’s not going to be my jam.” So what does care personally look like behaviorally?
Yeah. I would tell that firm owner, you’d be surprised at how observant your people are. It’s not something that you need to pretend to be something that you’re not. Some of the most beloved firm owners I know in my experience, it wasn’t because of their amazing, you know, small talk skills, or that they stopped by every desk. Oftentimes it was displayed in that servant leadership. And what that means is, you know, working hard, not just expecting—to live to those values. And when, you know, when you work hard and you show up and someone’s having something personal and you’re saying, “Hey, you take care of that, let me either reallocate resources or even, you know, take that on,” that goes so much further than being well-liked. And so, you know, it starts with that DNA and it starts with servant leadership, working hard.
Yeah, no, that’s in incredibly helpful. So you said it goes beyond just caring deeply though. So what’s the other component?
The other component is challenging directly. And obviously there’s background, you want to have clear roles and responsibilities and things like that, but it’s amazing to me how many organizations that say “We’re a family, we’re a family.” And don’t get me wrong, you want to have family values. But you know, at the end of the day, if you have experienced a healthy family system, hopefully you’ve experienced unconditional love. Let me tell you something: What we do when we compete in the marketplace, it is very conditional. And so I always try to help owners understand it’s not about family values. At the end of the day, you’re a sports team or whatever team you want to, you know, debate team, whatever the case is, and so that means you need to put people, the right people in the right seats. And when things aren’t going the way they should, you need to be able to challenge directly and showcase. “Hey, you know, this isn’t going to work,” ’cause at the end of the day, you know, I play basketball personally, and I get along with lots of people, but I know that if I’m trying to win a game, I’ve got to surround myself with four other guys that are going to work together ultimately to score more than the other team. And that looks like defense and offense. So your CPA firm, it’s no different. At the end of the day, we do serve the marketplace providing whether it’s tax services or audit. We have to exhibit excellence in our work product.
Yeah, how do you balance the two? Because they do seem a little bit at odds at times, right? It’s like, “Hey, I do care about you, but you’re not the right person to help us land to this work, so you’re staying at the office and I’m taking this other person to go on this prospecting call because they’re going to actually be a better fit to help us land the work.” So how do you balance caring deeply and challenging personally? What does that look like, practically?
Practically, you cannot be conflict averse. You need to be willing to have hard conversations, difficult conversations. But on the “care personally” side, you also have to be in that person’s corner. And so at the end of the day, you know, if it’s a deficiency in hard skills or a deficiency in soft skills, these are trainable things. One of our partners that has now retired, she’s told me at a lunch, when she started her career, she was—in her own words, not mine—terrible with client interactions. She was afraid, she didn’t enjoy it, but someone believed in her enough to continue to give her those opportunities. They didn’t just shut her up and say, “Do this tax return, but I’m not going to let you talk to the client.” And slowly she worked at it and she actually has developed some of the most loyal client relationships we have here at the firm. And so all that to say, where that intersection lies is, if you’re willing to stay in someone’s corner and provide them resources to get better and the encouragement and motivation, then that’s how you care personally, but still challenge directly.
Yeah. So it’s one of those where, I mean, much like we talk about it on the client side, it’s all about relationships. It’s not about the tax return or the audit report or the consulting engagement, it’s about the relationships. “People first,” it’s about the relationships. They’ve got to be meaningful, you’ve got to have connection. You know, you said earlier that the fun stuff is the icing, not the cake, so is it fair to say that the relationships and how you show up for people, you know you’re in their corner, which means you care deeply, but also challenge them directly, that’s the cake, so to speak? That’s the key to “people first” is meaningful, caring relationships?
Yep, absolutely. And it’s something where your people will absolutely feel that. And transparently, it gets harder as you get larger, but that’s why it’s so important. ’Cause if you can train up your team and as you grow and hire on more, they’re going to continue to carry it out. It can’t all end with your character and your interactions, you have to lead by example and ultimately end up becoming a leader of leaders.
Yeah. It’s so interesting, it’s remarkably simple when you talk about it in a podcast. Obviously the execution is not easy by any stretch. But when we really think about “people first,” we overcomplicate it. We’re thinking about all the policies, the procedures, the pay, the perks, all these different things, but it all comes back to, do you actually care meaningfully about the people that you work with, to the extent that they know you care, and they see that challenge as a furtherance of that caring, not punishment or some negative thing. So what are in your eyes then, if we’ve taken care of all of that, it’s 2026, what are some of the extras out there that you’ve seen are really important to people in this day and age? So in the 90s it would’ve been different than it is in 2026 or even in the 80s or the early 2000s. What are some of the extras, some of the perks, the policies, that you believe to be critical to furthering the “people first” culture in 2026?
