Previous Events

Previous Live Video Webcasts (upcoming events may be found here)
(Most previous live video webcasts have been converted to OnDemand videos. See our Video Index for a list.)

Common CPA Firm Management Mistakes, December 13, 2017
Becoming a More Effective 21st Century Leader, December 12, 2017
Moving from Eat What You Kill (EWYK) to Building a Village (BAV) Model—New and Revised, November 1, 2017
Introduction to Eat What You Kill & Building a Village Models of Operations—New and Revised, October 31, 2017
Getting Real Traction for Your Leadership Development Investment, December 15, 2016
Advanced Compensation Case Study (Moving From Eat What You Kill to Building a Village), December 14, 2016
Best Practices for Ownership Transition (based on highlights from 2016 survey), November 2, 2016
The Succession Management Landscape November 1, 2016
Building a Better, Faster, and Stronger Bench 4: Tying It All Together with a Compensation System, November 13, 2015
Building a Better, Faster, and Stronger Bench 3: Creating Goals and Action Plans for Staff, November 12, 2015
Building a Better, Faster, and Stronger Bench 2: Developmental Managers, Direct Reports and Organizational Structure, October 2, 2015
Building a Better, Faster, and Stronger Bench 1: Competencies, Expectations and Accountability, October 1, 2015
Addressing Partner Conflict and Communication Issues, November 5, 2014
Succession Planning 3: How to Handle Retiring Partners, November 4, 2014
Succession Planning 2: Developing Better, Faster, Stronger People Quicker, October 1, 2014
Succession Planning 1: Moving Away from Eat What You Kill, September 30, 2014
Implementing the Partner Goal Process: Step by Step Instructions, November 13, 2013
Implementing Roles, Responsibilities and a Competency Framework in Your Firm, September 17, 2013
Managing Your Staff, May 9, 2013
Dynamic Leadership™ Part 3: Setting Strategy, Investing in Your Firm, and Improving Communication, December 7, 2012
Dynamic Leadership™ Part 2: Changing You, Negotiation & Conflict, and Accountability, December 6, 2012
Dynamic Leadership™ Part 1: Development of Your People, November 15, 2012
Practice Improvement Ideas: Practical Steps You Can Take Today, May 21, 2012
How to Build a Partner Compensation System that Supports Accountability , June 28, 2011
Pulling It All Together with a Partner-Shareholder Agreement , August 25, 2011

Title: Common CPA Firm Management Mistakes

Description: CPAs are often so busy helping clients with their businesses that they fail to run their practice as effectively as they should. This webcast addresses some of the more commonly found problems in the management of smaller CPA firms. Partners can enhance their bottom-line profitability and the residual value they stand to realize upon exiting their firm by addressing these issues and making the changes the authors suggest in this webcast. See below for more information:
Date: Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Content:

Mini-case studies of common situations and how they can be better managed
Top mistakes that can damage your firm and your retirement
Why you can’t procrastinate any longer—changes must be made now
What to avoid or change in areas from accountability to billing, to collections, to developing people, and more
Tips on planning and managing key changes

Archive: Link to the archived show here. If you have already purchased access to this webcast, you can watch it for free by entering your username and password from the registration confirmation email. If you would like to purchase access to this video webcast archive, contact Succession Institute.

Title: Becoming a More Effective 21st Century Leader

Description: CPAs are known for being honest, hard-working, high integrity, detailed people with project implementation as one of our best attributes. Because of these characteristics and skills, CPAs are quickly elevated into leadership positions in whatever organizations they serve. The problem is that this leap is from a technical position to a people position requiring a whole new set of skills, including management, communication and persuasion skills, just to name a few. This webcast looks at the kind of skills and perspectives leadership/management requires if we want to be as effective in our people positions as we have been in our technical ones. See below for more information:
Date: Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Content:

Why you as its leader are the first person that needs to evolve for your organization to get better, faster and stronger
Common areas of misfocus for leaders/managers
How and why to develop people faster
Improving management skills to run your firm more profitably
Tips for communicating clearly

Title: Moving from an Eat What You Kill (EWYK) to a Building a Village (BAV) Model—New and Revised

Description: This webcast assumes the knowledge gained in the first webcast and focuses on the changes required to move from an EWYK to a BAV operating model, or to root the hybrid model in BAV instead of EWYK. The change sounds simple, but there are several steps required to support this transformation. We go through the process step-by-step and discuss decisions that need to be made along the way, even though some of those decisions may need to be revised as you travel further down this path. Our approach is proven to help the partner group gain the traction needed to make these changes stick. See below for more information:
Date: Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Content:

The natural process firms need to follow as they move from one model to the next
The critical role governance plays in this transition
Why retirement benefits typically have to be the first step if you want any changes to stick
Why equity reallocation is a normal part of this evolution
Establishing the roles and responsibilities of partners
The role compensation plays in maintaining the new firm operating structure

Title: Introduction to the Eat What You Kill and Building a Village Models of Operations—New and Revised

Description: This webcast sets the stage for the two common CPA firm operation models. We take you through their strengths, weaknesses, and the typical obstacles and conflicts each create. Most firms are a hybrid of the two models, but in the end, while you can operate with a combination of both, we have found that firms are deeply rooted in one or the other. And whichever model you are rooted in will drive the future success of your firm. Often succession planning becomes the catalyst to change the firm’s model because the retirements of a few key people highlight the cracks in the firm’s current operating structure. See below for more information:
Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Content:

How the Upside-Down Pyramid™ is the root of many firms’ profitability problems
How the gap in book size between partners creates a chasm that over time makes it difficult to keep the firm together
Why the phrase “the stronger the partner, the weaker the firm” is true of most firms
Building a business model that supports partners managing double their book size in 5 years and triple the size in about 10 years
Organizational models that best support succession

Title: Getting Real Traction for Your Leadership Development Investment

Description: It has become very clear to firms that effective leadership requires more than just excellent technical skills. This has created a flood of manager through partner level leadership training programs, to help meet the need to truly develop sound managerial skills in key people. These training programs should help build critical soft skills such as emotional intelligence, conflict management, assertiveness, etc. But, are you getting your money’s worth? See below for more information:
Date: Thursday, December 15, 2016
Content:

Content to look for in a good leadership program
The learning process and the importance of an experiential approach
Role of assessments and coaching
What it takes from both the leadership program and inside your firm to assure your participants attain personal growth and positive change

Title: Advanced Compensation Case Study (Moving From Eat What You Kill to Building a Village)

Description: This webcast is a must-see review of advanced partner compensation issues. Over the past two decades, there is no single topic more commonly raised than how to structure a compensation model that supports the achievement of a firm’s strategic plan. And once established, questions arise as to how shortfalls or overages in profits are allocated as well as adjusting base compensation for performance. See below for more information:
Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Content:

How to establish a goal-based performance and compensation system for partners
How to determine metrics and measure progress
What steps should be taken to create greater accountability in your performance system
What approach is recommended to allocate shortfalls or excess profits based on performance
When compensation adjustments should occur and what factors to consider in making them

Title: Best Practices for Ownership Transition

Description: This webcast will cover key initiatives that firms should understand to better prepare for the succession of their current set of owners. This session will take a deeper dive into the areas of greatest concern that Bill, Dom and Tommye believe firms should address, including the most important steps firms must take now to ensure profitability, transition of ownership and long-term sustainability. Their recommendations are supported with highlights from the 2016 survey and their two-book series published by the AICPA called Securing the Future: Building Your Firm’s Succession Plan and Securing the Future: Implementing Your Firm’s Succession Plan. See below for more information:
Date: Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Content:

Effects of various business models on succession initiatives
Update on the valuation models found most commonly today and how they have changed over the past decade
Trends and ramifications of partners wanting to accelerate or delay their retirement date
Necessary policies and procedures to manage a still-working retired partner group

Title: The Succession Landscape: 2016 PCPS Succession Institute Survey Results

Description: This year, the AICPA’s Private Companies Practice Section (PCPS) and Succession Institute (SI) conducted their quadrennial survey of its members/clients to determine current succession planning challenges and practices in the CPA profession. This webcast will cover a summary of the key findings from that survey. See below for more information:
Date: Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Content:

Challenges of succession management
Why firms are on course for even greater workload compression in the future
What firms are doing that will improve their positioning for the seamless succession of their current leadership
Key findings from the 2016 succession planning survey, including Solo practitioners, Sole proprietors, and Multi-owner firms

Title: Building a Better, Faster, and Stronger Bench 4: Tying It All Together with a Compensation System

Description: These four sessions will walk you through key elements to address in creating stronger people more quickly and effectively. The content is based on our work with CPA firms of all sizes throughout North America. With many CPA firms experiencing unprecedented opportunities for growth, the battle for talent has never been more challenging. At many firms, staffing issues are a major barrier to the successful transition of senior ownership and a significant constraint on the firm’s future leverage and profitability. But you can change that—learn how with these webcasts!
Date: Friday, November 13, 2015
Content:

Why you haven’t achieved as much change as you’d hoped for
Creating a compensation system that rewards the right behaviors
Implementing and continually adapting your pay system as conditions change

Archive: If you have already purchased access to this webcast, you can watch it for free by entering your username and password from the registration confirmation email. If you would like to purchase access to this video webcast archive, contact Succession Institute.

