Confront Your Firm’s Challenges… Globally

Today, our guest is Andrew Leck. Andrew is CEO of MSI Global Alliance, which is an international association of lawyers and accountants. Andrew and I had the pleasure of meeting, or at least I had the pleasure—he’ll have to tell you if it was a pleasure or not—but I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew a month or so ago in Denver at, oh, I’m not even sure what the name of that conference was, but…

The Americas Conference, yeah.

Americas Conference in Denver. And we had a lot of fun and we thought, you know what, let’s get together and record a podcast. And so, here we are. So, Andrew, welcome to The Unique CPA.

Thanks, Randy. And I can concur. It was a pleasure to meet you. It was mutual.

Alright, well, nice. I appreciate that. And honestly, that was a great group. You know, we’ve done a lot of associations. There’s many of them that, you know, you get welcomed into immediately because that was our first one, but there’s some where it takes a little time, and we were welcomed immediately, which was a great experience there. So again, thanks to you and your members for that.

No problem. I think, interestingly, I mean, I’ve been doing, and we’ll talk a little bit about this maybe in a moment, but I’ve been in the role for two years, and one of my first events was the Americas Conference, it was actually in Miami when we came back after COVID. And again, just as you said, you know, they’re a very welcoming group, and there’s a real camaraderie among the group. And I think that really helps. And it’s an attractiveness to the existing members, but also when new members come in and a bit like yourselves as guests. You think, yeah, this is, there’s something, just a strong feeling around that. And I’m sure everyone says that, but actually, as you said, from an external perspective, you could feel it, you know, you and the team, you know, straight away.

Honestly, there’s some, and everybody’s great and all this, but there’s some where, you know, they’ve just been, they’ve got their group that’s been there together for a while, and you know, you gotta work hard to get into that inner circle, but that wasn’t here. 

Alright, so let’s start, we’re jumping ahead a little bit, which is fine, because that’s what we do on the show. We deviate, we go in different directions. But why don’t you give us a little background on, you know, probably you as well, because your background is a little interesting to where you got to where you are now with this too, but you and MSI, and give us a little background on both if you would.

Yeah, I mean, I think starting with myself, my background is in accounting and I basically, after working, I worked in local government and very quickly moved into the professional accounting association world—first of all, in a training role and then more laterally, I worked for ACCA and my role there was very much about developing markets, first of all, in the UK and then expanding out to Europe and actually taking some time in the Americas as well. And I think one of the great things about that was giving me a fresh perspective on what it was like to practice in other markets and culturally, what accountants did across the world was obviously similar in some ways, but obviously the environment that they worked in was a little bit different.

I moved from ACCA to EY, and my role in EY was working on developing our business in the private and middle market area principally in Scotland. Some of you who have maybe picked up that my accent is from Scotland, a proud Glaswegian. So my role in EY was very much working in the market, developing our business within those family-owned, privately-owned, entrepreneurial businesses. And again, that was a great experience as a bounce into MSI, where I took over as CEO in July of 2021. Having that background of working in a firm, working in a membership association, and also understanding what it was like to serve the needs of clients, and sometimes that’s not always easy, was a good sort of platform to come into MSI. 

As you said at the beginning, MSI is over 30 years old now. It’s an independent association of lawyers and accountants. We have over 250 firms in 100 countries around the world, generally, with around 15,000 total employees and those firms generating $1.8 billion of revenue. So an organization of scale. And I think that is a good platform to support other firms and their clients.

Yeah, so let’s talk about a few things around that. One, obviously the scale is great, and we can get into things about what we’re seeing in different places around the world, and you know, what’s different and what’s the same, but before that—it is lawyers and accountants. What’s the benefit of that? Because a lot of associations that I’ve dealt with are just accountants. And it’s funny, the ones that are international seem to be the ones that, at least from my experience, are lawyers and accountants. Just expand on why the benefits of lawyers and accountants working together in an association.

I think it’s both client-led and firm-led. So having lawyers and accountants under one umbrella has a range of benefits. I think that brings a diverse perspective to the problems and challenges that clients have, and providing perhaps a more holistic solution to help them achieve better outcomes. If you think about a number of activities that businesses undertake, they’re primarily going to need an accountant and a lawyer. Actually having them working together, collaborating, having that trusted relationship over a period of time, they understand the nuances of working in different markets, different states, so having them under one umbrella has a real benefit.

