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The Power of Intentionality with Jeremy Clopton and Heath Alloway
Part 2 of John Randolph’s special episode featuring Jeremy Clopton and Heath Alloway of Upstream Academy and the Upstream Leader Podcast continues, as the trio pick up their discussion of intentionality, a theme which runs through so many threads in the accounting profession. Intentionality is central to their discussions about creating firm culture, the value of deliberate planning, and the importance of effective mentorship. They emphasize that meaningful relationships and culture require intentional effort, even in a post-pandemic, hybrid work environment, also highlighting the importance of focusing on the right work, the right clients, and the right leadership style, best achieved through coaching and feedback. Among the ways to implement these themes successfully is by maintaining standards rather than rigid rules, and always keeping in mind the potential for an astronomical ROI when you invest in your people.
Transcript:
Welcome back to CPA Life, where we now rejoin host John Randolph in conversation with Jeremy Clopton and Heath Alloway of Upstream Academy and The Upstream Leader Podcast. They continue their focus on intentionality and how it relates to incentivization, mentorship, management focus, and more. Welcome to CPA Life.
It’s a relationship that’s important to you, right? Yep. Why don’t you do that with your people? ’Cause at this point, nothing’s getting done. I’d much rather have something that seemed planned occur, that tells that person they’re important to me, then have nothing occur because I don’t want it to seem like it’s a plan.
And John, that goes back to our conversation earlier about connection and community. And I’m going to extend that out to one more C, which is culture. Even in an in-person environment, culture doesn’t just happen. And if it does, it’s probably not the culture you want. And that’s a big pushback right now for a lot of firms as well. “It’s so hard to create culture when people aren’t in the office.” Let’s be honest. It’s hard to create culture when you are in the office because you have to be so intentional, so deliberate. You have to plan for that. And it’s a different approach.
But look, everything that is meaningful in the firm requires intentionality. If you want to truly create community, you’ve got to put forth effort. You can’t just let that happen. If you truly want to create the culture that you want in the firm, that doesn’t just happen organically, to your point. You’ve got to figure out, okay, who’s going to do what at the leadership level to make sure that this is the culture that we have. And that’s a misguided belief that a lot of people I believe are holding on to post-pandemic as well as before the pandemic, this was, it just happened. I kind of like to throw, you know, throw the penalty flag or the BS or the challenge flag or whatever it is. I don’t know what flag it is, right? There’s a lot of commercials now where they do that. It’s like, no no, it didn’t just happen. You were very deliberate about it.
And that’s why firms had a great culture, by the way, and had great community and great connection the first six to nine months of the pandemic, because everybody was very intentional to check in. And then we got tired of having to put forth so much effort and then we backed off of it and then we got busy and now it doesn’t happen. So to your point, everything that is meaningful within a firm, everything that matters and is important requires intentionality. In my view, maybe this is too strong of an opinion—if you’re not willing to put forth that intentionality, you don’t care as much as you say you do.
Completely agree. I couldn’t agree with that more because those things need to be urgent, those things need to be priorities, and so many times we get busy doing the things that aren’t as critical, that aren’t as urgent—What is it? The not urgent, but important?
Stuck in quadrant one instead of quadrant two?
Yes, yeah. I think Heath, you made a comment to that, didn’t you?
I did.
Talk a little bit about that, because I think that’s a reality.
Well, John, in a lot of ways, those little tasks that don’t take near as long, a lot of times I think it helps people feel like they’re getting stuff done. So it kind of gives you that rush of checking things off your list and feeling like you’re productive. But what happens is that you, without that intentionality, and I’m guilty of this, where you go in on a Monday and you have these plans to get all these things done, and then it’s Friday afternoon and you say, I didn’t touch one of those. Or a year goes by and the same thing happens, and you say, I didn’t have time to get to that because I was too busy while you’re putting off the things that will develop you or progress your career or improve your firm to check things off the list.
And I don’t know about you, John, but, time can go by rather quickly. And if you’re not scheduling those touchpoints with people. I mean, it’s easy for three or four weeks to go by, or two months, and next thing you know, it’s like, I haven’t talked to this person for a couple months. And to Jeremy’s point, culture is happening, whether we like it or not, each and every day, whether we’re intentionally doing it or unintentionally, it’s being created without taking action on it.
