Do you have the right people in the right seats?

Two-plus years into the pandemic, it’s clear our profession will never be the same. Not only have firms been forced to adjust to a mostly (or entirely) remote workforce, they’ve had to adjust to mostly remote client relationships. Add to that a tidal wave of boomers retiring, a younger workforce not willing to “pay their dues” the same way, an unprecedented war for talent and private equity disrupting the way firms expand and grow, and it can feel like our world is going off the rails.

Now suppose you had to assume the reins of a leading century-old regional firm during all of this tumult? Well, that’s exactly what Skeet Haag, managing partner of Reynolds, Bone & Griesbeck had to do back in 2020. Fortunately for Haag, he knew the RBG culture well, having spent his entire career there. As part of the firm’s core values. Haag’s predecessor, John Griesbeck, was committed to ensuring the transition would be successful. He even stayed on as partner emeritus in an office adjacent to Haag’s for almost daily consultations.

“Still, there were times when I thought to myself: ‘I didn’t sign up for this,’” recalled Haag with a chuckle. “COVID threw a wrench into a lot of things. I realized we had no control over the pandemic at all. The only thing we could control was how we dealt with it.”

As Haag told me on a recent podcast, every CPA firm has been adversely affected by COVID, but they coped in different ways. ”Look at the situation and ask yourself: ‘How do I respond to this?’ You’ve got to own the situation; you can’t let the situation own you,” he said.

While RBG has had plenty of opportunities to merge with other firms, it remains steadfastly independent. Haag believes that independence gives his firm a recruiting and retention advantage. “We tell our people, ‘At RBG you don’t have to report to New York or Chicago. We make our own decisions here in Memphis.’”

Being part of Allinial Global gives RBG the resources of an international firm, but still allows it to make decisions locally. The formula must be working because RBG is a perennial contender for Best Places to Work in both the Memphis metro area and nationally in Accounting Today.

Alignment with core values

With the world seemingly upside down when Haag took the helm of RBG, he found it helpful to review the firm’s core values. At RBG, the firm’s seven core values (see below) aren’t just window dressing for the website, lobby and offsite retreats; they’re the foundation for how the 104-year-old firm recruits, develops and measures each employee, from admin to senior partner:

1. Passion;
2. Respect;
3. Ownership;
4. Stewardship;
5. Teamwork;
6. Elevation; and,
7. Community.

That’s not to say Haag was content to follow a cookie-cutter approach to the firm’s success. That’s where “elevation” comes in. It’s a commitment to getting better and never being satisfied with the status quo. Haag didn’t want to reinvent the wheel during such a tumultuous time. He wanted to expand on what his predecessor started and take it to another level. “To do that, you have to go through the people,” related Haag.

Right person, right seat

Haag credits Jim Collins’ best-seller "Good to Great" for helping him realize the importance of having the “right people in the right seats.” He also credits Gino Wickman’s book "Traction: Get a Grip on our Business" for helping him take that concept to the next level. According to Wickman, you must ensure each person is not only in the right but they get it, want it and have the capacity to do the job well. That’s called “GWC.”

While RPRS and GWC make for great T-shirt slogans to hand out at offsite retreats, putting those concepts into practice is much more challenging. To do that, RGP developed a “core value bar” that measures every single team member, including senior partners, based on how well they align with the firm’s seven core values. Adapting Wickman’s rating scale, each team member gets a plus if their behavior is consistent with a core value most of the time. They get a plus/minus if their behavior is consistent with a core value 50% of the time, and they get a minus if their behavior is not consistent with a particular core value.

But instead of having employees celebrate (or lament) their report cards, RBG assigns a coach to each team member and the coach is responsible for helping their coachee improve. If a coachee’ s score is lacking, Haag said it’s the coach’s responsibility to get their coachee back on track.

“Believe me, it creates a significant level of accountability. The coach must think to themself: ‘If my person screws up, it’s on my head,’” Haag noted, adding that the firm’s HR department keeps careful track to make sure coaching sessions aren’t missed. The main benefit of this process is that everyone always knows where they stand at the firm."

“We’re very big on honesty and transparency,” he added. "We’ve found that transparency goes a long way toward minimizing surprises and resentment when raises, bonuses and promotions are handed out."

While having a coach is a tremendous benefit to RBG team members, they must also take ownership of their own career success. And the firm must take ownership of the employee’s development.

So, if you discover you don’t have the right person in the right seat, does that mean they shouldn’t be at your firm? According to Haag, they shouldn’t necessarily be asked to leave the firm. They just might not be in the right job (i.e., seat). A lot of firms don’t realize this. Haag believes if you have a talented person in the wrong seat, you need to sit down with them as soon as possible and say: “Listen, you have a really great skill set. How do we capitalize on this? Where can we put you to develop your passion and take it to the next level?”

Haag said that’s why passion is another of RBG’s core values. “If you have someone who is passionate, you never have to manage them,” he said. Related to passion is elevation, which refers to an employee’s commitment to continuous learning, constant improvement and never settling for the status quo. As Collins observed in his book "Built to Last," great companies believe that “good enough never is.” Your toughest competitors, Collins argues, are always getting better. You must keep getting better in order to keep up.

Another of RGB’s core values is community. To be successful at RBG, Haag said you need to be involved in both its internal and external community-building activities. “Don’t just show up — be passionate,” he exhorted. “When you bring that leadership training and skill sets that you honed at work to a nonprofit organization, you can really make a difference.”

Finally, there’s stewardship: How are you going to take care of your career? How are you going to take care of the training and mentoring the firm has given you?

“You have to be a good steward of the firm,” said Haag. “Again, you have to lead by example with your colleagues and your clients. You must find a way to maintain constant contact with them even though you don’t see them much face-to-face these days.”

Many of RBG’s values are also part of my own firm’s value system. We also have an additional core value: Build a culture around what happens outside the office. This isn’t just an icebreaker for social functions. When you see what really makes people tick and gets them fired up outside of the work setting, you’re in a better position to see the whole person and help them find a role they’re passionate about inside the work setting, wherever that work setting happens to be. So, from where I sit, it’s not just about having the right person in the right seat; it’s about knowing your colleagues well when they’re not in their seats.