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Contact Sarah Hoxie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-hoxie-38b54133/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:05)Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Mitch Roshong, and I'm here to preview episode 144 of our series. Today's featured guest speaker is Sarah Hoxie. Sarah is the Chief Accounting Officer at LSC Communications. In this role, she is responsible for all aspects of accounting and has overseen various projects impacting the organization. Throughout this episode, Sarah talks about her experience with business transformation projects and focuses on the people involved. Transformations can greatly affect culture, and Sarah explains how to best manage that. So keep listening as we head over to the conversation now. Adam: (00:54)Sarah, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. And our focus today is going to be around business transformation. And so just to kind of start off, what is your take on business transformation?  Sarah: (01:05)So in my opinion, you know, business transformation, isn't a straight line journey. It's not a matter of starting at, you know, "A" and working your way to "Z", and then, and then you're done. It's really about, you know, looking at the opportunities that are out there in the environment, and adapting to those, whether it's, you know, social, economic, environmental, they're all things that need to be considered. And as you're on that journey, incorporating them as, as they change. You know, in my experience, it's a lot of business transformation is about making the business or making your area of the company continue to remain, you know, relevant and I think the scope can be, you know, as narrow or as broad as, as needed, you know, I think you see a lot of companies that do business transformation well, look at all levels of a business and they never stopped looking for the changes that are out there. Adam: (02:08)So when we look at business transformation, what approach do you take when you're leading a transformation? Sarah: (02:15)I think the first thing that I really focus on is his tone at the top. I think to get everyone in a part of the business or even the whole company engaged in business transformation, they need to view it as a priority from the leaders of the, of the business. And I think it should, you know, my approach has been to involve all levels of the organization, right from, you know, people that have just joined the company or your interns, you know, right through people that are, you know, more senior in individuals, and getting their input. I think they have got to be helping drive some of the, the change, help identify, what the issues are, what the problems are, and then work together to find solutions for them. I think when you get all levels of the business, working behind this kind of transformation, it really does drive better solutions. You've got people that are doing some of the things on a day-to-day basis that can see how they can resolve the issues are they know what the issue is, and maybe don't know how to resolve it, but if you get everyone involved, then all those ideas are coming together and everyone's working towards them. I think another key piece of it is really accountability. Once you have that tone at the top set, and, you know, people are right behind that, then, you know, you can start to encourage everyone to be accountable for the areas they're getting involved in. From an accountabilities perspective, tracking some of the progress on the areas of transformation is really helpful as well, because, you know, if you're three months into this kind of process and you can precisely communicate to everyone, the progress that has been made, you know, and you're doing that through being able to track the progress, it starts to build the momentum for everyone to really get behind, the project. But, you know, it's in, you know, in the organizations I've been with it's, the tracking can take over. You really want something that's simple. That's not taking time away from the actual transformation activity. It kind of going back to what I was saying about getting all levels involved. I think if you're going to get true business transformation, you really need to give people a, you know, a lot of free reign to come up with those ideas. You know, don't set kind of restraints on projects or ideas that can be investigated. And I think that's, that's where I've had the most success when you've really given people a, you know, a free range, maybe hold up a brainstorming session to identify all potential suggestions of how we can do transformation out there and then start to investigate them rather than, you know, giving very tight restrictions on what can be proposed. That's something else that I've seen work well is not losing track of ideas and suggestions that don't necessarily make sense today, but may make sense in the future. Keeping an eye on those is always helpful because you know, the world is continually changing and that that idea or suggestion might be a great in, you know, two or three years time. Adam: (05:47)It almost sounds like you're referring to like a cultural shift within an organization, where, you know, you're changing the tone at the top and you're listening to ideas, even writing them down and keeping them for two to three years, maybe because that idea may be different later. How would you execute like a cultural shift in an organization to make sure that the transformation is successful? Sarah: (06:07)When you think about making it stick? It has to be something that continually comes up in everyone's day to day activities. It's not something that just people focus on for a month and that it's never mentioned again. It's, you know, really keeping it in the forefront of everyone's mind, even if it's small, day-to-day kind of, activities, really, you know, any chance of, you know, small meetings as a team or a larger kind of town halls, really having it as an agenda item that people talk about, that people celebrate. Some of my teams have had a great success in that. And, you know, there's been, you know, recognition and reward for those kinds of, activities, which then starts to drive more, more change within the organization. Adam: (07:05)That makes complete sense. But then how do you avoid people from falling back into the old habits? Because, you know, you can, put it in front of people's faces, but then over time, you know, it's easy to go backwards. Sarah: (07:18)Yeah. Absolutely true. And I think it's very easy when individuals are not seeing the, kind of the fruits of their labors, right. If they don't understand what impact their projects or their involvement is having in, driving change or maybe improving results, then it's very easy to slip back. So the more that businesses and groups can communicate successes, I think it's easier to stop them falling back into the old habits, you know, and I think it's listening to all viewpoints within an organization as well. People that have been with organizations a long time, have a very different viewpoint, than people who, you know, have only been with the company a short period of time. I think it's making both of those groups feel like their thoughts are, and input is valued. You know, people that have been with the organization, you know, a longer time may think, oh, we tried this, it didn't work. and so a lot of it is encouraging those individuals to, you know, be more open to trying again, but also listening to them and say, Hey, why didn't this work previously and trying to l...