I really think of three things that come to mind. There’s a lot of discussion and debate about remote work. Is it here to stay? Is it going back? Is there a return to the office? You know, at the end of the day, what you have to recognize is that if you trust your people and trust them to do good work, and they have demonstrated a trustworthiness, then whether you land on, you know, in person or hybrid, have the flexibility to support them in the life that they’re wanting to live. And so, you know, if it’s important to someone to pick up their kids from school or drop them off, travel, be a firm that can support that, because the truth of the matter is with technology the way it is, we have the ability to do great work all across the nation. And so, you know, my encouragement to firm owners would be if you rely on high performance being achieved because you’re looking over someone’s shoulder, that’s just not a long-term sustainable solution, and you’re not going to attract top talent by continuing to operate that way. I know I might be getting some disagreement on that point, and I’m willing to discuss that further. But, you know, for me, just as I’ve observed the landscape, that’s definitely where I see us headed. So that’d be one.
The second that comes to mind is, you know, I’ve talked about people operation systems. At the end of the day, the gut check is this, it’s, do our policies and procedures from, you know, recruiting all the way to offboarding, is it something that our team enjoys it, excited by it, it makes sense, or is there a lack of clarity? What I do both for Donovan as well as now, you know, our local client base is help organizations create effective people operation systems. And so, you know, my encouragement to a firm owner would be, if you don’t have that, it’s time to ensure that you do, because that does make a big difference when it comes to retention. So that would be kind of the second.
And then the last one, it’s one we haven’t touched on, but I think it’s one of the most important. And that’s when you have a client base, you have to ask yourself, are we supporting our team members by the clients that we’re choosing to work with? At the end of the day, whether if it’s a pricing issue or even a character issue, you have to be willing to have your client base support where you’re headed to go. And a client that may have been good for the firm in, you know, inception, or year two, may not be the right one in future years. Because at the end of the day, if for us, for example, we don’t want our team members to work insane hours that some of our partners had to, you know, when they first started in the profession. Well, if you’re going to make that a goal, you also then have to have a client base that is willing to pay the amount needed to support lower hours. You can’t do both—you can’t have lower hours and also either under pressure engagements or whatever the case is. So there’s got to be alignment there as well.
It’s a really important point on the client side of it, and one that I would say a lot of folks don’t consider in creating the right environment for their people, but I would agree with you 100%. If you’re trying to create one culture, but your clients demand another, it’s going to feel just so conflicting and there’s going to be so much tension constantly. Because you’re right: If you’re trying to create an environment where people don’t have to work insane hours, but your entire client base expects to have their staff accountant’s phone number and they can call them at 11 o’clock at night, that’s going to be counter to everything that you’re trying to build. So it isn’t just, do we put in the policies, the procedures, the flexibility, you know, do we trust our people? And I would agree with you, not disagree with you on that one. If we’re going to trust them with our biggest client relationships, I’d sure hope we can trust them to work when they say they’re going to. But that may be a whole other conversation.
But everything—you’re right, it’s a system and we have lots of systems for doing the work, we have lots of systems for client experiences. If we’re really going to build the firms that are going to be competitive and sustainable in the future, we have to have people systems, because people are the key. They will be our competitive advantage, they will be our big differentiator, and in my mind no matter how much technology we have, our profession is built on the people. We’ve got to have great people that want to do great things, and those systems are required for that. So I appreciate what you have shared. You mentioned the book, Radical Candor. Any other resources that you would recommend for firm leaders that are trying to improve in this space?
I would highly recommend the author Patrick Lencioni. He’s got a plethora of books, I’ll obviously point out one to start with. It’s actually a book study we’re currently doing with our team. It’s The Ideal Team Player. And essentially the spoiler is you as an organization, want your firm to be full of ideal team players, and an ideal team player is humble, hungry, and smart. And so it elaborates on that point a lot more. I would highly encourage an owner if they haven’t read that book to pick it up and check it out. A lot of Lencioni’s work is great in that organizational behavior space.
Yeah, I would echo that. That’s a wonderful book. I would agree. I don’t know that I’ve read any of his and thought, “Wow, that was a fail.” In fact, I think I have almost all of his and recommend them regularly. I would agree with you on that. Great work there on organizational behavior. So if you’re looking to the future 15, 20, 25 years and you know, you’re looking at Shish at that point in his career, who are you working to become as a leader?
Yeah. Who I want to be as a leader at the end of the day is someone who cares for the team above my own individual goals. And that when people work at Donovan CPAs and I say, “This is going to be one of the best decisions in your professional career,” that plays out to be true. So at the end of the day, I want my legacy to be one that was others-focused and more of a celebration of what we as a firm have accomplished than anything I’ve done individually.
Outstanding. Thank you for that. And if folks have questions, they want to talk more. I know you enjoy this topic and are open for conversations. What’s the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Yeah, so I’m active on LinkedIn. I’d love for anyone interested to reach out and connect. Also available through my email, that’s SCherian@CPADonovan.com. I’m always happy to chat. At the end of the day, for me, on the HR side of things, I celebrate firms that are trying to take care of their people. So if I can be of help, I’d love to have a conversation.
Outstanding. Shish, thank you so much for joining me. I have really enjoyed the conversation and look forward to having another one again soon.
Absolutely. Likewise. Thank you so much, Jeremy.
