By Reggie Pottuklam & Dana Sadarangani
This generation is redefining all industries and accounting is trying to catch up with changes in business practices and tax laws. Accountants are known as boring and robotic bean counters, but change is coming.
Many accountants start their careers in the public sectors. These accountants are working 60 hours as their superiors did before them. With no change or new techniques, accountants have been so busy balancing the books they forget to create a work-life balance for themselves.
Other accountants that start their careers in the private sector understand a work-life balance but fail to understand all the complexities of what makes a business run.
When you have a skill set in dealing with numbers, reconciling and budgeting, it’s easy to start thinking only in a logical sense. As an accountant you can get engrossed in the logical side and lose the passion with the long-term goals.
School taught goals:
Accurately record the measurement or disclosure about financial information that help managers, investors and executives make decisions about allocating resources. This shows you are thinking exactly the way that your parent’s accountants think.
The true goal:
The goal is to be passionate about business and it should help you as an accountant guide the managers, investors and executives with multiple avenues of decisions.
The Change:
As an accountant keep your logical side in tact but start understanding empathy as well. The employees, the clients and efficiency of the work load are all the things that make a business run. Efficiency comes through good relations.
There is no way of tracking human emotions, goals and ideas for an accountant. The only way is understanding all those different personalities, human goals, and human emotions. This understanding will help to create a human connection through empathy.
When you create these connections, you will organically get your clients and employees attention. You will be surprised how much quicker your work gets completed and how easily a work-life balance is created.
At the end, equip yourself with a diverse experience to strategically analyze proper operation of workflow, waste reduction, strategy, growth, profit initiatives, general business and empathy. Stop being your parent’s accountant.
This is Accounting Your Life and the new way of doing accounting is to be passionate about the business and providing value to small businesses.