Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of The Upstream Leader. My name is Jeremy Clopton. Thanks for joining me for today’s episode. Though we normally have a guest, someone that I’m going to interview, somebody that I’m going to talk with, we’re going to take a slightly different approach for today’s episode. I’ve been spending a lot of time at conferences and with firms, and talking with partners and other leaders in the profession about what’s going on, and there’s been a common theme that has been emerging. I thought it was worth just sitting down and sharing a little bit of that here on the podcast. We may not go the typical length of a normal episode. This may be a bit of a shorter episode, and I hope that’s okay with you. I think it’ll be very impactful.
One of the common questions that I get when we’re at retreats, or when I’m doing conferences is talking about the state of the profession, the future of the profession, and what that means—whether it’s AI, automation, outsourcing, private equity, or M&A and everything that’s out there. Though I love every single one of those topics, and I always find a great conversation to be had, the common theme that keeps coming up time and again is the importance of people. I don’t know that topic necessarily gets as much conversation as it should in the profession. I know that technology, private equity, M&A, and all of that tend to get a lot more headlines, it tends to be a lot flashier, especially when you’ve got new tech, new automation, new AI, and all the things out there that people get really excited about.
And we want to talk about, one of the things I would encourage leaders in our profession, and I would argue it’s probably applicable to leaders in other professions as well, but I work with accounting firms, so I’m going to stick to that, is we have got to determine how we ensure that our people continue to be our top differentiator. What I mean by that is, when we’re thinking about technology, there’s a lot that we can do with it. I discussed the role of AI in our last episode with our producer, Justin Grant, and we were talking about AI and all the things. But at the end of the day, it’s going to be the people who are our biggest differentiator. They’re the individuals, the component of the firm, if you will—and I hate that phrase, component of the firm, but I’m not exactly sure what the best phrase is. They’re the lifeblood of the firm, probably the best phrase to use for it. Without people, we don’t have sustainability, we don’t have longevity, we’re not taking care of our clients, and frankly, there’s not a lot of reason to use an accounting firm rather than using a piece of software.
And I know that that may sound a bit harsh, that may sound a bit blunt, but at the end of the day, we have got to remember that our people are what set us apart from the commoditization of the services that we provide. In thinking about our people, we have got to get back to figuring out how do we develop them to become not technicians, but instead, trusted advisors for our clients—individuals that can deliver insights and care about our clients and care about others within the firm, and really develop and build all of these meaningful relationships. As we move forward in the profession and add more technology, and more outsourcing, one of the things I know I’m talking to a lot of firms about is, we’ve got to stop looking for clients who necessarily only need us for what we do—meaning that they’re looking more for a compliance provider—and we want to start looking for clients who want to work with us. Yes, they might need to work with us as well, but they genuinely want to work with us, and they want to work with us because of the people that we bring to the table, the team that we bring to the table, that’s going to set us apart from every other firm on the market.
That’s why people development becomes so important. We talk a lot about compliance versus development, learning and, you know, getting all this CPE. There’s a ton of CPE that we do in our profession. There’s a lot of education, a lot of learning. The technical knowledge will always be important. I never want to discount or diminish the importance of the technical knowledge. Being a great CPA, if you’re a CPA, being a great consultant, if you’re a consultant, you’ve got to have the technical ability to do your job well. Even in the age of technology, you’ve got to have the technical ability in order to leverage technology effectively. But it’s all the professional skills that are really going to be the things that set your firm apart from others. It’s how your people show up in a professional context.
One of the elements of development that we’ve gotten a little bit away from in the profession over the past five, 10, maybe 15 years, is we don’t spend as much time as leaders mentoring, coaching, advising, simply working alongside those that we want to develop. And I realize, I’ve interviewed some guests on this podcast that are doing a great job of that, so I’m not saying that nobody out there is doing it. But as a general rule, as a profession, we’ve gotten really busy. We really kind of worry more about how do we get it all done? How do we get it all done? How do we get it all done? There’s not enough time in the day. We’re trying to figure out how do I delegate to people? I can’t delegate to people if they’re not capable, but I don’t have the time to train them to be capable. It feels like this problem that just can’t be solved.