And can I challenge listeners with one thing real quick?
Please.
Because I know where the pushback is going to be on this, because we hear it all the time. It is, “Well, but I’m serving my clients,” right? “I’m serving my clients. If I don’t serve my clients… all the bad things that’ll happen.” So let me challenge all of the listeners that are having that thought right now, and I know you’re out there, so let’s not act like you aren’t, just admit it, raise your hand, yeah, that’s me. If you’re in that mode that Heath just described where you’re just responding, you’re reacting, you’re not, you know, focused on what you want to focus on, are you even serving the right clients or are you serving those D and lower C level clients that are the loudest, most demanding, argue the most about the invoice, and as a result, it’s not only that your people connections are suffering, but you’re not even connecting as well with your A level clients because you’re so busy taking care of all the D level clients that want to be loud and obnoxious and not pay your bills.
Because so often the reason we don’t do all these things to Heath’s point, is we’re doing all the little things and we’re typically reacting, responding to those that are the loudest. I don’t know about you guys, most of my best clients, they’re also the most respectful and they’re not the ones that are the most, this is a critical, emergent, on a constant basis. Like if there’s an emergency, it’s a legitimate emergency. For most though, they’re the ones that are reaching out because they’re intentional. They value your time. They know you value their time. So the excuse of, well, I’m serving my clients, I would argue you need to step back and say, are you even serving the right clients or are you letting the minutiae that’s actually not profitable even bring down your connections with people and your better clients?
You know, we back in November timeframe, December, I don’t remember which one it was, we’re meeting with a lot of our clients that we’re starting to do some more advisory work with. And we were talking about the importance of the intentionality with their team and the owner of the firm, they’re about a 15, 16 person firm. The owner of the firm was talking kind of about what you’re talking about, Jeremy. They don’t have time. They’re dealing with, you know, a lot of the fires that are going on. And, I’m talking to them about the importance of, not hours upon hours upon hours on a weekly basis. I mean, we’re, talking minutes in the grand scheme of things.
But through the course of this conversation, what comes out from one of his partners at the firm, who’s talking about what a great guy he is, and how he wants to do these things, and there’s still a time and billing environment, but it comes out that he has not billed a client in three years. He does not bill for his time. And I was like, wait a minute. You’re telling me that you can’t take care of your people, spend time with them, because you’re taking care of customers, but you’re not even billing time to your customers. So in effect, your time is free right now and you’re investing it, you believe, in the place you’re going to see the highest level of return, which is with your customers that have problems. I would venture a guess and challenge that if you stopped serving customers altogether, forget it. You don’t touch a single client from this day forward, and you did nothing for the 40 hours a week or more that you work, and sow that into your people, the ROI of that investment will far outweigh any dollar per hour you could have or would have billed to a customer that you would have been engaging with. And it was just a reflection that, hey, where are you placing that priority? What you’re talking about, Jeremy.
Yeah, it is. And it’s interesting that the, I can’t remember which book it was. I was listening to a couple of different audiobooks in one week and I can’t remember which, if it was at the end of one or the beginning of the other, but they were saying that the place in a company that has the highest potential ROI is its people. And in fact, that it’s near infinite because you don’t know what they can achieve. And you pair that with, you know, Hidden Potential from Adam Grant, and it wasn’t that book, it was a different book that said it, but it’s like, that investment is so huge. And you know, there’s a, I talked to John Garrett on our podcast a few weeks back and he talked about, you know, creating connection, that investment that we’re talking about, 40 seconds is what it takes to connect with somebody, to create meaningful connection in as little as 40 seconds.
Wow.
So even somebody who’s like, oh man, I’m so busy serving my clients, even if they’re not billing for it, which that’s a crazy, idea, right? I’m with you, John, if I’m investing all of my time for free, it’s going to be in my people, because I know they can go generate the revenue. I’m not doing it in clients that aren’t willing to pay because that’s just, that’s crazy to me, right? But we’re not talking about even 40 hours. We’re not talking 40 minutes. We’re talking 40 seconds. It can be so simple. Yet we make it into this huge thing that it’s like, oh my gosh, I can’t do that. I don’t have the time. If you don’t have 40 seconds, what are you doing? But again, everything we’ve talked about, I think we’ve gone back to that all three of us, haven’t we? It’s simple. It doesn’t mean it’s easy, it just means it’s simple.
