Own The Promise

CEO Denny Schleper spends time with long-time principal Dudley Ryan who is transitioning to retirement after over 20 years with CLA. He shares his experiences and advice on working with clients and living the CLA Promise. [00:00:05] Announcer: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make in every relationship we cultivate. [00:00:18] Denny: Hello, CLA family. This is Denny Schleper. I had an opportunity to be in the Minneapolis office this week, and I ran into Dudley Ryan, one of our long-time partners within the firm, and I thought it was a great opportunity as we were sitting down and discussing where he’s at, not only in his life, but his career with CLA, to maybe share some of the thoughts that he’s had over his career and most recently, as he’s actually going to be retiring at the end of 2018, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to pick his brain. What has he learned over the years that might help all of us who are still here at CLA, and really those of us that might be close to the transition stage that Dudley is at as well as, perhaps, those of you that are in the beginning stages of building your careers, hopefully, here at CLA as you continue? So, Dudley, welcome. What I’d like to do, Dudley, just to give a opportunity for our people to know a little bit more about you, if you would just briefly give a little bit of your history with the firm just so that they could have that perspective as we carry forward. [00:01:32] Dudley: Thanks, Denny. So I started with the firm in 1985. At the time, I was practicing law, and the firm came to me and said, “We need somebody to head the firm’s tax practice. We have three partners that don’t want to do the administrative part of the practice.” So my first job was a manager with three partners and ten other people reporting to me at CLA. I did that for about 15 years, and what happened is is our firm expanded. Just as a sidenote, we had about 100 people in the firm at the time, but as a sidenote, I did that for about 15 years and went to the firm administration and said, “Gee, you know, this really is getting big. It’s becoming an administrative job, and I’m not really suited that way, technically, as a talent set.” And the firm said, “Great, why don’t you go and practice full time,” which I kept a book the whole time I was doing this anyway, and let me go back and serve clients, and that’s what I’ve done ever since. [00:02:30] Denny: You know, Dudley, before we get into kind of the transition part that you are currently experiencing, you obviously have had a lot of experiences over that period of time. Is there one or two just major lessons you learned in your career, or maybe major hurdles that you were able to get through and beyond that really changed your perspective maybe on life, but as well as your career at CLA? [00:03:01] Dudley: Well, we would have to go on for about four hours on all those things and maybe two days, but I think the big thing is that we are a client service firm, and we have to serve clients the way they want to be served and not the way we want to serve them all the time, and so we have to keep that in mind all the time, and it’s constantly a battle when I get busy or, you know, I just don’t think about clients all the time sometimes, and the reality is that when somebody calls and they want something, we should present it and give that in the way they want to do it, and also, when we have major opportunities, we’re in the service business, and we have to serve clients the best we can. We’re problem solvers, and we have to serve clients the best we can, and that means understanding what we do here at CLA that can help clients reach their financial needs,

CEO Denny Schleper asks for our help to share our CLA story with our clients. If our clients better understand who CLA is, they’ll be more apt to turn to us when it comes to the services and needs that they are looking for. Denny: Hello, CLA family. This is Denny Schleper. CLA family, I need your help. I’m putting out this request, but I wanted to share with you some of the observations and experiences that I’ve had recently that has kind of led to this request for your help. When I was at the Wealth Advisory Summit in January, I had a chance to meet with quite a few of our clients across the country And one of the things that became very obvious to me was that the clients did not really know who CLA was. [00:00:54] They didn’t understand the extent our geographic spread, our resources, our services–overall our capabilities, much less, the overall culture of CLA. And the more I started thinking about that experience, I thought when it comes to the CLA branding and who we are, what a better way than to work with our 2017 Annual Promise Report that has been recently posted on My CLA, and many of you have seen this and received it already–what a great way to get this information to our clients to help them to really–to get to know us. If we want to get to know them and help them–part of the CLA promise–wouldn’t it be wonderful if they would get to know us better. Another great advantage of this would be that our ability to be one firm for our clients–that we’re bringing all those capabilities and services that are outlined in this Promise Report–get that into our clients’ hands to really come through as one firm. [00:02:02] Also, when it comes to the strategy of seamless integrated services, if our clients better understand who CLA is, they’ll be more apt to turn to us when it comes to the services and needs that they’re looking for. Clearly, we should always be out in front, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if they would be picking up the phone and say, “I understand CLA has these capabilities” and they would turn to us. So here comes the request. I need all of you, across 5,300 people within CLA, to really spread the news of who CLA is to our clients. Utilize the 2017 Annual Promise Report in every opportunity that you can. I have already sent it out to numerous people and numerous groups, spreading the word of CLA, the brand of CLA. And I’m asking all of you to do this. Client meetings, tax meetings, the assurance meetings, every opportunity that you have to sit down with the client and share this wonderful report and information. [00:03:12] I am gonna be sending out, to all of the subscribers of CLA, a message to our clients, and I’m gonna include the annual report as well. It’s okay if they get it multiple times from multiple sources. This is a fantastic way to not only help the CLA brand within our client base, but more importantly, to fulfill the promise of really being one firm and seamlessly delivering all of our service capabilities to our clients. Ultimate goal, again, really to get to know them and help them. I thank all of you for listening to this and hopefully reacting to the request and the help that, really, CLA needs from all of us as we move forward. Thank you very much.