Title: Building a Better, Faster, and Stronger Bench 3: Creating Goals and Action Plans for Staff

Why staff need some help creating goals and action plans
How to begin the goal setting and planning process
Monitoring implementation for successful outcomes

Title: Building a Better, Faster, and Stronger Bench 2: Developmental Managers, Direct Reports and Organizational Structure

Why the most common reporting model short-changes your people
Some managers are better at people development than others
Creating the infrastructure you need to develop your people faster

Title: Building a Better, Faster, and Stronger Bench 1: Competencies, Expectations and Accountability

Why your firm needs a competency framework
How to use a competency framework to improve your people and your firm
Setting expectations to develop your people and hold them accountable

Title: Addressing Partner Conflict and Communication Issues

Description: This session deals with foundational issues that constantly create added stress, impinge on partner unity, and generate unnecessary misunderstandings within the partner group. We will discuss how to manage conflict, the difference between aggressiveness and assertiveness, how to manage dysfunctional behaviors including bullying, how to conduct partner meetings in a way that eliminates confusion and rehashing the same topics over and over without resolution, tips that can instantly improve communications, and more.
Date: Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Content:

How to better leverage communication basics:
- Why assertiveness is the proper technique to utilize when appropriate
- Conflict in partner discussions is not something to avoid, but rather to harness
- Consensus may be important to try to achieve, but consensus to the point of giving the “no” vote more power than the “yes” vote can quickly become dysfunctional
Learning to better manage partner meetings to create clarity, fairness and unity

Title: Succession Planning 3: How to Handle Retiring Partners

Description: This session is based on Dom’s and Bill’s newest two-book series published earlier this year by the AICPA called Securing the Future: Building Your Firm’s Succession Plan and Securing the Future: Implementing Your Firm’s Succession Plan.
These two books cover 15 areas that need to be addressed to create a robust succession plan that will ensure profitability, transition of ownership and long-term sustainability of your firm.
This three-part series will cover all 15 topics, with this session covering the remaining 9 of those 15 areas.
Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Content:

Building your firm’s key positions around roles and responsibilities, including the managing partner
Creating transparency in decision making by formalizing voting, addressing admission of new owners, and managing the equity distribution/redistribution processes
Managing working relationships with retiring partners including client transition and reasonable roles post retirement
Establishing other important processes, from maximum payout of retired partners, to dealing with death, partial or full disability, termination, and more

Title: Succession Planning 2: Developing Better, Faster, Stronger People Quicker

Description: This session is based on Dom’s and Bill’s newest two-book series published earlier this year by the AICPA called Securing the Future: Building Your Firm’s Succession Plan and Securing the Future: Implementing Your Firm’s Succession Plan.
These two books cover 15 areas that need to be addressed to create a robust succession plan that will ensure profitability, transition of ownership and long-term sustainability of your firm.
This three-part series will cover all 15 topics, with this session covering two of those 15 areas.
Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Content:

Building capacity for long‐term sustainability, building a firm on competency‐based positions, filling talent gaps throughout the firm, developing people more rapidly, and more
Creating accountability throughout the firm and the important role compensation and performance incentives need to play for accountability to work

Title: Succession Planning 1: Moving Away from Eat What You Kill

Description: This session is based on Dom’s and Bill’s newest two-book series published earlier this year by the AICPA called Securing the Future: Building Your Firm’s Succession Plan and Securing the Future: Implementing Your Firm’s Succession Plan.
These two books cover 15 areas that need to be addressed to create a robust succession plan that will ensure profitability, transition of ownership and long-term sustainability of your firm.
This three-part series will cover all 15 topics, with this session covering four of those 15 areas.
Date: Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Content:

Cleaning up your practice: run your firm like a business
Developing and implementing your strategy and why so many firms fall short in this process
Determining what business model you want to follow and the ramifications of the choice you make
Setting the value of the buyout and conditions of earning retirement benefits in line with the business model and with sustainability

Title: Implementing the Partner Goal Process: Step by Step Instructions

Description: This session takes a step-by-step approach for walking through the Succession Institute’s recommended CPA firm partner goal setting process (Managing Partner Goals TM). We will start with a broad overview of the process and continue to drill down into the specifics of how it should be implemented, using specific examples to add clarity. This session will take a comprehensive look at the process from the iterative approach involved, to defining goals, to a logical time line for the process, monitoring required once the goals are established, feedback recommended throughout the year, and to the final evaluation and determination of financial impact.
Date: Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Content:

A broad overview of the partner goal setting process
Setting both subjective and objective goals
Creating objective processes supporting the goals
The annual goal creation process and how we recommend that the iterative process work, using a case study example
What the managing partner should be doing throughout the year to monitor the process and communicate performance
How the managing partner should approach the evaluation of goal attainment

Title: Implementing Roles, Responsibilities and a Competency Framework in Your Firm

Description: Finding, developing and retaining top talent is a critical challenge for most small to midsized CPA firms. Given the demographic trends, the stiff competition for talent in the marketplace and the costs of replacing people who don’t work out, it behooves CPA firm owners to improve their people management practices. This two-hour webcast lays out a step-by-step approach to creating the processes you need to more effectively manage your firm, your people and their ongoing development.
Date: Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Content:

Why roles, responsibilities and competency expectations are important
Some examples of CPA firm roles and responsibilities
A competency framework for a CPA firm
Using roles, responsibilities and competency definitions to improve your people, your firm and your bottom line:
- Implementation issues
- Development issues
- Evaluation issues

Title: Managing Your Staff

Description: Although smaller firms may not have many staff, it is critical that they follow some important steps to effectively manage them. This one-hour webcast will address issues ranging from making sure that all professional staff are providing bottom-line profits to the firm, to a discussion on covering some of the common business issues that firms are addressing in their employment agreements, and more. By clarifying and fine-tuning their expectations, and doing a better job of communicating that information to their people, owners of CPA firms have the opportunity to improve morale and create a positive culture, as well as generating more take-home pay for the owners.
Date: Thursday, May 9, 2013

Content:

Determining reasonable expectations on hourly rates, charge hours, realization, etc.
Communicating those expectations
Critical management functions you need to perform regularly
Common practice management issues CPA firms are addressing in their employment agreements

Leadership in the CPA Firm: a Three-Part Series
Description: Managerial leadership competencies are a must for partners in CPA firms. In fact, how well developed one’s managerial leadership skills are will make a difference in how successful he or she, and indeed his or her firm, will be. This series of webcasts outlines the Succession Institute’s Dynamic Leadership™ model and how you can begin applying it at your firm. The three-part program covers what your role as a leader in a professional service firm entails and how to carry it out. Leadership skill is not something that is genetically determined—you can learn to lead if you have the desire to do so, and this three-part series provides you with actionable knowledge to help you enhance your leadership effectiveness right away.

Title: Dynamic Leadership™ Part 3: Setting Strategy, Investing in Your Firm, and Improving Communication
Date: Friday, December 7, 2012
Content:

Using the Dynamic Leadership™ Model to address your firm’s challenges
Starting with your mission, vision and values
Making the investment in the firm and yourself that is needed to stay current and relevant
Communication—the skill that enables all leadership

Title: Dynamic Leadership™ Part 2: Changing You, Negotiation & Conflict, and Accountability
Date: Thursday, December 6, 2012
Content:

Using the Dynamic Leadership™ Model to address your firm’s challenges
You need to be able to constantly change
Dealing with conflict and negotiations
Accountability—a requirement for firm-wide success

Title: Dynamic Leadership™ Part 1: Development of Your People
Date: Thursday, November 15, 2012
Content:

Challenges leaders face today—the context and the dynamic we all face
Summary of components of the Dynamic Leadership ™ Model
What leadership involves
Beginning to use the Dynamic Leadership™ Model to address your firm’s challenges
Development of your people

Title: Succession Management and the Small Firm
Description: Many owners of small CPA firms may be considering various options for their exit strategies—from simply closing the door someday to a sale or merger, for example. The Succession Institute (SI) and the Private Companies Practice Section (PCPS) recently conducted a succession management survey that addresses these issues. This FREE, one-hour, live webcast will preview findings from the PCPS – SI 2012 Succession Planning Survey applicable to sole proprietors of CPA firms and owners of two-to-three-owner CPA firms as well.
Date: Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Content:

Succession Management and Related Exit Strategies
Tips on Preparing your Firm for Your Ultimate Exit
Succession Planning Current Practices and Best Practices
Improving Firm Marketability and Value to Your Practice Before You Retire
And Much, Much, More!

