Building and Leading a Team (Part 1)

*This article is derived from a webinar that occurred in 2017. Its content remains relevant to the accounting industry today. 

Clayton Oates is recognized as a thought leader in the accounting, bookkeeping, and technology industries in Australia and internationally. He’s been working in and consulting to the accounting, bookkeeping, and software consulting industries for more than 25 years. After completing a business accounting degree at Monash University, Melbourne, he joined Price Waterhouse, working in the tax division for five years. He then moved into the industry as a retail accountant for nine years with another firm. In 1998 he co-founded QA Business, a specialist independent IT consulting practice that’s focused on improving business systems, productivity and performance for small business owners and operators, and in that capacity, he has gleaned and acquired skills in leading teams.

Joe Woodard: Hello, Clayton. Welcome to the podcast. 

Clayton Oates: Good day, Joe. Thanks so much for having me on the call. 

Joe Woodard: Well, it is always great to have you on the podcast series.  

When hiring, do you focus primarily on a person’s skill set, or their aptitude? 

Clayton Oates: That’s a great question. It’s a definite focus on hire for attitude, train for skill, all other things being equal. What I mean by that is, you’re not going to hire someone new who’s got a terrific attitude and is a great plumber to do bookkeeping. If someone’s got the skill set, they need that, and there’s ways of testing for that. The attitude piece is a higher priority for us and has been over the years. And it’s where we’ve achieved the greatest success in bringing and building teams. When we’ve been on the desperate side and we’ve needed someone right now, and whoever comes along has the skill set, we’ve had to filter the attitude piece. That hasn’t tended to work out as well as we expected. 

Joe Woodard: It’s funny that you should say that: focus on the attitude and aptitude and train to the skill piece. In my experience in leadership, you can train to professional proficiency. But what you can’t necessarily coach someone through is an attitude problem. I’ve had some success coaching to attitude and helping people mold into our culture. But if it’s a completely polar opposite or if they’re not coachable, then the culture of the company starts to take a hit. Disney Institute talks about several things they overmanage, such as culture. When you’re hiring for aptitude, what’s the connection to the culture of your practice? How would you describe the culture of your business? 

Clayton Oates: I think it’s very important to have that clarity around your culture. What are the values that you stand for? What is the purpose, goal or mission that you are trying to instill with that client? Who are we to the audience? I think we need to have that documented. It’s certainly something we’ve always done. We’ve had that non-negotiable up front. We articulate our culture and values right at the start of the hiring process and interviewing process. People are aware of what we stand for. Ultimately for us, it was about making a massive impact on client lives, using technology to drive efficiencies and effectiveness, but ultimately really to help them buy back time in their life. Technology has enabled us to make an incredible difference to people’s lives. We were the conduit, with the technology piece to enable that to happen. We were very clear upfront there, and we also looked at people being accountable with non-negotiables: living above the line. What I mean by that is we need to lead as well; we’re not just coaching. We’re actually leading. Leaders need to lead. It’s about being accountable, being responsible and taking ownership. The team would take ownership of issues that arose; when I was dealing with a client, for example. I didn’t want to have to be the one that handled every single issue in the practice. “If something’s messed up, then Clayton’s the fixer for that.”  No, we had to help the team members take responsibility, take action, own that issue, and learn from it. That can be a little confronting. We tend to shield the team members from this confrontation sometimes that can occur with clients. We’ve been completely opposite on that. We need to have them on the front line and ultimately learn from that experience. 

Joe Woodard: I like what you’ve said there. There are subjective elements to culture. But you’re objectifying the culture. You have very clearly written guidelines for how you’re going to act with each other and with the client. So, you point back to those guidelines that everyone has mutually agreed to and be very specific. It’s not just that Greg and Sally are not getting along. That’s what everyone thinks culture is – artificial harmony. But it’s not. I love what you said about mission. It’s about everybody aligning around a common mission and then working together to accomplish that common goal.  

Continue to Part 2 here