CEO Denny Schleper describes the six priorities set forth for 2018 making it a great year to create opportunities for our clients, our people, and the communities that we live in. Narrator: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. [00:00:18] Denny: Hello, CLA family. This is Denny Schleper. I know many of you are in the midst of a very busy time. Obviously since 2018 began, there’s been a lot of things happening within the firm. Much of this we’ve been able to share once with the owner group when we got together in January as well as a webcast that we pulled together with many of the non-equity principals and those of you on the signing director path as well. [00:00:46] I just wanted to spend a few minutes today sharing some of that information with the entire CLA family. We had a chance not only to be at the major firm group meeting in January, which gave us a lot of good information, but we also had an opportunity to have the AICPA chairman Kimberly Ellison-Taylor speak to us at the owner advance as well. [00:01:11] And I just wanted to share there is an extreme amount of optimism for 2018, not only with the economy but also with the opportunities that that economy is presenting for professional service firms like CLA. [00:01:28] It was nice in January because we were just coming off of obviously the December period where we had a chance to pull together many of the teams within CLA–the executive team, the leadership advisory team, the young executive team, the Future Innovation Team–along with some of the industry chief officers. [00:01:49] And we spent time creating the priorities that we felt we needed to meet as a firm in 2018, and I think those priorities tie very well into the information that was picked up at the major firm group meeting as well. Along on the way of this optimism, I think for 2018, we feel that CLA can have a great year. We think we’re coming off of a very good year in 2017, but 2018 should be a great year for CLA. [00:02:24] Well, what does a great year for CLA mean? That should mean it is gonna be a great year to create opportunities for all of you, our people, our clients, and the communities that we live in. So I did want to share with you, if you wouldn’t mind me taking the time, on the six priorities that we have set forth for 2018. And I’m gonna break these up really into two groups, the first three and then the last three of these. [00:02:55] The first one is one firm, the priority that we must truly embrace the seamless integrated services that we’re providing as a firm. We really need to raise the performance of all of the teams that we are participating in. Truly this one firm accountability and trust factor within the firm. We believe if we’re able to continue to drive a lot of these concepts around the one firm approach, it’s something that will really end up creating the opportunities for all of us. [00:03:31] The second one is around creating opportunities for our people, all of us within CLA, really driving career path clarity and opportunities and accountabilities, embracing and developing the generational workforce, all these types of things that we feel will help create more opportunities for our people. There’s a lot of effort that has been put into this priority in the past, and it’s something, again, that remains at the top of the list for 2018. [00:04:06] And the third one is around creating opportunities for our clients. As I mentioned, really embracing the seamless approach, the personal touch, the face-to-face with our clients, the relationship building, and really aligning those client relationships around our industry expertise and some of the service expertise. [00:04:29]

[00:00:04] Man: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. [00:00:17] Denny: Hello, CLA family. Denny Schleper coming to you once again, this time actually from Orlando, Florida. Why are we in Orlando? We are in Orlando actually this week with the incredible pleasure of meeting with the executive team, the young executive team, some of the chief industry officers across CLA, and the FIT group–the Future Innovation Team. We spent about the last day and a half really looking at 2018; where are we going as a firm, what do we have to prioritize; a year from now, what is that we absolutely are going to have to accomplish as a firm. One of the great things about CLA is that people like myself, the board of directors, the executive team, we know and understand we don’t have all the answers. There’s no way that we can figure this out for a firm like CLA, with the geographic reach that we have, the industry reach, the service reach that we have, and also for many of you listening, obviously, the perspectives of all the generations within CLA. So the reason the Future Innovation Team is invited is to really help us figure out a perspective that we wouldn’t otherwise have within the firm. So actually with me today are members of the Future Innovation Team. And this group, many of them have been together now for a little bit, about a year and a half or so. Some are newer. But it was just a fantastic experience we’ve had. And I wanted to share with all of you, and let you not only get introduced to this group, but really get a sense as to what they add to the strategy of CLA and the vision of CLA. I know I get impressed with the 50% that I understand that they’re talking about, and I guess really impressed with the other 50% because it sure sounds good. But it does give us that knowledge that we need. So I would love for all of you across CLA to get introduced to this group and hopefully, as I do, really appreciate the efforts. They do this really on a volunteer basis. This is their time above their day jobs, really helping the firm move forward. With that, I’m happy to turn it over to one of the FIT members. And somebody needs to raise their hand. We have a hand raised. John Tauer. [00:02:44] John: Thank you, and hello CLA, and I appreciate having the opportunity to say a few words. And I had to raise my hand there initially because Denny said he wanted to put a group together to figure all this out. If you’re looking to us to have it all figured out, we don’t have it all figured out, and frankly, we’re probably never gonna have it all figured out. It’s a journey. So what is FIT doing and how do we feel we’re helping the firm? It’s really trying to dive deeper into the disruption that we’re hearing and we’re seeing throughout all industries, throughout the economy, in many different pockets. And we don’t know what the exact answer is. We don’t know the exact path to get there. But we know we all need to be engaged in it, and we need everybody from CLA to be engaged in it at some level, whether you just started with CLA, you know, one day ago and you have an idea. We want to hear about it. If you’ve been here for 30 years, we want your help as well, too, because you’re also probably leading others and other groups and need to be open to that. So again, that’s what we really see as probably again as top level, what does FIT do? You know, we just got our ears and eyes open and trying to understand the market and hoping that we can add value to where we’re all trying to go. [00:03:51] Denny: Jessica Platt from New Bedford. [00:03:53] Jessica: I would also say in regards to the FIT, when people hear about FIT,

