Can't play the accounting game anymore? Just change the rules!

Note: This article is an excerpt from the book Coloring Outside The Lines: Business Thoughts on Creativity, Marketing and Sales.

By Jeff Tobe

Recently, I sat down to play a Chutes-and-Ladders-type game with my 7-year-old daughter. It was a lot of fun to see her little mind at work, but she had one annoying peculiarity: She was continually bending the rules, reshaping roles, changing the boundaries, reversing strategies. Everything I took for granted, she challenged.

Cheating? I don't think so.

When we decide that we are in competition with other CPAs, other priorities of your clients or even in your own organization, you implicitly agree to play the game the way it has always been played, to abide by the formal and informal rules and roles, as well as the unspoken rituals. Although competition can be fun and exciting, it is not very creative and definitely limits the imagination. It is because of this experience that I have concluded that competition encourages conformity.

Kids are always changing the rules and the way the game is played. Research shows that kids spend more time creating and recreating a game than actually playing it. So why not ignore the competition and start to recreate the way the "Accounting Game" is played?

When you compete head-on, you are just agreeing to play by the old rules, to conform to the way it has always been done, to stay in the lines! Innovation simply means to change the way we do things. I believe "there is no such thing as a new idea, only new ways of presenting old ones." This hits at the very core of our accounting persona. Once you make the decision not to "compete" but to define your own market, you can find solace in the fact that you don't have to re-invent the wheel to be successful. Approach the market with the mindset that you are simply going to find new ways to present what you already have.

Maybe that means figuring out a way to present your benefits differently or look at alternative ways to provide the same old service in a way it has never been presented before.

When you begin to accept competition as a head-to-head battle, there are no winners and you tend to lose any advantage you ever had in your marketplace. Look at what has happened with airline frequent-flier programs. What was once a very unique, innovative idea now has been copied so many times that no airline has the advantage in this arena. As a matter of fact, I would venture to guess that many an airline executive rues the day that the concept of frequent-flier bonuses was ever developed.

It would be naive and foolish of me to say, "Don't compete." I realize that anything you can do to beat your competition to the punch can give you some small advantage in the marketplace. Though you will gain some small, often one-time "one-ups" on your competitors by facing them head-on, competing will never present the breakthroughs that you are going to need to really move ahead of the pack or the staying power you need to survive in your profession.

Remember, every new and innovative idea in any business has always — ALWAYS — broken with tradition. I love to repeat the advertising copy of one of the large auto makers: "This is not your father's Oldsmobile." This is not the way your business has been conducted in the past. I have enjoyed challenging many of you to "stop looking in your rear-view mirrors to see how it has always been done in the past. Start looking through your windshield to see what is coming down the road ahead of you in the accounting arena." If you spend your time considering the way things have always been done in your organization, you are not prioritizing your energies.

Start asking yourself, "How can I present my organization's experience differently than all the others professing to be in the same business?"

By changing the rules to the game, you get outside of your comfort zone and begin looking at volatile marketing challenges from a whole new perspective. We are not going to be comfortable any longer and we can either accept the challenge or get left behind.

Helen Keller once said, "The most pathetic person in world is someone who has sight but has no vision." Rather than looking at the competition that IS, why not start to create what ISN'T?

Jeff Tobe is a certified speaking professional. For information about his books and keynote presentations or for free business newsletters, visit his Web site at www.jefftobe.com. Contact him at (800) 375-9929.

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