theGrogroup’s Managing Director, Paul Richmond, delivered a keynote presentation last week in the city, focused on “Managing Your Path to Tomorrow” or how to develop your future professional at the ICAEW Practice Conference and Expo.

Paul took the audience of around 100 people through a series of key points balancing business wisdom drawing on almost 30 years of industry experience and 10 successful personal strategies developed by Jim Lawless in his DARE programme, to take a practical look at how to ensure you can execute your plans for your future firm effectively.

Here are some of the key highlights and top tips from the workshop for developing the future professional. The main focus being mapping your path to tomorrow, i.e. it’s down to you, the individual, to follow and embrace these key rules:

• Act Boldly Today… Time is limited. Today you are living at the slowest pace of change you will ever know. Change has become a core competence when developing the future professional. So commit to action and act boldly today.

• Begin with the end in mind… Set clear goals. No athlete ever wins a medal by thinking – “I will aim to be … ‘better’ next time…” They set clear, measurable goals and regularly review them.

• It’s all in the mind… Response  in adversity. When it’s not going your way, show resolve and push ahead. Create positive reinforcing messages for you to follow.

• Rewrite your rule book… Take Personal Responsibility. By this we mean challenge the rule book. The one you have created for yourself that governs what you think is possible. When people say things such as “Clients will not go on a DD,”  “We’d be slated in the press if we jettison the worst 5% of clients” or that “Fred may leave if you question his performance”. Are they factual statements or someone’s rulebook shining through? Developing the future professional means challenging their ‘rulebook’!

• Create disciplines… Do the basics brilliantly. That’s half the battle! People try to create complex processes and systems to deliver value – 9/10 of what you need is to do the basics, consistently, and on a regular basis – so few do!

• Teamwork…Roles are key. If clients perceive you work in silos, they will not feel your firm is capable of working as a team, let alone working as part of their team. Do you still send engagement letters from each team? How joined up are those services perceived?

• Communication… Make it loud and clear. Eyemail not email. Be clear on sectors and services. Arm your people with real time information and ‘killer questions’, ‘Hot’ topics. Not just WHAT you do for your clients, but what they get… when you do what you do. Use examples, tell stories, give people an idea of what its like to work with you personally.

• Change happens in the diary… Manage your time. You can’t control time, but you can plan what you do with the time you have. So if you need change in your firm – allocate time in your diary and treat it like a client meeting. Immovable.

• The tools are all around you, just ask… Role Models. Encourage people in your firm to learn from each other – the best questions, review a pitch document, share best practice. Use that CRM! whatever it is, encourage others to use it, make it mandatory and scream about the successes.

And the final one …. Resilience, never never give up!

Commenting on the day, Paul said “theGrogroup is very passionate about creating change within the accountancy profession and the wider professional services sector, to enable it to drive forward. Conferences like this are fantastic because they present key decision makers with new insights and methodologies that can be taken away and implemented in their own respective businesses.”

To find out more about conferences and key note speaking theGrogroup provides then please visit our website, call us on 01892 610060 or email paul@thegrogroup.com