[00:00:05] announcer: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. [00:21:20] Cara: Hello, CLA family. My name is Cara Schleper, and I’m Danny Schleper’s daughter. I know he has mentioned me in some of his podcasts. I’m 28 years old, currently living in Tampa, and working out of St. Petersburg as a business development manager for a loyalty marketing firm. My dad asked me to do this podcast to give my experience and view of the firm. I was a bit taken aback on why he or the firm would like to hear from me, but as I sat and thought about it, I realized the firm has been a part of my whole life. [00:50:25] One of the first things I thought about was my father’s podcast on CLA’s mobility philosophy. Of course, as you all know, this is a subject that hits close to home. As I was listening to it, I really think my father gave us a lot of credit, but I thought I would share a bit from my perspective. When we moved from Minnesota to St. Louis, I was only six years old. I didn’t have too much clue of what was going on. However, with the Philadelphia move, I was 13, just started eighth grade. [01:19:15] We had made some roots. I had fallen in love with baseball–of course, “Field of Dreams,” and the St. Louis Cardinals. I had a ton of friends, even knew what high school I wanted to attend– which if you’ve ever known someone from St. Louis, that’s a big deal. I knew exactly what was going on, so when my father sat us down to have a family meeting, I knew exactly what it was about. One thing that my father did, which he has done for our whole lives, was be completely transparent and honest. He told us why we were moving, what it would mean, what it meant to the firm, and of course, what it meant to him. The firm was seen as a part of our family. It meant a lot to my father, so it meant a lot to us. He never made it about his job or his passion or his ambitions. It was about what opportunities we could have as a family that neither him nor my mom ever had. The firm was giving my family the opportunity to see things that were beyond our scope of the world, so my family was in. [02:17:11] Let’s just say the move was extremely difficult for our family, and at points it felt like the family we were in St. Louis was gone forever. We struggled with a new culture, a faster pace of life, and handling new areas and people we weren’t used to. I remember distinctly showing up for the first day of school with the wrong uniform and crying in the car, telling my mom I didn’t want to go in. I was mortified. My dad took the brunt force of this, of course, because he was seen as the reason why we moved, even though we all agreed as a family. [02:49:00] It took a toll on everyone. Philadelphia honestly never became our home. However, what did become our home was our family unit. We established a bond during those years that I’ve come to cherish more than anything, because in the end, we only have each other amongst millions of people. We weren’t the Brady Bunch, and we did have our share of fights, but we made it through this struggle and came out on the other side as a stronger family. [03:16:25] If I hadn’t moved to Philadelphia, I wouldn’t have seen or heard of the University of Tampa, who heavily recruited from my high school. I would have never experienced catching the train in New Jersey to hang out in New York for the weekend, or have the ability to travel abroad at a young age. I probably would have never known how good a hoagie is from Wawa, which would be an utter shame. These experiences have taught me that no matter where I go in the world, I can find a piece of home. [03:44:15] Early in my own career,

CEO Denny Schleper takes all types of questions from our CLA team in Northern California’s Walnut Creek office. Hear about his time in San Francisco, his thoughts on CLA’s Global outlook and even learn about his favorite movie and why. [00:00:05] announcer: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. Denny: Hello, CLA family. This is Denny Schleper once again coming to you with my monthly podcast, and I’ve had the opportunity to visit a lot of offices, as many of you know, and today I have the pleasure to be out in the Walnut Creek area. [00:00:36] It’s a wonderful, beautiful office. We have around 27, 30 people in this location. Just a little bit about the office itself, through September, the revenue for this office is sitting at around $6 million of revenue, and the expectation is that we’ll finish the year probably around 7 1/2 million. [00:00:56] The really wonderful thing is through September, that $6 million of revenue is putting the office a million dollars-plus over budget for the year, so that’s obviously fantastic news, and a lot of growth, and I think I heard that growth compared to last year is sitting at around 20% growth for the location, so on my behalf and for all of the people at CLA, congratulations to the office. [00:01:23] Thank you for all of the efforts that you’ve put in, especially as most of you know as part of the CLA family, this office has only been with the firm for the last 11 months, and so that means they’ve produce that growth percentage and that over budget amount in a time of terrific transition, but when I look across the room and the faces, it looks like everybody still stayed healthy and are still smiling, so we wanted to thank them for their efforts as well. [00:01:50] We also just wanted to open it up to questions they might have or anything that might help us continue to move the firm forward, the CLA promise forward, not only in the what we do, which that is we help our clients, and not only the how, and that is by getting to know them extremely well and building relationships, but probably the most critical piece, and that is the why, and that is to create opportunities both for our clients and for all of us here at CLA. So we’ll turn it over to Russ first. Russ: Hey, Denny. Just since you’re visiting the Bay Area, just want to know what’s your favorite place to visit? [00:02:30] Denny: So, you know, many times what happens with my visits across the country is I do spend most of the time at offices or actually with the people or the leaders from those offices, so many times people ask me, “What have you done?” and the answer’s pretty boring, and that is, “I went from the airport here, and I went from here back to the airport.” However, this trip my wife and I came out last Saturday, so today being a Wednesday, it’s given us a few days to not only meet with offices but also to spend some free time in the Bay Area. [00:03:05] So what did we do? Probably my favorite thing was actually yesterday we visited Alcatraz, and what was really nice is I put my wife in the cell and just imagined. That wasn’t very nice. She got kind of weirded out though. She said the minute we got on the Rock, she said she felt this incredible weight come on her chest, and she just–she freaked out a little bit, so when I put her in the solitary confinement cell, that did not go so well, but we saw really tremendous part–amounts of the city. [00:03:38] We went on the big bus tour, actually, went across Golden Gate, did all those types of things, and I’m not a great person with heights. In fact, I’m horrible with heights. I’m okay on airplanes, but you put me on something like that,