In recent times, and again, we can explore this, one of the big attractions for new members is seeing that they’ve looked to other associations, but actually having lawyers and accountants together is something that’s more attractive to them because they have that existing legal or accounting local connections and networks. But actually, on a global scale, having everyone together is much more attractive.

Yeah, and it seems to work really well. When we were there in Denver, a friend of mine, Allan Koltin, was there speaking at your event and Allan’s a great guy. 

Yeah. He did a great job. 

Allan doesn’t need a script or anything. He can just go. After I got back to, I was going to say my office, we have an office, but I pretty much work at home, I got an email from one of the lawyers in your association who said, “Allan Colton said I really need to reach out to and get to know you.” And I’m like, alright, that’s pretty cool. Already, like I said, we’re getting this collaboration, we’re feeling welcome, and we’re going to go have lunch with the lawyer that Allan introduced me to.

I think it’s because, it’s interesting, because what we talk about at our events, we can’t go very technical accounting or tax or very strongly—we talk about business issues, we talk about client issues, we talk about practice management issues. It’s very interesting that actually as much as they’re very different professions, there’s a lot of commonality and actually focusing on what are you being asked by your client, how’s the world changing that you need to survive and work in, and how are people approaching it in different ways? The amount of collaboration between the two is very strong. Just as you said, you’re getting lawyers calling you up just to say, let’s connect.

Yeah, that’s pretty cool. So you just said a couple of things there. The issues that they’re dealing with may be similar in more business issues. You’ve got a unique perspective on that from not only the lawyers and the accountants, but the international, because you’re dealing with how many countries did you say you’re dealing with, you have members?

101 at the moment. We’ve got members in 101 countries. And I think, predominantly, in the two years I’ve been here, we emerged out of a very interesting dynamic under COVID, and how people responded to that, both in a working environment and how they engage with their firms and clients. But actually, the predominant thing that was top of the agenda for every meeting was people, and that was motivating, cultural issues, remuneration, recruitment, retention. 

And whether you’re a CPA, a legal firm in Chicago, a CPA firm in New York, or a lawyer in London, you’re basically going through some similar challenges. You have to motivate the people you’ve got, you have to help them develop because they’re in demand everywhere. People can move so easily. The firms combine a lot to share experiences and in the last 12 months, more than the first 12 months, people at the beginning were getting together to help each other, almost reassure them that they had the same problems too, and isn’t it really difficult. 

But now we have to find solutions for these challenges. We’ve seen a number of different examples of what people are doing to try and deal with people-related matters. We’ve seen firms in South Africa going to a four-day week but keeping the same level of reward, which was quite interesting. And then you’re seeing firms exchanging people moving from different countries to help deal with demand issues, such as a UK firm using some of our members in another CPA market to help them during the audit busy season. We’re seeing different reward packages and broader benefits. So that type of thing was important to share.

But then you also see cultural differences that a large-scale law firm in Atlanta versus a small practice in Botswana, they’re quite different in terms of how they deal with clients. Therefore, you have to adapt to that. That was a big part of our strategy to make sure we had one strategy with some regional focus to respect those differences. So yeah, I think some similarities and some differences, as you would expect.

One thing I wasn’t even thinking about when you were saying that is just cultural differences. Obviously, there’s going to be a different cultural difference from one country to another. Even though the issues might be the same of finding people, retaining people, how you go about that is different. Do you put on specific programs for that? Is it members just sharing, or when you get together or have webinars or something, is this a topic that often comes up?

Yeah, I think culture has been a big part, and I think what people are really interested to hear is first of all in a sharing experience, just to see how people are dealing with that, we very much encourage that respectful nature of how people interact with each other, you know, if you get a referral you have to reply within 24 hours and how you engage with people. But also the experience of how are you dealing with this matter is always there. 

But I think also when people are looking to work together, they really need to kind of get a sense of what is it like to work in that market, and what is the, you know, and I think that’s the thing about having an association of independent firms, they really understand that local culture and they’re happy to share “this is what it’s like when you work in Mauritius, when you’re working for a firm in London, this is how you engage, this is what to expect.”

So we had an example where one of our, again it was both in Europe, and we had, I won’t maybe mention the countries because it might be a bit unfair. We had one country where they pretty much had gone online with most of their activities around tax and then another European country were very traditional. So they were engaging with each other and we got a complaint from our firm saying it’s really slow from this country, why are they taking so long? We maybe need to look at another firm. And we said, it’s just how their bureaucracy works in that market. So we needed to kinda intervene ’cause they tried another firm who were actually worse and basically said, oh, I realize it’s actually not the firms until as the bureaucracy of the government right within that.