Michael L. Schmit, CPA, is the Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer of the Schweitzer-Mauduit International Inc. (SWM), a publicly traded, multinational diversified producer of highly engineered solutions and advanced materials for a variety of industries, headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia (NYSE: SWM). SWM has been experiencing rapid growth over the last few years and their accounting team has been going through a business transformation, which Michael has been the leader of. This transformation includes implementation of robotic process automation (RPA), improved operational analytics, and several process improvements to meet the needs of the growing business. Michael's career spans over 25 years where he has held leadership roles in financial reporting, operations and management accounting, finance, internal and external audit, as well as shared services. And, in this episode, he shares what has gone in to his current business transformation project, how it compares to previous transformations, and how technology and the future of work play a role. His main takeaway? Businesses must understand their "why" and the specific goals they hope to achieve through transformation. Download and listen to the whole episode now!Contact Michael Schmit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-schmit-8350545/Michael's Profile Magazine Article: https://profilemagazine.com/2020/michael-schmit-swm-international/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05) Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson. And this is episode 143 of our series. Today's conversation features Michael Schmit, the corporate controller and chief accounting officer of SWM. The accounting team at SWM has been going through a business transformation, including the implementation of RPA, improved operational analytics and several process improvements to meet the needs of the growing business. And Michael has been the leader of these efforts. In this episode, he discusses the importance of identifying the company's why when considering a transformation and the role of technology in the process, keep listening as we head over to hear more now.   Mitch: (00:51) So business transformation is not really new when it comes to accounting and finance, but the systems, the processes, the things that are being transformed have certainly evolved. So what has accounting transformation looked like at SWM and how does that compare to previous transformation projects or other things you've seen evolve in your experiences?   Michael: (01:11) Yeah, I think that accounting and finance really isn't new, but I think the why we're doing this and the, how we'll achieve this, really has been continuing to evolve, to ensure that we're meeting customer's needs. For instance, the SWM, our accounting business transformation is really following our overall company's business transformation. SWM's has been growing at an accelerated pace, both organically and through acquisition in the last year and a half or the last, I guess two and a half years since I've been here, we've actually grown from about a billion in revenue and 22 production facilities in eight countries to now 1.5 billion in revenue with 36 production facilities in 11 countries. And now we operate in over 90 countries. So we've been really focused on integrating our acquisitions while transforming our own accounting processes, leveraging best practices from companies we've acquired as well as adding new technologies along the way. So our why wasn't to, just, you know, cut costs. It was to obtain synergies from the business, but also improve on kind of our status quo and, add more value from our roles as accountants. The vision for the accounting organization here is to operate as one team and one company to support our company's vision, their knowledge sharing and process improvements and leveraging technologies to execute world-class business partnering and fiduciary excellence. And so all those things are kind of leading the transformation and, you know, we see the fiduciary excellence piece as the absolute minimum expectation. Yeah. That includes complying with all laws and regulations, and to do that as efficiently as possible, but then also business partnering, which is partnering with companies' leadership and management, each other on our teams, and also other groups to provide actionable, insightful reporting to assist in decision-making to achieve the company's vision. So in other words, taking the rear view kind of near view of driving down the road and focus more on what's coming on the windshield and in the future of the road ahead. So this is different than past transformations, I was involved with in other companies, cause I think the why was really always focused on how do we lower costs and the, how was we're going to offshore it to a lower cost place like the Philippines or India. You know, sometimes robotics were in there as well, but really that's the main difference I see.   Mitch: (03:47) We'll get back to the specific, why at SWM and some of the goals and, you know, progress that you've seen in just a minute, we'll go to that. But I first want to, you know, take a step back. You mentioned business partnering another term that's, you know, again, not new, but it's definitely more prominent, I think these days when it comes to accounting and finance. This whole conversation has a lot to do with the future of work. And that's another hot topic, a phrase that is getting thrown around a lot. So before we really dive into what all of this means and the connection between the future of work transformation, business partnering, I'm curious what you think about the future of work. How do you define it? What are some of the main considerations are really, you know, why listeners should be aware of what's going on when people talk about the future of work?   Michael: (04:33) Yeah, to me, the future of work really boils down to value creation. In other words, how can we as accounting professionals add more value beyond what we have done historically and what can now frankly, be done at lower rates in other countries, or be replaced by technology? You know, we're evolving from the history of being just scorekeepers to being trusted business partners. And that is someone that's going to provide those insights to help drive decisions of the business. And, you know, the rate of change now is greater than it's ever been in most industries and it's going to continue to increase. So as accountants, we have to be better prepared to change and help our businesses succeed in this. So we need to be able to evolve ourselves and improve at least at the speed of our business. And why should your listeners be, you know, interested in that, frankly, so they don't get left behind. I mean, I literally, you know, having their roles outsourced overseas or replaced by technology accountants today really must focus on continuing to develop their own business skills and be able to articulate the value they're bringing to the business above, you know, debits and credits and internal controls. That's just not good enough anymore and won't be in the future.   Mitch: (05:56) So that's a great point. And we have a lot of conversations about this and the need for upskilling, reskilling, and technology is a big part of that. And we'll get to technology coming up next, but to connect the dots in our conversations so far, the accounting transformation that you talked about, the specific why at SWM o...

