Here are the key takeaways from their discussion.

Topple the triangle: Rethink management structure

Shaun co-founded Air Accounting with his wife in 2015 after working in Australian mid-tier accounting firms for more than a decade. Those traditional firms operated within a triangular structure, with multiple managers reporting to each partner, multiple supervisors reporting to each manager, and so on.

“We found that that’s really slow for decision-making, slow for change, slow to adopt practices,” Shaun says.

As a result, Air Accounting uses a productized revenue model based on three core services. An origination team brings in new clients—primarily small-to-medium food and beverage businesses—before handing them off to one of the three department heads.

This new structure allows for functional flexibility. Shaun has hired a People & Talent Partner, built out marketing and admin teams, and hopes to bring on an innovation team in the future.

Ensure your team knows the score

Moving to a less conventional management structure also meant transitioning Air Accounting from a family-type culture to a high-performance team.

“In a team culture, there needs to be standards, and there needs to be a scoreboard,” he says. “The team needs to know whether they’re winning or losing, or progressing or going backwards.”

Air Accounting created a scoreboard that tracks metrics such as ‘jobs completed under budget per week’. A heat maps colors underperforming metrics red and excelling metrics green so that team members can watch their performance in real time.

And the company’s OKR process—an activity that data shows has the strongest impact on Practice Excellence—also uses a heat map to visualize progress toward quarterly goals.

“We’re starting at red and we’re going to get toward that green,” Shaun says. “And by 12 weeks, we want to see that we’re hitting those targets.”

Pathway to excellence

Karbon’s Practice Excellence data highlights the impact that strong leadership and management have on a firm’s ability to successfully navigate change and meet new milestones.

Harnessing the power of management looks like:

• Cultivating a management structure that works for your team and your clients, and allows you to adapt as needed

• Shifting your culture toward a high-performing, team-based approach

• Regularly measuring success and making sure the whole team understands their contributions

Invest in building up strong accounting firm management techniques and watch your firm soar to new heights.