Reflect, reboot, reengage: Emerging from busy season smarter and wiser.

• Author: Oppe, Ami

It is summer--time to sit back and unwind. Summer is also the best time to reflect, reboot, and reengage with your two most valuable professional assets--your clients and your staff.

Reflection

CPAs spend most, if not all, of their time during busy season checking tasks off a to-do list to meet client obligations and government deadlines. It can feel like a three-month fire drill. From one tax return or tax issue to the next, CPAs are in "get it done" mode, not reflection mode. Summer is the perfect time to take a breath and reflect on things that went well and not so well during busy season.

Summer is a perfect time to sit down with staff (or by yourself if you are a sole practitioner) and list all of the positives and negatives from busy season. There should be a long list of issues on both sides. Those issues can be classified into four buckets: workflow and processes, client-related experiences, technology, and staffing. For each bucket, narrow down the positives and negatives to a handful of issues. Having a few items to deal with will help focus the group on those that are most important and will have the most meaningful impact.

It is human nature to focus on the negatives or the things that went terribly wrong. In some instances, these are the things that keep practitioners up at night long after busy season; for example, waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat wondering if an extension was filed for a particular client. The negatives often linger longer than the positives. CPAs must resist the urge to focus on the negatives. The list will contain some negatives that need to be addressed, but the team's energy and time should not be wasted by dwelling on everything that went poorly.

Instead, they should spend time identifying the positive experiences and working on further improving them, while mitigating the effects of the negative experiences. During this period of reflection, it is important to understand that this is about learning from the past and choosing to be better in the future and not about pointing fingers or assigning blame.

The goal from the reflection period is to come up with a plan of action for the remainder of the year. You may decide to take a closer look at something at the end of the year instead of now. Whenever in the calendar year this exercise is performed, it is important to spend the time reflecting while the memories of busy season are fresh. The results of this reflection will help focus...