Thriveal CPA Network | conferences

11/12/2012

Take Off the ROWEz-Colored Glasses

So it’s been a few weeks since we had the THRIVEal “Deeper Weekend” learning gathering. I wanted it to be called “THRIVErdome, Battle Royale of Best Practices: That which does not kill you makes you less stupid.” But that got shot down (Jody Padar said it didn’t sound aggressive enough*).

We spent all day Thursday (which is apparently considered part of “the weekend” to Jason Blumer) with Jody Thompson, co-author of the book Why Work Sucks and How To Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution. She guided us through the concept of a results- only work environment, or “ROWE,” and everybody came away from our time with her with a raging ROWEner.

Category:: conferences, Management and Operations, ROWE, THRIVEcast
Comments:: 2

10/29/2012

Can A CPA be a Craftsman?

I’ve been intrigued by this quote from St. Francis of Assisi for some time:

“He who works with his hands is a laborer.

He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.”

Category:: conferences, Design Thinking
Comments:: 6

10/23/2012

You Are A Creative Director: Response To Deeper Weekend

Thriveal just finished up our annual learning gathering. It was called Deeper Weekend – and, boy, did we go deep!

My take-away from the learning gathering is that we are not only leaders of CPA firms, we are Creative Directors. That is, we are directors of the creativity that flows through our firms. This ‘flow of creativity’ is something to recognize, manage, enhance and ultimately sell to our customers. This creativity that we all have is something accountants often suppress. But we attempted to tap into it at this event. I think we got there for so many. It was exciting to see people challenged to enter into an unknown world of being creative, working toward the goal of changing the lives of their customers. It was uncomfortable, compelling and changing.

Category:: Business, conferences, Design Thinking
Comments:: 7

10/22/2012

Design Thinking From the Customer’s Perspective

This week, a bunch of CPAs were learning about “design thinking” from my friend Jason Blumer. They were learning to take a real interest in their clients (isn’t that crazy?) in order to help their clients grow and get better. Suffice to say… these aren’t your typical accountants!

As part of the experience, Jason brought in a few of his own clients and local business owners to serve as guinea pigs or lab rats. (I was just going to go with lab rat, but lab rats are injected or exposed to all kinds of funky chemicals before the chemicals are packaged for people to use or ingest… or something like that. Guinea pigs seem relatively useless but are probably better looking. So let’s go with guinea pig.)