A Chair's Holiday Message

Holidays

Having recently celebrated Thanksgiving; we all have so much to be thankful for, including our families, our jobs (don’t forget to let your Managing Partner know how thankful you are), our good health (hopefully) and I would be remiss, if I didn’t thank our Board of Directors for all they do for our Association and Kim Fantaci, and her staff, for the day-to-day operations.

And as we work our way through December, I also want to wish all of you the best for the upcoming Holidays and a Happy and Healthy 2017.

Leadership Institute Deadline

The two-part program led by our own Bill Reeb, CPA and Dom Cingoranelli, CPA from Succession Institute, will be held in conjunction with our NPMC (National Practice Management Conference) June 19-23 in Fort Worth with a follow up session in Chicago on November 7-8, 2017. The deadline for submitting an application is December 31, 2016 so don’t delay. If you have not yet completed an application, click here and do so today! Incidentally, registration for the NPMC is opening this week too!

AAAPM is now PAFM

Click here to read more about changes the New Year will bring to our credential. I want to give special thanks to Jane Johnson, Vice Chair of the CPAFMA and Bill Reeb, CPA, one of our Advisory Board members, for all the time and effort in making this Accreditation a reality. Over the last four years, Jane, Bill and others have worked endlessly to improve the visibility of our profession. If you are interested in learning more about the PAFM or better yet, becoming one, click here.

Nominations for the Board of Directors

Are you interested in joining the Board of Directors? For more information, see. If you are interested, you should submit an application and give serious consideration to attending the 2017 Leadership Institute mentioned above. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me.

AICPA and PCPS

As we have reported in the past, we continue to value our relationship with both the AICPA and PCPS. Joel Olbricht, CPA, the current Chair of the PCPS Executive Committee is a regular attendee and participant in the CPAFMA Board of Director meetings and Kim Fantaci and Alan Alexander, CPA, AAAPM are invited guests at the PCPS Executive Committee meetings. We look forward to continuing our relationship of mutually sharing information with both the AICPA and PCPS and in 2018 our NPMC will be held in conjunction with the AICPA and PCPS in Las Vegas on June 11-14. If your firm is not a member of the PCPS, for $35 per CPA it is a worthwhile investment.

Leadership

Richard Feloni wrote a book entitled “Your Right to Be Rich” which built upon self-made industrialist Andrew Carnegie successes. Those habits that the most successful leaders have include:

1. They surround themselves with people smarter than them.
2. They are self-reliant.
3. They can control their enthusiasm.
4. They gather information before reaching conclusions.
5. They are open minded.
6. They listen more than they speak.
7. They pay attention to details.
8. They can take criticism.
9. They learn from their mistakes.
10. They praise the achievements of others.

So, what is the lesson? We are all leaders and we are all capable of doing the best job possible. But, how many of the above habits do you practice?

Top 20 Expectations of Employees

Have you ever communicated to your employees what your expectations of them are? Laurie Simonson, AAAPM, and Director of Operations for Froehling Anderson in Minneapolis has. Laurie has been a long time contributor and a good friend to the CPAFMA and put together this Top 20 Expectations of Employees list a couple of years ago. Thanks Laurie for sharing. And speaking of sharing…so many of you have contributed to the Q&AFM. Thank you! If you haven’t asked a question or contributed a response, why not make a New Year’s resolution to do so? No need to reinvent the wheel and you can learn at the same time.

Feedback

I would like to hear from you. What can the Association do to make your job easier? What can you do for your Association to make it better? Please feel free to give me, or your Board, any feedback you think will help us “be the best we can be” or on any other matter you wish to comment on. You can reach me at rbiddle@bowmanllp.com.