Get an inside look into some of the risk management issues the firm faces. Listen to a conversation with Denny Schleper, CEO, Hod Dahl, chief quality officer, and two representatives from Integro, our insurance brokerage agency. [00:00:05] male announcer: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. [00:00:19] Denny: Hello, everyone, CLA family, this is Denny Schleper. I wanted to take an opportunity that we’re just experiencing this week working with really our brokers, basically an agency out of Chicago, called “Integro” that works with CLA to help us place our insurance with underwriters both domestically as well as internationally for the firm. [00:00:48] It’s a great opportunity, obviously, to get exposure to what’s happening within the insurance marketplace, but what’s more importantly is it’s our opportunity to really share with the brokers, with the underwriters, where is CLA headed both strategically, economically, and so forth, but then ultimately it comes down to what type of experience is CLA having from an overall claims experience. [00:01:19] Where are we having quality issues within the firm that either potentially could turn to a claim or already has turned to a claim, and I thought for all of you it would be a great opportunity just to hear from some of the people that are with me. Of course, our chief quality officer, Hod Dahl, sits in on all of these meetings as I do, and we also have both John and Jay representing Integro here with us today as well. [00:01:49] They’ve been serving the firm in this capacity for many, many years. They know CLA extremely well. They know our experience and obviously are involved with all current issues, and I thought it’d be wonderful for all of you just to hear from them as to their perspective of CLA. [00:02:06] They have an opportunity to work with many other CPA firms, and I’m sure they see differences within CLA compared to some of their other clients and what we’re experiencing not only strategically and economically, but really also from our quality issues themselves, so I would like to ask them some questions, but before I do that, I’d like to just–Hod, if you just have some maybe introductory comments for the firm just to give them a perspective of really this process and what we go through not only to protect the firm, but improve the firm in the process as well. [00:02:48] Hod: Thanks, Denny, for that. This is a very interesting process to go through. I feel privileged over the last number of years to be able to represent CLA in these discussions with both our insurance brokers and then ultimately with the underwriters that support our professional liability insurance program. I think one of the intriguing things that has come out of these meetings is to hear the perspectives of the underwriters and the kinds of questions that they ask of Denny and I when we’re describing what’s happening in the firm both strategically and from a risk management perspective. [00:03:28] They’re very interested, obviously, in the claims experience we’ve had, but they’re also interested in finding out what are we doing to change the way we operate day in and day out that will improve the quality of the firm and by extension reduce our exposure to claims made against the firm, so I just really enjoy the interactions with the underwriters. They ask some tough questions once in a while, and it really challenges us to think about how are we responding to these risk issues. [00:04:02] Denny: Thank you, Hod. I’m gonna have both Jay and John introduce themselves, but also just maybe the perspective from your world that you come from. Just on a broad scale,

[00:00:04] [music up] Narrator: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. [00:00:19] [music out] Denny: Good morning, CLA family. This is Denny Schleper, and I’m coming to you today actually sitting at our CLA Foundation board meeting. I thought, you know, back in June, we had a Give Day, and I sent out a voicemail to all of the people within CLA asking you to consider contributing and participating in the CLA Foundation. I never had an opportunity, really, to thank you for that participation, and I thought today would be a great way to thank everyone, either if it was with your financial support, your time, or simply your interest in the foundation. [00:00:59] Give Day was a tremendous success. We had over a half a million dollars raised on that day alone. We had well over 1,000 people participating in Give Day. When you think about the CLA family and know that well over 20% of us were able to participate in some way financially, I think it’s just a tremendous credit to the organization, our people, and really living the promise that we all talk about. [00:01:32] I come to you today, obviously, in the midst of the horrific storms in the Texas region, and you get to see live on television the need of people and how fortunate we all are. We complain about a little bit of rain. A little bit of rain has been made relative in these days when you start to see the horrific damage that’s been caused. So again, people that are not as fortunate as all of us, I think it’s a great time to remember that. [00:02:02] So I wanted to pass along my thank you to all of you. I also wanted to give the board of directors an opportunity to introduce themselves and also say a few words to all of you. We’ve never really had an opportunity to do that. So with that, I’d like to turn it over to Brian. [00:02:19] Brian: Good morning, CLA. This is Brian D’Orazio, the treasurer of the foundation, and, again, just wanted to thank everybody for your support for this great cause and organization. [00:02:30] Sarah: Good morning. This is Sarah Curfman, associate director of the foundation. Thank you for all your participation in giving day, and if you have any questions on the foundation, we can be reached at clafoundation@claconnect.com. [00:02:45] John: A shameless plug. [00:02:46] Sarah: Well. [00:02:46] John: This is John Langan. Many of you know I wear a lot of hats in the firm, so I’m chief industry officer for the public sector, so that’s relevant to the work we do in the foundation. I have the honor of chairing the CLA firm board, and I also am the chair of the program committee for the foundation, and so making the connection between the firm’s strategy of career-building and the career opportunities we’re providing through the money that you’ve given and the time that you’ve given and the grants that we’re able to give to these worthy organizations is really the CLA promise in action, and connecting those dots, so thank you very much. [00:03:28] LaChel: Good morning, everyone. This is LaChel Hird, and I’m part of the career-building leadership team here at CLA. Of course, our focus is everything related to career-building, but very excited to be part of an organization that really took that strategy to be the career-building firm and try to make an impact in our communities across the United States. Very excited about the impact we’ve been able to create and the opportunities that we’re able to give to people in our communities, and excited to see where the foundation goes. Thanks again. [00:03:54] Kira: Hello, this is Kira Sexton, a director from the Indianapolis office,