When I think about the solution, I keep asking partners when I interact with them, I say, “Who was it in your career? Was there someone in your career that you can point to that gave you an opportunity before you were ready? They poured into you, they cared for you, they helped you develop, they were there to answer questions, they were there to challenge you, make sure that you took risks. Was there someone there? And do you remember who they were?” Almost every leader in our profession that I talk to will say, “Yes, there was, and this is their name,” Because it was that impactful for them. But my follow-up question is often, “Do you have the time to do that for people today, or are you making the time to do that for people today?” And that’s typically when a lot of partners will look at the floor, and they’ll go, “Eh, no, I wish I could, but I’m just too busy.”
So when we think about people being our differentiator, and one of the things that we’ve got to do to be great developers of people is we have got to figure out how we find the time to develop the next generation of our firm and not get so caught up doing the work of today in our firm. I realize that feels like a bit of a catch-22, and you’re gonna say, “Jeremy, I’ve got deadlines to meet” and all the things. I get that. I understand that. And I’m not saying that tomorrow you’ll just be able to shove aside all the client work and simply focus on people development. But if we’re looking for how we as leaders, A, can become better, and B, can make our firms better, finding the time to develop people is going to be one of the most important activities that you can do. That’s going to be step one.
Step two that comes with that, though, is a lot of people are trying to figure out, “Well, that’s great, I love the idea, I’d love to find time, and maybe I can even commit to finding the time. How do I then develop them? I’m not a coach. I’ve not been trained in coaching. I’m not certified in that. I don’t really even know how to develop people. And besides, if I let them struggle or I provide them feedback, what if they get frustrated and they don’t actually want the feedback? They don’t want to get better, and then they leave and then we don’t have them anymore.” There’s a whole lot of what-if scenarios that we want to go down when it comes time to trying to figure out how to develop people, we can come up with all the reasons in the world.
So I’m going to try, if I can, to provide you a framework that is pretty straightforward. Now, does it remove the risk of someone leaving when you provide them feedback and you challenge them? Absolutely not. I would probably argue that if you challenge someone or provide them feedback and try to help them groww and they leave because you’re investing in their career, they’re probably not the right fit for the firm to start with. I know that when staffing is difficult, that sounds rough because we never want somebody to leave. But if they don’t want to get better, and that’s one of your core values for your firm is continual growth and improvement, we’ve got to make sure that we get the right people there.
The framework that I’m going to ask that you use, or I’m going to encourage you to use—you can use whatever framework you want—the framework that I’m going to encourage is what we call the Upstream Growth Triangle. It has three components to it. There are three components to personal growth that you’ve got to figure out how to balance out. For the math junkies out there, it’s not always an equilateral triangle—it does shift over time—you’ve got to figure out what the triangle looks like for you, what it looks like for the people that you’re working with to develop because it not only applies to your team, but it applies to you as well.
The three components of the Upstream Growth Triangle are accountability, adversity, and advocacy. Accountability, adversity, and advocacy. And you’ve got to have a balance of all three of those. That doesn’t mean equilibrium, it means a balance of all three of those as someone is developing in their career. All growth comes from a balance of all three. The reason that you’ve got to have all three: accountability is doing what you are supposed to do. It’s learning to do the hard things. It’s getting outside your comfort zone. It’s taking that step. It’s committing to the plan. It’s setting up the system of daily activities that’s going to help you be successful. That’s what accountability is—it’s showing up consistently. If you don’t have that, it’s hard to believe that you will develop or that you will grow.
