Welcome to Gro:Gossip, the first of regular emails capturing our thoughts, opinions and experiences, sharing stories and commenting on what we are seeing, hearing and working on in the world of Professional Services.

The purpose is simply to inform, challenge thinking where we can and spark conversations and debate around relevant themes.

theGrogroup are a consultancy led by three Accountants who have all held senior positions in firms. We support Accounting and Law firms in two ways:

• At a strategic level, creating a clear picture of who they are, where they want to go, how to get there and how to bring people on board
• Enabling people to build great careers through developing their Leadership, Management, Commercial, Client Relationship and Business Development capability

Ok so, the Gossip!

Talent Crisis

We are reading, hearing and talking a LOT about the global Accounting talent crisis. There are some pretty shocking stats produced by the Accounting Talent Index who found that between 2010 and 2023, domestic student enrolments into accounting programmes declined by an average of 56% across the UK, US, Canada and Australia.

This certainly points to a lot of work needed by the professional bodies, institutes and firms in reimagining the entire profession and creating a powerful ‘selling’ picture of modern (and future) accounting careers to young professionals.

The accounting industry isn’t dying. It’s evolving into something far more exciting.

The future belongs to those who can translate numbers into narrative.

… Who can convert data into decisions.

… And who can transform compliance into competitive advantage.

Something that may be interesting here is musings put together by Gro: MD Paul Richmond, who recently attended a Gartner workshop on the ‘Future of Work in 2025’. His focus is specifically on how this could impact on Professional Service Firms together with some recommendations for action. These cover:

– New demands for a future ready workforce
– The evolving role of leaders and managers
– Emerging talent risks to organisational strategy

To find out more click on the link here

Shifting the focus 

The need to build stronger ‘human’ relationships with key clients has been a common theme across numerous conversations and engagements with firms in the last few months.

A partner at a leading firm told us how disappointed he was to be told ‘the relationship feels very transactional’ by a client which has moved to a competitor firm.

Certainly there is an issue with the know-how and confidence to have more frequent relationship building conversations with key clients, particularly with the younger generation of professionals. But the key driver, in our opinion, is usually the operating model. With professionals being so focused on the efficient delivery of solutions and services to clients there is little space to invest in client relationships. More problematic, is that with performance predominantly measured on utlisation, productivity, recoverablility and billing then professionals will more often than not, steer clear of longer term progress activities and focus almost entirely on the fee earning work.

BD is back!

Over the last few years, for most firms, there has been a lot of easily reachable fruit to pick from the garden of client work!

Good quality audit work, in particular, has been in rich supply as client work has cascaded down the tiers from the Big Firms through client stratification strategies.

Whilst this hasn’t by any means dried up, there is certainly a sense that it is getting more competitive out there and firms are needing to work harder and focus on Business Development.

The challenge here is that many of the people who will be tasked with BD responsibility (new Partners, Directors, Associates) often lack the tools, contacts, networks and processes to be effective. Especially those promoted throughout Covid.

We are having more conversations with firms looking for support in not only building skills and confidence and providing tools for Business Development, but also in creating a real focus on fee-growth across the firm – in effect creating a BD culture. This brings in targets, accountability, responsibility and clarity of ideal clients and selling messages.

On top of the usual, what’s going on with the team?

Kate is training hard for the London Marathon, with under 3 weeks to go she completed her longest 20 mile training run last weekend. Any sponsorship for a local MND charity close to her heart would help to get her over the line! Here’s the link

Paul has been Mr Keynote – delivering (some say) useful and inspirational sessions on engagement, retention, audit staff challenges and of course the Samoan Circle at the Alternative Events Accounting conference last month.

Alex has been trying to work out how to create space for the rapidly growing exhibition of animals, spacecraft and boats from his Lego obsessed 5 year old!

Gro:Quote of the month

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what

you’ve always got.” Henry Ford

Gro:Moan of the month

It’s bad enough when ‘window seat’ sitters put bags on the adjacent seat on busy trains. But when they are sat in the aisle seat and fill the window seat with a bag, purposely making it even more awkward for someone to ask to sit there, then that is going to a new level. I am going to start a campaign for this!!!