[00:00:05] Denny: Good morning, CLA. This is Denny Schleper. I’m actually in Milwaukee today, sitting with the entire YET group, the Young Executive Team, and I wanted to come to all of you today in response to the feedback and coaching survey that was conducted over the last month or so. [00:00:25] We accumulated all of the results, and we’d like to share some of the feedback and some of the thoughts around that survey, but before we do that, I do want to come back to the real driver of that survey was the YET group. The initiative around more proper and timely feedback for all of our people to support the career building firm. So I thought it would be appropriate to pull the YET group back together after the results and really have a discussion regarding some of those reactions, and also to get back to all of you regarding the results. [00:01:06] Many of you have spent many time filling out the feedback and the questionnaire, and we just thought it was appropriate to share with you some of these thoughts. I will start off and really indicate that my initial reaction was positive, in that many of you shared, really from a scale of one to six from the survey, very high scores. [00:01:32] In fact, it was hard to find an average score anyplace in the firm, be it for an individual, an office, an industry, or a service area that wasn’t either a five or even as high as a six average score, but the more I thought about it, I realized that there was probably a disappointment–not a disappointment in any of our people within CLA, but probably a disappointment in the process itself, that–were we really able to identify the weak areas in the firm? [00:02:07] The areas in the firm where we’re not providing the right feedback and the right coaching. My sense is that the process that we used was not successful in identifying that, and therefore, we’re left in a position of, “What do we exactly do with the information that we have?” [00:02:29] Clearly, we want to glean as much information as we can, but it probably was not successful in one of my goals, and that was–and I know it was one of the YET’s goals–is to make sure we could identify, in the firm, where management really needed to spend more time identifying, why is the proper coaching not happening? Why is the immediate feedback not happening? And I think with some of the results to date, we’re gonna have a difficult time identifying that. [00:03:02] So with that said, I thought I would just kick it off for any of the YET members on maybe some of their reactions to the results. Why do they perhaps feel that the average score was probably unrealistically high? Maybe why we did not garnish more of the–which we all know are weak spots within the firm. [00:03:31] Could it have been the process itself? Could it have been the technology? What was it, maybe, that prevented some of that feedback that we were looking for? Any thoughts from the YET members? [00:03:44] Sahan: One of the things that I’ve thought about is, would it be a process issue in how this was administered? Because the way I understood it, the folks that were asking for feedback went to specific people or sent a blanket email out to a certain group to say, “Please provide me some feedback.” And human nature to me is that there would be somewhat of a self-fulfilling bias in that, because if you are a high performer, and you want more of the positive feedback, and you know you’ve been performing well, you would go to many, many people and ask for their feedback. [00:04:24] If you were a low-performing person, your bias would be to limit the amount of negative feedback and therefore go to a fewer number of people, so the law of averages means you like having a weighted average higher towards the folks that ...