At the same time, you’ve got to have some adversity. Adversity is also closely tied to the comfort zone because adversity means we are outside of our comfort zone. We’re doing something that is a challenge to us, it is something that we see as difficult, it’s something that we think, “I might fail in this. I might make a mistake. I might screw up.” And that’s exactly why we need someone to have that in their development process, because we don’t grow very effectively through success. The positive outcome of success can sometimes mask the fact that our approach or our process was actually not correct. So we miss a growth opportunity because the outcome masked our challenges or our issues that we needed to work on. So we’ve got to have some adversity because, in those challenges, in those failures, in those mistakes, we learn. There are lessons there. That ties back to the accountability. How do we then learn from those lessons, take what we learn, and apply it to the next situation?
The third component is advocacy. Anybody that knows me, knows that one of my biggest principles when it comes to coaching is you can’t care more about the other person’s success than they do if you’re coaching them. If you’re trying to help them develop, you can’t care more about their success than they do. You can care up to the point at which they care. You can always match their energy. You can always match their initiative. But at the point at which you start caring more, it leads to frustration across the board. So advocacy is helping to encourage them in a way that allows them to accomplish more. It’s encouraging them that they are capable of more than maybe they think they are. It’s helping them get into situations or opportunities that they can’t otherwise get in themselves. Often leaders have the ability to bring people to meetings, to put people into opportunities that they can’t just simply walk in the room on their own. Sometimes it’s removing unnecessary red tape or political barriers, and I mean internal political barriers within an organization where somebody should have the opportunity, however, there’s this, the way that we’ve always done it, that gets in the way, and people are like, “Yeah, but there’s no precedent for that, so I don’t know that we can give them the opportunity.” When you’re developing someone and that’s the right opportunity, advocacy means saying, “I don’t care how we’ve always done it. This is what we need to do right now.”
When you are developing someone, you’re helping them to grow in their career, you’ve got to figure out how you balance all three of these. If you’re a leader, and you’re listening to this podcast, and you’re thinking, “Okay, but I’m trying to figure out how do I develop myself?” It’s the exact same triangle. You need to figure out how you balance out accountability—showing up consistently; adversity—finding opportunities to fail and make mistakes and learn and grow; and advocacy—getting somebody in your corner or a group of people in your corner that are going to help you be as successful as you can possibly be. They’re going to help get you in the opportunities, get you in the rooms that you need to be in, get you around the tables that you need to be around.
When you’re trying to help someone develop, what I would encourage you to do—and you can reach out to me, I’ve got a career mapping document, a template that we encourage for our clients to use, I am happy to share it with any listener of this podcast, all you have to do is email me. My email address is in the show notes. If you reach out to me, what you’re going to do in that career map is you’re going to plan out where someone is, where they want to be, and what are all of the steps along the way. What knowledge do they need to gain? What skills do they have to develop? What experiences do they need to have to apply the knowledge and skills that they’ve learned? Then what you’re going to do is at each step of that along the way, you’re going to step back and say, “Okay, for this development opportunity, what is the balance of advocacy, adversity, and accountability?” You’re going to ensure that you’ve got all three of those.
If you have accountability and adversity but no advocacy at all, it can lead to so much frustration. It can lead to somebody doing everything that they’re supposed to do, working as hard as they possibly can, seeking out the challenges, and something, or some process, or some system, or somebody on the other end is saying, “Yeah, but you still don’t get to do anything, you still don’t get to grow, because that’s just not the way that we do things.” Before somebody says, “Oh, but that’s just part of it,” that’s exactly why we need advocacy, because it shouldn’t just be part of it. If we are truly developing future leaders and they’re doing everything that we ask, why should there be artificial barriers in place to them moving to where they want to move, getting to where they want to get to in their career?
At the same point though, if you have accountability and advocacy and it goes too far and you don’t have any adversity, now we get into this idea of what I call snowplow leadership, where we try to make everything so easy for them that they never have to struggle. There is value in the struggle. It is hard to watch people struggle that you know can be successful, that are working hard. It is difficult to watch them struggle, yes. For them, it is difficult to struggle, especially if they’re a high performer, because they’re probably used to getting everything right and not ever making mistakes. But if they’re not making mistakes, they’re not getting far enough outside their comfort zone. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to make sure that we bring that adversity in, so it isn’t too easy, but then you’ve also got to have accountability along the way. They have to be the one to show up. If you’re advocating and you’re positioning them with adversity, but then you give them a cop-out so they don’t actually have to do the work, they’re never going to grow. You’re going to put forth a whole lot of time, energy, effort, and you’re not going to get anything out of it.
