In my recent post, Beware the Jabberwock, I intended to suggest that as practitioners we always question what is the ‘common body of knowledge’ and accepted management philosophy we have been indoctrinated with over the past 50 years.  My comments were not directed specifically at Ric Payne or Principia, but rather at traditional thinking, while I did use one of Ric’s posts as an example.  My comments were apparently interpreted as a personal attack based on Ric’s comment which we have posted.  After again reading my post, I do see it could be interpreted as a personal attack.   That was not my intent, and I sincerely apologize. Read more…

“Twas brillig and the slithey toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe,  all mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe.”

Written by Lewis Carroll, his poem “Jabberwocky’ in “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There” is considered the most famous nonsensical poem in the English language.  It was certainly one of my favorites during my alcoholiclly impaired college years in the 1960’s.  It re-occurred to me today as I read a post by Ric Payne on the Principa blog titled Time Based Billing is Unethical – What Rubbish.  Read more…

After writing my first blog post, “Intern’s Corner: The Big Four Push” I began to think about how does one choose the right firm. I am lucky enough to have had to opportunity to experience different firms and different values over the past two years. I have been a member of Beta Alpha Psi (BAP) in that time period. By having those opportunities, I feel that I have been able to explore different options, and I know what is right for me. These are the steps that I took when choosing the firm I choose Read more…

Earlier this week David Maister posted Satisfaction Guaranteed on his website.  You can read it for yourself, but the essence is committing to a service and performance guarantee for the services you provide.  Several years ago we began including this language in our client service agreements:

“Our work is guaranteed to the satisfaction of the customer.  If you are not completely satisfied with the services performed by Mark Bailey and Company, Ltd., we will, at the option of the Company, refund the price or accept a portion of said price that reflects the Company’s level of satisfaction.” Read more…

Unquestionably, large mature accounting firms can have some distinct advantages.  As smaller firms can we overcome them and compete on the same level?

When I left the ‘Big 8′ (yes children, before it was the Big 4 it used to be the Big 8 back in the olden days) to practice with several other big firm refugees we were certain of the many opportunities that existed to invoke positive professional change, and do it better.  Like most teenagers, we knew it all – especially everything that was ‘wrong’.  We missed no opportunity to criticize.  And like most teenagers, we somehow missed all the things our former Big 8 employers had done that were ‘right’.  The naivete of youth.  And we were professionally youthful having only been recently emancipated.  Read more…

Our premise for this blog is that no matter how perfect the practice management model is in accounting, it can be improved by the collective minds, experience and efforts of the members of our profession.  No management model is perfect, and one that hasn’t changed substantially in more than 50 years, such as ours, certainly must have some room for improvement.

Change is always difficult if not traumatic.  It’s also inevitable if we want to improve our situation.  We freely admit that some of our theory is just that – theory.  Almost inevitably it flys in the face of what is traditionally accepted practice management philosophy.  To be validated it must first be falsified.  Read more…