Spring 2013

Tearing Down

SILOSScott White succeeds at IGS Energy by fostering collaboration

strategic excellenceDelta Systems

get to knowMichael Perlman

focus onQuickBooks®

2 ss&g solutions spring 2013

going for gold

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Less is more, so start subtractingThe world we live in is overwhelming, complicated,

and, at times, exhausting.

Every day, we wake up to our smartphones, iPads,

and laptops, reviewing emails, LinkedIn, Facebook

and Twitter, text messages, schedules, the headlines,

and the scores from last night’s game. If you’re like

me, all this happens before your first cup of coffee.

Even with all of the information-gathering devices

we have at our fingertips, it seems as though we have

lost our sense of what’s important.

Is checking the weather for a trip you’re taking in

two weeks really benefiting your day? Just how smart

is that phone if it’s distracting you from that time

you set aside to reflect on your next big project, not to

mention the goal you missed at your son’s soccer game because you failed to look up

from your emails? Is it worth the anxiety you felt on your last flight because you were

expecting a message and weren’t able to check for an hour?

This world of immediate information has helped us to become sharper at running

our businesses, but it seems as though the communication overload is starting to blur

our vision.

Since the recession, most businesses have figured out how to become more

productive, reducing costs to survive. Now we need to shift our attention to the

bottom line. Profitability needs efficiency, and the secret to efficiency just may be

to do less. We think we always need to do more, but, in fact, our days are filled with

many distractions and very few of these interruptions can make us more profitable.

Matthew E. May recently published “The Laws of Subtraction: 6 Simple Rules for

Winning in the Age of Excess Everything.” May believes that “less is best,” and that

“by removing just the right things in the right way, something very good happens.” So

in doing less, or subtracting, a C-suite executive or business owner can cultivate the

calm, quiet mind one needs to improve performance, profitability, and value.

Even the late, great Steve Jobs believed it. At the Apple Worldwide Developers

Conference in 1997, he said, “People think focus means saying yes to the things

you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the

hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as

proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying

no to 1,000 things.”

According to a report by McKinsey and Co., “multitasking can limit you by slowing

you down, limiting your innovation, and putting you on edge.” How can we expect to

be focused on productivity and profitability in our businesses if we are distracted by

the very things that are supposed to be making us more efficient?

Think about it. Could you do more with less? I know I can.

Mark Goldfarb, CPA

Managing Director

IRS Treasury Regulations require us to inform you that any tax advice contained in the body of this communication was not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, by the recipient for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed under the Internal Revenue Code or applicable state or local tax law provisions.

3spring 2013 ss&g solutions

first person

Michael PerlmanTitle: Managing director, Chicago

Degree/college: Bachelor of Science degree in accountancy from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana

Hometown: Lincolnwood, Ill., a suburb immediately north of Chicago

Year I joined SS&G: 2013

My first job: Little League umpire – my first entrée into leadership and management

The word that best describes me: Caring

I’ve been recognized for: Promoting change.

The best part about my job: Having a positive influence on the lives of those with whom I work

The best piece of advice I’ve received: Surround yourself with good people who are as smart as or smarter than you

Books of note on my shelf: “The 360 Degree Leader,” “Now, Discover Your Strengths,” “The Speed of Trust,” “True Professionalism,” “The Question Behind the Question,” “Leading Change,” “Be Unreasonable — Start With No,” “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”

The biggest challenge I’ve overcome: The fear of making small talk

If I could change anything in my career: Beginning to network in the early stage of my career

If I could give one piece of advice to executives: Be humble and demonstrate humility

A great leader is: One who brings out the best in everyone in the organization.

The business/business leader I admire most: Walt Disney. He had a dream, created a vision and built a legacy.

My business philosophy: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

I’m most proud of: The love from my devoted wife and the emotional strength and emotional independence of my college-age daughters.

I hope I never: Stop learning.

A little-known fact about me: I’ve seen the Rolling Stones perform live each time they’ve visited Chicago since 1975

My next goal to be met: The successful expansion and growth of SS&G in Chicagoland

My favorite place in the world is: Being on a beach on an island on the Caribbean

When I get discouraged, I: reflect and consider what I could have done differently.

My attitude toward change is: Bring it on!

I’m inspired by: People who have succeeded when the odds were against them.

Success is: A state of mind. j

If I weren’t doing this, I would: Be a rock-and-roll drummer.

4 ss&g solutions spring 2013

industry

Elizabeth Barry needed a fresh perspective on how

Delta Systems Inc. was operating, and she found

it through the SOAR to Strategic Excellence™

program, developed by Larry Goddard, managing

director at SS&G Parkland Consulting.