I think that’s great distinction. It’s, not necessarily easy because it does call for intentionality. Early in my career as a manager, and I use that word versus leader, my answer was, I’ll show you how to do this one time, maybe two times. And then after that, I’m just going to do it myself, and if I do it myself enough, that means that our jobs are redundant, and I’m probably not going to fire me, I’m just going to fire you. And I would just do it myself, until I started working for a mentor of mine who got me to clearly understand. He’d say it over and over, and it finally sunk in one day. He would say, John, you need to understand, a good man can do the work of 10 men. A great man teaches 10 men how to do the work, and then helps them find the motivation to do it even better.
And once I understood that concept, once I gathered that, I could see that, you know what, if I can replicate me, there’s so much more that can get done. Now, thankfully, they’re not all my personality, but, if they have the understanding to get the job done, and provide solutions, there’s so much more that can get accomplished versus just one person trudging away at it day in and day out.
You know, one of the, one of the things that I’ve heard you guys talk about on one of your other podcast episodes for The Upstream Leader podcast that you guys have, there was a firm that you were talking about, I think it was on the west coast, that it was the, values or the standards that you have within your organization, I think the phrase that you use or that they use was standards versus rules. Talk a little bit about that because that was pretty intriguing to me.
Yeah. They were referencing Coach Krzyzewski, and I can’t remember who I was talking with at that time. I think it may have been Keith Dolabson, but Mike Krzyzewski, the former coach at Duke University, the men’s basketball coach, said that, you know, he had standards versus rules because if you have agreed upon standards, you don’t have to police the rules because people want to behave in accordance with those standards.
And I tie that back to accountability within our profession. You can either have a culture of accountability, right? Where the standard is we want to be accountable. We want to do the right things. We want to behave in accordance with this, or you can enforce accountability. Which is kind of having the rules mentality, which is more of having to police it. But that’s the core of it is when you have agreed upon standards, behavioral standards, this is how we operate—again, very close to values—people want to uphold that. They want to be accountable to that. They’re willing to hold one another accountable to it. You don’t have to have as many rules because as long as you’re acting in accordance with those standards, you’re fine. But when you don’t have those agreed upon standards, then you have to start coming up with policies and rules and policing everything.
And we see that a lot, and historically have, right? Gotta work on Saturday, gotta work X number, gotta do this, gotta do that. I remember when I started my career, I couldn’t have, the thickness of the soles of my shoes could not be more than a quarter inch, like, we come up with rules for everything, right? It’s crazy. And then you’ve got a firm and there was, it’s another firm out on the West Coast, actually Sensiba, and they have “Communicate, meet your commitments and be kind.” That’s their standards. Three standards that are very simple. Not always easy. Simple. Communicate, meet your commitments, be kind. Now I don’t have to tell everybody exactly what to do in every moment.
Jeremy, ironically enough, and I’ll share this real quick, but I just had a call with their HR director, and how John had shared how, like, on a lot of calls or team calls, they If someone asks a question, they’ll reference those words. And during our call, she did exactly that. So it just tells you how much that is bred into their culture. And everyone knows what that means and they all hold each other accountable. And it’s really cool to see.
And I’ve got to imagine that is a top down, not edict, but that is a top down lifestyle. That is a top down embracing of how we communicate, how we deal with things, how we embrace things, how we address issues. You know, here’s the rules, if you will, or the standards by which we look at things. And it makes things so much easier. When my kids were growing up, they would tend to, especially when they were teenagers, I’ve got two daughters, two very headstrong, opinionated girls. I have no one to blame for that but my wife and I, we ingrained that in them. There was some of it that was born in them, but we, we watered it and, nourished it a lot, but we would get a lot of pushback, as we do with all teenagers. And they would argue about the rules that we had in place. And I would always tell them, look, you may not like the rules, but at the end of the day, I have one very simple philosophy, rules don’t need to be fair. Rules need to be clear.
Once we have clarity, whether those are standards or whatever you want to call them, but once we have clarity, first of all, we’re going to be as simple as we can, then we’re going to be as clear as we can. Because the problem is we try to run our business by the exception and deal with the rule when it arises versus understanding here’s the standards. It’s very clear. Here’s the standards. Now we have clarity. Now, if and when exceptions arise, we can deal with them.