00:00:06:17 –:–:–:– Announcer: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. This podcast is another way to remind us of our strategic focus, prepare us for new and exciting endeavors, and help us sustain our rhythm of business. 00:00:28:12 –:–:–:– Denny: Hello, CLA Family. Today I actually have the privilege of being at the director/manager conference in Minneapolis. And a lot of the discussion today was around the career-building firm, and part of the career-building firm is obviously the coaching process that takes place for all of our people in CLA. And I thought it was a great opportunity to sit down with some of the attendees and really have the discussion around what kind of coaching actually is happening throughout the firm, true-life experiences. So, with that, I’d like them to do a quick introduction so you know who I have the privilege of being with this evening. 00:01:04:27 –:–:–:– Rachel: This is Rachel Webster, health-care group, in the Charlotte office. 00:01:08:22 –:–:–:– Connie: This is Connie Lira from the Cedar Rapids office, and I am nonprofit tax all day every day. 00:01:14:22 –:–:–:– Stephanie: This is Stephanie McDonald, and I’m in the Charlotte office with the Biz Ops Group. Whoo-hoo! 00:01:20:02 –:–:–:– Matt: This is Matt Billman from Denver, Colorado. I’m in our private sector tax group. 00:01:24:22 –:–:–:– Tim: This is Tim Rawal. I’m also from the Denver offices, and I’m in the public sector group. 00:01:30:07 –:–:–:– Denny: Well, thank you all very much for spending some time with us this evening. When you think about the coaching process, we’ve all been through some good experiences, and we probably have been through some negative experiences, but I think it would be helpful and interesting to the CLA family–What has been your actual experiences? So maybe what we’ll do is we’re gonna start on the negative side, and we’re gonna finish on the positive side. So anybody would like to share either a coaching experience that was delivered to you or just one that you observed that is really probably not the way that we would want to be coaching within CLA. 00:02:10:27 –:–:–:– Connie: This is Connie, and, you know, I’ve been with the firm about ten years, and very early in my career, I got with a coach, and I was very excited, and I talked a lot to my coach. We talked, and we talked, and I felt like I was talking about all the things I wanted to do in my career, and I found out a little late that we weren’t actually communicating. And so the difference between talking and communicating is something that I have carried with me for the rest of my career, making sure that we are solidifying what I think is being said and what I think is happening to what is actually happening. Some specific things were, “I like to travel. I like to get out and try new things.” And I was saying these things, and then I didn’t follow up when they weren’t happening. So that’s the second takeaway. You know, you have to own your own career development, and if you aren’t getting out of coaching what you want to get out of coaching, make a change. Do something different. Those were two things that I learned a lot from. 00:03:09:22 –:–:–:– Denny: Thank you, Connie. I’m curious, when you think about the coach itself, ’cause a lot of this is improving the coaching part of our process, what do you think the individual was lacking and why they weren’t hearing you,

Announcer: Welcome to Own the Promise, a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make in every relationship we cultivate. Denny: Hello, CLA family. I had an opportunity today to be in the Tampa location, and was speaking with some of the people in Tampa.  And I thought the conversations that we were having were really good conversations, and some questions and issues that were on their minds.  And I thought it would be a great opportunity to share some of those questions, and even the thoughts beyond them.  So I have with me, today, I have Aaron, Michele, Ed and Katelyn from the Tampa location, and I thought we’d kick it off with some thoughts or questions from Aaron. Aaron: Thanks, Denny. One question that’s always struck me about the CLA promise is, you know, one of the strategic advantages there is that we’re the premier resource provider for owners of privately-held businesses.  As a member of the public sector group, it’s always felt like it somewhat excludes our group from the Promise.  How would you reconcile that, you know, for members of the PSG group, how should we approach that strategic advantage? Denny: Thanks, Aaron. You know, when the CLA Promise was developed years ago, that was an issue that was brought up quite a bit.  So we had to address it.  And there’s really two items I think I’d respond with.  One is understanding that the Promise is made up of a lot of different things, and four basic, strategic advantages.  One of the strategic advantages is the one you mentioned, and it does very clearly relate to owners of privately-held businesses.  But another strategic advantage we have is around industry specialization. And when it looks at industry specialization, and knowing that specifically, the public sector group is the largest industry that we have within CLA, clearly there’s no doubt in my mind that the CLA Promise really does address the public sector group, and it does it really through the industry specialization. But the other way is, I know within many individuals in public sector, they’ve also taken that strategy of a premier provider of the privately held, and they’ve somewhat modified it, and they’ve said, we are the premier provider for the stakeholders of our organizations and the clients that we serve. And therefore, that’s perfectly fine, modifying, really, that promise to say the stakeholder, in effect being the board member or whatever type of governance that non-profit or government organization has, is really the owner, really is the stakeholder of that organization. So, while we never want the Promise to be exclusive, we clearly want it inclusive.  This is the way that we really address the Promise within CLA, never meant to be exclusive. And again, serving as many public sector clients as we do, I think it really is pretty clear, our dedication to that industry and the importance to CLA. Ed, did you have a question? Ed: Thanks, Denny. One thing that’s always on my mind, as a profession, as a firm, we constantly need to be innovating.  Can you talk about some of the projects the firm has been working on, is currently working on, and plans to roll out in the upcoming years? Denny: Thanks, Ed. You know, innovation, maybe the best way to answer that is kind of understanding the way CLA and maybe even the world looks at innovation.  Innovation is not something we look at as necessarily inventing.  So that would be wonderful in the firm, if that occurred in certain situations.  But it’s really not the expectation.  The expectation is, can we be more innovative?  Can we take things that have already been invented, already designed, created, and simply can we improve upon them? It could be, can we just become more efficient? Or even another answer, is there ways that we could change the things we do to add more value to the client,