The company was doing very well, but Barry wanted

to see if there was a way to identify improvements that

would help Delta Systems do even better.

“We had used the same strategic planning approach for

many years and everybody felt it was time to try something

new,” says Barry, the company’s president and CEO. “I

thought the SOAR program was different enough that we

should try it. It was truly looking at the full company.”

That broader organizational view is a crucial part of

getting employees excited about the future at all levels of

the company.

“It is the responsibility of senior leaders to lay out the

vision for success,” Goddard says. “But if you truly want

the vision to be successful, the best way to do it is to

allow people throughout the organization to be involved

in figuring out how to turn the vision into reality.”

SOAR to Strategic Excellence’s Corporate Body Scan™ is

a process that assesses a company’s overall effectiveness

and identifies opportunities for improvement. At Delta

Systems, this process included 18 people from across the

company, not just senior managers. Each employee was

given the opportunity to answer 300 questions about

the business. Those answers were entered into software

that created a report explaining which areas were doing

well and which were in need of improvement, allowing

Reaching new heightsDelta Systems energized its employees by turning its corporate vision into reality

the company to develop a detailed action plan for

improvements and benchmarking the company against

high-performance, world-class companies.

“We asked everyone to be honest answering those

questions,” Barry says. “It really does delve into many

facets of the company that a traditional strategic

planning program might not look into or address.”

Taking actionOne area that Delta learned it needed to work on was its

new employee onboarding process.

“We want to make sure everybody knows that we are

trying to hire the right people and onboard them as best

we can to make their integration into Delta easier,” Barry

says. “Then we’re working with each employee to make

sure they get adequate training and career growth that

makes them the best Delta employee.”

A group has been tasked with the challenge of

improving the onboarding process and meets a few

times each month to work with an SS&G facilitator to

develop and implement action plans. Other teams are

working on better customer evaluation strategies and a

new vision strategy.

“One thing that scored low was no one was too excited

about our existing strategic plan,” Barry says.

The SOAR process is still under way, but Barry

is confident that lack of excitement is no longer a

problem, as employees throughout the organization

are now playing an active part in mapping out the

company’s future.

“If you truly want the vision to be successful, the best way to do it is to allow people throughout the organization to be involved in figuring out how to turn the vision into reality.”— Larry Goddard

“The excitement is already there now that we’ve

started this process and started to address these items,”

Barry says.

Understanding your flawsSOAR provides the deep look a company often needs to

take as it pursues its bigger goals.

“You have to hear how good the good parts of the

company are, but you also have to hear about what

you’re not doing as well,” Barry says. “These days, you

have to be strong in as many areas as possible.”

That includes everything from hiring the right people,

to having a strong culture that welcomes and trains

those people, to keeping them informed so they can

better serve your customers.

Barry believes SOAR has put Delta on a path to excel

in these areas and others. She hopes the end result will

be a stronger company.

“Everyone knows what the common plan and vision

are and knows that we all work to make it possible,”

Barry says. j

HOw tO reacH: Delta Systems Inc., 330-626-2811 or

www.deltasystemsinc.com

SOAR builds teams that winThe SOAR to Strategic Excellence™ program is the result of more than 20 years of research conducted by Larry Goddard to determine just what it is that makes a company world class.

“I found the traditional method of consulting to be inefficient and ineffective,” says Goddard. “I wanted to create a scorecard that allowed a business to measure its effectiveness compared to world-class performance.”

There are four main sections in SOAR: strategy and vision; organization and culture; accounting and finance; and responsiveness and execution. A group of people who represent a cross-section of the company get together and answer 300 questions about the business.

“We separate them into three groups to answer the questions separately and then we compare their answers,” Goddard says. “If the three teams don’t agree, we have a discussion about why they didn’t agree.”

Creating three groups and having a facilitator question inconsistencies ensures you are getting at the heart of what a company does and does not do well.

“There are multiple safeguards built into the system that make it very difficult to get anything but the truth,” Goddard says.

There are four subsections within each of the four main sections. They all count equally, with each area being worth 100 points for a total of 1,600 points. If 85 percent of your company’s answers match what world-class companies do, then you’re considered a world-class company.

One of the keys for any company participating in SOAR is the team-based implementation process that is geared to helping companies that fall short become world class. This process helps generate employee buy-in, which is a highly effective catalyst for business success.

“Instead of just having people do their jobs, you allow people to start thinking about how to make the company better,” Goddard says. “It gets people much more energized, focused and, committed, and you achieve employee buy-in.”