There was a period in our business, in the recruiting business where, you know, I was working for one of the largest, most well known names in the recruiting accounting finance space. We all probably have an idea who that may be. And we were dividing up some of the pieces of business, how we were going to run it, and I said something about. What I said was if we get a manager job, if we get a manager job, we’re going to work on this side of the business. Well, someone said, well, what if a client’s looking for an AP manager at $100K? Well, let’s see. How many of those positions have we worked in the last five years? One? So why don’t we do this? Why don’t we have this rule, and when that next time happens, we’ll figure out what to do with it. But it seems like 99 percent of the positions we get at that level are better served in this group over here.
We’re always going to come up with exceptions. Always. Well, what if someone wants to take off because, you know, they have a death in their family on April 2nd? Well, you know, first of all, we don’t really plan for deaths, but they happen, and we’ll deal with it when it arises.
And John, I think a lot of times in those situations, it’s our natural thought process. It’s human nature sometimes to start thinking about all the what ifs and what could come up instead of stepping back and taking a different look at it, what you just described of, we can address that when it gets there, if it ever does happen. You can waste a lot of time on the what ifs, the things that’ll never ever happen in life.
I was listening to a podcast the other day with Cal Newport, the gentleman who wrote…
Deep Work?
Deep Work. And he made the comment, they were talking about the world that we live in and how we live in a FOMO mentality, fear of missing out. And he said, I’ve got a hypothesis. I don’t think it’s the fear of missing out. What did he call it? It’s the fear of missing the emergency. So we don’t have a fear of missing out. We have a fear of missing the emergency. So we always want to be connected. We always want to plan for the “what if” scenario. Well, you can’t live life like that. you’ve got to understand that there’s some basics that we need to deal with. And once we understand what those are, we can have boundaries moving forward.
And the nice thing with the standards versus rules approach in that context is it gives people the freedom to operate within the standard and to work together to take ownership for those exceptions, to figure out how is this in the firm and the team, the department, whoever’s best interest. And then if need be, you can always escalate it. But, you know, that’s always the challenge with rules is, well, what about this? Well, if it’s a rule, now we’re violating the rule. We’re accountants, right? Nobody likes, well, most are accountants that are listening, I realize not everybody in a firm is an accountant. You work in an accounting firm, people like rules. They’re not looking to find a way to accept the rule or to, you know, get past the rule. So that’s part of it, right? As we were in an industry that is taught, it’s all about adherence to a rule and compliance with the rule.
If we can broaden it out and say, you know what, We’re focused on the standards of behavior and we’ll figure out how to deal with situations when they arrive, it’s freeing, but it’s also empowering. And now you have a team that feels like they have a say in their career, and that can be very beneficial.
Absolutely can. You know, one of the things that, as we sit here and we talk about rules, and we talk about people in accounting firms that like black and white, do you think that one of the challenges that the accounting firm faces from a mindset standpoint—especially from a leadership perspective, when we start talking about spending time with people, being more intentional, doing things that you cannot track on a timesheet—do you think that part of the problem with leadership is, how can I be all touchy feely, but yet still account for every 6 to 15 minute increment that I have to account for on a utilization or realization basis on my timesheet?
I very strongly believe that we’ve got a misguided belief of. What productivity is and what matters, right? For whatever reason, we believe that if it’s on the timesheet, it had to be productive and valuable. And that’s just simply not the case. I realize that’s what historically we’ve done. And, you know, all of those things, I’m not saying that we need to get rid of timesheets because there is value in understanding, are we using our time effectively and appropriately, but we’ve got to disconnect our value on our worth from 6 to 15 minute increments, and we’ve got to figure out what’s the right thing to do. What do we need to be doing, and just go figure out how to go do that, even if the timesheet doesn’t come up with the best utilization.
Because utilization is a bit flawed, let’s be honest, I’ve known many a person that 60 billable hours and get 20 hours’ worth of work done. But on paper, they’re a rockstar. In reality, nobody wants them working on any of their clients. So we’ve got to get past these traditional metrics and accept the fact that they don’t actually tell us the context that we need to understand what’s really happening and what really matters within the firm.