About Sylvana Caloni: https://sylvanacaloni.com/about-me/Humble Crumbles: Savouring the crumbs of wisdom from the rise and fall of Humble Pie:https://sylvanacaloni.com/humble-crumbles/https://www.amazon.com/HUMBLE-CRUMBLES-Savouring-crumbs-wisdom/dp/1916328571/https://sylvanacaloni.com/book-reviews/https://sylvanacaloni.com/testimonials-2/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:05) Welcome back to count me in, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and today you will hear from Sylvana Caloni, as she joins us for episode 142 of our series. Sylvana is a former equities fund manager, a professional certified coach and author of the book, Humble Crumbles. She was an executive vice president when she was privileged to partner with an executive coach. She is now a leadership consultant committed to paying it forward by enabling clients to make an impact at their companies and in their communities. In this conversation, you will hear Sylvana discuss the value of failure, the benefits of clear communication and ways to propel business. Let's head over and listen to her now.   Adam: (00:57) Sylvana, I just want to thank you so much for coming on the count me in podcast today.   Sylvana: (01:01) Thank you, Adam. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and to explore failure and entrepreneurship and all sorts of different ideas coming from our book, Humble Crumbles.  Adam: (01:13) So speaking of your book, Humble Crumbles, you say in that book, failure has a purpose and failure's a part of the process. So can you just start by giving us some more insight into that statement?   Sylvana: (01:25) Yeah, absolutely. So I guess we see across different cultures and across different types of businesses, if you like and academia, that there is a fear of failure. And we, as individuals often are constrained in what we do because of that fear of failure. It may be so great that we prevent ourselves from jumping in taking the leap and starting up a business, or perhaps we have started the business, but because of that fear of failure and because of a fear of not meeting the commitments we've made to our stakeholders, et cetera, again, it constrains what we can do. So if you look at tech companies, for instance, you'll often hear the phrase fail fast, fail often, or if you look at scientific revolutions and innovations and how things have pivoted during this pandemic, actually, if there had not been failures, there wouldn't have been learning. There wouldn't have been multiple iterations. There wouldn't have been new responses to the challenges that are out there. So for Paul O'Donnell my co-author and I, the idea that failure is part of the process is that we do need to sort of remove ourselves from that view that it's first time only time, and we're going to be successful from the get go, because in fact, most successful businesses have started out in some other form in their initial iterations. And it's the ability of the business owners and entrepreneurs to be flexible and to pivot and, you know, take on constructive criticism or take on impartial advice to modify their product or service, which means that ultimately it is successful.   Adam: (03:15) So when you look at these leaders who are having to transition and fail and become more successful, how do you, you know, how do you understand what makes them tick? What do you, what, what can we do to, to look at these people and see what can, what can cause you to fail and keep coming back and keep coming back?   Sylvana: (03:34) It's a great point that I think one of the key points we're trying to make in Humble Crumbles it's that the failure of the business is often attributed to external factors. So someone will say, well, you know, the economic environment deteriorated or technology changed or legislation was too prohibitive. And that's true. I mean, absolutely there can be external factors that impact the success or failure of a business. But what I found when I was an equity analyst and funds manager, was that more often than not the failure of a business was to do with the owners or the leaders, the management of the companies and the problems I often saw were whether they were not self-aware. So they didn't have a sense of, okay, well what makes me tick? What, what are my drivers? What are my motivations? How do I make sense of my world? And in having that lack of self-awareness, they're not then able to engage successfully with others because they take the view that well, it's my way or the highway, or this is the way the world works. So they don't have an appreciation that their own norms, standards, practices, ways of behaving are not universal. They could differ with other people because other people have different cultural backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, gender backgrounds, it could be a different set of, drivers within an organization. And if at what we show in the book, Humble Crumbles, and it's full title is Humble Crumbles: Savoring the Crumbs of Wisdom From The Rise and Fall of Humble Pie. We share Paul O'Donnell's story. So Paul is my co-author and Paul like me had come from the financial services world. We had both worked at Bankers Trust. So BT co. Us company. In fact, even though we were both Australians and you can hear that in my accent. So we were working in Bankers Trust in Sydney, Australia, and Paul eventually left BT and started up a couple of his own businesses. So he's a serial entrepreneur and his first couple of businesses were in what you might call financial adjacent. So they were similar types of businesses, you know, financial advisory or publishing a financial material, fundraising, that type of thing. And then he wanted to go into a business that was more real in the sense of making something so humble pie was a business that manufactured pies for the retail sector. And then ultimately also he got into wholesale. So it was, it was pies that we eat sweet and savory pies that we eat. And he came from that financial services background with the number of ways of seeing the world behaving and business traditions, if you like, or business practices that certainly worked for him, but there were others that were more relevant to financial services, but not so much to a factory where he had people in the factory kitchen making the pies or sweeping the floors or delivering the pies to the shops, et cetera. So what we found Paul was blindsided in that he just assumed for instance, that the factory workers would, like him, have a view around equity as a way of incentivizing behavior or around bonuses as a way of, you know, promoting work, et cetera. Whereas these people had different concerns, different cares, you know, for them the weekly pay pack. It was what was really important, not some notion of equity or a bonus at the end of the year. So the blind sidedness or the lack of Paul's self-awareness, which he courageously, I have to say. I mean, he fesses up basically in the book and looks at some of the errors he made with. I think, I think he's very generous and very courageous in doing that because what he's doing is he's demonstrating how sometimes the very things that we think are our strengths, if taken to an extreme can actually turn into a weakness or can turn into a vulnerability in a negative sense.   Adam: (08:00) That almost mak...

