Managing change: The benefits of evolving your practice’s approach

At a time of increased digitalisation, MTD ITSA looming, and demanding clients and staff, choosing what to prioritise and how, is often far from straightforward.

 Enhancing what you have

Practice consultant Keith Underwood, of Foulger Underwood, looks at change as a chance to evolve existing services and processes.

“It’s often easier to adapt and change in light of your current services rather than add new ones,” he explains. “This way you end up with an evolution that is built on sound principles.”

Underwood also underlines that this could be done by focussing on capacity and margin: “IT can be a lever in change, especially if you can identify the tools that can take out the manual work, and bring clients with you.” This idea should resonate with small practices as quite often there is nothing fundamentally broken, but improvements are required to keep on top of the day job and cope with future demands.

Understanding your role

Fuelling the desire for change and creating the appetite internally is half the battle for FD Works managing director, Jonathan Gaunt. He does this by focussing on “passion, impact and pains. With change you need to create a sense of excitement, or be consciously moving to a better place. We try to understand where we are going and what is holding us back, and then who has some excitement and passion to help drive it forward”.

Involving staff adds focus to the task, but also means that not everything rests on your shoulders. If your team is acutely aware of the pain points, they will have valuable insight in fi nding and implementing the solution.

“We need to treat staff as adults rather than have a parent/child relationship where we might think we have, or need to have, all the answers. The more you can get their input the better the output.”

This approach means delegation and accountability is easier and based on understanding each other’s roles and responsibilities, and play to people’s strengths: “I am good at starting things but not necessarily fi nishing them! I enjoy the creative side and have the people around me to take things on and run with them. That leaves me to check and support rather than working out the details.”

Once you have clarity on what needs to change and how, your job can be to focus on coaching others to deliver. The issue boils down to what should be a priority.

Prioritising

Della Hudson has much experience in implementing change both as the owner of a small practice and coach to other accountants through Hudson Business Advice. “The good thing about being a small firm is that you can be much more agile. But change can be terrifying. Prioritising is around what is urgent and important, and in particular what your staff need.”

The emphasis on staff is relevant given the post-pandemic requirements to provide fl exibility and better terms. Hudson, however, sees this as having a broader business benefi t: “If you look after your team, you look after your clients. And it’s much easier to get new clients than new staff at the moment.” As the business owner, it’s also important to recognise your own concerns and motivations.

Pinpointing these can set the wheels in motion for change. Through experience, Hudson has found that answers often lead back to business basics: “Are you earning enough money? In which case it is likely to be pricing and profi tability. Or better work/life balance, which means working too hard for not enough money. These are things which are in your control, and what often gets in the way is fear… most of which is unfounded.”

Change doesn’t have to be radical

For Hudson, this fear can often be overcome by process and by making small changes. “Change can be about ground rules rather than being radical. So, start at service level agreements. If the client asks questions, commit to getting back to them on a working day, and tell them you expect them to get back to you in a working week. Or, committing to a review of fees every quarter to ensure they get the service they need.”

As time, energy and resources are always going to be in short supply, change can be embraced. If it is managed incrementally, with the input of others, and done in a controlled way the benefi ts of evolution could be all you need.

Richard Sergeant is MD of Principle Point and a freelance journalist