To learn more about SOAR, visit www.SSandG.com/ services/management-consulting-and-strategy or contact Larry at LGoddard@SSandG.com.

“We’re working with each employee to make sure they get adequate training and career growth that makes them the best Delta employee.”— Elizabeth Barry, president and CEO

Delta Systems Inc.

5spring 2013 j ss&g solutions

case study

7spring 2013 ss&g solutions

Scott White blames himself for the silos that developed at IGS

Energy Inc. a few years ago.

“I was not facilitating enough communication between the

leaders,” says White, the company’s president and co-founder. “I think

the company got bigger and people got focused on accomplishing what

they felt needed to be accomplished.”

Every good leader wants his or her employees to be focused. But

when that focus is so intense that it blinds that person to how others

contribute to the company’s success, it becomes problematic.

“Finance needs to accomplish what it needs to do and operations

needs to accomplish what it needs to do,” White says. “But to the

extent that we can understand a little bit more about how they are

accomplishing what their role is and how it aligns to the company,

the more we can support each other and maintain alignment as a

company.”

White has seen IGS — the nation’s largest independent retail

supplier of natural gas — transform from a three-person startup in

1989 to a company with more than 350 employees and $1.4 billion

in annual revenue today.

Experience has shown him that alignment, no matter how

big your company gets, begins with your leadership team.

“As more people get involved, it is harder to have a

personal relationship with everyone,” White says when

asked about the challenges of growth. “Managing a larger

group of people, you need to rely on your leadership team

to help you.”

Scott White succeeds at IGS Energy

by fostering collaboration

Phot

os: J

effr

y K

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8 ss&g solutions spring 2013

Engage your leadership teamWhite meets with his leadership team for two hours

once a week to review what is happening both in the

business and within each department.

“We rotate the subject and allow different executives

to have their day, and that challenges them to be

accountable to the rest of the team,” White says. “That

allows the whole executive suite to be more informed

and more aligned in leading the business. It is a great

way to keep everybody accountable to each other.”

It also reinforces the notion that, while your business

is made up of different departments, everyone is

supposed to be working toward the same ultimate goal.

“The more people know about what we are trying to

do and why we are doing it, the more engaged they are

going to be,” White says.

White believes he has evolved as IGS’ CEO from a

tactical executioner to more of a strategic planner.

“I have people that can execute far better than I can

tactically,” White says. “I need to make sure what they

are executing on, as each individual leader is executing

on their tactic, that all those things are aligned with

each other and not getting out of sync. As you develop

in your career, you prove yourself to be tactically

efficient. As you get higher up, you need to become

more strategically thoughtful.”

White learned a lot about managing people and

keeping things in sync while playing with The

Safarians, a rock band he helped lead during his

college days.

“We had players come and go, we had conflict

management, we had highly talented people who

were not engaged,” White says. “All these things are

not any different in the C-suite. You had people that

were really talented individually, but together they

were not compatible because they did not complement

each other. A lot of those lessons I learned about talent

management and egos and how people can complement

each other are things that I apply today.”

White once dreamed of becoming a professional

drummer. But while he appreciates the lessons he

learned from playing in college, he has no regrets about

the way his life has turned out.

“The more people know about what we are trying to do and why we are doing it, the more engaged they are going to be.”

— Scott White IGS Energy Inc.

www.igsenergy.com

“There are a lot more starving drummers than there

are CEOs,” White says. “And I realized the person I met,

who I ended up marrying, did not want to be married to

a rock-and-roll drummer.”

White says his wife of 23 years, Michele, has played

an important part in his life.

“Having that stability at home is a big part of being

successful in your career,” he says.

Encourage employee feedbackAbout a year and a half ago, White started taking an

hour each quarter to sit down with 50 to 80 employees

to provide a company update. He reminds people what

the goals are and talks about how the company is doing

in its efforts to meet them.

After the update, he opens the floor for questions.

White likes to hear about the good things that are

happening at his company, but even more, he wants to

hear about the problem areas.

“We ask for people to give their input, and if they

are seeing problems or if they are observing things that

are not flowing through the way we had hoped, it is

valuable for us,” White says. “Some of the best feedback

is when you tell me what is wrong.”

One example is a problem that had developed with

IGS’ call center operations. Some newer markets had

a new customer service platform, while older markets

were using the older system. White says it became

obvious to him that, with the different platforms,

customer service representatives were struggling to

learn multiple systems. As a result, the management

team decided it was important to try to simplify the

business.

“That was a result of getting valid feedback from

the people trying to keep up with what we were asking

them to do,” White says.