Heath, what do you think about that?
Yeah, John, I would go back to how you described it, even you said touchy feely, I think starting with changing that mindset too, that we work in a profession built on trust, and if you’re not making that time to build that connection and trust, productivity will suffer, so I think even just changing the mindset on that can make a difference.
Right, I think it’s a shift in the mindset. Again, this client we were working with last year, they, since the inception of the firm, paid overtime. So everything over 45 hours a week during busy season, they pay straight time. So someone works 60 hours, they get 15 hours of overtime. Someone works 70 hours, 25 hours of overtime. And we were talking about that dynamic and I said, I don’t know any other way to say this, but I don’t think that is worth anything in the world that we live in today because people don’t want to work that much time.
Now, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, that was an incentive for people. Today, that’s not an incentive for people. As we ventured down that path and we talked about it, he said, so would you say that we just chunk that out the window and stop paying for overtime? I said, well, I wouldn’t say change it overnight, because nobody likes to feel like something’s being taken away from them, but I think that if you put some type of plan in place that—don’t ditch the dollars. You’ve allocated the dollars in your budget, but why don’t you put together some type of a productivity bonus plan that basically says, look, we’re going to pay for productivity. So if you’re a 45 hour a week person, but your productivity is at, you know, whatever your measurement is, let’s just say 90%, whatever you’re measuring, if you’re working 45 hours, but your productivity is at 90 to 95%, but you’ve got somebody over here working 65 hours that right now you’re paying 20 hours of overtime. They’re working 65 hours, but their productivity is at 60%. Who’s really your more valuable employee? Who’s the person that probably should be making more money?
And as one of my mentors used to say, people are going to respect what they expect you will inspect. People are going to be managed through the pocketbook, whether you like it or not. And whatever, wherever you put those dollars is where people are going to put their motivation. And if you’re just telling people, I’m going to pay you for time, guess what? They’re going to drag it out. They’re going to drag it out. But if you pay them for exceptional results, and they can do it in a shorter period of time, what does it matter?
Yeah, it’s an input versus output mindset.
A whole different mindset. One of the things that both of you mentioned on your questionnaire, and I want to just dig into this a little bit, because again, I think we could go a whole down, down a whole other path on this. Both of you mentioned coaching. I think you both mentioned coaching your daughters, being involved in your daughters’ sports, whether it’s coaching or being an active participant in, in helping them develop. What has that taught you from a leadership perspective? Because that’s a whole other game, so to speak. And I’m speaking from experience because I had two daughters that I actively participated in and coached. What, have you learned from that, that you’ve taken into the leadership realm and say, hey, there’s some correlation here.
For me, John, it’s just at that age, because my daughter’s 11, and I coach my son’s 6 and 7 year old team too, is just building a belief of that they can be successful, and it puts them in the right mindset that—it’s crazy to watch, John, because when someone believes that they can do something, they’re going to do it. There’s a lot more likelihood that they will be successful. So that’s part of it. And I think building the right mindset of when things don’t go as planned, how to work through that at that age, I think it’s 100 percent critical.
Actually just this weekend, my daughters, they had their home tournament. They made the championship game and they lost. They actually went into overtime, was still tied. They did a sudden death shootout, and they lost by one. And so I saw it in action of how they dealt with that. If they were all pretty bummed out, but they realized that they’d learned from it. And yes, there were a lot of tears right then, but then they realized that it’s okay, we got better from it. And I keep telling them like, focus on the controllables because there will be things that will happen outside your control.
And at that age too, I’ll use my son’s team of just showing that you care and building that excitement. That sends a pretty powerful message to him. And I think that translates to coaching within a firm. Because if we’re not taking the time and we’re not, Being open and honest with them. If we’re not connecting with them, I think it’s going to be hard to ever develop the next generation.
Absolutely. Jeremy?
I’m going to go with how to give feedback and how to get people in the right frame of mind for feedback. Two of my daughters are on the same team this year, they’re on a 12U softball team, and then my youngest is on an 8U softball team. My older two, I tend to coach a bit more, because they’re further along, my oldest is in sixth grade and middle’s in fourth grade, and with the oldest, we’d already made the transition to where she knows that she needs to be in the right frame of mind to receive feedback. So anytime I do, instead of saying, can I give you feedback or however, I’ll just say, can I share an observation? And she knows that she has the freedom to say not right now, because she knows that she’s not ready to hear it and ready to take action on it. And for me, from a leadership standpoint, that’s helped me understand that you can give feedback all you want, but the other person has to be ready to receive it. And we’ve got to acknowledge sometimes we’re just not, and that’s okay.
