Steve Pittman had some definite ideas that he wanted to launch as the new managing partner of accounting firm, Bruner-Cox LLP. In fact, he had been working on them for quite a few months before he became managing partner last year, and he felt they would differentiate the firm from the competition by using a simple catchphrase ― “We.”
“That’s the collaborative culture within our organization, and part of that collaborative dynamic is the relationship we have with our clients. We are working together, and we are extremely effective,” Pittman says.
The feedback, in a word, has been positive.
“The response from our associates has been outstanding,” he says. “The response from our clients has been outstanding.”
Smart Business talked with Pittman about incorporating the message of “We” to a firm’s mission.
How do you decide if your brand needs polishing?
This was something I had been working on with the partners. I think it’s one of those things where you look and say, ‘OK, we’ve got a great organization. We have great people. We’ve been able to be really effective even during the tumultuous economic environment we’ve been in. So what are we doing that we can do better?’ We felt like it was finding a message ― the brand, if you will ― that we could all recognize, all feel good about and talk to our clients about.
It’s not that just the leader can drive the vision; the whole organization has to drive it.
Think of the late Steve Jobs as an example. If you talk about visionaries, he had a vision. He drove that vision. He wasn’t actually building the products, he wasn’t building the retail stores, but he had visions of what Apple was going to be. He constantly reminded people, ‘This is what we are. This is what we what we do. Nothing less than that.’
How do you get your organization to buy into your approach?
Over time, you build up your reputation as an organization, as having quality people who are excellent, who have high integrity, who have this concept of collaboration. Be sure that every person in your organization never deviates from that. If you do have people who aren’t consistent with your culture, they should not be with your firm.
You want clients to always feel like that whoever they are working with from your organization, they will get to know him or her because that person is most interested in them. First of all, they’re highly intelligent, they’re well-trained, they’re focused and they have all the professional attributes that you want in a service provider but also they get the relationship concept. They get the collaborative dynamic concept.
A culture has a life of its own. If you feed it well, if you nurture it, then it takes care of deviations because as a group, you are making sure that you all stay focused, you all stay disciplined. You don’t let variability occur.
How do you control variability?
If you hire interns, that’s an excellent opportunity to evaluate people. Whether or not you are recruiting somebody young into the profession, or someone who’s lateral, spend a lot of time making sure that they understand your culture, making sure they are going to fit in and constantly monitor that and make sure they understand that the culture is the most important thing you have.
But you don’t want to discourage independent thinking because a key value should be innovation ― innovation within the culture. Here’s an excellent example: 90 percent of the competition may look at an issue one way and one of your people looks at it a different way, which is a tremendous value-added feature for the client. So that’s the idea; you always have to be thinking. You always can’t just fix up something on its face value. You have to say, ‘OK, how can we look at this in a way that it can add value to our client?’
Company facts:
City: Akron
Founded: 1925
Size: About 105 employees
Pittman on maintaining a culture: Culture is self-managing … if it is working the way it should. The key is having people who get it and understand it, and they feel good about being in that environment. That’s what you need to do best.
How to reach: Bruner-Cox LLP, (877) 339-1040 or www.brunercox.com