Contact Anders: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andersliulindberg/IMA's Count Me In Ep. 45: Anders Liu-Lindberg - "Insight x Influence = IMPACT": https://podcast.imanet.org/45Additional Resources from Anders:Link to book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Create-value-Finance-Business-Partner/dp/1724850741Link to the ebook: https://businesspartneringinstitute.org/research-and-networks/#insightsLink to blog: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andersliulindberg/detail/recent-activity/posts/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05) Welcome back to count me in IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson. And this is episode 141 of our series. For today's conversation, we welcome back Anders Liu-Linberg. Anders is an advisor to senior finance and FP&A leaders on how to succeed with business partnering. He is a partner, the chief operating officer and the chief marketing officer for the business partnering Institute. Back in episode 45 of count me in Anders talked about how insight time influence equals impact when it comes to business partnering. In this episode, he focuses on the influence piece of that equation and shares how business professionals can increase their influence across the organization. Keep listening to hear more about business partnering and contributing to overall impact.   Mitch: (00:58) So first Anders, thank you for joining us again in our first podcast episode, I know we really talked about, business partnering at a little bit of a higher level. You know, you gave us your definition of insights, times influence equals impact, and we really appreciated all that information you shared. So we wanted to bring you back and for today's conversation, we really want to dive into the influence piece of that equation and how, developing influence leads to more effective business partnering. So to start off our conversation, you know, as far as influence goes, what is the first step? You know, what does it take to be an influential business leader?   Anders: (01:36) So if you're a finance professional today and you want to influence business leaders, I guess the first simple step that you need to take is to identify who are those business leaders that you're most likely to be supporting, because that are always clear to people, right? So who is, who's my stakeholder, who is this person or these few people that I need to influence? I think that's, that's really step number one. And then step number two, once you have intensified them is really to reach out to them and say, Hey, you know, I used to work in accounting and finance, and now when I get closer to the business and, you know, help you drive your agenda, can we have a talk about what you're doing and how it can maybe help, right? So then you can have the first conversation and of course, then you build on it from there, but at two steps, identify and engage and then, you know, we can get it into the more details.   Mitch: (02:33) And then the business leaders that you work with, they're not always just interested in data and reports, right? There's a little bit more of a relationship, I think that has to be built, especially when we talk about business partnering. So as far as influence, how can I become part of the team?   Anders: (02:49) Yeah. So, so key for someone to send to you is obviously that they trust you and in any kind of human relation, you know, we want to get to know people before we start to trust in them, of course, from a finance and accounting perspective, we come often with the numbers and with the data and, you know, the foundation is that they can trust those, right? If our accounting is not working so well and the numbers keep changing, I mean, we need to fix that foundation first because otherwise there's not going to be any trust. The second bit is then to develop the interpersonal trust and build the relationship that can best too, by spending as much time as possible with your stakeholders. So today many finance teams, you know, they sit on their own floor in the building and they sit together and they do finance stuff. But if you want to build relationships with business leaders, you got to get out from that cubicle and move your desk and your chair down to those people you want to support and sit with them, if not for a full week, then at least three to four days a week. And then maybe you can one day finance because that's the best way to build trust, to be around them, you know, have the coffee side chat and all those small info and sometimes follow up is that we need to do, because that's how you get to know people. And if you don't know people, they probably don't trust you either.   Mitch: (04:09) That's a great point. And it is a lot of times I feel some of those more casual conversations as well, where you kind of learn about each other. So putting yourself out there and kind of forcing that opportunity, I think is a great recommendation, kind of building on this, you know, a little bit more, as far as the steps, is there a proven structure, you know, that could help me to really start influencing these business leaders and the decision-making, you know, beyond the relationships. Now let's get back into the business a little bit.   Anders: (04:36) Yeah. So we generally have like a three-step process you could follow. The first step is what we already talked about is to identify your stakeholders or the business leaders that you want to support. And then do a small, let's say a desktop, a biography of analysis and say, how strong is my current relationship with these stakeholders? How much influence do they have in decision making? And what are the currently thinking about, right? Because then you sort of know, you know, that the important ones where the relationship is maybe not so strong and then maybe they don't have such a good impression of you. That's where you need to start to identify the person and say, Hey, I want to sit down, have a lunch or talk with you. So at that talk with our coffee or lunch, or virtual, whatever it might be, you sit down and talk about three things, introduce yourselves if you haven't done that already talk about how their business is going and then, you know, get an idea about what do they think about finances right now, because that tells you one of their priorities and what do they think if you. Then you had, when you've had that talk would be half an hour, an hour, it doesn't have to be long. Then you go back to them and say, thanks for having that chat with me. Now, I know more about your, let's say your top three priorities. Now I want to try to help you. So, can we discuss how it can be a part of that? And so maybe they have some priorities. Some are maybe very far out in terms of this transformation or some very customer centric things, but some of it could be very relevant also to finance and accounting to get involved in. So you might pick one of that top roads and say, I'm going to spend some time analyzing the numbers and figuring out,...

