November 2015
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Life Outside the Profession's Echo...
Joanne S. Barry, CAE
Consider how the world of finance today is so vastly different from what it was just seven years ago. We were unsure if our entire financial system was about to collapse: there were budget cuts, failing businesses, high unemployment. Anyone with a reliable job could only hope it would remain that way. You hunkered down and worked hard, eager to prove your value.
Thankfully, those days are behind us. The economy has recovered, the job freeze has thawed, and even though we have been busy muddling through a slow recovery from a long recession, technology has continued its exponentially progressive forward march. As a result, what NYSSCPA members needed from their professional association just a few years ago may be vastly different from what they need today. With this in mind, the NYSSCPA will in January launch a long-overdue membership survey that will be used to inform our programs, technology, and content. Every Society member for whom we have an e-mail address will receive the survey—so if you haven't recently updated your current record with us, please contact the NYSSCPA within the next month so your voice can be heard.
I often write and talk to accounting groups about how critical it is that firms prepare for the future; the business environment is no longer “business as usual,” and firm owners who think it is are in for a shock. Technology is not only changing the accounting profession's playbook; it is also changing the entire playing field. Firms' ability to adapt will determine who gets to play and who gets benched. With the results of this survey, the NYSSCPA can help its members make the cut.
Meeting the Needs of the Next Generation
About four years ago, we launched the NYSSCPA's NextGen program because two-thirds of the membership was over 50 years old. We value these members, their leadership and contributions, and how much they in turn value their membership—but anyone looking at our membership numbers could see that the NYSSCPA was not meeting the needs of the next generation. So we set out to change that. We have made significant progress in increasing the number of students on our membership rolls, but almost equally as important is that we have expanded our NextGen programming based on what the next generation of accountants needs, not what we think they need. The same goes for baby boomers making assumptions about what millenials should be, how they should learn, and how they should reach their career goals.
The survey results will be rich in data that will allow us to better serve the needs of all of our members. We are giving special consideration to the responses of our NextGen members, since the survey will be gathering most of its data from an already engaged and vocal segment of our membership. We need to be the organization that the next generation not only wants to belong to, but also wants to engage with and lead some day. If we don't meet this challenge, we risk becoming an organization that exists in an echo chamber, listening to ourselves talk about what the next generation needs instead of listening to what they have to say. We need to create value for all of members, not just the generation nearing retirement.
I hope you will help us reach this goal by completing the survey when it arrives in your inbox in January 2016. We'll be using the ideas and suggestions that you share with us to write a new playbook for the NYSSCPA, instead of relegating ourselves to the bench.