My nine year old, actually this past weekend, she got a new bat. So she was working on that and it’s three ounces heavier, which doesn’t sound like a ton, but it’s a ton when you’re nine. And she was working on it and struggling to hit, and I was giving feedback and all the things, And my wife was pitching and she came up to me afterwards, she goes, Dad, I know you were trying to help, but the fact that you just kept giving me tips and it wasn’t working, wasn’t actually helping me. Can you wait next time? I said, Paxton, you know what? I appreciate you telling me that because that’s a fair point. I said, I’ll do what I do with your sister. I will simply say, can I share an observation? And when you’re ready, you let me know.
And that’s really helpful from a leadership context with adults as well. Sometimes you just say, Hey, can I share an observation with you? And somebody may say, you know what? I’m not ready for that right now. I’m not in the right head space. That’s okay. Let me know when you are and I can have it. And that’s really been valuable for me.
So Jeremy and Heath, I can’t thank you guys enough for spending time with me today to talk about all the different points that we’ve kicked around. So if folks are interested in learning more about Upstream Academy, the upcoming Headwaters Conference that we didn’t even touch on that we could spend another 30 to 45 minutes on, if someone just wants to reach one of you, at least to begin some discussions about possible solutions, the challenges they may be facing, what are some of the best ways that they can do that?
Definitely. So the easiest way to find Upstream Academy is online UpstreamAcademy.com. Our podcast is there. It’s called The Upstream Leader. You’ll find it on our website, TheUpstreamLeader.com as well, and anywhere you find podcasts. Easiest way to get ahold of me, Jeremy, is on LinkedIn. My email address, everything is out there, and you can find me there. Heath, I know you’re on LinkedIn as well.
Yeah, LinkedIn, and then John also, we have our Upstream Academy LinkedIn page as well. So, we put updates out there as well. So, yeah, all the things Jeremy mentioned, it’s a great way to reach us.
Awesome. Well, to our listeners, I want to say thank you to each of you for carving out a little bit of time to spend with us today. With so many different streams of information flowing your way, we know you have literally a ton of options. So, we’re truly thankful that you choose to spend some time with us. And if you enjoyed what you heard today, Make sure and subscribe to the podcast so that you don’t miss any of the upcoming conversations we’ll be having with other leaders, just like Jeremy and Heath, as we talk about the future of the industry and what you can look like when you have a CPA Life. Until next time.
We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting app, leave a five star rating and visit our website for links and show notes at CPALifePodcast.com. We’ll see you next time on CPA Life.
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About the Guests:
Jeremy Clopton, Director at Upstream Academy, gained his accounting experience from his work at a top U.S. accounting firm, where he led a firm-wide specialty practice. During his 12 years there, Jeremy gained extensive experience in data analytics, fraud prevention, and business intelligence. He now leverages that experience to teach firms the potential that data and technology have to transform firm practice management, leadership, and firm culture.
Prior to joining Upstream, Jeremy launched his own consulting company focused on developing more successful cultures by asking better, more strategic, questions. He created the SQ Method, a framework designed to help firms overcome challenges and more successfully adopt new technology, analyze and utilize data, encourage innovation, and drive employee engagement. Jeremy speaks both in the US and abroad at industry events, as a faculty member for the ACFE and as an instructor at the Management Development Institute at Missouri State University.
Heath Alloway is a Director at Upstream Academy and co-hosts The Upstream Leader Podcast with Jeremy. Heath’s unique skillset helps clients thrive no matter the business climate. Driven by a passion for helping others, he works closely with leaders in the profession to position firms for success through people development, strategic growth, and positive change. He is a popular coach and speaker for firm and conference presentations.
Before joining Upstream Academy, Heath spent over a decade in a unique role in one of the top accounting firms in the U.S. In this role, he ran a firm-wide business development training program and led a multi-disciplinary team of 20, focusing on strategic plan development and implementation, and development and launch of new services and industry verticals.