Keep talking: as your firm grows, so should your communications.

• Author: Armanino, Andy
• Position: Practicemanagement

With the national and California economics in distress, a discussion of how to manage rapid growth might seem a little counterintuitive. But consider that Accounting Today's recent annual report on the nation's Top 100 firms shows that those firms collectively grew net revenue in 2008 by a respectable 8.12 percent. Accounting, it seems, is necessary in good times and in bad. Analysts predict the economy will improve in the coming year, so now might be a good time to begin thinking about how to get your firm poised for growth.

One of the hidden challenges to growth, however, is the poor management of communications. While the benefits of growth are obvious--increased revenue, enhanced ability to recruit and economies of scale that make operations more efficient--getting bigger increases the potential for communication problems. As your organization becomes more complex, your employee, client and prospect communications must keep pace. The experiences in my firm present a good case study.

Between 2005-09, we grew from about S30 million in revenue to S70 million, increased our workforce from 100 to 275 and opened two offices. Having spent nearly four years focused on growth, we realized we needed more frequent and formalized communication processes and a new way of thinking about our business.

One of the ways we formalized our communications was by creating three integrated advisory boards. Two boards are internal: one is composed of managers and another of junior and senior staffers. The third board is composed of executives working outside of the CPA profession.

We then linked the boards to increase the flow of information used to solve problems and to capitalize on opportunities for the firm.

The benefits have been immediate and tangible--we are getting great ideas from both our own employees and external experts. These ideas are influencing our strategy, benefitting our culture and helping our firm to operate more efficiently.

AMLLP Advisory Board (AAB): Five high-level executives from Bay Area industries outside the accounting profession comprise this board. This group meets with me and other executive committee members quarterly to discuss business strategy For instance, we will soon query the group about potential expansion and where opportunities lie in both organic and inorganic growth.

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Management Advisory Board (MAB): This group was the idea of the most recent graduates from our firm's leadership program...