So as I say, I’ll keep the names out it to protect the guilty. But I think it’s really interesting that people have to adapt. It’s not everything that you expect in your own office or your own state, you know?

Yep. And so that was actually a question I was going to ask is how do you deal with, because there’s a lot of collaboration I’m assuming going on with between firms and not everything always runs perfectly, I assume, kind of like this. So how do you make sure that we have good relationships in the side of the association, even if there’s a little bit of a hiccup here or there?

Yeah, I think, well, before my time, but certainly the team, we have a secretariat team who over, you know, support our members. And I think that where we see a very clear unresponsiveness in the professionalism of our members, if there is an issue, then the members will come to us straight away. So we will intervene, certainly around communication and responsiveness, you know, sort of, if a firm has gone out to someone and said, look, they haven’t replied after two or three days, we will go back to them and we will make that intervention. I think also, as you can imagine, sometimes the complexity of an engagement, whether it be an M&A transaction, whether it be a client moving to a different market, sometimes you just have to help them navigate that a little bit by explaining, you know, the process and both sides. 

But one of the great things about it is as firms work together, you know, quite quickly they get to understand that culture and it’s like really important if someone says, I want to talk to another CPA firm, you know, in Brazil. Because when I speak to my client, I want to demonstrate that I know a little bit more than them, so that they can explain that actually when we, if we go into Brazil and we’re going to do this is how it’s going to work, and we’ve got a firm there who can help you do it, but actually you should be aware before you start this process, this is how it’s going to work. So there’s always a little bit of an explanation. 

And in some ways, If you compare that to a network or a, you know, a bigger branded firm, often you just think because they’ve got the same stamp or the same logo or the same, you know, stationary that they just do it all the time. And I think we all know from experiences that doesn’t work that way. And it’s not, it’s no disrespect to, I mean, I was at EY and I absolutely loved it, you know, but I think you can see the differences between me and Scotland asking our US tax desk to do something when they’ve got a whole entry that’s massive, and my entrepreneurial tech client from Edinburgh is maybe not going to be the top of the list versus when we give work from one firm to another, that client becomes their client, and therefore there’s a mutual benefit, and I think that’s a real, you know, benefit around, you know, working together and again, go back to that cultural piece of understanding the nuances of the different markets and also the clients that operate there.

Alright, so one thing that you just said in there, and you weren’t talking M&A specifically in the profession, you were just talking about M&A deals, but that brought up an idea to me that, you know, there has been so much M& A going on. I know in U. S. firms, you know, for sure, and a lot of it’s been driven by private equity lately, too, back to our friend, Allan Koltin is very active in this, but have M&A deals within the profession affected you? And is this not just a US based thing? Do we see private equity coming in all over the world? Or what are you seeing?

So, I mean, to give a short answer, which has probably been unusual so far, but the answer is definitely yes. We have lost firms in North America as a result of M&A and, you know, kind of mergers around that. Some really fantastic members we’ve had, very active, but for a number of reasons, and we can go into that, that they’ve joined either a larger, you know, network or been taking some private equity as part of a broader group. 

And I think it’s understandable. I think that what we’ve seen, the reasons that people have gone down that road, a lot of it is around succession, you know, where they look in terms of what the next generation is. I think the partnership model is obviously for newer people coming in more challenging and therefore those more established partners who might want to take a next step out of the partnership, how do they do that in terms of, you know, they’ve worked very hard over decades for many of them in terms of that. So they want a reward for that. Private equity is there to offer them a solution. 

We see that in other parts of the world as well. I think the US has probably been the most active. I think if you speak to a number of firms in Europe and look at the UK, most of our reasonable sized firms have had phone calls to say, are you interested in this? And, you know, again, I think a lot of firms remain independent for very good reasons. They want to have that decision making, they want to have that independence of strategy and decide how they want to develop and who they want to work with. Sure, if you get some extra finance coming in, that might accelerate some growth or entry into new service lines and things, but I think what the debate that we’re having, and this is very active in the US, is our existing CPA firms who want to remain independent are looking to come together to see how they can demonstrate that to the market. 

Because I think the quality of service doesn’t change. There’s obviously a resourcing piece, but you know, I think people want to remain independent for the reasons, as we’ve said, that they can help make a decision owner to owner rather than having, you know, someone above them who’s all of a sudden deciding what type of clients they have and what type of work they do.