So when you are trying to develop leaders within your firm, the next generation of people within your firm—by the way, this works outside the office, this works for professional development, for professional growth opportunities, it works in so many capacities—what you’re going to do as you work to build your people in your firm as your great differentiators, you’re going to ensure that you utilize this Upstream Growth Triangle. You’re going to utilize a blend and a balance of accountability, adversity, and advocacy. There will be times you will need more adversity. You will need to challenge them more. Other times, you will need to lean heavier on advocacy because they’ve done the work, but now you’ve got to get over the hurdles and barriers that don’t actually add any value to the development. Along the way, you’ve got to ensure you have that great foundation of accountability where they are learning to show up every single day, even when it’s challenging, even when it’s difficult, they’re showing up every single day and committing to getting just a little bit better.
When I talk with firms I hear all the time: “How do we develop our people? How do we develop our people? We’re not coaches. We’re not trained in that.” I would argue that over the course of my career, I have seen some phenomenal people developers in firms. Firms that I’ve been in, firms that I’ve worked with, were they certified coaches? No. But what they did is they cared about their team, first and foremost. They cared about their success, genuinely. They made the time to help them develop into whatever career they wanted. They made the time for that. They saw that as just as valuable as working on client work, if not more valuable. They recognized that investing in people has the highest potential ROI in the firm. They didn’t call it this, but they used the components of this Growth Triangle. They used a blend of accountability, adversity, and advocacy. That’s what I’m going to ask that you do as well. As you try to build out the next generation of your firm, maybe you’re trying to build out the next generation of you, how you’re going to grow, that’s what’s necessary. Three components that are necessary, right? Three components. First, you’ve got to care, you’ve got to find the time, and you’ve got to use a framework. The framework that I advocate for: accountability, adversity, and advocacy.
If you do that, you’re going to have great people. Is it going to be perfect? Absolutely not. But are you going to make great progress? And are you all going to be working together to get better? Absolutely. Then, when you need to pass a project to somebody because you know it would be better for someone else to do as a learning opportunity, you’re not going to worry about are they okay, or are they ready. You’ll know they’re not ready, but this is what’s going to help get them there. If we continue to wait to pass projects along, to give people authority and autonomy, to start owning projects and clients, until we determine they’re 100 percent ready, we’re never going to be able to delegate a thing. Because it’s the delegation that actually gets them there, it’s the getting them outside their comfort zone is that challenge, that adversity that is the great catalyst for their development.
So, like I said, I’ve had a lot of conversations over the past few months, and they’ve ranged on a number of topics: talking about the future, talking about the now, the technology, and what we’re going to do. All of it comes back to people. People are the lifeblood of our firms. People are the key to a sustainable future for your firm, no matter what path you choose. People will be the great differentiator that will set firms apart and command the value that we will look to get in the marketplace, when we are working with clients who want to work with us. It’s going to be for our people. If we’re going to be successful in developing them, we’re going to have to take that on as our responsibility. That’s going to be our level of accountability. We’re going to have to show up every single day, willing to care, willing to make the time, willing to hold them accountable, to provide them with some level of challenge and adversity, and then advocate on their behalf to get them to where we need them to be.
Then you know what I hope they do? I hope they don’t wait for a seat at the table to open up. If we can embrace this idea, these principles, what’s going to happen is we’re going to get a generation of professionals who are not waiting for a seat to open up at the table. They’re going to build their own chair and they’re going to bring it to the table, and they’re going to help us take our firm to the future.
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this. Feel free to reach out to me. You can engage with me via LinkedIn, or you can email me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what we can do to better develop our people and your thoughts on the Upstream Growth Triangle: how we balance out accountability, adversity, and advocacy. Thanks so much for joining me for today’s episode. We’ll talk again soon.
