UHY director Ladislav Hornan listed must-have attributes for new partners during a presentation on 'Elements of growth' at the UHY annual meeting in Auckland, New Zealand.
The presentation provided an overview of the "hot topics" discussed at the Managing Partners' Forum, held in Istanbul, Turkey, earlier this year.
He says a partner needs to have:
- Technical and managerial excellence.
- Initiative, motivation, reliability, and the ability to juggle tasks and anticipate needs.
- A positive attitude, suggesting the person is responsive, likeable, loyal with ability to inspire and accept criticism, and a willingness to sacrifice.
- Resilience, an ability to work under stress, adapt, imagine possibilities and persevere.
- Similar ethical values to current partners.
- Business development skills and a good understanding of the wider business environment and issues.
The discussion at the Managing Partners' Forum highlighted some additional important criteria that should be given consideration when selecting a new partner.
A partner needs to bring clients to the firm. He or she needs to be ambitious, personable and technically competent – but not necessarily an expert.
"The more senior the partner is, the stronger these attributes must be," says Ladislav.
In the presentation, Ladislav also referred to practice management that motivates and incentivises staff and retains talent; and how future managers and partners can be identified – as proposed by partners who attended the UHY Managing Partners' Forum.
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| Ladislav Hornan (presenting) with (from left) Georgios Varvias, UHY Axon Certified Auditors, Greece; Ibrahim AlBassam, UHY AlBassam CPAs & Consultants, Saudi Arabia; Alvin Tee, UHY, Malaysia; and Alan Farrelly, UHY Farrelly Dawe White, Ireland. |
Business models, comparing partnerships with LLPs as well as single ownership were on Ladislav's agenda. He also reported how the managing partners explored ways of guaranteeing sustainability to ensure firms could be financially secure: they included spreading activity in different services as well as specialisation; succession planning; and making international services a core business.
Under business development initiatives, Ladislav reported how partners had discussed how to build networks at a local level; PR programmes; and sector and service development and diversification.
The managing partners also focused on their growth strategies and key performance indicators – comparing actual achievement with planned achievement; examining how and why firms perform as well as they do; and competitor benchmarking.
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