Title: Practice Improvement Ideas-Practical Steps You Can Take Today
Description: Another successful busy season has come and gone. Now that you’ve had a chance to take a breather, we’d like to give you some food for thought. This FREE one-hour, live webcast will focus on practical ideas you can implement right away to make a difference in your practice. It will cover ideas for: planning your future, leveraging yourself, client billing and management, holding people accountable, improving business development, and much, much more! Our discussion on how to implement changes in these and other areas should be helpful in making your practice even more successful than it already is. This could easily result in a stronger, more focused practice, with an improved bottom line.
Date: Monday, May 21, 2012
Content:

Create a plan for your organization
Hold your partners and staff accountable
Stop milking the cash cow
Improve your business development processes
Verify that your services make sense
Create capacity at the top
Start managing your firm
Maximize the role of your managers
Charge clients a fair fee for the work being done
Deal with the real infrastructure issues
Implement the General Contractor model
Manage the trough
Clean up your financial statements

2011 Succession Series: Moving from Eat What You Kill to Building a Village
Description: Succession is a problem for most firms because the retirements of a few key people highlight the cracks in the firm’s current operating structure. This never before presented set of 4 webcasts takes you through the common problems firms are facing, the steps that need to be taken to overcome critical obstacles, how to create accountability and sustainability around change processes by reinventing your compensation system and how to tie this process up in a bow by addressing specific topics in your owner agreement.

Title: Moving from Eat What You Kill to the Building a Village Model
Date: June 1, 2011
Content:

The natural process firms need to follow as they move from one model to the next,
The critical role governance plays in this transition,
Why retirement benefits typically have to be the first step if you want any changes to stick,
Why equity reallocation is a normal part of this evolution,
Establishing the roles and responsibilities of partners, and
The role compensation plays in maintaining the new firm for us, and more.

Title: How to Build a Partner Compensation System that Supports Accountability
Date: June 28, 2011
Content:

Why our current system to pay our partners is failing,
The trap of tying retirement, compensation and ownership together,
The basic components of partner compensation,
The need for both subjective and objective measures,
How to incorporate customized individual goals for each partner into the system, and more.

Title: Pulling It All Together with a Partner-Shareholder Agreement
Date: August 25, 2011
Content:

The benefits of developing what we call an SOP framework around your partner agreement,
The importance of determining what kind of voting structure you are going to use with each policy
The basic policies that we suggest firms include and some common alterations they make,
Setting up a review and change process that continually keeps your agreement current and consistent with how you are operating, and more.

2011 Becoming Your Clients Most Trusted Business Advisor Series: How to Add Value, Improve Client Loyalty, and Increase Profits
Description: Succession is a problem for most firms because the retirements of a few key people highlight the cracks in the firm’s current operating structure. This never before presented set of 4 webcasts takes you through the common problems firms are facing, the steps that need to be taken to overcome critical obstacles, how to create accountability and sustainability around change processes by reinventing your compensation system and how to tie this process up in a bow by addressing specific topics in your owner agreement.

Title: Most Trusted Business Advisor: What, Why and How
Date: May 4, 2011
Content:

Most Trusted Business Advisor: What, Why and How,
The difference between MTBA services and consulting packages,
Answers to typical objections to taking on the role of MTBA,
How and why you need to be able to switch hats, and make it clear you are switching hats, from being an expert one minute to being an advisor the next,
How you should approach finding solutions your clients will support, and
The use of the General Contractor model to facilitate your MTBA roles.

Title: Helping Your Clients Identify, Prioritize and Quantify their Needs
Date: June 2, 2011
Content:

Techniques to get the client to open up the conversation beyond taxes and financial statements,
Using communication techniques to insure you and the client are in sync,
Common questions advisors are often concerned they will be asked that have simple positive responses,
How to generate a sense of urgency, when the situation is urgent, that will commonly motivate your client to ask YOU for the business,
How to uncover your client’s top priorities in less than 10 minutes,
How to quantify the value or your involvement,
Case study examples of techniques covered in the webcast, and more.

Title: Pricing Your Advisory Work and Engagement Tips
Date: June 27, 2011
Content:

How to leverage “To-Do List Planning” tool,
How to approach pricing when performing advisory work,
Why you need to bill at a higher rate for advisory services just to be profitable,
Phasing and breaking projects down into manageable pieces,
Billing rates, project rates, value billing and retainers,
Sample pricing scenarios,
Billing frequency, sharing the workload with the client, engagement tips, and more.

Title: How to Facilitate Client Meetings: Techniques and Processes
Date: August 24, 2011
Content:

The facilitator’s roles and responsibilities,
Meeting management tips,
Do’s and Don’ts that will help you generate more productive outcomes,
Processes to follow when conducting client meetings,
Tricks and techniques to use when encountering difficult or highly confrontational situations, and more.

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