Happy Monday!

This is something I’ve been really considering for the last 2-3 months. I think there’s an opportunity for us CAS firms to leverage our expertise in slightly different ways.

A few months ago, we started working with a $20M+ client that moves incredibly fast. They have big customers, visionary leader, and big ideas.

It ended up being a ton more work than expected.

On the surface, the issue looked like accounting.

But once we got in, it wasn’t really an accounting problem. It was a systems problem.

Manual workarounds everywhere. Approvals living in emails. Commission processes that changed faster than documentation. Fixes layered on top of fixes.

The previous accountant wasn’t lazy. They were keeping up. Every month was a sprint to close. So they applied duct tape where they could.

And to be fair, sometimes duct tape is what keeps things moving.

But duct tape compounds. Manual fixes become recurring fixes. Recurring fixes become fragile systems. Fragile systems eventually break.

We’re hired for the books.

But the books don’t stabilize until the business does.

As an accountant, this makes me cringe a little at the lack of boundaries.

As a business owner, this feels like an opportunity.

You can’t deliver clarity on top of chaos. Businesses need the proper controls & systems in place so that we can deliver great work.

This isn’t unique to this client. I see this constantly.

We’re hired to do the accounting.

But our work is held hostage by the client’s underlying systems.

Things like inconsistent revenues, inventory adjustments and cash flow issues show us there’s a problem.

On the surface these seem like accounting issues… but they usually aren’t.

Our work is simply where the cracks become visible.

At some point, you have to decide what kind of firm you’re going to be.

Are you the kind that patches the symptom and closes the month?

Or the kind that fixes the process so the symptom doesn’t come back?

For firms that want to lean into this, there’s an opportunity.

Here’s how I see it currently.

Who is better positioned to help businesses build (or point out) issues in underlying systems than we are?

The question really isn’t whether we should be doing this.

Many proactive firms already are (we are…)

The question is whether we acknowledge it and design around it intentionally.

Instead of treating systems work as accidental scope creep, we can treat it as part of the value.

Not by doing everything for the client.

But by recognizing that reliable numbers require reliable processes.

And building that into our offering.

That’s what I’ve been considering more and more lately with our mid-market CAS clients. Is this something you’ve thought about or identified?

My friends Carla and Steph told me about the Working Genius test months ago and I finally decided to take it.

And… it’s so cool. Basically everyone has types of work that:

It breaks the work into six stages:

What’s cool about it is how practical it is.

It explains why some parts of leadership feel effortless and others feel exhausting, and why certain team tensions aren’t personality conflicts, they’re energy mismatches in the work cycle.

Give it a shot, my whole team took the tests a few weeks ago and it’s been really cool to see and think about as a team.

Fun fact - my working genius is Invention and Discernment.

Have a fantastic week!

Tailor