Welcome 2012

In the days following the excesses of the holiday season, when the cold of winter has finally settled itself in, a strange feeling fills the air. A sense of impending battle, tainted with the fear of possible , stretches itself across the populace. Our heroes are busily preparing themselves, rushing to do what they can in advance. The world of public accounting stirs and awakens - busy season begins.

Okay, so public accounting may not lend itself well to dramatic story lines... I've tried to think up a comic where an accountant could be the superhero, and it just isn't happening. Nope, all anyone ever wants from us is to answer their tax questions, and it turns out that us auditors don't typically even know the answers to those questions. (We all do audit AND tax at my firm, but I still don't know a whole lot about individual taxes.)

Our busy-season interns began work this week. I feel like I have plenty to do, but end up billing so little, because I have been running around the office, meeting with different people, making sure the interns know how to use the software and the scanner whenever I give them a task... nothing takes as long as I think it will!

I'm trying to make an effort to redistribute some work to the interns and the first-years, because I want to practice assigning other people work before it's a required part of my job. I've already made a few mistakes where the first year staff did the work completely differently than how I wanted it, but it was perfectly understandable that they'd think that's what I wanted! I have a manager who gives me assignments without taking the time to fully understand what he's assigning me, and it drives me up the wall some days. I don't want to be managing like that when I'm a 5th or 6th year, so hopefully if I practice more now, I'll be an expert by then!

Some thoughts about managing other people

There is a certain art to this process. I am lucky enough to work with a manager who is good at knowing better than I will exactly how long work should take me, and he anticipates where I'll run into problems. I need to learn (for starters) how to answer the following questions:

• How much to show someone, and how much to let them figure out on their own? Am I explaining something obvious, or missing out on some key information?
• How long will this assignment take them? If I'm having an intern do the cash section for me, is it going to take them four hours, or is it going to take them two days?
• How long will it take me to review this work? I need to be able to factor that into my own schedule for the day.

The places where the less experienced manager frustrates me are the following (I'm noting these to try to figure out how to avoid them myself - the bits in italics are my thoughts on what I can learn from this):

•  Assigning me work that he doesn't know how to do - not because he's bad at his job, but just because with all the different state tax forms, forms pop up now and then that neither of us have seen before. The issue in these cases is not that I can't figure it out the same way he would - the issue is when he has done some of the research, say, calling the state revenue department, but since I wasn't on that call, I'm not really understanding the 2nd-hand instructions from the revenue department.
• Perhaps a solution to this situation is to make sure whoever is working on an unknown issue has all of the information I have? Be sure to forward all emails related to the situation to the staff member who will be researching it, and tell them to feel free to call the state again if they need to talk to someone there.
• Pointing out errors in my work that are not my errors. Now, this is probably more of an issue on my side, but in accounting, it's very important to pay attention to details. So when someone points out you've made a mistake, and it turns out it's their mistake, I find it difficult to just smile and nod and not point it out to them.
• I think the only answer to this as a manager is to be prepared for other staff being defensive as well - it doesn't mean I shouldn't point out true errors to them - it's important for them to get in the habit of using spellcheck, to continue the example - but if I feel it's important enough to point it out to them, then I should also be okay with it being important enough for them to be defensive about, if it's not their error.
• Telling us that we should use his advice on all of our jobs, when it's well-known that every partner's team does things differently. It's always best to check with your manager on that specific job how things should be organized.
• At the very least, I don't want to have the ego to insist that my way will be useful on every job. When giving advice to newbies on best-practices - make sure I understand myself what different methods are in use in our firm, and whether my way is contradicting any firm policies.

My main takeaway from working with this manager is - don't be afraid to tell people you don't know. This guy is inexperienced, and it shows, but he tries to bluff his way through, and act confident, but it just makes him seem like a jerk. The sad part is that as regular people, I would much prefer to hang out with the inexperienced manager rather than the experienced one. In a work setting though, I vastly prefer having the experienced manager, and our interactions have much less tension involved. Being friends with the staff members who work under you doesn't make you a better boss to them.

Any thoughts out there on the growing pains of learning how to manage other people? Ever had someone who was your supervisor/boss who just drove you crazy with their management style? Please share your advice/thoughts/stories of horrible/awesome bosses below!