Donna Bulmer
Joint Group Managing Partner
As the group goes through a period of transition, we sat down with our board of directors, Donna Bulmer, Stephen Lucey and our new non-executive directors, Ben Loveday and Matthew Bracher, to discuss moving forward. They talk about what motivates them, the common misconceptions about accountants and the importance of embracing a strong company culture.
We all had different reasons for joining the accountancy profession and came from different backgrounds. We’ve tried our hands working for large accountancy practices and for small boutique firms. While our experiences are extremely varied, our reasons for joining Haines Watts are very similar. It’s our desire to work with real businesses and make a meaningful impact. Relationships with our clients are key. The opportunity to work with entrepreneurial businesses as trusted advisors and see those businesses flourish is what matters most to us.
As a team, we’re everything the Big Four aren’t. As owner-managers ourselves, we understand what our clients are working towards every day. We build relationships which would be impossible to do within a much larger organisation.
‘Boring’, ‘grey suits’ spring to mind and ‘number crunchers’. This was very much the narrative of the 1990s. But we’re much more visible these days and having personality counts. It’s a people business and while we need to look at business issues through a ‘finance’ lens, the view that ‘you have to be great at maths’ no longer stands. In reality, it’s about being great at building lasting relationships and effective problem solving.
It’s good that it’s losing its dreary reputation, because in our experience our work is far from dreary! Accounting is also a great pathway for a whole host of careers in business because it incorporates business techniques and skills that are necessary whatever business you go in to.
Historically, it was about preparing company accounts and financial analysis and while some of that still exists, technology means that we’ve become business advisors across a host of issues and work across multiple industry sectors at any one time - from legal firms to environmental firms, creative services, construction and manufacturing. It means that every day brings a new challenge. It’s always different. For young people coming into the profession, it’s become a lot more exciting, challenging and rewarding.
Our focus is on what we want to achieve as a network and being seen as the ‘go to’ accountancy firm for owner-managed businesses. We want to make sure that we represent this every day when we meet our clients.
Our culture is based on authenticity, having a common purpose and a common set of values and objectives for the network for the medium to long term is crucial. What do we want the Haines Watts brand to represent? How can we best combine the flexibility of our local ownership of practices with the national association of the Group. We want to be open and share knowledge and skills across the group. This is beneficial not just to Haines Watts, but to our clients.
It’s essential. It gives us a wider perspective and the ability to make more informed decisions. We also want to be inclusive and representative of the clients we work with.
We’ve all come from a variety of backgrounds and worked our way up through the profession, working for other accountancy firms before settling at Haines Watts. We’re keen to encourage under-represented groups in to the profession, which can be a challenge. We keep working at it because otherwise we know we’ll be missing out on fantastic new talent and important voices.
As far as internal challenges go, we have a culture of openness. As a network we can’t have 40 different ideas running in parallel, but we can discuss best practice with informed discussion. The benefits of the network are many, so ensuring that we take everyone along with us in the decision making process is crucial.
Technology has dramatically impacted the industry over many years and this will continue into the future. Software and systems solutions in areas like auditing and compliance, mean that clients will increasingly outsource this work to accountancy practices who have teams of people managing the software on their behalf. This will leave accountants to do more business advisory - translating and interpreting the results for their clients – as well as challenging and problem solving what the information may be telling us.
We’ve all learnt through making mistakes and found that failure can be a strength as long as you learn from it. We’ve collectively learnt to be brave. You get far with thinking positively and often it is much more important to make a decision and move forward than to labour over nuances.
It’s important to be authentic, to be yourself and have empathy with people. To listen and understand other people’s point of view. And finally, do what you’re good at and allow others to do the same.
It’s incredibly important to us as a national network. We can’t thrive if our teams don’t understand the ‘why’ behind what they’re doing. For us, culture is the starting point. We have to live and breathe it every day.
We want to encourage Haines Watts to build together nationally, training together and sharing knowledge across the Group.
Our culture is what we have in common, our values help build and maintain strong teams. People work best and are happiest when they are part of a culture that they can relate to and feel proud of – the challenge is how we communicate our values and attract clients and people who are aligned with how we think and feel.
This caused plenty of debate. However, the most mentioned was Warren Buffet, who started investing when he was a child and became one of the most successful investors of all time. Alan Sugar was high on the list, notably for his crazy task setting in The Apprentice. Bill Gates was a popular choice for all of us, particularly his commitment to philanthropy and how he found his purpose. Finally, there’s a collective interest in hearing from the likes of Rhianna and Kylie Jenner, what makes them tick and how they amassed such vast investment in their businesses Fenty and Kylie Cosmetics.
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