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Two questions you need to ask yourself

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28th Jun 2011
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Accountants Bootcamp guru and “Wizard of WOW” Paul Dunn set a challenge for practitioners at the National Accountants Conference 2011 to try and make themselves more like Apple Computer.

Dunn revealed that accountants wanting to find the transformative quality that will make a difference to the services they offer clients should ask themselves two basic questions.

Citing the example of the Apple brand, he said it was all based around believing. “people will think you’re a remarkable practice, because you’ve added WOW”.

To set the scene for his talk, Dunn explained that in the wake of the global financial crisis people are looking for the following:

  • authenticity – doing what you believe in
  • transparency – just being open
  • certainty – people lost this in the financial collapse
  • clarity – you need this for the WOW impact
  • trust

With these demands in mind, the first question you should be asking yourself is: “Is this the way a remarkable enterprise would do this?”

According to Dunn, “It involves breaking your business down into smaller individual processes – such as the phone process – and asking at every stage how a remarkable enterprise would do it.”

You then go from process to process throughout your organisation, defining a series of processes with your clients. This makes a difference and clients will make judgments about other areas of your practice because of the positive experience in that one area.

It also includes all the little “remarkable” things down to the way you hand over a business card, arranging a meeting, to how your colleagues answer the phone.

This is where Dunn’s second question came in: “What little things can we work on that will blow our minds and theirs?”

He explained that people will think you're a remarkable practice because you've added WOW. "WOWs are never static… it’s always the little things that you do that make the profound differences and habitually define you,” he explained.

To recap, the two questions Dunn said you need to ask yourself are:

  1. Is this the way a remarkable enterprise would do this?
  2. What little things can we work on that will blow our minds and theirs?

These questions may seem obvious on the page, but Dunn’s enthusiasm brought home the central message - it’s about believing and WOW.

However, if there’s an echo of Tom Peters here, the real test is whether people will put his ideas into practice in their everyday working lives.

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