NARRATOR: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. DENNY SCHLEPER: Hello, CLA family. You know, within our career building firm documentation and philosophy, there’s built within that a CLA mobility philosophy. You can find a lot of information on this mobility philosophy within myCLA, however, I just wanted to spend some time with you really addressing what this mobility philosophy is really trying to do for you and for the firm. Clearly, the mobility addresses our ability to maybe move from one industry to another industry, or maybe from one service line to another service line, but it also gives us a great opportunity to be mobile within our geographies. I’d like to spend some time on this mobility of the geographies. You know, within the firm we’ve had hundreds of people that have decided to make geographic moves. Now, clearly, this is a difficult decision and it’s a difficult topic because all of use, as we look to balance our careers, we also have other priorities in our lives; our families, our friends, and so forth. And so it becomes a very difficult issue. I know this because I was one of those hundred-some people that have made that type of career decision. I know when I was in Minnesota I had an opportunity to commit to relocate to St. Louis, and I actually made that verbal commitment at work one day, and then decided, “How am I going to communicate this to my wife?” So, untraditional for me–I’ve told this story many times–I went and picked up some Chinese food, brought it home, walked in the door, and my wife looked at me and simply said, “What’s up?” ‘Cause she knew this was not something I would normally do. And then I told her that I made a verbal commitment to relocate our family to St. Louis. She paused, looked at me again, and then said, “What kind of Chinese food did you get me?” Now, clearly, I was very fortunate to have a partner that understood that making some tough decisions is really required within building a career and building a career that benefits not only your career and your work life, but also your personal life. You know, I had another opportunity about seven years later to relocate to Philadelphia, and this time, my children were older so I had to include them in the decision. So I decided to call and hold a family meeting. Now, that was the first and only family meeting our family has ever had. But I went into that meeting very, very nervous, of course, not knowing what type of reaction I would get from my wife and my children. And of course, the result was incredible for me. I was so proud of them. So proud of my children for their willingness to understand that a move like this could have some wonderful benefits, and they understood the downsides that it would have as well. And the thing that you would find if you spoke to, again, the hundreds of people that have made these types of moves, you would find some wonderful, wonderful stories of the experiences they have–had, not only within their careers, but also personal experiences. And, as we know, there’s always some downsides as well. There’s some sacrifices that go into this. But the reason I’m asking all of us at CLA to rethink and consider this mobility issue as part of our careers is because of the great need that we have within the firm. We have the need in many geographics for the opportunity for people to relocate. With relocations in the mobility philosophy generally comes leadership opportunities that may not have otherwise have been there and afforded to you within your career. So it gives you that opportunity, again,

NARRATOR: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. With another reporting and tax season successfully completed, CEO Denny Schleper introduces the season of feedback and shares a life lesson on giving and receiving. SCHLEPER: Hello once again, CLA family. I wanted to take sometime to congratulate all of those individuals across the firm that put in tremendous efforts for our reporting and tax season that we just finished. It was an incredible start to 2017, and all of your efforts really paid off extremely well not only in the results CLA is having but ultimately the on the benefits you’re adding to all of our client base. I also wanted to just wish all of those that are entering into their busy season the best of luck to do the same. You know,what was on my mind today was really a lesson that I was given many years ago, and it was really a life lesson around giving and receiving. It was even described to me at that time as it was the secret to life. The ability to know how to give in life and truly the ability to know how to receive in life. These are difficult things. Some people in the world are very,very good givers. Many times,those same givers may not be the best at receiving, and it really is critical that, in life, we learn how to be great givers and we learn how to be great at receiving gifts and receiving the benefits that are given to us. Why is this on my mind today? Well, we’re really entering into a season of giving and receiving, and that season is the season of feedback, feedback to all of our people within the CLA family. You know, I read a survey the other day of different issues that are common amongst all companies across the country, probably across the world. The number one thing that ends up on everyone’s list is this issue of feedback. It’s a problem no matter where you go, and it’s an issue and a challenge within CLA as well. Everyone struggles with this. The YET group, the Young Executive Team, they’ve been putting forth a lot of effort on how can we not only improve feedback within CLA, but how we can really make it part of our culture. Now really what they’re concentrating on in a lot of efforts today is really that first part and that’s the givers. Those people that should be giving proper feedback. We have a seminar on May 12th to hopefully help people understand what the career-building firm is, the role of the CLA career coach, and all types of tools and checklists that can help our people giving feedback, the givers in the firm, to become better givers of feedback. You know, to the givers that are out there, those that should be providing proper feedback, please remember there’s only two reasons for feedback. One is, you’re trying to change, perhaps, the behavior or something to help that person improve, or the feedback is to reinforce what that person is doing. Really any other type of feed back probably is not beneficial in this process. So I encourage all the givers out there, use some of the tools; take this seriously to make that feedback constructive and really, ultimately make it part of the culture of CLA. You know, I had an opportunity to speak with one of our people, probably in their late 20s, and they were struggling with some of this feedback issues across the firm. So, I really want to challenge the person on the other side of this equation and that’s the receiver. For all of those receiving feedback, I’d just like to share that conversation that I had. I really tried to explain and help the person through that, all of us, when we receive feedback,there’s probably three different emotions that run through us. One, initially, is a truth factor. In other words, the information that’s being given to us, we have a tendency to want to question it and to say, “Is it accurate? Is it complete? Is it fair?”