So how do you encourage employees to provide

feedback that is not complimentary of the way you are

running your business?

“You have to be prepared to hear the bad things and

the things you may not have known,” White says. “The

people on the front line are your best resources. If you

ask them what is wrong, they will tell you.”

Once you hear it, you have to show that you are glad

somebody brought the problem to your attention so it

can be fixed.

“If you hear bad news and you act negatively, that is the

last time you are going to hear bad news,” White says.

In addition to being nonconfrontational when

someone raises concerns, you also cannot lie if you hear

about a situation or problem that you did not know was

occurring.

“If you find yourself caught off guard, it’s best to just

admit it,” White says. “As the company gets bigger, you

are not going to know everything. If you are honest and

say, ‘I need to look into it,’ or ‘I do not have that level of

detail,’ that’s better. Do not try to make up something.” j

HOw tO reacH: IGS energy, 888-995-0992 or

www.igsenergy.com

TakeawaysHere are some of Scott White’s keys to effective leadership.

• Setasidearegulartimetomeetwithyour leadership team and review the direction of the company.

• Expectdepartmentheadstoknowtheir own goals and encourage them to be familiar with how the actions of other departments fit into the fulfillment of those goals.

• Createanenvironmentwhereemployees can and do bring you concerns about problems that exist in your company.

9spring 2013 j ss&g solutions

10 ss&g solutions j spring 2013

focus on

QuickBooks® is for more than just small businesses. While it can certainly benefit small businesses,

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4 tips for getting the most out of

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Be careful when modifying transactions from prior periods. Before modifying old data, such as voiding an

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You don’t want to change data from prior periods

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same period or name shouldn’t be a problem as

long as the finances stay the same, but always

double check. j

HOw tO reacH: contact Deborah Defer at

DDefer@SSandG.com

If you’re one of the millions of people who use Intuit® QuickBooks®, you may be missing out on some key

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Here are four tips to help you get the most out of QuickBooks® from Deborah Defer, a senior consultant at

SS&G. She is the firm’s expert in the accounting software and is an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor®.

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11spring 2013 ss&g solutions

the last wordwith Gary Shamis

“I don’t plan to fade into the sunset; I plan to maintain an active role at SS&G.”

I believe it is only fitting to dedicate this “Last Word”

to Bob Littman, who becomes managing director of

SS&G on May 1. I have tremendous confidence that

Bob will take SS&G to new places and heights. Bob is a

great person, committed to his family, our clients, and

our colleagues.

I don’t plan to fade into the sunset; I plan to

maintain an active role at SS&G. I will be there to assist

Bob and will continue to lead the growth initiatives

for the firm. We remain a work in progress, striving to

raise the bar in all aspects of what we do.

It has been a true honor to lead SS&G for the past 27

years. It is amazing to me how almost three decades

passed by so quickly. I am so grateful to the many

clients I served, and to the wonderful colleagues I have

worked with at SS&G and LEA Global, our international

association of CPA firms.

My final word

A word about Bob

I am truly blessed. I set out to be a doctor and ended

up with the perfect career. Thanks to everyone who

made this journey so incredible. j

Bob Littman began

his career at SS&G in

1985 when the firm

had 10 employees. Now,

on May 1, he assumes

the role of firm managing

director, overseeing 525

professionals in four

states. We know him to

be a dedicated professional, approachable leader, and

extraordinary accountant.

What should you know about Bob? He possesses an

uncanny ability to multitask, returns phone calls and

email promptly, and always goes the extra mile to take

care of his clients. He has managed the firm’s largest

book of business, runs marathons, plays a mean game

of golf, is active in the community, and still has time

to spend with his family. We aren’t really sure how

he does it, but we know if anybody is best suited for

the role of firm managing partner, it’s Bob. He’s set

standards for integrity and client service, and has been

an integral part of the growth and success at SS&G for

more than 25 years.

Basically, Bob is the model for success and someone

we believe will lead the firm into a successful,

prosperous future. To learn more about Bob, view his

bio at www.SSandG.com. To reach Bob, email him at

RLittman@SSandG.com or call 800-869-1834. j

32125 Solon Rd.

Cleveland, OH 44139

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PAIDCLEVELAND, OHPERMIT NO 1940

more

In fact, we like to step outside the spreadsheet. At SS&G, our CPAs take the time to understand each client’s unique situation so we can offer customized accounting, tax, assurance, and consulting service. We don’t just report your past, we tailor our approach to help plan for your future. Let us help you go farther.

Discover what makes us different at SSandG.com/words.

We go beyond accounting.