Yeah, that would be hard for me. I have someone come in and have that charge. You mentioned that maybe the partnership model might be a little difficult for maybe newer people coming in. Are you seeing at all, at least the thought process of do we change this? And who was it? Some big firm was just going to go to a corporate model rather than partnership, I think I heard? It was RSM or something?

I think there’s always, you can cut the cake in different ways, right? I think it’s about how can you incentivize the next generation to be part of the ownership of the firm so that they are benefiting from firm growth. You obviously see, you know, in different levels, you know, whether that’s a big four or the larger firms, we have a lot of, you know, non-equity partners, and actually, if you think of the process of becoming a partner as part of the owner of the firm, and then you get to that place where you become a non-equity, then you’re just paid a bit more rather than actually having a share of the firm, and that’s a different piece. 

And I think the next, you know, as you’ve mentioned, you know, more eloquent people than me have looked at it and things, but actually I think the next generation of leaders coming in, they have, perhaps a different perspective and that might not be what they want. So I think firms are looking around to see what’s the right shape for us, you know, going forward. And I think that broader piece of, you know, partner remuneration, we have our international conference in Sydney, Australia in October, and we’ve got a, you know, a remuneration expert coming to talk about that and the different models and how you link in reward, how it’s linked to leadership, how the DEI agenda is coming into this, all these kind of multi layers, because it’s not just about money, you know, I think that’s the thing.

Yep. For sure. So going back to the M&A piece a little bit, you know, you had mentioned that you have, you know, there’s been some firms that have merged in and you’ve lost that. But so you’re always, I assume, looking to replenish that to bring in new firms. And so, you know, how is that going and what is the plan around that?

Yeah, I mean, I think that probably in recent times, you know, 2022 for us was quite disruptive. There was probably more changes then than there has been. And I think what that made me focus on is we have to be more on the front foot of our growth. And actually this year, we work in a calendar year, so since January of this year, we have had 22 new firms coming in, so 12 lawyers and 10 CPA firms, which is great. I think that’s partly down to approach and strategy, but also, as you say, we’ve had to replenish in certain markets, and therefore we probably have to look at that in a slightly different way, because I think if you’re a CPA firm who’s established over a number of years and you have a pan-national, international outlook, you’ll be part of an association or a network. And people tend not to move, you know, because you’ve built up your relationships and your network. 

So actually, who are those new market entrants? Who are those hungry, you know, developing firms? And we see quite a lot of people who have come out of either Big Four or those firms who have taken private equity and they’ve decided that’s not a life for them. No disrespect to those firms who have, but they decide it’s not for them. You mentioned that yourself a few minutes ago, so therefore they’re starting their own firms, and that’s really interesting because they’re bringing a very broad technical perspective and experience of running a big, of being part of a big firm, right? But they’re now more agile, being in a more mid-tier. And that’s quite appealing to clients and it’s appealing to us because we’re bringing, you know, new firms who are actually wanting to grow with us.

So that’s been a real success story, you know, for us this year. And again, as one of our firms said, you know, you probably just have to change, you know, where do you look for your next generation of firms? And that’s what we’ve been doing. And that’s been good because it’s interesting because it’s new names, and you said yourself at the beginning of the podcast, coming to an event, probably about our events now we’re seeing, you know, 30, 40 percent of the people coming are new. And that’s great because it brings fresh energy and ideas.

Yeah, it’s so, and that’s a huge passion of mine. It’s just these events, these conferences, these collaboration, as you mentioned, collaboration being so important. At the in-person conference, you just learn so much, and you meet these people, and you build these relationships, and then you know, you know, oh yeah, I just met, you know, Sally, and Sally’s an expert in this. And now I know I need that and boom, we can communicate, we can connect, but you just build relationships, which are so, I think important to, business overall.

Absolutely. And I think that you, I mean somebody described the conference as feeling the warmth of the room. You know, and actually you build that trust and, you know, even if it’s not in the session, it might be, you know, on the traveling to a different event. It might be over dinner. It might be a social event. It’s just, you get to talk to them more about, you know, tax or accounting about what their family does, interesting sports or whatever, or culture, and that’s great as well. And you then get a more rounded view. So therefore, when you’re introducing your client to them. You feel as if it’s more not from a spreadsheet or a website, it’s actually because you know that person and that’s really important.

