There’s no shortage of information and advice on how to do it. Books, training courses, webinars, podcasts, blogs, conferences – there are literally hundreds of sources.

All the learning in the world is available, much of it for free. And with AI, it’s now easier than ever to access it.

You’ve no doubt read some of those books, been to those conferences, listened to those webinars yourself.

And yet…

Accountants are still working long hours, particularly in tax season.

Accountants are still not charging enough for their hard-earned skills.

Accountants are still not valuing themselves the way other professionals do; they’re unable to say ‘no’ to client demands.

So, why isn’t anything changing?

Why doesn’t all that learning stick?

Very often, this is what happens.

You listen to, say, a webinar (maybe even one of mine). You take notes, underline a few key points, tell yourself you’ll take action.

Then you get back to work – and all your good intentions get forgotten as the day-to-day workload takes over again.

By the time you revisit your notes (if you actually do) it’s all a bit hazy and you’ve forgotten exactly what you planned to do.

Sound familiar?

So how can you make sure you actually take action and make the changes you want to see?

The key to taking action

Have you ever heard of a study that was done at Yale (or possibly Harvard)? It found that only 3% of graduating students had written down their future goals. But 20 years later, those students were earning 10 times as much as their less organised classmates.  

The conclusion was that writing down your goals makes it much more likely you’ll achieve them.

The finding has been quoted everywhere in business training and coaching. But it’s actually an urban myth! The study never existed.

So, is it actually true?

Well, in 2007 an academic at Dominican University in California decided to test it out. And her research had some interesting results.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of five groups:

• group 1 – unwritten goal
• group 2 – written goal
• group 3 – written goal and action commitments
• group 4 – written goal, action commitments to a friend
• group 5 – written goal, action commitments and progress reports to a friend.

And yes, those in group 2 with written goals achieved more than those in group 1.

But group 4 achieved significantly more than Groups 3 and 1.

And group 5 achieved significantly more than all the other groups.

It’s not just writing down your goals; accountability matters just as much.

Make yourself accountable

Harish is one of the accountants we work with at AVN. He was drowning in phone calls – clients phoned him literally every 10 minutes. He couldn’t even start his real work until late in the day. And he was trying to do everything himself, despite having a team on hand.

He knew what he needed to do – prioritise his work better then delegate more to his team. But it never seemed to happen.

Things only began to change when he started working with his AVN Practice Growth Expert. In their fortnightly sessions, Andrew keeps Harish on track with what he’s trying to achieve and they look at what’s working and what isn’t. Where things aren’t going so well, they analyse the cause and make adjustments.

In less than a year he has…

• put a call booking system in place for clients so they don’t phone him ad hoc – and as that gives him time to prepare for the booked calls, they’re also much more productive
• diarised time in each day to work on different areas of his business, such as team development and strategic planning – so the business is steadily moving forwards
• automated many systems, such as onboarding, and handed over the running of the systems to his team
• increased his outsourced team to handle more tasks and free up his time further.

Harish has found that knowing those meetings are coming up makes him take action. He knows he’ll be held accountable and that’s the motivation he needs to make those changes.

So yes, write down your goals, but also find someone to hold you accountable. It’s the surest way to make progress.

If you’d like to find out how an AVN Practice Growth Expert could help you, book a discovery call with us.

Shane Lukas – AVN for Accountants