Contact Dana Pascarella: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-catanzaro-94978a6/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05) Welcome back to count me in, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson. And this is episode 140 of our series and today's conversation. You will hear from Dana Pascarella, VP of finance at Wesco International. As she talks about staff development. Dana is a finance executive with extensive accounting experience at a global publicly held fortune 500 organization. She is particularly skilled in mergers and acquisitions, debt, financings, business growth strategies and technology upgrades, among other areas, but she is especially passionate about developing our finance staff to ensure organizational success. Let's head over to the conversation and hear more about it now.  Mitch: (00:52) So Dana, from a finance perspective to kick things off here, what are some of the key areas you focus on when it comes to staff development?  Dana: (01:01) Yeah, so ultimately I'm focused on providing my staff, you know, a foundation that will allow them to deliver solutions in the future. So, obviously that's, teaching them the skills to become an expert in their area. Right. I want them to become an expert. I need them to have the basics, the fundamentals, the technical skills, but also I think it's so important, especially with the younger staff that they really start to understand and learn those softer skills. So organization, adoptability, communication, you know, those soft skills are so important and can truly take years to learn and you want them to be able to really be able to draw upon that, that total foundation so that the technical skill plus the soft skill will really provide them something, to draw upon as they move forward in their career.  Mitch: (01:59) Yeah. You know, it's interesting at IMA obviously we focus on management accounting, you know, accounting and finance and the technical skills, the emerging skills are obviously highly important, but we also really try to make sure that the foundation, you know, the, the leadership skills and the ethics, all of that is equally emphasized, I would say, and a lot of the things that we do and now granted it's for members as opposed to staff, but I think the focus is really there. And, it's all about developing that pipeline. Right. And I think that's kind of what you were touching on. So from your experience, from again finance and staff, when it comes to developing your staff, what kind of methods or types of trainings have you attempted, implemented? You know, what kind of training has been the most effective for you and your staff?  Dana: (02:50) Yeah, so definitely every year always focus on goal setting with a couple of stretch goals, right? I want to, I want to challenge them, pull them out of their comfort zone a little bit. But you know, something as simple as regular communication, having one-on-ones and being clear and providing constructive criticism to really help them, you know, improve if you're not providing constant and regular feedback, I don't think individuals know where to begin or what to improve on. So I really think that communication is super important, cross training, getting folks into, maybe areas that aren't their area of expertise, but, allowing that cross training to really build out their, their expertise, involving folks in a new project or a responsibility for a short period of time, if something comes along again, that's part of, kind of pulling them out of their comfort zone, but also seeing how they do with these new projects and give them that role, you know, obviously guide them, but let them be the decision-maker to an extent, obviously, you know, the leader I'd have to provide guidance, but let them participate to understand the different perspectives and see how they would answer the questions. And let them feel kind of part of that process. I also think anytime you can provide a staff an offsite experience, I think that, especially in finance right, we're just the behind the scenes books and numbers. So when you can give an employee an opportunity to kind of better understand the business, the operational side of what's going on, you know, be it visit a branch, an office, accompany an internal audit to a site visit, visit a customer, a vendor. I think that really helps, especially some of the newer staff really put the full picture together. So not only understanding the numbers, but also understanding the why, the how, and how the businesses is running. I just think it helps to put that full picture together and is just so much more valuable as they move forward in their career.  Mitch: (05:10) Yeah, I totally agree. And a lot of great practices there from my own personal experiences, I can say, you know, a lot of what you've shared that I've been through, it certainly works, and it really helps with that stickiness and makes everything kind of make sense, big picture, like you were saying, but I do want to kind of just follow up on what we're talking about here. You've mentioned a few different skills, but when it comes specifically to finance, what are some of the skills you see that are most important? You know, when it comes to staff development, we talk a lot about upskilling or reskilling. Where is the focus today?  Dana: (05:43) I mean, clearly you have to have that mathematical analytical skill set, right. I think, you know, today also having pretty strong IT skills are pretty important and that's all part of kind of that technical skill. But I also think persuasiveness, decisiveness, interpersonal communication skills are, it's all part of, of finance, right? It's more than just that technical skill. It's how do you, how do you deliver that technical answer? How do you, how do you provide that with confidence? Right. It's one thing just to give a number, but if you provide it with confidence and decisiveness, then your audience is, they have comfort in you and what you're delivering. So it's, again, it goes back to, you know, not only those technical skills, but, but having strong, soft skills.  Mitch: (06:35) That's great. And, again, I can really see how everything you're sharing comes together. I can relate personally to some of my experiences. So, like I said, a lot of great ideas, perspective here. I'm curious when it comes to thinking about these ideas and trying to put a plan together, how do you go about mapping out these needs? How do you go about picking these different practices to implement? Is it an individual basis? Is it by department? You know, how do you go about planning your staff development?  Dana: (07:08) Yeah, so I think it is important to kind of first understand the individual's career aspiration, their personality. You know, you want to make sure you're stretching and challenging the right person and the person that you're giving them challenges that fit their personality. Right, so you want to align project and work with those desires because if there's a mismatch, it won't be effective. Right. But it is about understanding that person, their career goals, their personality, and providing challenges and, and stretch goals to kind of push them outside of their comfort zone and see how they perform. You know, some people they're just, you know, you're steady Eddie, but, but some people have a desire to continue to move up in their career. And so you would align projects and responsibilities accordingly. So for me, it's always been understanding that individual person and their desires and their personalities, and then al...