Yeah, because they’re a friend, because you’ve got to know them, which is pretty cool. So let’s expand on one thing then about the growth of MSI a little bit. You are looking for more firms. Is there a certain, do you define a firm in a certain way? Hey, we want a $15 million firm. We want a $2 million firm. We want a firm that, you know, specializes in this. We want a firm in this specific location. How do you look for the firms?

I think it’s, you know, it’s, I’m going to sound like a politician here and give you about seven different answers and hopefully one of them is actually an answer, but I think we could be all of those things and what we try not to do, I mean, we have to, we would look for full service law and accounting firms. That would be our starting point. However, we might take on more specialist firms in a certain area, particularly if they’ve been introduced to us by another firm in a membership, you could say well we actually used this firm in LA, they’re a specialist in tax, they’re really good and they do this very peculiar, you know, more niche part, so they could service, you know, clients all over the world, so we would take them. 

But actually it’s more around what are the attributes of those firms when I meet people either face to face or online when we talk about coming in. What’s their attitude? Are they hungry? Do they want to be part of something? I shouldn’t really have to convince them to join. They have to demonstrate to, you know, their enthusiasm for joining because they’ve got a good outlook to serve their clients. So I have to demonstrate to them that we would be a good choice for them, but actually they have to be hungry to be part of that. They want to work together, they understand about serving their clients and using other people in our association to help them do that and vice versa. 

And I always describe MSI as a community. And I think if you’re part of a community, you do two things: You consume, but you also participate. And if you don’t do the participation, then you’re not, that’s not the kind of members we want. We want people who are very much, you know, part of that. So it’s about, you know, talked about culture, it’s about attitude, it’s about capability and their quality, these things are almost a given. But what’s going to make them be additive to our overall, you know, MSI community, and that’s what we look for in new firms.

Yeah, what you just said. I think the firms that I see that, that put the most in, get the most out as well. I mean, and so I think that’s so important.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Alright. So before we, I’ll give you a final wrap on some things. I’m going to ask a couple deviation questions here and then we’ll get the wrap up. So these are questions everybody gets. I don’t think I warned you ahead of time. But, you know, we’ve just been talking about MSI and business and the profession and everything, and we talked about, you know, the importance of getting to know the people, you know, besides what they do. So that’s what we’re gonna do. When you’re not running MSI and flying around the country and meeting new firms, what are your outside of work passions? What do you enjoy doing?

I mean, I’m quite a sports related person, participating and watching, so I’m a keen runner and a keen golfer, you know, so actually that’s, they’re both great things. I found out particularly during the summer, it’s hard sometimes to do them both, so one improves as the other one goes down, so this is golf season in the UK at the moment, so, that’s part of it. They’re probably my passions outside of work in terms of, you know, activity around that. 

I like to travel, which is quite good for the CEO of a, you know, a global association. So I, I can get to, to travel and for business and also pleasure. So recently just back from two weeks in Tuscany, which was great. And again, those of you who are familiar with Scotland, we tend not to get Tuscan type weather very often, so it was nice to get some sunshine around that. So, yeah, that’s probably some of my main passions.

Yeah, well, that’s pretty cool. And speaking of where you are located, I didn’t mention this before, but Justin, who does our editing and producing and everything for the show, is in Edinburgh. So, how far is that from you? 

Probably about 50 miles.

Oh, that’s it, huh?

Yeah, so it’s not a big, so Glasgow is the west coast of Scotland and Edinburgh is on the east, so there’s not, but there’s not much between us, except he, his accent’s probably a little bit different to mine.

Well, he’s actually from Arizona. 

Alright, okay, so it’s very different to mine then. 

Yeah, but he’s been there a while, but I don’t hear an accent when he does it. So, alright so then last thing then, if anybody wants to find out more about you, about MSI, just see what you’re all up to, what’s the best place for them to look.

Go to our website, MSIglobal.org. And I think one of the great things we have recently done, we’ve been working a lot on our external messaging. So we’ve got a great video that we’ve just launched, which is 90 seconds, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about MSI. 

I watched it! It was very good. 

It was good. And I think the team that pulled that together, it was just trying to succinctly put across what it’s about. And then if people want to find out more, then they can come and see us.

Perfect. Alright, Andrew. Well, thank you. I appreciate you being here. This was, I actually delayed it once, so I, thanks for being patient with me, but I appreciate you being on the show. It was a lot of fun.

Thanks, Randy. Enjoyed that. Good to see you.