Narrator: Welcome to Own the Promise. On today’s podcast, CEO Denny Schleper talks about an Accounting Today article that highlights some of CLA’s accomplishments over the past year. Not only was CLA solidly ranked as eighth in the country among professional service firms, but the article focused on the significant and successful cultural transformation that is occurring in our firm. This cultural transformation was referred to as our major competitive advantage. Denny Schleper: Good morning, CLA. It is April 2017 already. It’s amazing that 2017 has gone by so fast. However, it’s gone by fast for many of us because of the incredible busy season that we are all experiencing. I know that many of you are spending some very long times in your vehicles, traveling to serve clients. There’s many others of you that are spending long hours in airplanes and in airports, looking to serve clients, as well. And then obviously there’s many of you that, day after day, are probably getting into the office extremely early in the morning, staying late at night, again trying to serve our clients. Sometimes six days a week. Probably some of you seven days a week. It’s an incredible effort that we’re all putting forward to serve our clients and fulfill the promise. And it clearly is showing the results of those efforts of living the promise. We are off to an incredible start in 2017, and I just wanted to share with you some of that success and hopefully share with you the rewards of all of your efforts across CLA. You know, one of the publications in our industry is the “Accounting Today” publication. And the “Accounting Today” every year puts out the top 100 firms in the country. And of course much of this is concentrated on the accounting practice, but just like CLA, many of the accounting practices have transformed more towards professional services, some of them containing the outsourcing and some of them containing wealth advisory, as well. But when you look at those statistics for 2017, it becomes clear now that CLA has moved into the eighth position as the eighth largest firm in the country. And while one could argue this doesn’t mean much, it also does mean something as far as the results of all of our efforts — our efforts to grow and our efforts to continue to offer career opportunities to everyone. I think it is a significant miles mark for CLA. And again, that’s congratulations to all of us and the efforts that we put forward. What the “Accounting Today” publication also does is, it looks at those top hundred firms and then it follows up with a publication on really ten firms that they select that they believe had either great years or are on a certain trend of growth that they would like to highlight. CLA is going to be one of those firms in a publication — an article that comes out soon. And some of that article material was shared with me. And they interviewed Alan Coulton. Alan is a consultant to our industry, really a friend of the firm. But what I’d like to do is just read you a quote that’ll be in this article from Alan, which I think really does summarize very well our competitive advantage and the great results that we are all having at CLA. Alan states, “2016 was a magical year for CLA in terms of overall growth. Everyone talks about the mergers they did and the high-performing firms that joined them, but they also had exceptional organic growth, as well. At a time when many of their competitors were milking compliance services, CLA was reinvesting in building out the firm of the future. Today, they have a major competitive advantage due to their outsourcing, advisory, and wealth management platforms. The secret sauce, though, lies in how they have transformed their culture to get their people to truly see themselves as business and financial advisors.

Narrator: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate. On today’s podcast, CEO Denny Schleper talks about the rhythm of business. CLA finds itself in an optimistic time. So how do we keep that optimism moving forward? And what results can we expect from maintaining a positive outlook? Denny Schleper: Hello, CLA family. This is Denny Schleper. Thank you for spending just a few minutes with me today. I hope to come to you each month with some messages that are really going around in my head, going around in the firm. And, you know, so many things have already happened in 2017, it’s reminded me a little bit of back at the early part of 2015. The firm was really asking ourselves, “There’s a lot of great things happening within the firm. How do we actually keep those good things moving forward?” And one of the communications that we put out was really the rhythm of business. How do we keep that good, positive rhythm going throughout CLA, keeping us moving forward not only as individuals building careers at CLA, but also in helping our clients? And as I look at 2017, I see that same optimism, that same enthusiasm that we had back at the beginning of ’15. A sense that the CLA Promise can really carry us forward to places we really haven’t taken it prior to this. And so what I wanted to do is just revisit this rhythm of business and communicate to you the things — really four items that I believe will continue to move this rhythm forward within the firm. Many of you have heard me say rhythm is different than momentum. Momentum will come and go inevitably, but rhythm is something we can continue to move forward as a firm. And really, that first item of keeping the rhythm moving is communicating our vision. And that vision is the CLA Promise. We need to make sure that both our people, our clients understand that the Promise is really a commitment that we will live every day to help the person across the table from us reach his or her dreams and build the better world he or she envisions. Our three integrated businesses, our culture, our strategic advantages are the mechanisms for delivering this experience to everyone we come into contact with. I had a great opportunity in our Ontario office this past week, which is obviously new to the firm and new to the Promise really going through “What does the Promise mean?” How are we different in the marketplace and how do those differences really tie right back in to the CLA Promise? It was a great opportunity and an opportunity we should all take to continue to communicate our vision. The second area is celebrating our achievements. As hopefully many of you have seen, we have come out with the real-time feedback cards as an opportunity for all of us to celebrate the great things that our people are doing. Our people do incredible things for our firm and for our clients across the country, and we need to share that success. Now, we all know positive recognition empowers our people and our hard work and commitment inspires others to do the same thing. The third area is around decision making. And I had a great experience — we were actually in front of the D.C. offices at a town hall meeting, and there was a recommendation made to really bring back, along with maybe the real-time feedback cards, real recognition symbols that people can share. Some people in our past legacies had leadership blocks or things like this. And so we made a decision right at the meeting that we were gonna start to work on that, and that is in process as we speak today. So again, decision making meetings just continues to keep the rhythm moving. And the final one is connectivity — connecting with one another. And I just want to share with all of you all the great ways that we really are connecting within CLA.