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IMA Website: https://www.imanet.org/About the CMA Certification: https://www.imanet.org/cma-certificationFor nearly 50 years, the CMA® (Certified Management Accountant) certification has been the global benchmark for management accountants and financial professionals. Why? Because CMAs can explain the "why" behind numbers, not just the "what." And that can give you greater credibility, higher earning potential, and ultimately a seat at the leadership table.FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam (00:05):Welcome back for a special bonus episode of IMA's Count Me In podcast. As you know, this series is dedicated to bring you the latest perspectives and learnings on all things affecting the accounting and finance world, as told by the experts working in the field and thought leaders shaping the profession. Well, IMA is pleased to announce that it has continued to shape the profession through its CMA certification and has just officially certified it's 100,000th. To celebrate this milestone IMA has planned a month long celebration to promote the impact the CMA has had on the accounting and finance profession. To kick off the celebration, IMA's brand content and storytelling manager, Margaret Michaels, spoke with IMA's senior vice-president of certifications, exams, and constant integration, Dennis Whitney, about the state of management accounting profession and the trends impacting its future. Keep listening to hear this insightful and celebratory discussion about IMA's CMA program.Margaret (01:08):Great. Well thank you Dennis for joining the Count Me In podcast. The first question is about the certified management accountant or CMA program that was launched in 1972 by IMA. Can you tell me a little bit about what the impetus for creating a certification program like this was?Dennis (01:30):Yeah sure Margaret, thank you for having me today. I'm very happy to talk about the CMA program. Yeah, it's interesting, back in the 1960s, IMA started seriously thinking about a certification program. The impetus behind that was that rightly so they believe that management accounting was a distinct profession from public accounting and that the competencies needed inside organizations were different from public accounting. There was quite a bit of overlap. You know, financial accounting is necessary both for public accountants and accountants working inside the company, but there are distinct competencies, cost management, financial planning, and analysis that are very important for accountants working inside organization. So they identified that need and they started the planning process to develop the CMA program. And it took several years of planning, but they had their first Board of Regents meeting in the beginning of 1972 and rolled out the first exam in December of 1972.Margaret (02:44):Wow. So the CMA has a long history and how does IMA ensure that the program is relevant to the profession right now and evolves alongside it?Dennis (02:56):Yeah, the CMA program has evolved quite a bit over these, almost 50 years now. You know, when we first developed the CMA in 1972, there was more of a focus on cost accounting, but today the focus is more on a planning, analysis, decision support, and also technology and data analytics. So the way we keep up with the profession is, you know, we're constantly scanning the environment, reading research papers, talking to CFOs, corporate controllers. But what we also do is every six years or so, five to six, seven years, we do what's called a job analysis survey. So with that, we identify the tasks that management accountants do every day and what they need to know to do their job efficiently and effectively. And so from that research, we're able to develop the content specification outlines and the new exam and keep up to date with the profession.Margaret (04:02):And how does continuing education fit into the CMA program?Dennis (04:07):Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting that you use the word program because the CMA is a program. It's not just the exam. When you finish the exam, you're required to do 30 hours of continuing education every year, including two hours of ethics and the reason for that is management accountants need to stay on top of the latest trends in the profession. They need to develop new skills, new techniques. You know, if you got your CMA 20 years ago, you know, most of that knowledge is still relevant, but there are new skills and in order to maintain your relevance on your job and add value to your company and also help you develop your career, it's very important that you keep your skills current. So that's why we have the continuing education as part of the program.Margaret (04:58):That makes sense. And I'm sure that continuing education aspect appeals to a lot of professionals who are looking to stay current right now. In looking at the growth of the CMA program, it seems as if the CMA has been growing most significantly in the last five years with 50,000 CMAs added from 2016 to the present. And for perspective, it took 50 years or from 1972 to 2016 to reach the first 50,000 CMAs. So what trends do you think are contributing to the CMA's astronomical growth in the last five years?Dennis (05:39):Well there are a couple of factors that go into that. First of all, for most of our history, we were pretty much a US, primarily a US certification. I mean, we are still a US certification, but our candidate growth has expanded beyond the US. So about 10 years or so ago, we started seriously looking to develop markets overseas. So we've seen tremendous growth overseas. Now we're still, we're growing actually quite well in the US, but we're actually growing very, very well overseas, especially China. We've seen tremendous growth in China. But we've also seen growth in Europe, middle east, very strong growth in the middle east over last 10 years. And India, India is a market now that's really growing quite a bit. And also Southeast Asia, for example, in the Philippines and Vietnam. So it's a global growth and that's attributed, contributed a lot to the growth of the program. The other thing is that we've, we really work hard to communicate the value of the CMA. And for example, we have every year now for the last, I'm not exactly sure how many years, five years or so, we've been doing a commercial and an ad campaign where we make sure that we tell the public, not just our CMA's and our candidates, but tell corporations through business development and tell the public through marketing, how relevant the CMA is. So that increasing exposure has more people who know about the CMA and more people who realize the importance of the CMA, particularly hiring managers. So we're seeing, for example, more ads saying CMA preferred and I think those are the reasons primarily for the growth. Well, one other thing actually is a bigger exposure on the university campuses. So more students are interested in the program as well.Margaret (07:54):That makes a lot of sense and clearly now more than ever, hiring managers and organizations are faced with challenges revolving around rebuilding post COVID and the talent war that we hear about where there's fierce competition for CMAs in particular. So as organizations look to build a more enhanced digital capabilities and transform their finance and accounting departments, how does the CMA specifically prepare them for those types of challenges?Dennis (08:35):Well the CMA has a very unique set of skills. So, y...

