It’s hard to believe I’ve now been CEO of Allinial Global for 17 months! And to think that I interviewed, accepted, and started this role all during a pandemic. I didn’t see a single member in person until May 2021. There are still many members I have not seen in person but have come to know virtually. And for now, that is just fine.
As I reflect, here are some of the key themes from 2021.
Live vs. Video
I think we’re all tired of video currently, but that doesn’t mean it’s going away. I’ve heard some say they can’t wait to get back to “normal.” I’m afraid this is the new normal.
But the new normal gives us opportunity. We held two live meetings this year. Both happened to be in the US, where some cities have opened back up. It was great to see folks live. But it also gave us the opportunity to reach deeper into our membership by continuing to offer a virtual option.
For our fall meeting, we had record attendance both live and virtually. That will be the new normal. We have to get some of the steps and systems right, and we’re still working on it. But overall, both experiences were well received. We were able to see more firms that couldn’t travel to the location AND we were able to see more professionals inside the firms who only wanted to attend a portion virtually.
Commerce
One of my earliest blog posts touched on the idea that commerce is a noun. I consider it a verb, however, because it takes action for commerce to work. And we’ve had a ton of action this year, even if firms couldn’t meet live.
We’ve added a Commerce Consortium dedicated to thinking of new ways for firms to work together. We’re close to finishing guides to help with that. We’ve hosted specialty workshops and “Doing Business In” workshops that have all been wildly successful. We’ve also had firms in similar markets working stronger together to find ways to help when firms are conflicted out of opportunities. This is why we want multiple firms in markets—we’ve seen the success it can bring.
Trusted Advisor Status Unchanged
We continue to see our member firms embrace their trusted advisor status with clients to do truly amazing things. The pandemic has helped the world realize just how trusted we as their accounting advisors truly are to their business.
We were there to help our member firms do more for their current clients. Some of that was through global expansion, but much of the opportunity revolved around risk management for the client and helping the client sort that through.
Diversity of Thought
This year we have been fortunate to see growth in new firms joining Allinial Global. Yes, we’ve lost a few to mergers, but we’ve added over $500M USD in new firms in the last 13 months, which is a sizeable number. That coupled with our current firms’ revenue growth to make the 2021 year-end substantial.
More impressive is the fact that we’ve improved diversity of size. We’ve added firms from $1M to over $250M USD revenue. We’ve welcomed new members from the US, Latin America, the UK, several parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia Pacific. I like to think that diversity of thought comes from size, geography, practice area, and most importantly, gender, race, and a variety of social factors. As an organization, we don’t ask you to think like us. We ask that you think WITH us. That’s what makes us all better as firms and as an association.
Governance
We have more work to do on how we govern our organization. Our member firms also have work to do on how they too are governed. I don’t think governance is a topic that ever gets permanently fixed. It’s one that continues to evolve as customer needs change and as an organization matures and grows.
But we are helping our member firms with this issue and constantly challenging the business model of old. At Allinial Global, we are also challenging ourselves to change governance given the changing needs of our global organization as our firm mix continues to evolve.
Allinial Global has made some wonderful progress in 2021, and we have many great things planned for 2022. We do hope to be able to offer a hybrid experience in all of our regions next year, so stay tuned. I thank all of you for being such great members look forward to a healthy and happy 2022.
