Future-Proof

Pretty much every survey under the sun identifies recruitment and retention as one of the top five issues facing accounting and finance organizations today. Everyone is struggling with this and nobody seems to know how to solve it. There are a lot of suggestions being put forward throughout the profession — communicate, be a role model, make your expectations clear, offer a safe working environmen...

Today we’re going to talk about something that most accounting and finance professionals probably never give a second thought — writing. Writing is one of those skills that we all take for granted. We all do it in some way, shape, or form every day, so we all assume we’re awesome at it. Maybe even better at it than some of our peers? This is a misconception that happens all the time, in different...

Pascal Finette is co-founder of be radical , an organization that teaches leaders how to create new business models for success, positively embrace disruption, and prepare their people to be future-forward and future-ready. He is also chair for Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation at Singularity University , which is a global learning and innovation community that uses exponential technologies to...

Summer’s over, October’s here, and things are changing. But that’s the state of our world today, isn’t it? And not just when it comes to the weather.  Change is the new normal, and that can be an uncomfortable thing, especially for  CPAs. But for those who are ready to embrace it — to adapt a more nimble and flexible mindset — there are a lot of opportunities just waiting to be taken adv...

We’re jumping back on the culture train today. As you can probably tell, we’re big believers in getting your culture right. We’ve had conversations on the topic with Tom Peters , Karl Alrichs , Jamie Notter , Richard Silberstein , and David Barrett — and that’s because it’s a REALLY important conversation to be having!  Really, there might not be a bigger or more important differentiator in b...

Today’s episode is all about Color Accounting — and if you’re not familiar with Color Accounting yet, you need to be! So, we invited Peter Frampton, co-founder of Color Accounting, onto the show to teach us all about what Color Accounting is and why it’s so important to the future of our profession. To learn more, and for the complete show notes, visit blionline.org/blog . Resources: ColorAccounti...

Today we’re going to talk about something you probably didn’t expect from this show: Cannabis.  But legalization for both medical and recreational cannabis products is growing at the state level. At this point, it seems like a hard trend. So it’s high time we talked about this stuff (pun intended)  if we want to future-proof this profession. To help us come to a joint understanding, if y...

We’ve been talking about the cloud for so long now that it’s easy to assume that everyone already has it figured out – but that’s the wrong assumption to make with our profession.   There are exceptions, of course. There are some accounting and finance pros out there who take pride in getting ahead of new technologies early. But a sizeable part of the profession hasn’t made that leap yet.   So Bla...

How do you transform your organization into a truly digital organization?    It’s not as simple as it sounds. You can’t just about employ some digital technologies and think that you’ve made it. Doing digital and being digital are not the same things. Not even close.   So, we’re joined by Matt Loeb, principal of Optimal Performance Seekers and acting CEO of SECURE, who is simply one of the deepest...

To know where you’re going, you have to have an understanding of – and an appreciation for – where you’ve been.    Publisher and activist Marcus Garvey said, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” And Michael Crichton, the bestselling author of Jurassic Park and Westworld, said, “If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anythi...

We spend a lot of time on this show talking about future trends and technologies — things like artificial intelligence, blockchain, and automation – and, more importantly, what those things mean for the future of our profession.   But there are many other hard trends — a.k.a. future facts, a.k.a. things that we know are going to happen – that will have a huge impact on what we do. The topics aren’...

Our guest today is Neil Irwin, who is the senior economic correspondent at the New York Times and the best-selling author of The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire, about the global financial crisis and its aftermath.   And Irwin recently wrote a new book titled How to Win in a Winner-Take-All World: The Definitive Guide to Adapting and Succeeding in High-Performance Careers . I...

Today, we’re talking about the elephant in the room, or what Tom Hood would call the dead moose in the room. That thing that’s stinking up the joint but that nobody wants to do anything about – or, more to the point, nobody knows what to do about it.   That dead moose is talent.    How do you find it? How do you keep it? How do you set your organization apart from all the others out there so peopl...

Today’s show is all about innovation – which, let’s face it, it’s not something the accounting and finance profession is known for. We’re all about accounting for what has happened, and history tells us that what will happen is not our problem.   Except, here’s the thing: We’re living in a world where we’ll be flattened by what’s in front of us if we don’t take the time to look for it, if we don’t...

We’re going to talk about your career path today. If you’re new to the profession, and even if you’re not, we’re not going to lie to you – things are going to get weird.    It’s just the nature of work today. Things are changing at an exponential pace these days and that means your career is also going to change exponentially – so you have to be ready with new skills, a flexible career path, and t...

The accounting and finance profession as we know it seems to be under assault. New technologies, staggering legislation and regulations, demographic shifts that are reshaping the face of workforces — we’re experiencing change and complexity on a level we’ve never seen before.   Or is that really true?   In a way, when you think about it, none of what we’re experiencing right now is new. All of the...

Our guests this week have a challenge for all accounting and finance professionals: start thinking in terms of moonshots.   Now, you might be asking yourself, what in the world is a moonshot? It’s a huge, seemingly insurmountable quest that is ultimately inspirational and game-changing in nature. It’s something that , when achieved, changes the boundary between possible and impossible – just like...

Our guest this week is Brian Solis, who you’re probably already familiar with if you’re conference nerds like us. He describes himself as a digital analyst, an anthropologist, and a futurist; he has studied the effects of emerging technology on business, marketing, and culture; and he’s written best-selling books like Engage , The End of Business as Usual , and What’s the Future of Business?   His...

This week we’re talking about the role of the CFO – a role that is changing, and pretty radically. Thanks to advances in technology and other disruptions, organizations are expecting their CFOs to play an increasingly strategic role; to actually help drive strategy in the organization, rather than just leading their department and crunching numbers.   It’s a fairly recent phenomenon, but it’s happ...

Today’s topic is A.I. Artificial intelligence. You might have heard about it? It’s that thing everyone’s been talking about for the last five years or so. Yeah, the hype is out of this world.   But here’s the thing, and there’s really no getting around it: this isn’t something entirely new or groundbreaking. The technology itself is new, but we’ve been through this before. Excel was supposed to ki...

A lot of folks talk about this notion of becoming future-ready as if it’s some sort of magic trick. They paint a picture of a future where we need to learn all kinds of new stuff — new skills, new technologies, new strategies, and new business models — in order to out-maneuver the machines and remain relevant. And to some extent, that’s true. We’ve got some serious work to do from here on in.   Bu...

Over the past year, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about how the accounting and finance profession is changing – but we haven’t spent nearly as much time talking about how those who regulate our profession are changing.   So, on today’s episode, we sit down with Terri Polley, (outgoing) president and CEO of the Financial Accounting Foundation. The FAF is an independent, not-for-profit, private-...

We’re headed back to Annapolis for this week’s episode, where Maryland’s General Assembly recently put a bow on its 2019 legislative session. It was another busy one, including some CPA-related legislation that will impact accounting and finance professionals, not just here in Maryland but throughout the country.   Legislative advocacy, according to our members, is the most important thing that th...

Where are we going to find tomorrow’s leaders?   We’ve been doing these podcasts for almost a year now, and as much talking as we’ve done about the future, the missing ingredient in all of those conversations has been leadership. We just haven’t spent much time talking about future leadership, and with 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day, that’s a critical part of becoming future-ready.   So th...

If you ask most people — not all, but MOST people — outside of the profession what an accountant does, they’ll probably say “taxes,” or “auditing,” or some variation on the tasks of people who work in public accounting.   But they’re missing about half of the profession, of course. You’ve got educators, you’ve got accountants who work for nonprofits and governments, and you have those who work in...