Contact Demetrios Frangiskatos: https://www.linkedin.com/in/demetrios-frangiskatos-00290a7/Demetrios at BDO: https://www.bdo.com/our-people/demetrios-frangiskatosFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch (00:06):Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and this is episode 137 of our series. Today's conversation is between my co-host Adam and the co-leader of BDOs SPAC assurance practice, Demetrios Frangiskatos. The SPAC, Special Purpose Acquisition Company market has long-term implications that cannot be overlooked. Demetrios joins us to explain factors currently driving the market as well as other considerations and risks. To learn more, keep listening as we head over to their conversation now. Adam (00:48):Demetrios, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. To start off our conversation, where's the SPAC market now and what factors have been driving its activity and is it still a viable option to going public today? Demetrios (01:02):Thanks for having me, Adam and looking forward to our discussion. Yeah. You know, the SPAC market has been on a roller coaster ride over the last probably 18 months and all of it is sort of been going up just at different speeds and different levels. The market right now is probably a little slower than it has been, you know, earlier on in the year with regards to initial public offerings and raising capital through the pipe market, but there's been no indication from, you know, whether, the bankers,, attorneys sponsors, what we're seeing in the marketplace that it is still a viable option. We're still seeing activity. We're still seeing SPACs raising money. We're still seeing spot sponsors, which include asset managers and strategics and high net worth individuals who have had a lot of success in doing M&A, looking to raise capital. So I don't see it slowing down. I think we were sort of in an unprecedented market at the beginning of the year and that incline had started from the year before, and that might've been a pace that was difficult to continue following. But it still seems like it's going strong and you're still also seeing even the traditional IPO market go strong. So they both seem to be viable, options that are continuing in the marketplace, as well right now. Adam (02:51):So back in April of this year, the SEC issued a new guidance regarding, related to warrants that seemed to shake up the market. Can you talk about what happened there and what implications were for sponsors and target companies alike? Demetrios (03:08):Yeah, of course. Yeah, that was, that was a bit of a splash in the market with respect to the accounting behind warrants was dealt with in a certain way for a long period time and with the SEC statement it changed the direction of that accounting from what was fairly easy to account for the warrants as equity instruments, to if the warrant instruments had certain clauses they would have to be reclassified as liabilities. And what did that do, that caused, you know, there was at least 400 SPACs out in the market that raised capital, that had to reevaluate it. That was de-SPACs that occurred in the marketplace, where the warrants carried over from the original offering into the new operating company that became public that had, restatements. So it caused quite a bit of noise. And, you know, the timing was interesting because the statement came out in April and then in March, I shouldn't say then, but prior to that in March, we had started seeing a little bit of a slowdown in the market. I think the pipe market was reaching a bit of a capacity point in how much private investment was going to go into these SPACs and the combination of those two really, really put a pause in the marketplace. And it took, it took about, you know, maybe a couple of months for the market to start getting back up and going and enough time for the companies to evaluate what the rules mean with their current equity instruments, you know, attorneys to evaluate the structure, including the bankers. And initially there was a lot of hesitation and what to do, whether to file new SPACs with, you know, the legacy terms and my ability accounting, try to restructure these agreements so that they have equity accounting, and that started shaking itself out and initially we saw mostly filings of you know, saw the restatements on the old, on the existing companies. We started seeing filings of SPACs with, warrant instruments with liability accounting, and now we're starting to see a shift where the sponsors and the bank community and the attorneys are working on instruments that will, get these warrant instruments to equity accounting and you know, we're working through several within our firm as well, so you're starting to see the market evolve and address some of the concerns that the SEC presented in their statement. Adam (06:06):Can you maybe touch on the regulatory focus that continues to increase, such as the current chair's Gensler's the statements that he's made? Demetrios (06:14):Yeah, no, of course. I think, you know, you're going through changes in the administration right now, because of the presidential change so that's, we'll probably gonna see some shifts in regulatory focus and, you know, the appointments that are being made and coupled with, you know, Gensler's comments, maybe a month, month and a half ago, he was talking generally about the capital markets and there's been an uptick both in traditional IPO's, and that there's an expectation that will continue. But did talk about SPACs, and their sort of their resurgence from, you know, these were vehicles that existed several years ago, or much longer than several years ago, but they just weren't, they weren't being used as often and obviously now the activity is tremendous. And he was, you know, he was focusing on our investors protected appropriately with these SPACs specifically. I think his focus was on retail investors and them getting the appropriate information, that they need both on the initial IPO stage and in the de-SPAC when the target is the operating companies identify and the DSPAC occurs and I think he was cuing that there should be some focus on this and make sure with the volume that's going on that the disclosures and the information flow that's getting to investors is at the right level. And, the second point he raised, which I think has always been something that's been a focus is, just generally speaking the efficiency of the vehicle and whether, you know, is how it compares to traditional IPO. Obviously, the SPAC sponsor is the ones that are raising the capital and are the ones that are looking for the operating company. There's a certain level of dilution and costs that they bring to the table. The SPACs that we're you know, in the current market, maybe several years ago, they didn't have pipes, but now they have pipes which are private investments in public equity. So there's significant capital being raised through that and that they're getting discounted pricing. So the combination of all that is a concern that gets brought up, are the retail investors aware and, are they properly, being, you know, evaluating their decisions with the information for what's going in? So it's clear that there's going to be some heightened focus on SPACs, disclosure, the right level of information for investors, and then ultimately I thi...

