Have you ever thought about what would happen to your accountancy firm if you weren’t there?

Say you were seriously ill and couldn’t work – would your firm continue to thrive? Would it just about keep going? Or do you think it might actually collapse?

In a survey of 1,575 accountancy firm owners, only 19.75% were confident their firm would continue to grow if they were hospitalised for six months.

So, 80.25% have a business model that means they can’t step away if they need to.

Other findings from the survey back this up:

• 79.13% don’t have an induction process that can onboard employees without relying on the owner
• 78.72% lack a teachable method for promoting their services
• 85.53% don’t spend significant time developing potential future partners
• 73.84% don’t have a sound recruitment process for attracting great people.

These aren’t isolated issues. Together, they describe a firm where knowledge, decisions, relationships, marketing and quality control are concentrated in the owner.

I hear this anecdotally when I talk to firm owners, in phrases like, ‘I never switch off’ or ‘I always respond to client emails, even on holiday’.

The statistics from the survey aren’t a surprise; they’re just really sad.

What happens when a firm is too dependent on the owner

The consequences of this are far-reaching, including:

• It’s impossible to scale without overloading and overwhelming the owner; the operating model simply doesn’t allow it.
• Finding and keeping great people is difficult because they can’t see a path to develop their careers (and frankly, what kind of an aspirational role model is an owner who’s overworked, overtired and undoubtedly underpaid for what they do?).
• Ultimately, the value of the firm is reduced when you want to exit because if you aren’t there, what’s left?

I know that changing this is really hard.

When you’re indispensable, you’re constantly dealing with today’s issues, just to keep the business functioning.

Strategy, future planning, training, all move down the priority list while you tackle the most urgent of the fires that have popped up. But without a focus on those areas – what Michael Gerber calls ‘working ON your business, not IN it’ – your firm becomes less and less sustainable.

But for the sake of your firm, your team, your physical and mental health, your family and your own sense of fulfilment, you need to make the change.

How to create a firm that runs without you

Chances are that much of what you’re doing could be done by someone else. You just don’t have the time to delegate it – or the confidence that someone else will do it to your high standard.

Kathryn Webb of Torbay Accounting was spinning all the plates in her firm, feeling demoralised and exhausted. She knew she had to do something, but wasn’t sure what.

The first thing she did was a time audit, recording what she did all day for two weeks.

‘By day three, I was making changes. So quite quickly, I could see, oh, my God, why am I doing this? This is ridiculous. We can have a process for that that I could do in 10 minutes, and then that's going to save me an hour over a week.’

‘So straight away, using that time audit gave me that clarity, and that really gave direction to where I went from here. Because then I could start ranking things to understand, okay, this is a big issue in the business, we need to prioritise it. Or this maybe isn't a massive issue in the business, but there's a quick fix, so we'll prioritise that as well.’

That first task she delegated saved Kathryn an hour a week. That gave her time to systemise another task, freeing up another hour. Kathryn now has time to work on her business every week, doing the kind of work she loves, while her team take on the rest.

See the snowball effect of starting with just one small thing?

What would you find if you did the same as Kathryn?

The key to effective systems

It is possible to create an effective system so that every task gets done to the same high standard every time – no matter who does it.

Here’s how:

• While you’re doing the task, note down every action you take. Even better, record your screen as you do it so it’s easy for someone else to see exactly what you do. There are lots of applications for doing this easily, such as Scribe or Loom.
• Write up your notes into a step-by-step system – apps like Scribe also help with this.
• Pass the system and video to one of your team and ask them to test it out. Getting input from someone else is really helpful. Often, we can be so used to doing it our way we take it for granted that others will have the same knowledge as we do. And that’s when things get missed.
• Be open to ideas from your team member for improving the system. Remember, they’ll be the one using it in future so it needs to work for them, not you.
• Make sure everyone knows how to access the system and that they’re expected to use it!

Those statistics I shared are what keeps firm owners stuck on the day-to-day treadmill, unable to move forwards. Changing that starts with one small thing.

How does your firm compare? Take the Compliance Trap Scorecard to find out.

Shane Lukas, AVN – The Accountant’s Network