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The personal and business development side of CPD

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19th Jun 2012
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Mark Lee explores the practical considerations for start-up practices looking to arrange their own personal and business development CPD.

This is the third of three articles exploring CPD-related issues for start-up practices. The first article in the series explored the questions “what does CPD really mean?”, “what counts as CPD?” and “which approach do you prefer?”

The second article focused on the technical side of CPD – keeping up-to-date with professional and technical developments and ensuring that you are sufficiently up to speed to be giving clients advice.

This article looks at the other important side of your continuing professional development. That which determines whether you continue to grow and to develop as a person, as an accountant and whether you do anything beyond hope, wish and pray to build a successful practice.

What are these other skills?

Traditional analysis suggests that accountants need a variety of non-technical skills and that most accountants are predominantly one or other of the following:

  • Finders – who go out and find the new work
  • Minders – who look after the relationship with the clients
  • Grinders – who do the work
  • Binders – who keep the team working well together

A 2010 article on AccountingWEB explained the necessity of these skills in more detail: Are technical skills enough? At the time it was suggested that some accountants who start their own practice “do not have all (or sufficient) of the skills recognised as necessary to become equity partners”. In the context of start-up practices the focus was on the skills of being a ‘finder’ and a ‘minder’. It is equally important of course to develop the necessary business skills to build up and run a successful practice – of whatever size you choose.

If there is a key absence or gap in any of these skills it means either that your start-up practice is doomed to fail or that you need to develop the skills you are lacking. And this is why it can be so important for CPD to focus on more than simply technical knowledge and skills.

Where can I learn them?

There is plenty of free advice around that focuses on the key personal and business development skills you need to build a successful accountancy practice.

AccountingWEB is a great resource of course, in the ‘practice’ section feature articles, the blogs and also in the ‘practice section’ of Any Answers too. A simple search will often reveal that someone else has experienced the same issues that you are facing. Although the solutions that work for them in their situation with their background may not be ideal for you. Everyone is different in this regard.

Further advice can also be found elsewhere online in articles, blogs, discussion forums. Then there are a number of accountant business coaches, mentors and consultants who are available to work with you to build up your business skills.

You could also look to attend personal development and business focused courses and seminars, as provided by the mainstream accountancy training providers. There are also plenty of generic business and marketing related courses run by local Chambers of Commerce and other business focused organisations.

Another place you can be reminded of key business and personal skills will be local networking groups. Indeed, attending these can have a number of benefits for your start-up practice as they may be a source of prospective clients and advocates. NRG-Networks and 4Networking are just two of the many different groups that include educational slots that could be useful for start-up practices.

Can I do it alone?

One of the challenges of simply listening to a speaker or of reading online advice is the need to migrate the ideas into action, to identify what will work for you, what you are prepared to try and then to put it into practice.

This is one of the attractions of working with a coach or mentor. They can “hold your feet to the fire”, they can motivate and encourage you. They can require you to commit to taking action to move things along week-by-week, month-by-month.

In theory you could do this without having to pay a third-party to keep you focused. In practice though experience reveals that those start-up practices that try to go it completely alone take much longer to become viable and successful.

When tennis players decide to go pro they get a coach. The same is true for many sportspeople. Even some top business people give credit to their mentors. Of course they could all try to go it alone. To work out for themselves how to balance all of the conflicting advice and ideas that come their way. This “go it alone” strategy costs less but invariably takes more time than one that involves a third party catalyst, mentor, guide or coach.

What’s the difference?

Both coaching and mentoring are processes that can enable start-up practices (and indeed more established accountants) to achieve their full potential. They are different processes to conventional training as that typically involves the explanation (teaching) of specific skills or knowledge. Coaching is typically more about facilitating someone else’s thinking and helping them learn on the job.

There are various theoretical differences between coaches and mentors. The former will often pride themselves on helping their “patients” to find the answers that were already within them. Mentors will often be more willing to share their knowledge, experience and advice. Indeed, in its traditional sense, a mentor will often be an older and wiser experienced accountant who can pass on knowledge and experience and open doors to otherwise out-of-reach opportunities. As the owner of a start-up practice I am mentoring put it the other day: “You are helping me to short-cut the learning from experience that would have slowed me down”.

The bottom line though is that everyone is different. What someone calls themselves is not the most important distinguishing factor. As a start-up practice it is essential to determine what your needs are and to ensure that the coach or mentor can supply you with the type and level of service you require, whatever that service is called.

If you want to work with someone else you need to decide what approach you will find most comfortable. You need to speak with whomever you are considering working with to clarify their approach and to find out if they are willing to work with you too.

Or you can simply hope, wish and pray that the first person you speak with will be able to work wonders. Ultimately the success of your start-up practice will be entirely down to you. You can choose to undertake sufficient appropriate CPD or you can choose to follow another route.

Thinking of going solo? Our new Start up in practice guide will help aspiring sole practitioners take their first steps towards success. Download your free copy of the guide now.

Mark Lee is consultant practice editor of AccountingWEB and writes the BookMarkLee blog to help accountants build more successful practices more enjoyably. He is also chairman of the Tax Advice Network of independent tax consultants.

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