Continue the conversation with David!https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshar/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch (00:05):Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and this is episode 136 of our series. Many would describe the global business environment over the last year and a half as rather turbulent. From accelerated growth due to technology, followed by the effects of COVID-19, burnout has become a very common theme in the workplace. David Shar, business psychology expert, and founder of Illuminate PMC joins us to talk about what businesses and people can do to avoid burnout and find real meaning in their work. Keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.Adam (00:49):So David, thanks so much for coming on. Burnout is a word that I've been hearing a lot lately, especially with people coming on the other side of the pandemic and coming out of their homes a little bit more, but so many people have been stuck in front of computer screens in their homes for so long. Can you just kind of talk about what is burnout?David (01:07):Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for having me Adam. So burnout is definitely becoming a little bit more of a popular topic. Fortunate for me, unfortunate for everyone, I guess. And it is, becoming more and more universal, especially with what everyone has gone through and were not done, like you said, as we are now leaving our homes and going back to work and, many of us will be teleworking and be on fully virtual teams, but whatever that means going on to that, and I know it's a horrible term because it's used so much, but to that new normal, we're not out of the weeds yet. This is when, we're all going to have to start to really cope with what we've gone through and burnout by definition is typically defined as having three pieces to it. The first one is this emotional exhaustion and emotional exhaustion is often misunderstood. It's not physical exhaustion, it's not mental exhaustion, but it does lead to those things and even lead to physical ailment, but it starts as emotional exhaustion. The second piece is a general cynicism of work and, that's where we start really putting up barriers between ourselves and our coworkers and our clients and if we have employees between ourselves and our employees, we have this general sense of cynicism and we separate ourselves from our work as much as possible, mentally. And then the final piece of, burnout would be a reduced sense of personal accomplishment. And what that is, is that we feel like we're turning our wheels twice as fast and getting half as much done, or we feel like we're putting in the effort, but not getting the reward and maybe that means the compensation, dollars and cents compensation, or maybe it just means the recognition or the positive feelings or whatever it is we're putting X in and we expect to get Y out and there's an imbalance there, which is either real or just perceived, but either way it will take you to the brink of burnout.Adam (03:48):So as you described all of those three things, I know that I've been there, I'm sure you've been there, I'm sure many of our listeners have been there. What can business leaders do to prevent that burnout?David (04:01):Yeah. Another great question. So, right. We've all sort of been there, especially over the past year and a half. You know, who hasn't felt extremely cynical, who hasn't felt emotionally exhausted as they're trying to learn to do their job, in a new reality and, you know, within accounting, a lot of your work could be done virtually and a lot of you may have been already working primarily virtually, but even those individuals didn't necessarily have their children at home trying to homeschool their kids, you know, at the same time, that's incredibly difficult. There are, there were incredible barriers that we made work harder. And, so there's a lot that can be done from a leadership perspective, as well as the individual's perspective. But the biggest thing that I would say from the very beginning is we need to reconnect with what it is that we do, right? Like, we need to reconnect with our proverbial why, like what is our firm all about, what is our business all about? We need to be able to reconnect with that because that's what we've gotten away from. We get so lost in the weeds and so overwhelmed and distracted that we lose sight of maybe it's the client interactions, maybe it's the mission of the organization, maybe it's a difference that we're making and suddenly instead of all of those things, it's just spreadsheets on the computer and it becomes very easy to lose sight of those other things and so we need to take away the noise and create the sense of why again, and we need to be able to do it in a way that, brings people, brings people back mentally and also gives them a sense of control in their lives again. Work during the pandemic, could have been part of the problem, or it could have been an escape from the problem, depending on how much control employees felt when they went to work or virtually signed into work. If they felt in control of their work, then when their entire lives felt out of control work was the haven where they were still in control. But if that wasn't the case, then work was just part of the problem.Adam (06:37):So let's dig into that, finding your why a little bit more, you know, sometimes people have very mundane jobs, when you're first starting out in accounting, you know, sometimes you just, you know, kind of crunching numbers. How are people supposed to find meaning in that work and connect with that why, if they're so far down?David (06:55):Yeah, it's really interesting. So my first job, my first real job was, I was a kennel worker. I wanted to be a veterinarian and, turned out that, to be a bio major pre-veterinary you needed chemistry and physics. So I'm like, nope. And ironically, I switched to the business college and the very first class I took, I'm like yes, I'm getting away from all the math and the very first class I took was accounting I. So you gotta be kidding me, but suddenly when you took moles off the end of a number and you put a dollar sign in front of it made a lot more sense to me. But yeah, so my very first job was working in these kennels and I was pre-veterinary, I wanted to be a vet and I remember one day as a young man, I was literally pooper scooping, like picking up poop from the floor of a kennel. And I was doing this, I was working on alongside a coworker and I remember looking over and seeing her face and realizing that the two of us were doing completely different jobs, the same exact tasks, but completely different things. She was picking up poop. I was, I was creating a cleaner and safer environment for these sick animals. You know, I was caring for animals while she was cleaning up poop, you know, and it was just in the mindset. It was in how we saw our jobs and when you're in accounting or any profession, you have a choice in how you see the actual why of what you do, how much you connect with that. And we typically find careers where we have some sort of role model that we look to somebody that we see that we're like, yeah that's what I want from my career. And there's usually not that much of a separation between our career and life outside of our career. We look for significance in our lives, we look for significance in our career, and that might mean something different to each of us. Maybe want to make a difference with the organizational mission. Maybe you want to be able to, you know, afford to travel around the world and work from wherever, whatever it is, you're lookin...