Recently, I found myself seated in the very building where Mr. Rolls first met Mr. Royce. The occasion was the bicentennial celebration of a private members club of which I am grateful to be a part.
The guest list read like a who’s who: QCs, CBEs, councillors, district judges, doctors, lords and other dignitaries. Yet, in the midst of all this ceremony and tradition, my mind wandered not to the grandeur of the room but to my father.
This is where he wanted to be but never arrived. I got there on his behalf. I also got there for 17-year-old me, who never believed opportunities like this would ever come his way.
I suspect many of us who drive ourselves to succeed are, in part, giving gifts to our younger selves. The achievements and stages we reach are often those our teenage selves could scarcely imagine.
Looking back at my own career, especially the past five years, I see exactly that: goals achieved that once seemed unreachable, benchmarks hit that once felt out of range.
Ambition in Short Supply
In the accountancy profession, however, I’ve not seen much of this ambition. That’s one reason private equity has embedded itself so quickly and successfully in so many firms. PE houses are ambitious, commercially minded and hungry. They didn’t need to climb over much ambition to get what they wanted in the accounting profession.
Most accounting firms aren’t focused on vision, succession, or independence. They aren’t fiercely committed to brand clarity or service innovation. For many, accountancy is simply a stable career that generates comfortable incomes. What’s wrong with that, right? So, when private equity came calling, their ambition for the firm they were looking to buy was mostly greater than the ambition held by the firm’s current owners. As a result, PE money has gained a stranglehold over the top 100 firms in both the UK and the US in next to no time.
The Client’s Perspective
Now, what happens if a firm without outside capital and without substantial resource wants to attract significantly higher-level clients than they currently have, why should those clients move? Why would they leave their current accountant, who is “fine” or “okay,” for another “fine” or “okay” firm unless it’s about cutting costs?
Without ambition, you can’t compel that move. Without ambition, you’re unlikely to innovate service lines or leverage technology in transformative ways. Without ambition, you cannot hope to serve ambitious clients, because ambitious clients don’t want “fine”, they want aspirational.
The Question That Matters
This week’s bullet:
When you first qualified as an accountant, what did you want to achieve?
Have you achieved it?
And if not, what is still required to get you there?
I asset that ambition is the critical ingredient for achievement. Without ambition, no one would ever have driven a Rolls Royce.
To your success
Martin Bissett
